"hi'Amba is about creating the kind of place you want in your neighborhood and can rely on every day," says chef Bill Taibe, describing the all-day bakery, café and restaurant he's set to open on Jesup Road this fall.
Coming from most chefs, that line would be standard opening-week copy. Coming from Taibe, it's a pretty clear signal of where his head is right now. For fifteen years, the man built restaurants Westport drove to on purpose. Now he's building one you're supposed to walk into without a plan.
The Résumé He Kept Selling
If you've eaten out in Westport since 2009, you've eaten Taibe's food somewhere. He opened LeFarm that year, and it earned four James Beard Best Chef: Northeast semifinalist nods before he sold it. It's now The Cottage. The Whelk followed in 2012. He sold that one too. Kawa Ni came in 2014 and Jesup Hall in 2016, then Don Memo in 2020, which is now operating under new ownership as Massi Co. He opened a café at the Norwalk Art Space in 2021, and in 2023 he took Kawa Ni to Denver, where it caught Michelin's attention the following year. Along the way, the Connecticut Restaurant Association named him Restaurateur of the Year.
Read that list again and notice what's missing. LeFarm, The Whelk, Don Memo: gone, sold, renamed. What Taibe has kept for himself is Kawa Ni in Westport, Kawa Ni Denver, and the Norwalk Art Space Café. He's been quietly narrowing his own footprint for years. hi'Amba is the first new thing he's built from scratch in Westport since 2016, and he's describing it in language that has nothing to do with tasting menus or reservations.
What Comes Next Instead
hi'Amba will occupy 33 Jesup Road with a working bakery on the ground floor, a grab-and-go market stocked with house-made dips and pantry staples, and a full dining room upstairs built for sharing. The food draws from the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and Southwest Asia: Jerusalem bagels, pita straight from the oven, man'oushe, shakshuka and eggs at breakfast, then a wider spread of hummus in several styles, baba ghanoush, muhammara and hindbeh as the day goes on, with sandwiches like swordfish shawarma and lamb kebab. There's a coffee program built around Ilse Coffee alongside the bakery case.
The team is not a first-timer's crew. General Manager Branden Hahn has run the floor at Don Memo, Kawa Ni, Jesup Hall, Augusta National and The NoMad. Executive Chef Karen Nicolas trained under Tom Colicchio at Gramercy Tavern and Charlie Palmer at Aureole, and she was named a Food & Wine Best New Chef back in 2012.
"You can come in for coffee and something warm from the oven, sit down for a great meal, meet friends upstairs for a bottle of wine, or grab dinner on the way home," Taibe says.
That's four different reasons to walk in the door on the same block, at the same address, without needing an occasion for any of them. It's a different design brief than a restaurant meant to be the highlight of your Saturday night, and Taibe seems to know it.
The Rest of the Wave Isn't Playing By the Same Rules
hi'Amba is landing in the middle of a genuinely busy year for Westport restaurants, and most of what's opened around it is doing the opposite thing on purpose.
Felice took over the second floor at 38 Main Street in early March, bringing its first Connecticut location after building a following in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island and South Florida. It's a full white-tablecloth kind of room, with a curated wine list built around small Tuscan producers and a general manager who describes the pitch as wanting to "swoop you up, embrace you and nourish you." That's destination language. You plan a Felice dinner. You don't stumble into it on a Tuesday.
Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana opened at the other end of downtown on June 1, in the White Birch Center on Post Road West, with a coal-fired oven built from bricks shipped down from New Haven. By early September it had been open close to four months and, by local accounts, was drawing steady crowds. Pepe's sits somewhere between the two poles: it's a 96-year-old family name people plan trips around, but the seating and the price point make it easier to treat as a regular stop than Felice ever will be.
And back in March, Wonder opened at 1300 Post Road East with a model built specifically around flexibility: a single space serving dishes from more than two dozen different kitchens, so a family with different cravings at the same table doesn't have to negotiate. It's a food-hall logic applied to a Post Road storefront, which puts it closer to the "come as you are" end of the spectrum than the "make a reservation" end.
Line these up and a pattern shows up that a quick scan of openings wouldn't catch on its own. Westport isn't getting more restaurants of one type. It's getting a wider spread between two types at once, destination rooms on one end and everyday counters on the other, with less landing in the safe middle than it used to.
The Original Everyday Spot Is Up for Grabs
There's a place in town that's been the everyday model longer than any of this year's openings, and it's currently without an operator.
Old Mill Grocery & Deli has sat at 222 Hills Point Road, steps from Compo Beach, since 1919. It carries three separate historic designations from the town and the state as the oldest continuously operating retail food establishment in Westport. Three years ago, when the building's future was uncertain, nearly 600 residents donated to keep it open, and the nonprofit Soundview Empowerment Alliance took ownership with Romanacci running day-to-day operations starting in early 2024.
This week, Romanacci announced it won't renew its lease, choosing instead to focus on growing its restaurant business elsewhere, including a new location planned for Darien. SEA co-founder Ian Warburg says the split is amicable and business-driven rather than a sign the concept failed, and that the nonprofit is already in active talks with what he described as four capable, experienced prospective operators, one of which he says is ready to move in almost immediately.
The market's tenure under Romanacci wasn't without friction. A zoning change that let it serve beer and wine on premises drew lawsuits from nearby residents, and a Superior Court judge ruled against the town's amendment in February. Whatever comes next for Old Mill Grocery will have to work within that ruling, possibly through a BYOB arrangement rather than a full license.
None of that changes what the place is supposed to be for the neighborhood: coffee before the beach, breakfast sandwiches, a spot you don't need a reason to visit. That's the exact description Taibe is using for hi'Amba a mile and a half away. The difference is that Old Mill Grocery already earned that role over more than a century, and right now nobody knows for certain who's going to keep it there.
What This Weekend Actually Looks Like
If you want to see the everyday end of this spectrum in person, KiiN Sauna, previously a mobile operation around town, has settled into a permanent home at 1555 Post Road East, right next to Sherpa, Longevity, and Zion Physical Therapy. It's holding an open house this Saturday, September 19, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with a DJ, movement sessions and wellness vendors on site. It's a small data point, but it fits the same shape as everything above: another business betting that Westport residents want more places built for a Tuesday, not just a special occasion.
A quick map of what's landed where this year, for anyone keeping track:
- hi'Amba — 33 Jesup Road, Bill Taibe's all-day bakery and restaurant, expected this fall
- Felice — 38 Main Street, first Connecticut location, open since early March
- Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana — 361 Post Road West, White Birch Center, open since June 1
- Wonder — 1300 Post Road East, multi-kitchen dining, open since early March
- Old Mill Grocery & Deli — 222 Hills Point Road, seeking a new operator now
- KiiN Sauna — 1555 Post Road East, open house Saturday, September 19
Taken individually, each of these is just a business update. Taken together, they say something more specific about the town right now: Westport isn't choosing between destination dining and everyday spots. It's getting more of both at the same time, and the most decorated chef in town just bet his newest project on the side of the ledger that doesn't need a reservation.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these openings because you live two blocks from one of them, you already know why this matters more than a headline count of new restaurants would suggest. And if a year of watching Main Street and the Post Road reshape themselves ever gets you wondering what it means for your own address, Jillian Klaff Homes is always glad to talk through it. Request a personalized market consultation whenever the timing feels right.
