Veteran restaurateur Mike Murphy is proving to be something of a magician given he will reveal three new restaurants next week in a spot where last year there were just two.
After a sweeping, pricey, four-month renovation that tore Pescatores and the Oyster Bar down past the studs, Murphy will unveil three newcomers to the dining scene — Kitchen, The Commons and Raw Bar.
The three restaurants, all of them operating under the Pescatores banner, take up 6,000 square feet on the southeast corner of the Belmont Building where Pescatores, Oyster and Scala Boutique operated until the end of last year.
“We agonized over whether we would open as one restaurant,” said Murphy during a walk-through Thursday as finishing touches and paint were being applied.
The decision to split the space in three came down to Murphy’s desire to establish a fine dining restaurant downtown — Kitchen. “We couldn’t do high-end with one big space, you can’t do seafood cheap,” he said, noting with tourism rebounding and locals having few options there is a need for a new high-end dining spot.
So Murphy created three very separate dining experiences in one space.
Kitchen, which takes up some of the space that was Pescatores, will offer an intimate room with 22 tables, down from 35, and a high-end menu.
Physically placed between Kitchen and The Commons, which takes up all of what was Oyster Bar and most of Scala Boutique, will be Raw Bar, with seating for 12 and handling all raw fish such as sushi and oysters.
The Commons is likely to be the engine of the new set-up. “It’s the rock and roll place, it will be hopping,” said Murphy. “It will pay the bills.”
The Commons, with seating for 125 indoors and a 34-seat patio that comes with radiant heat in the concrete flooring, will be open from 11 a.m. until late every night with a mid-range menu, full bar and perhaps live music.
Customers who have been to Oyster Bar or Pescatores over the last few years may not recognize the place as there’s little other than Oyster’s dominant bar remaining from the original set up.
Murphy said he’s excited about the new offerings, and clearly loves his new kitchen. They built a second larger kitchen that will be devoted to The Commons, and completely renovated the original one in Pescatores. “We have redone it all,” he said. “We’ve gone from having maybe the worst kitchen in the city to having what is as good as it gets. We spent a lot of money making it work.”
Murphy said the old kitchen was too small to handle a rush of people and it affected both the quality and range of offerings.
“And frankly it was often hard to get people who wanted to work in there it was so small,” he said.
He doesn’t expect to have much trouble filling the 60 staff positions.
Murphy said as the plans have come together there has been excitement building among former and potential staff. He has kept many of his employees on the payroll working during the renovations, often at his 10 Acres restaurant.
The reinvention of the space has been some time in the making, as Murphy had originally conceived of taking up the entire space in 1997, but was thwarted at the time by another restaurant in the building.
Now the timing is right. The weaker Canadian dollar works for U.S. visitors and the local economy seems to be strong. “I’m looking forward to opening. The key is to just get this open because everyone needs to start working and we need to get practiced. It’s going to get real busy real quick.”
