The Seafare, one of Williamsburg’s best-known restaurants with 50 years of history and customer acclaim, is closed for the summer. Rumors that the eatery had closed permanently and had been sold by Nikolaos Sarantakos, also known as Nick Saras, and his family are untrue. “Oh, no,” Saras said with a big laugh.
“I’m making it new!” The restaurant at 1632 Richmond Road opened in 1975 “and had never been remodeled,” Saras said. “I wanted new everything. New plumbing.
New painting. New drainage. New parking lot.
” However, more important to him was a new interior. Saras is waiting on approval from the city for the new construction plans with a new façade, new roof and new interior. Why didn’t Saras just tear down the old structure and build a new one? “Sometimes you make a mistake,” he joked.
“Looking now at the cost, maybe I should have built a new one, maybe that would have been easy.” However, he stressed that checking “on everything as it is built” is important for him. His customers “know the building, they know the quality and we want that to continue.
” As the project develops, Saras is at the restaurant site every day, making sure “the best products are being incorporated — best wiring, best everything is being done.” He even has had the walls in the building taken down to the studs because he wanted to make sure they were still strong and had not rotted. Saras said he’s not in a rush, but said Seafare will hopefully reopen thi.