New deck, new clientele enliven longtime Burlington restaurant Shanty on the Shore

This look at Shanty on the Shore is the latest in a series of profiles by the Burlington Free Press on long-standing restaurants in Chittenden County. How do restaurants that date to the 20th century remain relevant, while continuing to do the things that have given them such staying power?

The core of the building dates to 1833 and the restaurant that now occupies the space opened in 1985, but it was only a few years ago, in 2018, that Shanty on the Shore made one of its biggest changes ever.

The seafood joint overlooking Lake Champlain in Burlington added an outdoor deck, doubling its capacity in nice weather to about 170. As the structure evolved, the crowd that had been coming to the Battery Street restaurant for more than three decades evolved as well.

“That has really changed the demographic,” according to Al Gobeille, who with his wife, Kim Gobeille, oversees Shanty on the Shore and, just up Battery Street, the Burlington Bay Market and Café.

Tony Elmore, supervisor of Gobeille Hospitality, which oversees both restaurants, said the clientele at Shanty on the Shore grew younger and more diverse. The deck had a lot to do with that, as well as the simultaneous addition of a small bar inside. Customers don’t necessarily hang out at the bar, according to Gobeille, but just knowing there’s a bar there makes Shanty on the Shore a more viable nightlife option for a broader range of people.

Shanty on the Shore made those upgrades while paying attention to what’s kept it going for 38 years. Broiled haddock remains where it’s been on the menu since the late 1980s. Shanty’s clam strips, whole-belly fried clams, homemade New England clam chowder and key lime pie are also stalwarts that draws regulars as well as newcomers.

“We still see a lot of the same people coming in,” Elmore said.

From dry goods to seafood

The website for Shanty on the Shore lays out the long history of the building that sits on land that once belonged to Ira Allen, one of the founders of the republic (and later state) of Vermont.

Isaac Nye built the core of the present-day restaurant in 1833 as a store for selling dry goods and groceries. The structure – the oldest remaining commercial building on the waterfront, according to Gobeille − included a home, storage space and an attached stable.

In 1894, James Wakefield leased the property to manufacture yachts, tents and other items. The pulleys, wood beams and lintels displayed at the Shanty today are from the time Wakefield used the space.

The Champlain Transportation Co. (later the Lake Champlain Transportation Co., known for its ferries across the lake) used the building as its office from 1913 until 1952, after which it became a cold-storage site. The building became the Welcome Inn Restaurant in 1963.

Kim Gobeille’s parents, Terry and Sue Spillane, took over the restaurant in December 1985 and rechristened it Shanty on the Shore. Al and Kim Gobeille bought the business in 1996.

Shanty on the Shore sits about 100 feet from Lake Champlain, but at one point the building really was on the shore. Al Gobeille said the lake was filled in several feet to allow for the laying of railroad tracks. Parking spaces and the Burlington Greenway bike path now occupy that ground as well.

‘A very educated consumer’

The local dining world in 1996 was not nearly as flush with restaurants as today. There was little commerce at Taft Corners in Williston. South Burlington’s restaurant scene was led by the Perry Restaurant Group on Shelburne Road, featuring Perry’s Fish House and the Sirloin Saloon. Restaurants in Burlington were centered on or around the Church Street Marketplace, including current eateries Leunig’s and Halvorson’s Upstreet Café and the recently-departed Sweetwaters.

Though off the beaten downtown path, Shanty on the Shore had an advantageous location. The restaurant sat just up the hill from the ferry dock that brought summertime passengers across the lake from Port Kent, New York.

“The ferry was incredibly busy back then,” according to Gobeille. He said restaurant employees would ring a bell to alert fellow staff members when a ferry was arriving so they could prepare for the next wave of customers.

Gobeille said diners at that time weren’t so interested in where the ingredients in their dishes came from or whether seafood was fresh or had been frozen.

“There’s a very educated consumer now,” he said, with patrons growing more curious about the origin of their food in part because of the farm-to-table movement that came to Vermont in the early 2000s. That’s around the time the state’s beer scene started booming, too; Gobeille said the Shanty on the Shore taps once dominated by Budweiser and Miller are now occupied predominantly by local brews.

