Center Street Social, a new bar and grill on, you guessed it, Shelton’s Center Street, opened last month.
Business has been good, co-owner Derrick Lee said during an interview inside the the restaurant, which formerly housed Caliente, Monday (Sept. 23) morning.
The Valley Indy’s Q&A with Lee is below. Click here to view the business’ Facebook page.
The address is 127 Center St., and the phone number is 203 – 513-8005.
Valley Independent Sentinel: So how’d all this come about?
Derrick Lee: We saw the space, we loved the standalone building, we loved it had an outdoor patio. We thought we could transform it into something really cool with great food.
We embarked on this project in June and it took us a couple months to renovate the building.
VIS: What did that involve?
DL: We basically bought a barn in West Virginia, had it shipped up here to a mill in Ridgefield, they put it in a kiln, dried the wood for two weeks, de-nailed it and dropped it off here. We just spent the summer putting up barnboard. It was real time-consuming. Every piece needed to be ripped and measured, but it really warmed the room up, made the room comfortable, and people are enjoying it.
We just saw the potential of the building and what was going on downtown. We saw the Avalon coming in and thought wow this is an up and coming area, and we were excited to do something a little different. There’s so many places down here.
VIS: Tell me a little bit about your background personally. Have you run bars or restaurants before?
DL: I started in New York when I was 26, I opened up my first place there. My partner (John Barounis) has five places in New York.
We decided to do something together and this was it. I started in Connecticut in South Norwalk, I opened up a place down there with a bunch of buddies of mine, Match, when I was 29. I live in Trumbull so I wanted to stay a little bit more local. One of the girls that works for me here told me about this space. I didn’t know much about Shelton but she gave me the scoop on the area so we decided to do it.
VIS: When did you open?
DL: Aug. 24.
VIS: It seems like it’s been pretty busy since then. I drove by Saturday (Sept. 21) and the place was packed.
DL: Saturday night was great, there were a lot of adults, it wasn’t just all young kids. It was just a great crowd. I was surprised and I loved the look and feel of the crowd.
And we have that with really no advertising, we just let it be word of mouth. We’re going to start advertising now, we have a great Sunday brunch, we do Happy Hour Monday through Saturday. We’ve also got a DJ booth and on Wednesday nights we do Karaoke.
VIS: I see you have Dale’s Pale Ale on tap, nice!
DL: Yeah we’ve got a lot of great craft beers.
VIS: Is there one aspect that you’re emphasizing, like a big craft beer selection? That seems to be a big trend nowadays.
DL: No, we just want to do a room with great food, great service, and then have a great drinks menu, like we do these really cool adults lemonades and teas in mason jars. Right now because it’s fall we do a pumpkin beer where we rim the glass with honey and cinnamon sugar, just fun things like that.
Our special drink right now is a chocolate pecan martini, and we rim that glass with chocolate syrup and crushed pecans.
VIS: I should have scheduled this interview for the afternoon. How many people can you accommodate at once?
DL: We have 120 seats, with the patio. The patio bar, that’s a drawing point. We have heaters outside, it gets packed on the weekends.
VIS: Seems like you’ve put a lot into the place already — buying a barn in West Virginia and shipping it up here, that alone sounds like a big investment.
DL: Yeah, it was an investment. But look at the room. Look at how great it made the room, how warm it is. It just has a great feel, to be wrapped in barn wood like this. The floors are all reclaimed wood, too. We just took the space here and tried to make it as warm and comfortable as we could.
