Whalesbone group to open high-end steakhouse
New restaurant will have a butcher shop and elevated service by uniformed staff
Ottawa's seafood-centred Whalesbone restaurant group will convert the massive, multi-storey space that was the former Fox & Feather pub on Elgin Street into a high-end steakhouse, the group's majority owner says.
Peter McCallum said this week the ambitious project will go ahead despite the uncertainties the pandemic continues to throw at restaurants, which have repeatedly been forced to shut their dining rooms since last March.
“Why would I open a fourth restaurant when I have three closed restaurants? We ask each other daily, `Are we crazy?'” McCallum said. “I think that the world has to come back to some semblance of normal.”
The steakhouse, which McCallum hopes will open for July 1, will be two blocks south of the Whalesbone Elgin Street in a 130-year-old heritage building with original brick walls, high ceilings, two bars and two patios. McCallum said he took possession of the space Monday and has a “pretty significant cosmetic change” planned.
The new restaurant, at the corner of Elgin and MacLaren streets, will be called Harmon's or Harmon's Steakhouse, he said. According to the Urbsite blog, the building was constructed in the early 1890s as Miss Harmon's School for Young Ladies, and the restaurant's name will be a nod to its origins. The school closed some time after 1910 and the property became an apartment building, the blog says.
It was converted into a restaurant in the 1970s. The Fox & Feather opened in 1995, according to its Yelp page, and Google lists it as “temporarily closed.”
“I love that corner so much I couldn't stop myself from saying yes,” McCallum said.
The deal with the Whalesbone group took place after the Eyamie family, the property's former owners, sold it last year to the landlord of the Whalesbone on Elgin Street, McCallum said. The landlord offered to lease the property to McCallum's group and it was an offer he couldn't refuse.
“We're getting a deal,” McCallum said, noting that the per-squarefoot rent for the steakhouse will be lower than what he's paying up the street.
He added that the potential of the property is so significant that “if I didn't take it, somebody else would. I know that somebody will make a go of that space.”
The Fox & Feather's website says the pub seats 350 people on its multiple levels and patios. But McCallum said he will reduce its capacity by adding a butcher's shop on the ground floor. In keeping
Why would I open a fourth restaurant when I have three closed restaurants? We ask each other daily, `Are we crazy?'
with post-pandemic living, McCallum also wants to make the steakhouse's patios “as three-season as possible.”
While there's no shortage of restaurants selling steaks in Ottawa, McCallum said he believes there's room for a new top-notch steakhouse that would feature elevated service by uniformed staff. For one thing, Hy's, the steakhouse that was a gathering spot for Ottawa's power players, has closed, he noted. As well, dry-aged steaks at the Whalesbone Elgin Street outsell the fish-based main courses, McCallum said.
During this latest lockdown, only the Elgin Street Whalesbone is open for takeout, while its sister restaurant on Bank Street and the Elmdale Oyster House & Tavern are closed.
The restaurant group's store on Kent Street has been four to five times busier during the pandemic, McCallum said.
Despite the restrictions imposed to combat the spread of COVID -19, which have contributed to the closures of other Ottawa restaurants, McCallum said his restaurants are “in a pretty good financial position.”
“We've been incredibly fiscally responsible,” he said. “We've got enough fiscal resources to get us through any close-down period.”