The inside scoop on The Boathouse Restaurant

Monday, March 09, 2009

Construction on the Boathouse Restaurant at Rocketts Landing is soon to be underway pending the allotment of a building permit by the City of Richmond. When we spoke on the phone, Kevin Healy, the owner, was in the process of picking out the restaurant’s dining room furniture. He said that once he receives the building permit, the restaurant will be completed and open for business in five to six months.

 Healy has owned and managed the award-winning Boathouse Restaurant at Brandermill, (located on the Swift Creek Reservoir in Chesterfield Country,) for the past 21 years.

“Call me crazy for undertaking such a large business venture given the current state of the economy, but at the restaurant in Brandermill, we have been experiencing a double digit sales growth since September,” he said. “I expect a similar restaurant for downtown Richmond to not be that much different.”

Before acquiring the Boathouse, Healy worked as a manager for four years under the leadership of Richard Ripp, president of the Richmond-based Restaurant Company. He started out as a dishwasher in the food service business when he was fifteen years old and attributes the success of the Boathouse to affordable prices, thorough training and business research.

The Boathouse can house up to 250 people and has been a longtime participant in the Brandermill community, serving as a setting for numerous regattas, family reunions, business meetings and weddings.

“It is more than just a restaurant,” Healy said. “It’s a place to celebrate life’s events.”
To create a comparable sense of community to Healy aims to build a restaurant at Rocketts that can accommodate similar functions and occasions.

It will be built below the Harbor Masters office on the second and third floor of the old power plant overlooking the James River. Chefs Gary Wood and Cory Sheldon of the Boathouse are currently putting together a menu for the Rocketts Landing restaurant that will feature an extensive raw oyster bar, open-flamed prime steaks, fresh seafood and Neapolitan wood stone fired pizza. 

The menu will be similar to that of the current restaurant, but Healy made it clear that the food offered at the Rocketts Landing restaurant will be better suited for Richmonders.

“We will always be tweaking the menu there, taking into consideration that Richmonders might want something different,” he said. “This is because I really want the restaurant at Rocketts Landing to evolve into a place of its own. It will be the only riverfront restaurant in Richmond and was almost meant to be.”

Check back next week as we take a closer took at the existing restaurant at Brandermill.