This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
05/17/2016 12:00 AMThree years after unveiling Paddleworks, its stand-up paddleboard (SUP) shop with a SUP Club and SUP Yoga (that’s right: downward dog on the water), Clinton’s Harborside Marina is adding another item to its menu: a waterfront restaurant. While the food may be traditional—fried seafood, burgers—the atmosphere is anything but.
Like its name, Shanks—a nod to an early ‘70s café with a legendary reputation—the new Shanks is a revival of a circa 1974 Bruno & Stillman 42-foot commercial lobster boat that’s been gutted and customized with a built-out pilot house and a state-of-the-art, 13-foot commercial kitchen. The original boat came from the Sound School in New Haven and was used as a research vessel for 20 years before being decommissioned.
“The project of getting the boat from New Haven all the way to transforming it into a working restaurant was about a year,” said Shanks and Harborside Marina owner John Benchimol. “One of my good friends who’s a contractor—Gary Litevich of JMT Construction—did most of the work. We found the boat on Craigslist and kept the name Sounder as a tribute to the school. The folks at the Sound School actually pushed it up here with two inflatables on Memorial Day 2014. Once the tide changed, they started losing ground at Falkner Island, so we went out and towed them in,” he said.
“Since the day I moved to Clinton, everyone has told me stories about the original Shanks, a dive bar that used to be on our property in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” he said. “From my understanding, it was basically a hole in the wall, but everyone knew about it and had a story to share.”
The new Shanks is not related to the original bar operated by the Amendola family.
“Over the years, I’ve heard hundreds of stories, ranging from Andre the Giant sitting at the bar all day long to people telling me they used to pick up their parents at the bar when they were eight years old. I’ve often threatened to bring back Shanks. We decided to call it that to honor the old restaurant and stories from the locals and to put a new spin on it,” Benchimol said. “We’re still trying to finalize our tag line, but it will be something like ‘Shanks…Everyone Has a Story.’”
The Backstory
Benchimol grew up on Long Island and worked at yacht clubs after graduating from the University of Albany. For a few years, he ran a large marina on the Hudson River, but never having had family in the business, he thought it unlikely that he would ever own a marina.
“So I went into corporate sales for NYNEX, now Verizon, and was pretty successful—enough to put some money away,” he said.
Then Benchimol and his wife, Jen, learned she had a cousin who once had a high-paying job in New York City, but decided to move to the country and start a business.
“He actually bought Harborside Marina in Clinton and then consulted me for help with boat sales and marina operations. I was very jealous that he could just buy what I always wanted to do, but that’s life,” he said. “After six months, they hated it and wanted out in a bad way, so they called me to see if I wanted to buy the marina.”
Benchimol talked it over with his wife. If he could get the financing, she said, she’d be willing to move away from her family and give the marina business a try.
“Never thinking I could get a bank to give me money,” said Benchimol, “I put together a business plan, hired a consultant, and started pitching banks. In March of 1998, we finally closed, and after money was transferred to everyone involved, we walked out of the lawyer’s office with a check for $135—just about enough to go to dinner—and a marina. Then we started the hard part of running it and opening up a boat dealership. We signed on with Chris Craft boats that year and have been with them since, even after they went bankrupt in 2001. We’re now the oldest Chris Craft dealer in the world and have been ranked first, second, or third for every year since we’ve been involved.”
The idea for the restaurant came a few years ago, Benchimol said, when he and his wife let one of their three children open up an ice cream cart—Abby’s Place—to test the waters.
“Last year, I hooked up with Russell Hodge, an experienced restaurant owner from Madison, and he’s been working with me to make this transition happen,” he explained.
Now We’re Cookin’
The new Shanks is considered a food truck and follows the laws and regulations specific to vehicles equipped with on-board kitchens.
“The only difference is our food truck is actually a lobster boat. The boat is 100 percent mobile and can be moved and operated anywhere,” Benchimol said. “It has a full commercial kitchen with ovens, grills, hoods, griddles, and fryers, and it’s quite roomy.”
Clinton resident Beth McDevitt, who manages the front end of the business (Mike Labonia, of New Haven, handles the kitchen and its staff), gave a tour of Shanks’s dining areas, which include indoor and outdoor deck seating for about 100 people, plus waterside seating on the ground level for overflow. Originally a ship’s store, the building that houses Shanks’ main dining area had been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. “We’ve been rebuilding ever since,” Benchimol said. “With new FEMA regulations, we had to raise the building to a 13-foot floor height, which now gives it the best waterfront view I’ve seen anywhere in Connecticut.”
On May 10, picnic tables arrived and were being arranged on the deck and pier. The following day, all the paper products were delivered.
“We’re going for a real clam shack vibe,” McDevitt said. “I’m excited. There are other restaurants right around us that specialize in their own thing, and we’re here to add to the marina dining district—but we won’t be selling lobster rolls; that’s what Bacci does.”
Enea Bacci owns nearby Lobster Landing.
“We’ll have a small menu to start with and will expand a little over time,” McDevitt continued.
“Shanks will be a classic New England fry house with a kids’ menu and land-lover items,” Benchimol said.
In addition to parking, the restaurant offers in-water docking (with reservations), local delivery service, and takeout. For now, Shanks is BYOB.
“We still have quite a punch list,” said McDevitt, but if all goes as planned, Shanks hopes to serve its first meal on Thursday, May 19, and operate through the weekend of May 21-22.
Shanks will be open full-time beginning May 26—in time for Memorial Day weekend—and will hold a June 11 grand opening to coincide with Paddleworks’ demo day.