REVOLVING DOOR RESTAURANT

“So what type of restaurant is The Revolving Door?” The answer is this: It depends! The name of the restaurant is aptly chosen, however, as the Revolving Door’s unique mission is to provide a venue for revolving guest chefs and bartenders to showcase his or her culinary talent. The Thames Street brainchild of Chef Albert Bouchard and his wife Sarah introduces a new guest chef every two weeks to a month, keeping the restaurant’s identity constantly in flux with a rotating menu of cuisine. Located on the Newport Harbor, the restaurant offers indoor and outdoor seating. Its extensive drink menu includes 24 types of beer, separate wine, rum and single malt scotch menus and innovative cocktails overseen by award-winning bar manager, Jason Kindess.
Bouchard, owner of the highly acclaimed French fine dining Bouchard Restaurant, located next door to The Revolving Door, offers chefs from around the world an opportunity to establish their brand. “We are looking for professional chefs who are in between jobs or off-season,” says Bouchard. The Revolving Door is a communal experience — one where visitors can interact with the chefs, courtesy of the open kitchen. “You can’t hide — you’re right in front of everyone,” says Bouchard, whose expectations for each chef are simple: quality and cleanliness. Guest chefs pay for their own ingredients and take 75 percent of sales each night they cook. Their small, personalized menus consist of three to four appetizers and three to four entrees, Bouchard says.
The casual, three-floor, 45-seat bar/restaurant provides each new chef with wait staff, bartenders, host/hostess, prep cooks, and house chef Josh Berman. In addition to the varied menus new chefs will bring, house chef Berman maintains the quality of The Revolving Door’s two $24 pre-fixe dishes: steak frites and shrimp scampi with salad, which are served every day.
True to the Revolving Door’s reputation for bringing cutting edge concepts of the culinary world to Newport, Bouchard also added a spectacle called “Battle Chefs”, where chefs cook/battle back to back, mano-a-mano in a timed event (like Food Network’s “Chopped”) in front of their customers as they attempt to prepare a better dish than their fellow competitor. The winner will receive the cover from the night’s event