For nineteen years, 33 Jesup Road belonged to Basso Restaurant & Wine Bar. The space closed in December, and for a few months the storefront sat quiet behind papered-over garage doors while people walking past on their way to the train tried to guess what was coming next. Now the town's Historic District Commission and Architectural Review Board have approved a green-lettered sign for the answer: hi'Amba, the new all-day bakery, café and restaurant from chef Bill Taibe.
If that name sounds familiar, it should. Taibe has been rebuilding Saugatuck's restaurant map since before most of the current storefronts existed, and hi'Amba is not his first, second or even third act in this neighborhood. It is his fourth. Understanding that history is the difference between reading this fall's restaurant news as scattered turnover and seeing it for what it actually is: a handful of ambitious operators quietly rotating through the same small set of addresses, keeping every one of them alive under a different name.
The Name Behind Most of Saugatuck's Last Fifteen Years
Taibe opened Le Farm in 2009, a restaurant that helped put Westport on the map for people who drove up from the city specifically to eat there. Three years later came The Whelk, built around local shellfish. In 2015 he brought Japanese gastropub cooking to Saugatuck with Kawa Ni. He later opened Don Memo, a Mexican concept, in the upper floor of the Old Town Hall building at 90 Post Road East, a cobblestone structure built around 1908 in the Classical Revival style that once served as the town's municipal hub.
Taibe has since sold his interests in three of those four restaurants. Don Memo reopened as Massi Co, Le Farm reopened as The Cottage, and he stepped away from The Whelk as well. Only Kawa Ni still carries his name locally, alongside a second location he now runs in Denver, plus a café at the Norwalk Art Space.
That is the pattern worth noticing before hi'Amba even opens its doors. When Taibe leaves a space in Westport, someone picks it up and keeps it running. The buildings do not sit empty. The concepts change hands and change names, but the storefronts stay in continuous use as restaurants, year after year, for over a decade. hi'Amba is not really a new phenomenon in Saugatuck. It is the neighborhood's oldest habit repeating itself in a fifth address.
The concept itself leans into that neighborhood-fixture idea directly. hi'Amba will center on a working bakery, with Jerusalem bagels, fresh pita and man'oushe coming out of the oven through the day alongside a coffee program built around Ilse Coffee. Taibe has described it as the kind of place meant for daily use rather than special occasions, somewhere to grab coffee and something warm in the morning, sit down for lunch, or meet friends for a bottle of wine upstairs. Karen Nicolas, who has more than twenty years of fine dining experience including time under Tom Colicchio at Gramercy Tavern and Charlie Palmer at Aureole, will run the kitchen as executive chef.
Every Stage of the Same Process, Happening at Once
Jesup Road is just one point on a timeline. Walk a few other blocks and you can see the entire life cycle of a Westport restaurant opening playing out simultaneously, from long-rumored to freshly seated.
Furthest along is Felice, which opened its first Connecticut location at 38 Main Street earlier this year. The Italian concept, known in New York and South Florida for a Tuscan-leaning menu and a wine program built around small independent producers, has been operating since 2007. Westport became its next stop after a run of dining rooms built around the same idea: a neighborhood restaurant that regulars keep coming back to rather than a special-occasion destination.
A few months behind that, Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana opened June 1 at the White Birch Center on Post Road West, taking over the space that had been occupied by The Naan. Pepe's is a different kind of arrival than hi'Amba or Felice. It is not a new concept finding its footing. It is a family-owned New Haven institution founded in 1925 that marked its 100th anniversary last year, now expanding into its ninth Connecticut location and eighteenth along the East Coast. The Westport shop seats about 110 people, was built with a coal-fired oven using bricks shipped from New Haven, and the company has said fans from Westport had been driving to its Fairfield and Stamford locations for years asking when a closer option was coming. The White Birch Center itself is owned by entities tied to Westport's James Conte and Norwalk's Paula Conte, and Pepe's leased its space through Saugatuck Real Estate LLC.
hi'Amba sits at the opposite end of that timeline. Its sign is approved, but the doors have not opened yet. And one more Westport address is even earlier in the process. On Cross Highway, Gruel Britannia, a British-themed restaurant already established in Fairfield, announced plans last year for a second location in the space that most recently housed The Porch at Christie's. Owner and chef Karen Hubrich teased the news with a banner reading "The British are coming," though an opening date still has not been set.
Line those four up and you get a snapshot of a restaurant scene that never actually pauses. One spot has been serving pizza for a full season already. Another has been seating regulars since late winter. A third has a sign but no open door yet. A fourth exists only as an announcement and a banner. Westport does not experience restaurant turnover in single events. It experiences it as a rolling process, with something always a few steps behind something else.
Main Street's Reshuffle Isn't Limited to Food
The same signage meeting that approved hi'Amba's letters also cleared a new sign for Brooks Brothers, which is relocating from its longtime spot at 136 Main Street to 44 Main Street, between Chanel and Alo. It is a retail move, not a restaurant one, but it reinforces the same point. Whatever is drawing hi'Amba, Felice and Pepe's to town right now is not isolated to kitchens. Main Street's storefronts are turning over as part of the same wave.
The One Afternoon You Can Taste Most of It
If you want a single afternoon to see how much of Saugatuck's restaurant scene has changed and how much has stayed the same, the Westport-Weston Chamber of Commerce brings the neighborhood's food, shops and galleries together every September for the Slice of Saugatuck festival. This year's edition returns on September 26, running through the stretch of streets around Railroad Place, Riverside Avenue and Saugatuck Avenue. Railroad Place closes to traffic for the afternoon and becomes a walking block party, with more than four dozen restaurants, shops and galleries opening their doors for sampling, seven bands playing at different spots around the neighborhood, and two beer and wine gardens.
Tickets have typically run $15 for adults and $5 for kids ages 5 to 12, sold on-site the day of the event. Proceeds benefit the Gillespie Center Food Pantry, and the Chamber's own count puts the festival's giving at more than $54,000 over the years it has been running. Past editions have drawn Kawa Ni, Tarry Lodge and JR's Hot Dogs into the lineup alongside Saugatuck's retail shops, so the festival tends to double as a preview of whichever restaurants are having a moment that particular fall. With Pepe's fresh off its first season and hi'Amba's sign just approved, this year's version of that preview has more new material to work with than most.
None of this changes anything about why people choose to live in Westport in the first place. But it says something true about the town right now: this is not a neighborhood where restaurant spaces sit empty for long, and it is not a coincidence that the operators willing to bet on it right now include a century-old New Haven institution moving into Post Road West and a New York restaurant group planting its first Connecticut flag on Main Street.
If you have lived here a while, you already know how this goes. A space closes, there is a season of speculation, and then someone with a track record steps in. Jesup Road is just the latest proof.
If you are the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood by paying attention to what opens and what survives, you already understand Westport better than most spreadsheets do. That is the same lens I use with clients here every day, whether the conversation is about a family home that has been in the same hands for decades or a fresh look at what a property is worth in this market. Sandra Calise Cenatiempo has spent her career watching this town change one storefront and one closing at a time. Let's connect. Start with a free home valuation whenever you're ready to talk.
