First look: Old Mamma Zu spot transformed for new Restaurant Adarra

A few years, an addition and a major renovation later, the former Mamma Zu building in Oregon Hill is set to come back to life. 

Restaurant Adarra is preparing to open at 501 S. Pine St. by the end of the year. 

The Spanish restaurant had operated on First Street in Jackson Ward since 2019, serving fare inspired by the country’s Basque region. 

Mamma Zu was a popular Italian restaurant from Ed Vasaio, whose other spots include 8½, Edo’s Squid and Dinamo. Its nearly 30-year run ended amid the pandemic in 2020.

Adarra owners Randall and Lyne Doetzer purchased the century-old building in 2022 and unveiled their plans to relocate there a few months later. 

Randall and Lyne Doetzer (Photo credit: Nick Hancock)

Over the last two and a half years, the Doetzers built a roughly 1,100-square-foot addition onto the existing 1,600-square-foot building, and embarked on an extensive renovation of the space.

Randall said the building had myriad issues, including lead paint on the walls, asbestos in the roof, and water and sewer lines that were rated for residential, not commercial use. They also had to pour new concrete flooring and re-engineer the building’s entire plumbing system.

Aside from the building’s exterior walls, nothing from Mamma Zu remains in the new Adarra, he said. 

“If we’d just knocked it over, we’d have been open a year ago,” Doetzer said. 

Much of the hardware in the new Adarra was custom-made, from a wood-burning oven that Doetzer said they sourced from Atlanta, to its tables that were made by local carpentry firm Kettlewell Construction. The Doetzers paid $900,000 for the building, and Randall said they probably spent two to three times that amount renovating it. 

“Suffice to say it’s been a process,” he said. “And it still is.”

Commonwealth Construction Management was the general contractor, and SMS Architects was the designer. 

The restaurant has seating for 50, up from the 30-seat capacity Adarra had in its Jackson Ward space. The Doetzers run it with a staff of roughly 10. Once fully open, Adarra will be open Thursday through Monday. 

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