$40 Gift Card for the Blacksheep Pub and Restaurant.

The Lyme Times Review:

The pub life is in Leo Roche’s blood. There’s been an Irish pub in his family for 150 years. His grandfather came over from Ireland back in 1912 and opened a ballroom in Harlem, then a big Irish community, and another one on Amsterdam Avenue in New York. After some years here, the immigrant headed back to Glin County Limerick to run the family business.
No wonder young Roche, who came to New York in 1986 as a teenager, thought he might do the same. Then he met Heather Vaisin, a gal from Groton.

Patrons of The Harp and Hound, a little pub in Mystic, already know the story. Turns out a good number of them hail from East Lyme, which got Leo to thinking that East Lyme might be a good place for a real restaurant and pub.

Since opening in downtown Niantic in mid-October, The Black Sheep Pub and Restaurant has drawn more business than the owners expected in this economy and time of year. The establishment has had its share of news coverage over parking and handicapped access. The Lyme Times sent this reporter to check out the menu and ambiance, and meet the new owners.

“We’ve always wanted to have a proper restaurant,” said Heather, who admitted that as a young hairdresser in New York, this line of business wasn’t on her radar range. Then she married Leo. The couple has two young children, Maggie Mae, 7, and Ian, 5.

The young family had already been dreaming about opening a pub and considering coming back to Connecticut when Maggie Mae was born on Sept. 11, 2001. They opened the Harp and Hound in Mystic about six years ago.

The Black Sheep is a combination of cozy and cosmopolitan, serving traditional and trendy Irish cuisine for coastal Connecticut tastes. It can seat up to 150 people inside.

The menu, created by executive chef John Schwartz, who Roche lured away from Go Fish and Dock and Dine, and sous chef Dan Bonville, runs from lamb shepherd pie with parsnip crust, traditional bangers and mash and Whiskey Angus Hamburger, to Cracked Wheat Crusted Salmon and Singapore Noodles. Appetizers include spicy fried oysters and Guinness steamed mussels. There are daily specials of sandwiches and beef stew. The soup or stew of the day runs about $6; most entrees are around $14 to $16.

The bar, which has a full liquor license, has 68 beers on draught, mostly European ales not available elsewhere in the state, according to Roche. Even the bartenders, Alan Sheehan and Pat O’Brien, are from Roche’s hometown in Ireland.

The establishment has created jobs, full- and part-time, for 55 people, many of them from the town, according to Roche. Mike Christina and Lindsey MacDougall are restaurant managers.

Since this was their first full-fledged restaurant and largest staff, the proprietors decided to start out with a “soft opening” on Oct. 22 by inviting over some local business owners, fire marshals and police, the First Selectman and town hall officials. The restaurant served complementary meals and asked the patrons to make a charitable contribution comparable to Kids Cancer-Vive, a local organization working through the Tommy Fund for Childhood Cancer at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital. The Roches presented a check for $1,600 to Carol Geluso.

As for the décor, it is “cosmopolitan pub,” with soft lighting, earthy tones, dark mahogany pillars, wooden tables and chairs, and a tasteful smattering of interesting old memorabilia on the walls and shelves.

Dane Proctor, an East Lyme woodworker, designed and built the massive Victorian style mahogany and mirrors bar. Heather designed the interior, picking out the colors and got to go over to Northern Ireland to pick out the furniture.

A high-backed padded leather 35-foot bench extends along the west wall to form the restaurant area. On the other side of the room, across the bar area, is a large screened open hearth fireplace.

The building, which had been vacant and boarded up for five years when Roche bought it, had been a pharmacy downstairs and for some time the town’s telephone exchange was run out of the upstairs. The upstairs is being converted into a two-story, three-bedroom townhouse-style apartment with its own entrance at the back of the building.

The interior walls of the pub are exposed brick from the building, which Roche said was built in the 1890s. The tall ceilings are the original pounded tin ceiling panels, newly painted a matte finish gold. Otherwise, everything else in the place is newly installed.

The previous pharmacist, John Birmingham, confirmed to Roche that this was where the prescription medicines were locked up and stored. So, the new owner decided the Prescriptions sign, found hidden behind the drop ceiling, should go back up. Heather found old prescription bottles to display in wooden racks on the wall.

The Prescription Room can be reserved for private parties of up to 25 people and offers a special menu, including prime rib and roast sirloin, appetizers, and desserts. The handicapped access door is located in this room.

“I enjoy doing this and I wanted to find the right place,” said Roche. The Niantic location appealed to him because of the community’s ongoing evolution with more downtown residential development such as 38 Hope Street and the potential to make it a strolling downtown area.

By being open seven days a week, from 11:30 a.m. each day until 1 a.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, the place offers more dining options in downtown Niantic.

Roche knows from his experience in Mystic that year-round customers are vital to a local downtown.

“We can’t survive in the winter in Mystic unless there are people coming downtown,” he said, estimating that at least 25 percent of his patrons in these opening weeks have turned their trip to check out the new restaurant into a shopping excursion and maybe a movie down the street in Niantic.

When the weather warms up, Roche plans to add tables and chairs for outdoor seating on the front patio. He had an Irishman build the sturdy, stately stone wall around the front patio and scrounged around online to find a bargain on old slate tiles salvaged from a 150-year-old building down in Darien, for the new front façade. The pub sign is complete with Celtic knot and old-style Irish lettering.

And why is it called the Black Sheep?

“Every family has one,” mused Roche.

By Suzanne Thompson
Special to the Times