Passerby Sees Smoke, Saves Beloved East Vllage Café

It was the quick thinking of a woman waiting for a bus that saved The Laurels Cafe. She spotted smoke coming from the basement of the neighborhood restaurant in the early-morning hours of Oct. 26 and phoned in the alarm that spared the business major damage.

The FDNY was on the scene within minutes, and Kevin Mulligan, the Irish-born owner of the popular East Village restaurant, says he was able to reopen on Oct. 29, only three days after the fire.

”I’m very grateful she made the call,” Mulligan told Our Town Downtown as he supervised cleanup efforts. While the caller’s identity remains a mystery, her call likely spared the fire from spreading beyond the basement into the main restaurant and possibly the apartments above in the six-story building.

”The kitchen, everything in the restaurant is 100 percent,” Mulligan said.

The FDNY dispatched about 60 firefighters and EMS personnel to the scene and stayed to monitor the situation. There were no reported injuries even though an unknown number of residents were sleeping in the apartments above when the smoke was first spotted. Fire investigators gave the building the “all clear” shortly after 1 p.m. that day, six hours after the initial alarm was received.

The FDNY said the fire likely started somewhere around the ductwork in the basement. Mulligan said the audiovisual equipment was fried and the soda lines to the bar melted. But beyond that, he said, damage was minimal.

The restaurant sits on the ground floor of two sister buildings at 231-235 Second Ave., on the corner of East 14th Street, that had been joined and renovated.

Mulligan only took over the restaurant from a previous owner in 2023. The building is owned by B&F Management, headed by managing partner Josef Yusuf Bildirici, which owns 16 multi-family, mixed-use properties in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and New Jersey.

Bildirici rushed to the scene the day of the fire, but was not able to be reached for comment, and a call to the company was not returned by press time.

Mulligan, who hails from Longford, Ireland, said he was initially worried that he’d lose business from the Halloween-day revelers; many of his customers are heading to the Greenwich Village parade and find their way to the bar-restaurant, which is at the northern end of the East Village. “It’s one of our biggest days of the year.”

But he said he was able to get electrical service back by quickly, enabling him to reopen on Wednesday and the usual full house on Halloween. A waitress named Regan who is running the TSC NYC Marathon is going to be able to host a post race party at the restaurant after all.

”There’s a few minor things but we’re fully back,” Mulligan said.

The day after the fire, because the damage was so minor, Mulligan said he hoped to be open by Oct. 29. The landlord found a glazier, who quickly installed a new glass door to replace the one that firefighters had to bust through to get into the unoccupied building the day of the fire. And an electrician was able to restore power a day or two after that.

”It could have been a lot worse,” said a relieved Mulligan. “We’ll make do with cans and bottles of soda while we’re waiting for the soda lines to be restored.”