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Leo's Pub will continue the location's tradition of live music, and there are also the future possibilities of events for football games and other sports. ("Let's get the place working, first," laughs Neuwoehner.)

And what about the upstairs? The photographs speak for themselves. Upstairs renovations include a new upper space (with a spiral staircase!) that serves as a unique wine storage venue, a private room with an elongated table, new partial walls to add privacy, and really snazzy booths.

"We were looking to elicit a 'wow' factor from visitors, but we didn't want to have overkill," says Prehm.

Oh, there's one other touch: Downstairs, the bottom (basement) level of the building, is now home to a cigar lounge.

"We wound up discovering that there was really an untapped market for cigars here in the area," says Neuwoehner. "Cigar smoking doesn't have the same stigma that's attached to cigarettes ... it's kind of the opposite, really, almost more distinguished. So now, you can have a meal with a big party of ten people, and then three of you can go downstairs and enjoy a cigar without blowing smoke all over everybody else, and you don't have to leave the building to do it."

Let us not forget that Da Vinci's is first and foremost a restaurant. (And it's smoke-free, too!) So what's the menu like? It's a full-featured menu, with the pastas that one would expect at an Italian restaurant (18 pasta dishes in total), all the way up to some lavish offerings, like "crab legs longer than your arm," fresh fish (delivered daily, through a partnership with a company in Honolulu) and prime beef.

"You only have to have beef that's 51 percent black to qualify as angus," explains Neuwoehner. Prime beef, on the other hand, comprises less than 2 percent of all graded beef. It's rich in flavor, it's highly sought-after ... and it's at Da Vinci's. Prices range from the $13-15 low-end to ... well, there's seafood involved. That can get pretty pricey. But the costs run the entire gamut, so rest assured that you'll be able to afford to enjoy a meal at Da Vinci's. And for fans of the days gone by, Da Vinci's will still hang onto some of the classics from Dempsey's and Molly's ... namely the bread and the house salad dressing.

In keeping with the elegant, up-scale atmosphere that has been created at the restaurant, the drink menu has undergone a significant change as well. Da Vinci's will boast a 120-bottle wine selection, with anywhere from 36 to 46 available by the glass. The wine bottles are also in a complicated wine keeping system (pictured above) that uses nitrogen for preservation, ensuring that customers won't be drinking oxidized wine that tastes like vinegar.
Da Vinci's will also feature an affordable lunchtime menu, in addition to a bar menu downstairs at Leo's Pub, ensuring that the location offers "the best of both worlds," in the words of Prehm.

"One of the things that we've tried to do with this place from day one is to make it a place that we'd like to hang out at," says Neuwoehner. "Now we're a little older, a little more mature ... well, maybe not so much of that ... but there's a bit more sophistication, a different atmosphere here."

It was a long process, making Da Vinci's and Leo's Pub into what they are. "We had some huge problems with sound, and we discovered that there was no electronic point-of-sale system, which we had to then deal with it," says Prehm.

But the trials and the tribulations were overcome, as they always seem to be, and Da Vinci's is scheduled to begin service shortly before Valentine's Day, perhaps as soon as Friday, February 10th. "If we had missed the Valentine's Day slam, I think I'd have hanged myself," Neuwoehner laughs. "We've opened a few businesses, now ... and while I don't know if we'll ever do things the smart way, but as long as we can keep promoting some of the historic things that make the city great, and introducing more opportunities for people to go out, then we'll keep doing them."

As for the 365 crew who took it all in in person? Color us impressed.