A new restaurant called Taylor Sam’s plans to try its luck at 20 Broad Street beginning next week. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Another restaurant is joining the Great Dining Rush underway in downtown Red Bank.
With a breakfast-and-lunch-all-day menu of low-cost “home cookin’,” Taylor Sam’s is taking over 20 Broad Street, where three eateries have tried and failed to take hold in the last four years.
Taylor Sam’s owner Scott Spivak. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Owner Scott Spivak tells redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn that Taylor Sam’s was named to evoke the idea of Taylor Ham, while also offering a nod to his 11-year-old daughter, Sam. And like the menu at his three-year-old Taylor Sam’s restaurant in Brick Township, this one is packed with references to other family members, including his other two daughters, he said.
The menu boasts omelettes, “samwiches,” soups, salads, burgers, tacos and plated dishes, all of it made from scratch. Spivak, a chef, said his restaurant doesn’t have a freezer, because everything that can be made from scratch is.
The space was leased a little more than a year ago by the short-lived The Spot, which took over after the brief tenancies of Mac Attack and Boardwalk Burgers. Before that, the storefront was the longtime home of Zebu Forno, which relocated up the block to 12 Broad in early 2012 before rebranding itself as Biagio Wood-Fired Pizza, which failed in March, 2014.
Spivak thinks he can break the pattern. The storefront, which has a rear entrance on English Plaza, has seating for 45, but Spivak said his strategy is to offer meals for less than $10, with an emphasis on take-out and delivery within a two-or-three mile radius.
“Volume,” he said. “That’s our focus.”
Spivak said he plans to open the restaurant next Monday or Tuesday.
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In other downtown food news, the Subway sub shop at 60 Broad Street quietly closed its doors last month.
The chain store was approved by borough officials in October, 2011, but after waiting four years for the tenant to occupy the space, the landlord sued to terminate the lease. Then, last spring, a deal with another franchisee led to the business opening last April.
Mike Morgan, who’s family owns the building, said a replacement tenant has not yet been signed.
