43 Green Opens In Huntington, With 'Amazing' Chef: Owner
HUNTINGTON, NY — Perfect timing led to the creation of a new restaurant: 43 Green recently opened, bringing “amazing chef” Lewis Vargas onboard, said Sandra Finley, owner of Finley’s of Greene Street.
“It feels very exciting,” Finley told Patch. “I’m so thrilled to have a chef of his quality.”
While Finley’s of Greene Street has always been a restaurant, the new 43 Green adds a new caliber of quality to the space, at 43 Green St., Huntington, Finley said.
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Vargas had recently closed The Maidstone 1845 Kitchen and Bar in Woodbury, while Finley was looking for a new chef. Vargas was available, and Finley said she was “thrilled” to team up with him.
“Timing doesn’t always work perfectly like that, but in this case, it did,” she said.
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Vargas is now part of the business.
“Mrs. Finley wanted someone here to resurrect the restaurant,” Vargas said. “Make it more refined.”
Vargas said 43 Green serves modern cuisine using fresh and seasonal ingredients, meaning the menu could change by season.
Vargas said the storefront has a lot of space and a larger patio than many of the restaurants in Huntington.
Diners can choose to eat in the dining room, front courtyard, back decks or one of the restaurant’s three bars, Finley said.
“I think that the Huntington community knows that we have more outdoor space than perhaps any other place in Huntington,” Finley said. “What they don’t know is that we now have a chef who really, what I think, is going to be our next real celebrity chef on Long Island. He is that good. People are thrilled with his food. We had a soft opening [June 13] for friends and family, which went very well. On [June 14], we opened 43 Green to the public. I think people will be really amazed at how good the food is.”
Vargas’s resume includes cooking at Robert de Niro’s Tribeca Grill, James Beard House and Gary Danko’s Michelin Star restaurant in San Francisco.
Vargas, who was born and raised in Port Jefferson, wanted to return to the Long Island scene after working in New York City.
“If I were to keep my career in the city, I could earn a Michelin star,” Vargas said.
He believes he could have earned the first Michelin Star on Long Island if he chose not to walk away from his partnership at The Maidstone 1845 Kitchen and Bar in Woodbury. His attention is now on 43 Green.
The 43 Green menu features shareable small bites, a seafood bar, lobster roll variations, salads, pasta, entrees, and appetizers for the table. While the restaurant is new, the rack of lamb with house-made ratatouille and parsnip puree has become a popular dish. The naked chicken, served pan-roasted with wild mushrooms, fava beans and a hazelnut brown butter sauce, has also sold particularly well so far.
“Everything has been selling on the menu,” Vargas said.
The menu also features a burger, duck a l’Orange, a New York strip steak, homemade ravioli, pan-seared halibut, pork Milanese and more.
Vargas said he has a passion for cooking and wants to share that with Finley’s of Greene Street’s existing customer base.
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“I know this restaurant has had a lot of faces in the past,” Vargas said. “Chefs have come here and tried to make changes in this place and did not succeed. I think maybe the concept they tried to do; one was probably too casual. When you have a restaurant this size and you have a menu that’s way too casual, you’ve got to do very high numbers to actually have revenue coming in. If you do a menu that’s actually more refined, and you have good seatings, you see more revenue coming in, because you’re actually doing a lot of numbers.”
Finley said she wants to tell the Huntington community she thinks “they’ll be delighted if they give us a try.”
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