The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Restaurant to reopen with new name and new look
PORTLAND — The former Portland Restaurant, long a Main Street landmark, is scheduled to reopen early this summer with a new look and a new name.
The two-story brick building at 188 Main St. will become the Portland Ale
House.
The new business plans to be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner, and will have 20 beer taps, the new owners said.
The building, which dates to 1884, is being leased by Paul and Jennifer Olson, who have been “working in restaurants all our lives,” Jennifer Olson said.
In fact, she said, she and Paul Olson met in a New Haven restaurant where they both worked “to put ourselves through college.”
They subsequently married and now are the parents of three children, two in college and one in high school.
They were involved in Steamers Bar and Grill in Guilford, and later opened a Steamers in Hamden.
When they first saw the Portland Restaurant, Olson said she immediately thought, “There’s a real need for great neighborhood place here.”
The “PR,” as Portland Restaurant’s longtime customers called it, was an Italian restaurant that closed in August 2020.
Portland Economic Development Planner Mary D. Dickerson said the site originally was a general store and liquor dealership for “20 years when a fire destroyed the building in June 1884.”
The building was owned by James Laverty, an Irish immigrant, Dickerson said.
Within a week of the fire, Laverty “had quickly constructed a wooden building on the property and a brick building was rebuilt on the existing foundation by November 1884.”
Jennifer Olson, who earned a degree in hotel and restaurant management from the University of New Haven, said she and her husband “were excited by the real neighborhood feel” of the “PR.”
They are equally excited, too, by the buzz that is building around Brainerd Place, the mixed-use development scheduled to be constructed across Main Street on the former Elmcrest property.
The soon-to-be ale house’s location is blessed by the intersection on which it sits, at Main and Marlborough streets, Jennifer Olson said Wednesday.
“It’s got high visibility,” she said, noting its proximity to the Arrigoni Bridge and, beyond that, to Middletown.
What’s more, the Olsons hope to draw customers from the popular Brownstone Exploration and Discovery Park, the water park that occupies the Brownstone Quarry.
Located between Brainerd Place and the quarry “will definitely be a plus,”
she said.
She anticipates offering a menu that begins with “lots of good appetizers, salads, oversized sandwiches and interesting entrees.”
Jennifer Olson said town officials “have been very helpful and very welcoming.”
“The Economic Development Commission has been tremendously helpful, as has the (Middlesex County) Chamber of Commerce,” she said.
The Olsons hope to open the restaurant in mid to late June.
First Selectwoman Susan S. Bransfield is pleased the restaurant is being revived and welcomed the Olsons to town.
“They are taking over an historic building and now we will have the opportunity to create a history of their own,” she said.