Maybe.
What can you get with $125 in gift certificates to a restaurant that no longer exists if you call SOS? If you're Mike and Cheryl Moskoff, you can get grilled ginger lime shrimp, an apple crisp cocktail, cranberry apple cobbler or one of the other items on the menu at a newly opened -- and fully existing -- Madison restaurant.
Shortly before Christmas last year, Mike took advantage of a promotion at the former Cloud 9 Grille on Madison's Far East Side: For $100, he got a gift card worth $100 and a paper gift certificate worth $25. The idea was to take Cheryl out for a nice dinner at the restaurant, which offered striking views of the state Capitol.
Then Cloud 9 unexpectedly closed, although it appeared not for long.
In February or March, "there was a sign on the door that said something like 'we are renovating, remodeling,'" Mike said, so he figured he'd wait it out and do the dinner when the place reopened.
It never did. Instead, a restaurant called Jovian Taphaus Grill replaced it, and Mike said he was told by an employee there he could get an appetizer, a drink or maybe both for the old gift certificates -- in other words, far less than what he'd paid for.
Mike called SOS soon after, and SOS was able to locate the former owners of Cloud 9, James Hovde and Alfredo Teuschler. After SOS made multiple attempts to contact both, Teuschler agreed to let the Moskoffs trade in the old Cloud 9 gift certificates for ones of the same value at his new Bonfyre American Grille on the city's South Side. Moskoff said he is "absolutely" satisfied with the trade, which he made last week.
Hovde never responded to messages left by SOS at Jovian, where he is part owner. But after the Moskoffs had exchanged the Cloud 9 gift certificates, Jovian general manager Jason Kinslow said his restaurant would honor any of Cloud 9's old gift cards, but not the paper gift certificates because owners were worried they could be easily counterfeited.
