Chef Ken Brown grew up in Delaware catching crab and cooking them with his family.
His family would all take part in an event he called “crab picking” – cooking up the days catch of blue crab and dumping it into a pile on a newspaper-covered table before it was time to roll up the sleeves and dig in.
More than 30 years later, he is bringing his homegrown love of seafood to Williamsburg along with his culinary partner Victor Minichiello, whom he has known since 1990. Brown and Minichiello are in the renovation stage of their new restaurant, Fat Tuna Grill and Oyster House, which they expect to open in late March.
“We’re going to focus on fresh, local ingredients,” Brown said. “It will be mostly seafood but we’ll have some beef dishes, some pork dishes and vegetarian meals.”
Brown is doing much of the renovation himself for the restaurant that is located at 1433 Richmond Road, where Legends Bistro used to operate, in the City of Williamsburg. While a peek inside showed unfinished floors and a gutted building space that Brown and Minichiello did not want photographed, there was one sign on the wall of the decoration to come: a large mural of yellowfin tuna chasing a school of mackerel.
Brown said he was excited about working with Minichiello, who owns Italian Restaurant Sal’s by Victor and co-owns Rocco’s Smokehouse Grille with Rocco Colafrancesco. He said Minichello’s attentiveness to customers and quality food will be a welcome help in their venture.
“He worries about every customer in his place,” Brown said. “People see that. I’m excited to have him bring that to Tuna.”
Brown went to school at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. and interned at the Four Seasons Hotel in London. After his internship, he began work at the Kingsmill Country Club and and was later a chef in Newport News, Chesapeake and Hatteras, N.C.
Brown is a seafood guy — he loves to catch, cook and eat it. While it is not Minichiello’s favorite food to cook, he said he is excited for the new menu, which will be themed fresh and local. Minichiello said the theme is not just a product of the local food movement that has been happening in the past few years.
“It’s always been a big deal, in my opinion,” Minichiello said. “I’ve been using fresh ingredients as much as I can since I started cooking.”
And he takes it seriously. He once fired a chef for using dry basil instead of the fresh variety. It is not elitism, quality food is just that important to him, he said. Above all, he wants his guests to feel like family.
“It’s so easy to fail in the restaurant business,” Minichiello said. “We put our heart and soul into it and we appreciate everything we get.”
Minichiello is also planning on opening an Italian bakery in the building next door between the future Fat Tuna and Chipotle. Right now, the business is in operation as a whole sale extension of the Billy Bread Bakery in Richmond, which specializes in the selling of a special type of bread loaf that shares the bakery’s namesake.
In May, Minichiello plans on turning it into a pastry and coffee shop with a large variety of coffees that can be purchased in drink or bean form.
