Tia Juanita’s Fish Camp took 12 total categories in this year’s People’s Choice awards, winning best beer selection, brunch, casual dining, chef, cocktail, date night, girl’s night out, gumbo, kid’s meal, margarita, Mexican restaurant and server. No restaurant has ever taken that many categories.

The menu has been tweaked. It’s extensive, with something for everyone. Everything but the chips, tortillas and bread are made from scratch. Gumbo begins with a black iron skillet, flour and grease. Tia’s People’s Choice wins and its move from 2.1 Google stars to 4.5 suggests something more is at play than good, fresh, generously-portioned, seasoned-just-right food.

At the helm is Colt Mire. He said the success of Tia’s is due to his staff.

On the day of the interview, Mire excused himself a few times to greet and seat late-afternoon customers, finally settling down with some chips, salsa and guac from the kitchen. Sitting, eating is a rare thing for him.

“I’m running left and right, working 80 hours a week,” he said. “This is my 63rd day straight and 60 of those were doubles.”

He has been on the cook line, waited tables, tended bar, crafted cocktails, managed people and processes, and doesn’t shy away from a deep clean. (He’s six-foot, three-inches, and looks like he would make a good bouncer, but if that’s on his resume, he didn’t say.)

Experience the best teacher

Life started for him in Kaplan. His mother named him for the original bass player for The Black Crowes, Johnny Colt, who also played with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

He remembers mowing lawns and pulling (weedy) red rice as a kid. In high school, he did a lot of couch surfing, sometimes getting to school ahead of the other students to get cleaned up.

“I wasn’t really talking to my parents,” he said. “I worked at McDonalds and basically lived out of a duffle bag. After I graduated I went to New York for a year. I had $5,000 to my name.”

At the University of Louisiana in Lafayette Mire majored in – and this sums him up to a degree – business, philosophy and psychology.

Mire is constantly reading. Books. And people. And he was doing it before he got his degree.

The Metropolitan, a New Orleans event venue with three rooms and two stories, was his first stop after college. Ruth Chris Steak House was next.

Then a four-star hotel with a burlesque lounge offered him the general manager title.

“I kind of fudged my way into general management,” he admitted. “I was a manager, but not a general manager — not up until that point.”

The first year he took the New Orleans business from $400,000 in total sales to $1.1 million. Shows went from one a week to four.

“I fixed the cocktails, the service and I made sure that every person in that place felt like they were seen,” he said.

There you have it, Mire’s secret sauce. He knows the power of making someone feel seen. He understands why people do and say what they do and say. He understands that making connections can be as satisfying as good food, more so for some people.

When the burlesque business announced it was going to have a new sort of audit in every department, an emotional audit, Mire was the first to call it (expletive) stupid.

Google’s AI overview describes an emotional audit as a research-based tool that measures a workplace’s emotional climate and identifies strengths and weaknesses to promote a desired organizational culture. Think secret shopper, but equipped with questions to help him or her browse the mind and go home with information that stays in a file forever, and could be used against them in a review.

He was concerned. What if the auditor was someone who had a bad day, something he had no control over. He crushed it.

Not every department fared so well. Instead of accolades, Mire sensed a shift, and it took him a minute to make sense of it. Not long afterward, he picked up Robert Greene’s, “The Law of Human Nature” and it resonated deeply. He realized the impact of being authentic, and the risks. Recognizing flaws in himself and others, giving and getting forgiveness and grace became not so much the turning point in his life, but a picture of the human condition, a cycle.

His ability to read, lead and accept people while demanding high standards has made him a different sort of manager than most, and he’ll be the first to say he’s not everybody’s cup of tea — but you won’t hear him bad mouthing the hospitality labor pool here. Words are powerful.

“Your staff is like your woman,” he said, then paused before going on. “I don’t want to come off sounding chauvinistic, but yeah, I can. Your woman is a reflection of how you treat her.”

“This industry doesn’t have superstars. You have to build them. The only way it gets better is if we get to work and stop running around fixing things that aren’t actually the problem, playing the blame game.”

He has always known, and research has confirmed, that people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

“If an employee is successful here in building some core character traits, they’ll be successful at anything they choose to do,” he said.

Sometimes he fails.

“I fail every day,” he said. “Every day I don’t crush it 100 percent. But I don’t quit because if you quit, you’re always a failure. You know, the only way you can reach any happiness or fulfillment in life, or the only way I can at least, is to complete a job that might be impossible for others.”

Now serving brunch

Mire and his staff now serve brunch 10:30 a.m.- 3 p.m. Sundays.

Indulge the sweet tooth with Tres Leches French Toast, crepes or house-made sorbet.

Try the bottomless mimosa, Stellar Beans martini, or the bloody Mary with olives, pickled okra, green beans, steamed shrimp and crispy bacon.

Crab cakes, carnitas, potatoes, chorizo, migas, a shrimp and grits and traditional Mexican stew over green chile grits topped with pickled carrots and in-house cracklins are just an example of other delectables.