A vacant space is loaded with possibilities. The 10,000-plus square feet that used to be Lipkin's furniture store in downtown Easton, was no exception when Mike Pichetto, the owner of Vintage Restaurant at the Club at Morgan Hill, walked through the doors with his wife Rebecca. Fast-forward five years.
As 3rd & Ferry Fish Market, it's blessed with a really long, lovely bar with a weathered-looking copper top, and a repositioned, new staircase leading to an upstairs mezzanine seating area. Instead of a flashy façade, your focus is drawn to its open kitchen situated right up front, with a large window (which receives constant cleaning) to entice passersby.
That window is Marketing 101: it halts both footsteps and traffic long enough for you to register a blur of white-coated bodies flipping sauté pans. If you're within a two-block radius, you can even smell it, too—in the best, most appetizing way possible. (Talking about the smell of fish is a dicey proposition).
Having an open kitchen is not without its challenges; for one, it compresses the experience for those who need to work in it, so executive chef Javan Small and his team need to be creative in order to maximize their flow. But most people probably aren't interested in behind-the-scenes logistics that make a kitchen work: understandably, they would like their meals to be memorable and served in a timely manner.
The open kitchen is just that: there is no buffer, as the staff absorbs the gamut of feedback. “I got some feedback from a customer who said the crab cakes were all filler. It's lump meat and claw meat. There's no filler. I grew up in Maryland; I've eaten plenty of crab cakes,” says the 28-year-old Small, chuckling.
Instead of a flashy façade, your focus is drawn to its open kitchen situated right up front, with a large window... That window is Marketing 101...
Undoubtedly, the kitchen's position is responsible for the serious following their raw bar is attracting; you walk right past various bivalves resting on ice on the way to your seat. Still, though, the biggest surprise in opening this place, says Pichetto, is the oysters. “We are selling four times more oysters than I thought we would,” he says, shaking his head. So why are those oysters so in demand? There's no mystery to the prep. “We just shuck 'em and serve 'em,” Small says, with the classic accompaniments of cocktail sauce, mignonette, and lemon—plus extra horseradish on the side.
Oysters are arriving from Maryland, Connecticut, New York, Washington, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and more. There's beauty in that simplicity, but that's only part of it. Sustainability—the restaurant uses River & Glen as a purveyor—and freshness reign. “We are getting deliveries nearly every day of the week. We have a guy who will drive to Massachusetts on a Sunday for lobster if we need it,” says Pichetto. With such rapid turnover here, we shouldn't need to heed the old warning about ordering fish on Monday.
Early discussions about the culinary enterprise included offering a retail fish market, as its namesake indicates. However, once the architectural drawings started coming together, it quickly became apparent that offering retail sales at the near end of the bar just wasn't feasible. There simply wasn't enough room. Luckily, the 39-year-old Pichetto parked his new restaurant (and its eight already-occupied apartments upstairs) in downtown Easton, which is preparing to launch a year-round public market version of the Easton Farmers' Market (akin to Reading Terminal or Chelsea Market). So come late fall 2014, when the winter market moves indoors and kicks it up several serious notches with permanent vendor outposts, you'll be able to purchase fresh fish and seafood (and snag what will likely be a coveted stool at the counter for lunch), and take it home that very day.
Lately, it's getting a little bit cliché around these parts to say that a restaurant's opening is eagerly anticipated, but Pichetto and his wife, Rebecca, who's a sommelier and also runs the front of the house, settled on this concept five years ago. It took a long time to manifest, but the why requires a knotty digression that we'll skip. And why seafood? “There's nothing else really like it in the region, and so we wanted to create that quintessential seafood place,” says Pichetto.
It was a shrewd business decision. Neither one of them have extensive nostalgia for or life experience with the life aquatic: Pichetto is your classic gregarious Italian-American from Bergen County, New Jersey, and Small, despite living in Maryland, Japan and New England, heretofore hadn't specialized in sea creatures. Small spent his formative culinary years at Johnson & Wales and then catering and working for various restaurants and hotels in Rhode Island and Boston, before landing in the Lehigh Valley at the Farmhouse in Emmaus (2010-2012).
“We don't do a lot with ego. We have a zero tolerance policy for drama.”
