They are naked in Rome, and so they are naked in Iowa

I don’t often write about restaurants on The Holy Rover (in fact, have I ever written about a restaurant on this blog?) But today’s post is about a wonderful restaurant I’ve discovered in eastern Iowa. I know it’s too far away for many of my readers to visit, but I hope you’ll enjoy its story, which really does tie into the theme of spiritual travels.

The tale begins in the former Yugoslavia, where Jacky Rosic worked as a veterinarian and health inspector. He and his family lived a comfortable life, Jacky explained to me when I visited this past week. “But then one day, poof! Everything was gone,” he said in his accented English, recalling the days when a civil war tore the nation apart. In 1992 Rosic took his wife and two sons to Germany, where they lived as refugees.

While in Germany, Rosic’s son Paco devoted much of his time to artistic pursuits—aerosol art, in particular. Paco learned to work magic with spray paint, creating murals, tagging railroad cars and studying with the top graffiti artist in Germany. “One day Paco showed me a mural he had done, while his teacher stood right beside him,” said Jacky proudly. “His teacher said to me, ‘Your son is so good he is teaching me.’”

After several years the Rosic family was able to immigrate to the United States and settled in Waterloo, Iowa, which has a sizeable Bosnian community. Jacky found work as a butcher and he and his family gradually learned English and rebuilt their lives. But Paco hadn’t forgotten his passion for painting, and one day he told his father that his dream was to re-create the Sistine Chapel Ceiling with spray paint.

“I talked to his mother about this,” said Jacky. “She told me that we left our home because of our kids and we came here because of our kids. We needed to give him a chance.’”

The Rosics found a run-down building in downtown Waterloo and started rehabbing it, but Paco had a job of his own:  he traveled to Rome to see the Sistine Chapel Ceiling in person. Each day he would go to into the chapel, where visitors can have only three minutes, and he would try to memorize as much as possible with his eyes.

Paco returned to Iowa and began painting. For four months he labored, using more than 5,000 cans of spray paint and covering nearly every square inch of the interior of the building with vibrant colors.

In 2007 the Galleria de Paco opened as one of the loveliest, most unusual restaurants in the country. Since its opening it’s drawn national and international attention, including being featured on ABC News, The Today Show, NPR, and The Rachel Ray Show, and in newspapers that include the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. While its food is hearty and delicious, its primary draw is the beauty of Paco’s paintings.

“When we opened, people asked, why all the naked people up there on the ceiling?” said Jacky. “I told them, they are naked in Rome, and so they are naked in Iowa.”

When I visited the restaurant I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to meet Paco, but I had a long and wonderful conversation with Jacky. When I asked him what made him happiest about the restaurant, he said, “This is the greatest country in the world. We came here with nothing, and look what we have now. People here, they do not realize what they have. In no other place can such things happen.”

So each evening in Waterloo, people can dine underneath scenes of the Last Judgment, with Adam, Moses, Jesus, and the saints gazing down on them. Remarkable, isn’t it? There are so many things I love about this story, but perhaps my favorite is this. When Paco said he wanted to re-create the Sistine Chapel Ceiling with spray paint, his parents didn’t say no. They didn’t urge him to be practical.  They asked, “How big a place do you need?”

Now that’s the sort of extravagant love of which parables are made, isn’t it?

The Galleria de Paco is at 622 Commercial Street in downtown Waterloo. Reservations are recommended.