Abendroth Avenue is going to need more parking.
Port Chester”™s already vibrant, bustling restaurant scene will see a new player later this month in Saltaire Oyster Bar and Fish House, a nautical themed eatery owned by restaurateur and second-generation seafood buyer Les Barnes.
Scheduled to open its doors by the end of August, the 7,200-square-foot restaurant at the site of the rustic Willet House Building on the Byram River will feature a 100-seat dining room, a 50-seat bar as well as a private dining room that can accommodate 65. Executive chef Bobby Will”™s menu will include grilled octopus, red snapper ceviche, sea scallops sliced with greens and salts, and, of course, 10 to 12 daily varieties of oysters from as far north as coastal Canada and as far south as the Chesapeake Bay shucked behind the restaurant”™s white marble-top bar. The raw bar will also offer seafood towers filled with anything from lobster to shrimp to crab claws.
- Les Barnes gets ready to open the doors for his Saltaire Oyster Bar and Fish House in Port Chester. Photo by Evan Fallor
Barnes hoped to create a personal experience through the three-sided raw bar, which is set apart from the main dining area.
“We want everyone to get friendly with the shucker,” Barnes said. “We want people to be able to come in and say, ”˜So, what do you got for me today?”™”
And if anyone should know a good catch, it”™s Barnes. He”™s been in the fish business since he was 5 years old, going on 5 a.m. trips to the Fulton Fish Market with his father to pick out the day”™s choices for London Lennie”™s, the Barnes family-owned fish restaurant in Flushing. By the time he was 22, Barnes was running London Lennie”™s, something he has now done for more than 35 years. The same fishmongers and oystermen he was chatting up as a youngster have now become colleagues during his half-century in the fish business.
“I”™ve been thinking about opening up a restaurant here for quite a while,” said Barnes, who”™s lived in Rye for 16 years. “Westchester and Fairfield County could use a really good, solid raw bar and seafood restaurant. Luckily, this great space became available.”
The Willet House Building traces its roots back to 1903, when the Westchester Grain Co. used the brick building for its operations during Port Chester”™s heyday.
Barnes did a near-full renovation of the former warehouse, which, he said, at roughly the same size as London Lennie”™s was a bit too large for his liking originally. But he”™s embraced its 30-foot high wood beam ceilings and brick walls, bedecking them with photos of fishermen and colorful maps from around the globe.
Though his father Lennie, was from London”™s East End, the Port Chester restaurant was not named for the British village of Saltaire. Instead, the restaurant draws its roots from a special type of Saltaire oyster Barnes was accustomed to buying over the years from Prince Edward Island.
Originally, Barnes wanted to name the restaurant “Blue Point” as a nod to the Long Island Sound oysters, but he scrapped the idea after learning Anheuser-Busch purchased the Patchogue-based Blue Point Brewery last year.
- The interior of the restaurant.
“We knew we couldn”™t own that name,” he said. “We tried to come up with another name. We wanted an ocean feel, and Saltaire worked.”
Saltaire, flanked by Bartaco Port Chester on one end and within eyeshot of The Waterfront at Port Chester shopping center, joins the roughly 30 other restaurants in the village. Barnes said he plans on opening an outdoor patio overlooking the Byram River, which he hopes to get village approval for sometime next year.
Port Chester-Rye Brook-Rye Town Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Ken Manning said he and the chamber were excited to see the launch of Saltaire later this month.
“This new restaurant will add to the wonderful selection of fine dining offered throughout the community and attracts so many people to our downtown which has so much to offer,” Manning said. “It is a dynamic and exciting time.”
As of Aug. 4, most booths, tables and chairs had been set up in the main dining and bar areas, and workers had already begun breaking out china and pots and pans. Barnes estimates hiring between 60 to 70 employees.
Barnes did not have an estimated date of opening later this month, but said the restaurant is just waiting on a liquor license and a temporary certificate of occupancy. Eventually, he”™d like to host oyster tastings as well as local wine and craft beer tastings coordinated by the restaurant”™s consulting mixologist Clinton Terry, wine director Brad Haskel and his daughter, Teagan, who will design the beer program.
“I know three things,” Barnes said. “I know fish, oysters and don”™t get married a third time. I felt we could be successful here with what I know.”
