Andreas Bieri recognized this week he may have a major problem in bringing back his beloved Mucky Duck restaurant on Captiva Island.
On the afternoon of Oct. 13, Bieri met with Captiva Fire District Chief Jeff Pawul, Deputy Chief Shawn Kilgore, construction contractor Victor duPont and kitchen range hood designer David Fusaro. After the meeting, he felt a sense of relief that The Mucky Duck finally had a path forward.
Bieri said that if he can secure the permits in time, he expects to reopen by Dec. 1 or, at the latest, by the end of the year — just in time for the peak tourist season and the restaurant’s 50th anniversary in 2026.
“Because right now, we don’t really have much business anyway on the island,” Bieri said. “It’s really quiet, so if we are ready for the season by December, that would be great.”
Bieri admitted to feeling stressed prior to the meeting, which lasted about half an hour and included a tour of the kitchen area.
“You don’t want one spark to bring all of this down,” said Fusaro, who married into the family kitchen hood business in 2002. His father-in-law Andrew Miranda founded Miranda El Dorado: Manufacturing Kitchen Hood Systems in 1945 in New York before bringing the company to Largo, near Tampa Bay.
As the Captiva fire department chiefs viewed the new interior of the reconstructed Mucky Duck, Fusaro, tape measure in hand, went to work inspecting the details. He concluded that one of the kitchen range areas perhaps did not have enough ceiling room to pass inspection. However, an area on the other side of the wall did.
Owner Andreas Bieri stands inside The Mucky Duck during renovations. He hopes to reopen the beloved Captiva restaurant by December, ahead of its 50th anniversary.
David Dorsey
duPont and his subcontractors will need to remove a wooden wall to create space for a second kitchen range. The original range area will be converted into a food preparation station, a solution Fusaro devised on the spot.
“When we submit the drawings, we’ll know they’ll get approved,” Fusaro said. “As far as chances of success, we went from a ‘maybe’ to 100%.”
“Different configuration,” Pawul said told Bieri. “But it will give you a bigger capacity.”
The Mucky Duck at 11546 Andy Rosse Lane, with a view of the beach and the Gulf, reopened January 2023, four months after Hurricane Ian, having escaped significant damage from that storm.
But Hurricane Milton on Oct. 9, 2024, destroyed the restaurant, as storm surge breached the windows and wooden walls, filling the inside. Only one of the original interior walls remains standing. duPont Construction rebuilt a near-replica of the original, keeping the same color of wooden panels inside. One difference will be vinyl flooring that has yet to be installed.
“Obviously, I wanted to rebuild,” said Bieri, a native of Switzerland. He moved to Captiva in 1974 and took part ownership of The Mucky Duck in 1980. Between 2011 and 2016, he bought out his business partners for full ownership of the restaurant, known for its sunset views.
“This had to come back,” Bieri said. “I’m so glad we had what we had. A historic building, which gave us more possibilities and easier permitting.”
Rebuilding The Mucky Duck to current construction codes would have proved costlier and may not have even been possible, duPont said, because of the property’s proximity to the Gulf.
“If we were to have changed it from the historic designation, well, first of all, we couldn’t even be here,” duPont said.
Having two, 10-foot kitchen ranges instead of the previous 12 feet of range will almost double the restaurant’s cooking capacity, which wasn’t something Bieri said he needed. The Mucky Duck has limited parking and can have lines out the door during the peak of tourist season in March. But the cooking capacity boost should make the restaurant more efficient, he said.
“We have to adjust,” Bieri said. “Maybe the whole menu might be adjusted a little bit. Different grill items. More baked items. We don’t know yet. It has to be checked out. But I don’t think that’s going to be a big handicap we’re going to face.
“I feel better. I have to say. I think I can sleep tonight much better.”