Eric Monte, creator and co-founder of The Fez restaurant in Downtown Stamford, is in the production stages of another restaurant called Tavern 489 set to open this month. It will be in the same building as Tawa Indian Cuisine at 489 Glenbrook Road in the Glenbrook neighborhood of Stamford.
Tavern 489, according to a statement announcing the coming opening, “takes its cues from the warmth of a grand stone fireplace in a tavernesque mountain lodge.”
The effort is spearheaded by Monte and his longtime culinary partner, French chef Regis Saget.
“We are doing something that”™s never been done before,” said Monte. The new restaurant is in partnership with Indian chef Kausik Roy of Tawa Indian Cuisine and is within Tawa”™s freestanding colonial style building.
“We”™ve taken the bar portion of Tawa”™s expansive restaurant space and played off the focal point of the room”™s massive stone fireplace and created a mountain lodge atmosphere featuring upscale tavern fare, wild game and libations,” said Monte.
The new space is separated from Tawa”™s main dining room by wooden trestle dividers and velvet curtains. With a stated nod to the authors Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost, Tavern 489 features will include Adirondack furnishings and a canoe. The new facility will accommodate 45 at the restaurant and mahogany bar.
The menu takes its cues from Monte”™s love for French cuisine and from Saget”™s upbringing in southwestern France on a vineyard where his family reared animals and grew their household produce.
A “hearty, local and seasonal menu” is planned, with entrees, including venison and rabbit, described as “unabashedly carnivorous.”
The Tavern 489 business model includes wine tastings, seasonal game dinners, literary-themed events, singer-songwriter sessions and a winemaker dinner series. The website is Tavern489.com.
