CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S – Michael Goodwin
By: Lori Smerilson Carson | Photos: Chris Schmitt
When you take your passion and combine it with years of experience, you have CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S in Boca Raton, Florida. What this means is not only amazing food and drinks, but incredible music by extremely talented musicians.
Catching up with owner Michael Goodwin, he explained about how and why the restaurant/venue started, some details that people can experience at CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S, and what Floridians can look forward to.
SFL Music Magazine: What is the history of CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S? How did it come about and what inspired you to open it?
Michael Goodwin: When my wife and I decided to move to Boca, I was working with the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Vice President for them down in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. The job was supposed to be traveling back and forth. We had an office in Miami and an office in Punta Cana, so the deal originally was I’d be back and forth a lot and that didn’t happen. So, I decided in the beginning of 2017 that I would leave that job and figure out what we were going to do. So, my experience and my history in the world is in basically what I’m doing now. I started doing bars and restaurants in the early mid-80s. I’ve opened and operated many, many restaurants through New Mexico and Las Vagas, Nevada, and then went into corporate world with casinos. I was Vice President of the Palms Casino (Resort) and the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Vegas. I ended up in Baha Mar in the Bahamas. That’s how we got to the east coast. So, all of my experiences kind of went to saying alright, what am I going to do? I’m living in Boca. We didn’t really have an infrastructure of friends or anything, but it doesn’t take long once you have a restaurant or a bar to make a bunch of friends. My wife encouraged me to design something that I thought would be great. So, we did some work in the area looking at what was here. What’s available. What we felt was missing, and we created what we really felt like what was missing, which was a very casual, but yet high-end-quality night club/restaurant/live music venue/brewery combination. I kind of likened when I was working with the Hard Rock over the different times. I kind of felt like the Hard Rock Café should have been what CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S is which is great food, great music, incredible atmosphere. Obviously, the service is what makes it all work. So, we decided that the design of what we were going to do was going to be this brewery with live music and great food. Then we started looking at names. We were talking about Crazy Uncle Mike’s. I’m an uncle to twenty plus nieces and nephews. I have eight brothers and sisters. I was the bar owning, long haired, Harley riding brother, and all my brothers and sisters are pretty serious businesspeople. Doctors and lawyers and that kind of stuff, so their kids all called me crazy uncle Mike. So, when we were looking at opening a brewery, I just felt like that would be a fun brewery name because everybody’s kind of got a crazy uncle whether it’s Mike, Bill, Jim or whatever. We’ve all got a crazy uncle. So, I thought it would resonate with the customer base. We’re sitting right there on Federal Highway. Excellent neighborhoods. So, I knew that they wanted very high-end, great quality food, great quality spirits, and we make a great beer. So, that was what we were shooting for, and over the last eight years, I think that we’ve constantly worked on improving every day, trying to make it a better experience for the customer every day. We’re still doing that every day now. I think that I’m fortunate to do what I love to do. The reaction of guests coming in and coming back, that tells me I’m doing something right.
SFL Music Magazine: Are you a chef too, or no?
Goodwin: Nope. I’m a serial entrepreneur. So, I’ve opened and operated mostly entertainment type venues. Albuquerque, New Mexico, I started in the 80s. I operated for a big company called the Graham Central Station company. It was the Graham brothers out of Texas and that’s where I cut my teeth. They took me under their wings and kind of taught me all the financial parts of the business when I was just twenty, twenty-one years old. Gary Graham saw something in me. My interest in what he was doing, how it worked and things like that. He gave me a lot of knowledge in the business as I was a young guy, and by the time I was twenty-four, I took on a building, rented it, and then opened it a short-term period later, and that was called Beyond Ordinary. I put a couple of my buddies together and we did it. We got recognized by MTV as one of the top twelve-night clubs in the country one year in 1990, and they did a street party and they kept playing it over and over and over again on MTV which did nothing but great things for my business (he laughed). We’ve had a lot of fun doing what I do. My restaurants and bars always have live music. I always try to get the best stage and the best sound and the best experience for the band as well as the customer because that’s a hard gig sometimes, these guys are on the road. I also try to turn people onto new music and up and coming music, and book a lot of national touring acts that come through that you might see them in my room, but the next time you’re going to see them and they’re going to be in a much bigger experience because we’re doing now some overbuys, bigger bands that really are incredible. The evolution that happens with a venue. You have to build it, get the motion on the local music, and then the national acts and their agents start looking at you. Then a few of them start coming, and then once you build credibility, they want to come back. So, we’re at that point where we’re starting to crescent where now we have a great relationship with a lot of touring artists and their agents. I think we’re just beginning that part of our journey which is really cool. Eight years and it’s just starting.
SFL Music Magazine: There is a large focus on live music, correct?
