Caseus to close, but reopen with a new vision

NEW HAVEN — After 10 years, Caseus Fromagerie & Bistro is closing this month, only to be replaced with a new restaurant with more services and a revamped interior, but the same familiar faces, in early September.

Jason Sobocinski, the original owner, said when his chefs approached him with a business plan and said they wanted to go out on their own, “I fell in love with it and I thought this is the future of the industry.”

Chefs Craig Hutchinson and Alex Lishchynsky bought a “good chunk of the percentage of the business” and soon will be announcing a new name and more details, while Sobocinski said he will help them lauch it and keep it running.

They will close Caseus on July 21 and open its replacement in early September.

Hutchinson said they have been listening to Caseus’s clientele and to what they want to see.

“We weren’t throwing away Caseus, we were more embracing what his guests love,” he said.

They plan to bridge their fine dining backgrounds in Boston and New York into the “grab and go market.”

“Quick service is the way people dine now,” Hutchinson said. “People’s schedules are busier and they don’t have two hours to be able to sit down and enjoy the whole experience.”

He said they will still have a sit-down service, but he felt they were losing too much business by not embracing other services.

“If we don’t change that now, we are going to be left in the dust by people who are going to do that,” Hutchinson said.

They said they will also have a take-out section with full diners ready to go, so people can grab them after work and quickly serve them at home.

Another big change will be the hours. Caseus now is open Wednesday through Saturday for dinner and Monday through Saturday for lunch. The new restaurant will be open Monday through Saturday for dinner and for brunch on Saturday and Sunday.

The cheese shop downstairs will be converted to a sandwich shop that will be open from 7:30 a.m. to dinnertime, allowing the restaurant to serve breakfast and lunch, as well as dinner.

The chefs said they want to take the attention to detail they have employed in their 10-year careers in fine dining and apply it to a lower price point and a quicker turnaround.

Lishchynsky said they are planning a “more lively experience” as the diners interact with the chef, as they move the kitchen to what is now the bar area. The bar area will be near the front windows.

They will seek a full liquor license to offer creative cockails, which is a big part of New Haven’s dining scene.

They said they are very good at Italian food, but plan on serving a different kind of Italian than what the city now offers.

They also plan on serving food at communal tables.

“The perfect Italian meal is walking into someone’s home and eating with the family. And there is no better way to get that point across than by dining with some people that you never met before. We are all going to have one thing in common, which is dining at a delicious meal and having an experience with one another,” Lishchynsky said.

The chefs said they have been dreaming of running a restaurant for a decade now.

“We found that in New Haven we can kind of offer everything, so might as well do this,” Hutchinson said.

They said they will have vegan options, vegetarian and gluten-free items on the menu.

“We don’t want anyone to be discouraged,” Lishchynsky said.

The problem with Caseus, they said, was that people assume everything has cheese. They said that is not the case, and this will give them a chance to prove them wrong.

Hutchinson said the current staff will continue at the restaurant.

Proud of what he has built in the last decade with the help of family and scores of present and former employees, Sobocinski said he was ready to do something new and spend more time with his wife and three young children.

“I think that evolution is really important.” Sobocinski said, as the staff prepared to serve dinner Wednesday in the popular eatery on Trumbull Street.

He will running several others businesses, he felt at Caseus it was time “to take a step out, pass the torch on to some people who are just as passionate and dedicated.”