Not Part of the Plan in Westbrook

When word got out that Scott Quinn was opening a tavern overlooking Westbrook’s town green, he said salespeople came calling, looking to pitch him on casual bar-fare items like fried pickles.

But that wasn’t part of his plan. Quinn, a Connecticut native, had just moved back to his home state after nearly two decades away, bringing experience from some of the nation’s top restaurants in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. For his debut on the shoreline, he envisioned something beyond a bar with pub grub, but that would still offer an easygoing, informal experience.

“This is food first, and liquor second,” Quinn said. “It’s more of a food-focused tavern that is unpretentious and lively, a great place to come and have a great meal, good drinks, and relax.”

Quinn opened Charter Oak Tavern in late February, with a cozy dining room featuring tables and bar seats for about 30 guests. The building at 24 Westbrook Place has a rich history in Westbrook, first as the town’s post office and then as the Military Historians Museum, which displayed memorabilia like uniforms, medals, and even vehicles outside in the back.

It ended up being the ideal location for Quinn, who grew up in Wallingford but spent much of his culinary career out west. He attended culinary school in Scottsdale, Arizona, and with four months left before graduation, he was offered a job working for renowned chef Thomas Keller’s restaurant Bouchon in Las Vegas.

When word got out that Scott Quinn was opening a tavern overlooking Westbrook’s town green, he said salespeople came calling, looking to pitch him on casual bar-fare items like fried pickles.

But that wasn’t part of his plan. Quinn, a Connecticut native, had just moved back to his home state after nearly two decades away, bringing experience from some of the nation’s top restaurants in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. For his debut on the shoreline, he envisioned something beyond a bar with pub grub, but that would still offer an easygoing, informal experience.

“This is food first, and liquor second,” Quinn said. “It’s more of a food-focused tavern that is unpretentious and lively, a great place to come and have a great meal, good drinks, and relax.”

Quinn opened Charter Oak Tavern in late February, with a cozy dining room featuring tables and bar seats for about 30 guests. The building at 24 Westbrook Place has a rich history in Westbrook, first as the town’s post office and then as the Military Historians Museum, which displayed memorabilia like uniforms, medals, and even vehicles outside in the back.

It ended up being the ideal location for Quinn, who grew up in Wallingford but spent much of his culinary career out west. He attended culinary school in Scottsdale, Arizona, and with four months left before graduation, he was offered a job working for renowned chef Thomas Keller’s restaurant Bouchon in Las Vegas.

After six years with Keller’s group, Quinn headed to Los Angeles, working as executive chef at West Hollywood’s Bagatelle for a year. The LA lifestyle wasn’t a fit for him, he said, so he headed north, working for the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley and Tyler Florence’s Wayfare Tavern in San Francisco.

Visits back east with his wife and children left him a little homesick, and he began thinking about the possibility of leaving California. His wife agreed, and they made the move last summer, settling in Madison. After an initial position with a local restaurant group didn’t work out, he was driving through Westbrook last fall and spotted the space that would become Charter Oak Tavern, calling the leasing agent’s number on the sign and meeting the landlord the next day.

Just about 90 days later, Quinn unveiled the restaurant, a comfortable space with eclectic décor marked by framed photos of animals in Victorianera outfits: rabbits, foxes, raccoons, owls, and alligators in top hats, bow ties, and ruffled collars. The menu, which Quinn changes frequently, focuses on seasonal dishes and things he likes to eat.

Staples include bacon-wrapped dates with bleu cheese and sauce bordelaise, short rib croquettes, a vegetarian forest mushroom Bolognese with pappardelle pasta, and a tavern burger, with melted Brie, red onion marmalade, and applewood bacon. On the seasonal side, spring dishes included garden asparagus with soft-poached hen egg, prosciutto di parma, and black truffle vinaigrette, and buttermilk fried green tomatoes with Gulf shrimp piccata.

Guests have also enjoyed entrees like squid ink tonnarelli pasta with shrimp, fennel and sun-dried tomato butter, pan-seared salmon with crispy potato pave and grapefruit butter, and the tavern’s fried chicken dish, a half-chicken marinated in buttermilk with a touch of lemon and hot sauce.

Desserts change frequently, Quinn said, with past confections like a flourless chocolate torte with toasted hazelnuts and orange crème fraiche, warm Kentucky butter cake with blackberry compote and vanilla gelato, and a pot de crème with macerated strawberries and basil sugar cookies. The bar offers beer, wine, and cocktails, like a classic espresso martini, a Manhattan, a Negroni, and a Dark & Stormy, along with a few alcohol-free options.

The tavern’s kitchen has an open window where guests can chat with Quinn while he’s cooking, and he’s already amassed a crowd of regulars, he said, including Madison resident Jacques Pépin. (The world-renowned chef was disappointed when he took a buffalo cauliflower dish off the menu in the spring, Quinn said.) Quinn put careful thought into the restaurant’s name, looking for something that would reflect his roots as a Connecticut native. The legend of the Charter Oak dates back to 1662, when King Charles II of England granted the Connecticut General Assembly a Royal Charter, according to the Connecticut Historical Society.

In 1687, when King James II appointed Sir Edmond Andros as the colonial governor of New England, Andros arrived in Hartford to confiscate the charter. According to legend, colonists hid the document in a large white oak tree in the city, which became a symbol of Connecticut’s “enduring tradition of representative government and self-rule,” according to the Historical Society.

“I just thought that was perfect; my roots are here,” Quinn said. “Everybody likes it that I’m originally from Connecticut. I’m not somebody from California who just threw a dart at a (map) and said, ‘I want to go to Connecticut.’”

• The Charter Oak Tavern is located at 24 Westbrook Place in Westbrook, charteroaktavern.com