Goodwin: Yeah. We try to be great at three things and that’s brews, bites and beats. So, all of our beers and whiskies and our food obviously, and then the music, and that was our focus from day one. Our tag line is brews, bites and beats. Now, we’re expanding into balls because we’re doing a little sports now because we have the facility for it. It’s a nice addition for reasons for people to come.
SFL Music Magazine: What exactly are you doing with sports?
Goodwin: We added a 20-foot screen on our stage. It’s a beautiful screen. Right now, we’ve brought in the World Cup, so there’s a three o’clock game every day. We’ll have that on earlier than our music on Sundays the next couple weeks because there’s all day long of World Cup games that are just starting. A hundred game series that they have going on, 104 games. So, we’re going to show all the games on Sunday the next two weeks and kind of integrate it. We didn’t bump any bands or anything. We’re kind of looking at calendars and saying ok, how do we integrate this into our world. We just started doing a live radio show with, he was a sportscaster named Jeff Dubrof. He’s been on the radio in Florida for twenty-five years or more talking sports. So, he’s doing a show from our stage every week interviewing different athletes and different people from colleges. The coaches, athletes as well as pros. So, that will give me a little different vision on people seeing me as a place to watch a game too. Most of the time we don’t have the sound on in a game, but we have the games on. Like on a Sunday ticket you’ll have five or six games playing at once, you don’t really have the sound on of one of them. You just watch them. So, the music works still good with that.
SFL Music Magazine: You’re very involved with charities. Which charities are you most involved with that you want people to know about?
Goodwin: Well first of all, when we opened and every place we ever opened, we’ve always felt like having events for charities and allowing them to use your space to make money in an affordable manner is always a community thing to do. So far, we’ve done that. We had a misfortune of losing a child in 2020. She was an eight-year-old daughter named Myla, and we started a foundation called Myla’s Beleaf. Beleaf is spelled b-e-l-e-a-f like be a leaf because she’s everywhere like leaves. It’s magic, the whole charity itself. It started magically. It’s been magic ever since. We’ve been able to help a lot of families. We’ve raised over three million dollars at this point in the last four years, and the money goes to families that are in financial bad situations because they have a kid in with cancer. So, we go help them pay their mortgages, we go help them fix their cars. Whatever they need. So, we’ve been able to have a lot of healing through this charity. That’s our main charity, but we support a lot of local charities and believe in a lot of the local charities. Incredible, generous, philanthropic, affluent communities surrounding us here in Boca. I’ve never seen so much generosity with people that they have whatever they need in life and they still care, and it’s really, really cool.
SFL Music Magazine: I’m so sorry to hear about your daughter.
Goodwin: Her full name is Myla Carrera, and I used to call her my ‘turbo baby.’ A wonderful, wonderful kid. Unfortunately, she got cancer and it wasn’t fixable.
SFL Music Magazine: What would you say is the best recommendation food wise or beer wise at CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S?
Goodwin: Well, I always ask people, are you trying to eat healthy today or are you trying to eat happy today? I do both well, and even the healthy is happy, and also tastes incredible. We have a couple signature things on our menu. Our sweet potato pancake and chicken with gochujang butter is an outstanding decadent meal. It’s got sweet. It’s got hot. It’s got crunchy. It’s got soft. It’s incredible! That’s one thing that we’ve had on our menu since day one. My chef, I didn’t have a lot of requirements for the chef. She’s an incredible creative and awesome chef, but a couple things that I did say is I want breakfast on the menu all the time. So, we do have a breakfast burrito and that pancake all the time. So, my requirement was fulfilled (he laughed).
SFL Music Magazine: Well, I’ll have to go check those out!
Goodwin: We also do the other stuff well. We have a power plate. It’s eggs and avocado and steak and broccoli. Then we’ve got mussels and we’ve got a salmon dish that’s incredible. We do the burgers. I’m telling you, I’ll put my burger up against anybody’s burger anywhere! The BLT, it’s weird when people tell me, “It’s the best BLT I’ve ever, ever had” because we use really fresh ingredients. We use great products. She does comfort food in a way that just elevates it.
SFL Music Magazine: Is there anything else you want people to know that’s coming up at CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S?
Goodwin: Go to crazyunclemikes.com and see what we’ve got coming up because we have some incredible jazz and incredible blues. Our lineup has such a wide variety of genres of music, and for me that’s great because I’m a consumer of all styles of music. I get reggae one night, I get blues one night, I get rock one night, I get jazz one night. I love our lineup.
SFL Music Magazine: Is there anything you want to add?
Goodwin: I hope people like what we do. We really love it and try to make it a really great place for everybody. I go there every day, looking around, trying to make it better, and hope people come in and enjoy it.