If you go, you'll be greeted with a menu replete with familiar items rendered with as much local and sustainable fare as possible. Imagine crab cakes served with a sweet pepper relish; crab-stuffed tilapia with whipped potatoes and a green vegetable; poached peel-and-eat shrimp; fish and chips with Small's not-too-sweet cole slaw. The indecisive may find solace in the popular combination plate: scallops, shrimp and crab cake, fried or sautéed in white wine, butter and lemon juice, along with a potato chorizo hash and broccolini. The delicate sweet meat in the lobster roll comes with fresh cut fries—if you upgrade to the Market Fries they'll be tossed in crab aioli.
Summer heat just begs for the refreshing and easily shareable ceviche flight; why choose one if you can have the classic, one with avocado, one with roasted corn and chipotle, and mango-mint? When the tomatoes hit full force, Small promises gazpacho, including a rendition with watermelon.
The specials, however, are where Small gets to experiment, “stay current and please the segment of the clientele that's looking for something more eclectic,” he says. “I've been doing meat with seafood together, such as duck confit, which we do in house, with scallops, and this awesome marlin we had recently with giant prawns,” he says. That same inventive spirit emerges from behind the bar with Eamon Kinsman, who's previously poured hundreds of drinks at Porters' Pub and has concocted a spate of house-made infused spirits.
On the sweeter, crisper side, there's The Circle Cucumber Collins, made from cucumber vodka, fresh lemon juice and club soda, and the Old Orchard Peach, with peach and vanilla bourbon, bitters, club soda and lemon zest. On the savory side, the 3rd Street Fire Shot will blow your taste buds with local serrano- and habanero-infused gin, and Parson's Potion is a roasted red pepper and black peppercorn vodka with olive juice, muddled basil, lemon, and white balsamic, rimmed with smoked salt. Drinks and punches will rotate on a weekly basis.
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Pichetto describes 3rd & Ferry as “blindingly busy, fortunately,” since its opening the night before Thanksgiving. They've collectively weathered some bumps, including an incorrectly wired exhaust fan that plumed the dining room with kitchen smoke for the first couple of weeks until it was remedied. Beyond the smoke issue, which definitely did not please diners, Pichetto welcomes constructive criticism—why else would the kitchen be so accessible? “It keeps it honest, keeps it open,” he says.
On the human side, Pichetto reports they've had very little staff turnover; Small, who spent the early part of 2013 cooking at sister restaurant Vintage, is still there and has no plans to depart. Pichetto says the average tenure with him is five years. What's the key? “We don't do a lot with ego. We have a zero tolerance policy for drama,” he says. As Small explains, “Mike and Becca are the people everyone wants to work for around here.”
Pichetto is one of the more animated chefs in our region; the conversation is freewheeling, unedited and infused with pure love for what he does. Small began the menu, and the two collaborated and tweaked it accordingly. When asked how he's managing the chef-owner-operator balance, Pichetto is blunt. “The worst thing about it is that it's pulled me out of the kitchen. On a personal level, it blows. On a business level, it's necessary.”
It's a continuation of a shift for the self-taught chef who started off with the requisite dishwashing/busing job at an Italian spot at age 16 and became mesmerized by the cooks, “They always seemed to be having fun. I thought to myself, ‘I'm never leaving, I'm going to be those guys.'” He shares a story that cracks up Small about how when he was eight or nine years old he would “cut up everything in sight, including the couch,” he says, laughing. “It drove my mother nuts.” He did actually cut food, too. “She made me eat it.” He pauses. “There's just something about a sharp knife.” Small nods knowingly. A moment of silence.
A good knife is necessary in the creation of one of their signature desserts: the pie shake. The top third of the pie is cut off from the crust down and garnished on a sundae glass. The rest of the pie is tossed into a blender with Bank Street Creamery ice cream scoops of your choice but not fully incorporated; sizeable chunks remain. Pie offerings will likely rotate on a seasonal basis, but you can always count on apple. It's an ingenious nostalgic mash-up, one that means you never have to choose between a slice of pie or a milkshake. If you've made it to dessert and still have room, you should be congratulated.
After such straightforward, honest fare, you shouldn't have to agonize over a menu of composed desserts. The pie shake speaks for itself, as that generously sized, two-spooned, reward. You'll be grateful for its existence, just as we're grateful for a fish-forward restaurant—and its impending market, too.