Back then, according to Gobeille, the restaurant carried three types of red wine and three types of white, but the selection has become much more extensive. “Now we have to have three different types of rose,” he said.

A more-discerning customer is a good thing, according to Gobeille. He said Shanty on the Shore relies on frozen shrimp coming north from the Gulf of Mexico, but otherwise the restaurant in landlocked Vermont sources fresh seafood several times a week from Boston.

“In some ways it’s so welcome,” Gobeille said of that increased scrutiny. “It’s the art that we do. It’s nice to have people recognize it.”

The menu has evolved with changing tastes. “We never would have done fish tacos in 1996,” Gobeille said.

Those are super-popular, according to Elmore. “Top three, for sure,” he said. “It’s easily our staff favorite – easily.”

Weathering the pandemic

Gobeille also oversaw Breakwater Café & Grill at the King Street ferry landing before selling the eatery in 2017. The lakefront property reopened as The Spot on the Dock.

“I had this crazy state job,” Gobeille said in explaining the reason for the sale. (He had just become secretary of the state Agency of Human Services.) Gobeille has also served on the Shelburne Selectboard and as chairman of the Green Mountain Care Board.

He’s not threatened by having The Spot on the Dock, a competing restaurant, so close to Shanty on the Shore. He sees strength in numbers, with the likelihood that customers might come on the same night to one establishment for drinks and another for food.

“Busy restaurants make busy restaurants busier,” Gobeille said.

Brooke Mossman of Charlotte and Peggy Pearson of Essex sat on the deck Aug. 11 so they could catch up on each other’s lives. “This is our regular spot to meet every couple of months,” according to Pearson.

On this Friday evening Pearson ordered haddock, but she has other favorites, too. “I absolutely love their clam chowder in a bread bowl,” she said. Mossman is a fan of Shanty’s haddock as well as the shrimp scampi. While she enjoys sitting on the deck in nice weather, she said she and Pearson also like to explore the menu in winter.

The new deck became especially valuable when the COVID-19 pandemic drove the majority of diners outside in 2020. The pandemic caused the supply chain to become “brutal,” according to Gobeille, making it hard for Shanty on the Shore to source fresh lobsters, oysters and clams. He said the restaurant took steak off the menu for a couple of years because it became too hard to find quality, reasonably-priced beef.

“Everything seemed to change every week,” according to Gobeille. “But we were OK.”

Staffing shortages hit the restaurant, too, as has been the case for restaurants nationwide since the pandemic.

“A lot of people were scared to work,” Elmore said. “The turnover rate was big.” Instead of receiving 20 responses to a help-wanted ad, he said, the restaurant would receive four, and would interview every applicant.

Unlike many restaurants during the pandemic, Gobeille’s restaurant remained open seven days a week. He said that made Sundays and Mondays when other restaurants were closed even busier at Shanty than on Fridays.

To lure more workers, Shanty on the Shore, which employs up to 90 full- and part-time employees, had to increase pay without raising menu prices so high it would drive customers away. “I think it worked because we had the volume” of business, Gobeille said. The restaurant tried to stay ahead of the problem first, according to Gobeille, and worry about profit and loss later.

“It’s still really, really hard,” he said of the restaurant’s efforts to attract workers.

“It’s an improvement,” Elmore said.

“From impossible,” according to Gobeille.

The ferry from Port Kent stopped running after the pandemic, but a new marina has brought new clientele to the foot of King Street. “If we didn’t get the marina we would have felt the ferry leaving,” Gobeille said.

“Adding the deck has increased tourism even without the ferry being there,” according to Elmore.

Though Shanty on the Shore has room to expand its deck, Gobeille plans to keep things as they are for now, especially while staffing remains an issue.

“Right now we’re just happy with the way customers have responded,” he said.

If you go

WHAT: Shanty on the Shore

WHERE: 181 Battery St., Burlington

WHEN: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m., Sunday-Monday and Wednesday-Thursday; 11:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m., Tuesday; 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Friday-Saturday.

INFORMATION: (802) 864-0238, www.shantyontheshore.com

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Shanty on the Shore adds deck, reels in new customers in Burlington