It's booze as usual for Ferndale’s landmark Como’s Restaurant & Pizzeria on Woodward at 9 Mile Road, the Detroit Free Press reports.
A state liquor license suspension was lifted Monday, Bill Laitner of the Freep reports.
“Everything’s back to normal – the booze is flowing,” owner George Grego tells the paper:
"It's a good day for us," Grego said. Ferndale police surprised Grego with the suspension notice Wednesday afternoon, and told him that a 50-day suspension "could happen if I didn't pay," and were overheard by a patron on a bar stool a few steps away, he said. Soon, the tale of a 50-day suspension was "out on social media," he said.
Actually, that's not quite accurate.
Suspensions for 35 days and 15 days already were in effect -- not "could happen," On Como's front door, police Wednesday posted an orange from the Liquor Control Commission in Lansing. The first public report was published Thursday morning in the Daily Tribune, a Royal Oak newspaper, as Deadline reported that day.
In Grego's version, he tells Laitner that a state letter about a bounced Nov. 10 check to a vendor, the lesser of two violations leading to the suspension, “basically fell through the cracks.”
The owner focuses solely on the returned check, not a previously unpaid $700 fine for serving an underage police decoy in 2014.
By the time police arrived to yank Como's license, it was too close to Christmas to reach a state regulatory official -- “she’d gone home for the holiday,” he said. “So this morning I drove to Lansing and it was all taken care of by 9 o’clock,” he said Monday. Grego said he paid two invoices totaling $1,028.40.
The fines Grego paid were assessed following hearings dating back to April, at which Como’s was charged with two violations of state regulations on bars, according to online records of the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulation. One violation was for serving a minor in November 2014; the other was for bouncing the check in November.
Earlier coverage
2 Liquor Law Violations Mean Dry Holidays and January at Como's in Ferndale, Dec. 24
