The owners of the Home Port Restaurant announced this week that from now on they will only serve locally-caught fish and shellfish at the landmark Menemsha eatery known for its sunsets and swordfish.
The sunsets will of course stay but swordfish will only be on the menu at the Home Port if it has been caught off the Vineyard, restaurant owner Sarah Guinan Nixon told a gathering of Island fishermen on Wednesday night.
Menemsha may have a new lunch option this summer, after the Chilmark selectmen approved an innkeeper and common victualler’s license for Dennis Barquinero, the new general manager of the Home Port, Beach Plum Inn and Menemsha Inn, with the understanding that Mr. Barquinero may open the Home Port’s take-out window for lunch.
The Home Port restaurant in Menemsha has turned its back door green.
New owners Bob and Sarah Nixon and chef Johnny Graham saw environmental sustainability as an area where the landmark restaurant could improve in this, its 80th year of business, and they are starting with the huge volume of disposables that go through the eatery’s back door take-out facility every day.
Hope for an ailing Island commercial fishery was on the menu at the Home Port restaurant in Menemsha Wednesday night, along with some hearty chowder and fresh herb-crusted swordfish.
Most of the Island fishing community was on hand for the first annual meeting of the Martha’s Vineyard Dukes County Fishermen’s Association, along with representatives from Cape Cod and Maine.
The owners of the Home Port, who completed their purchase this month of the long-running Menemsha seafood restaurant, plan to make few changes in their first season.
Susan and Robert Nixon bought the restaurant from William and Madeline Holtham on Feb. 10, paying $2.3 million.
The Nixons, who also own the Menemsha and Beach Plum Inns, plan to retain elements from the old restaurant, from menu to staff and hope that customer loyalty for the business, which has been going since 1931, will prevail.
Chilmark’s most diehard scallopers will have a chance to increase the bushel limit in exchange for some community service.
Menemsha seafood retailer Karsten Larsen convinced selectmen at a meeting Tuesday to raise the small pond limits from two to three bushels a day, arguing that those ponds are oversubscribed with small scallops which would die in a freeze and potentially damage the pond bed.
