He woke up early Sunday, May 31, to a heartbreaking call from the Austin Fire Department, telling him that his 7-year-old restaurant and bar had gone up in flames. Silverstein described first walking into Bar Peached on Sunday morning as a very sad and tough experience that has been difficult to process.
“I don’t think I [have] fully come to grips with what I saw with my own two eyes in there on Sunday,” Silverstein told MySA. “You know, it’s one thing to look at the pictures, but when you’re inside that building, it’s a lot worse.”
The Austin Fire Department estimated that the building sustained about $600,000 in damages, but Silverstein believes that the dollar amount will likely be more. AFD previously told MySA they believe the fire was caused by a malfunctioning refrigerator, which provided a heat source to ignite the blaze that eventually extended into the attic.
Silverstein explained that there was a compressor failure on the Bar Peached’s two-door refrigerator in the kitchen that had overheated and caught on fire. At first, AFD crews worked inside Bar Peached to extinguish the fire, but as the fire progressed, it caused them to withdraw from the building and initiate an exterior defensive fire attack.
The fire took AFD nearly an hour to put out, and there were no reported injuries. Silverstein said he and his team are now working through the phases of remediation, including getting all the perishable products out of the building and inventoried for both his restaurant’s and his landlord’s insurance.
“Truthfully, it’s a wait-and-see because we’ve got to get a structural engineer to look at the building to see what can be saved, and really we’ve got to go through both sets of insurance companies to figure out what can be recovered,” Silverstein said.
Silverstein said both insurance companies are expected to visit the restaurant this week. However, despite this tragedy, Silverstein added that he’s very grateful for all the love and support he has received over the past few days from the Austin community.
“It’s definitely made me very emotional,” Silverstein said. “Bar Peached was a special place. It was a special place for the community and my family…When you build a restaurant within a community in a neighborhood, and you’re around for seven, eight plus years, almost a decade, you’re kind of built into the community at that point, and the support — that’s what makes Austin a special place; that’s why I love Austin.”
Bar Peached has launched a GoFundMe to help support his staff and continue to pay them for the near future. Silverstein concluded by saying some of their staff will be relocated to their sister restaurant, the Peached Tortilla, in the meantime, as the restaurant continues to rebuild.