Sound Shore

Craig Muraszewski didn’t feel like there was any place in Westchester where you could go to get a little bite to eat and enjoy a cocktail — and not feel like you’re in a restaurant. After all, when he goes out, he prefers to sit at the bar, rather than at a dining room table somewhere.

So he is opening Vintage 1891, a wine lounge, on Boston Post Road in Larchmont in about six weeks.

“It’s designed as a restaurant that’s for the community,” he says. “A place that you can feel you can bring your laptop and hang out or go for a great meal and a fantastic bottle of wine.”

The restaurant is “downtown meets country,” he says. And that means clean lines, custom-made wingback chairs, couches and two huge comunal tables. The building has its original skylights from 1880, so he restored those, and he added a fireplace with a big slate hearth. There are rich brown walls, hardwood floors and 14-foot ceilings. Muraszewski says it’s “open, airy and spacious.”

The food will be small plates — not tapas, he says, but small plates — and will focus on local, seasonal ingredients. The bar will use fresh juices and herbs and his bartenders will “really go back to the crafting of the cocktail.” (He says there will be a Larchmont Cocktail on the list, too.) The wine list will start out covering the major wine regions, and as work into smaller, more electic regions later.

Muraszewski was formerly the general manager at Plates in Larchmont. He also worked at Per Se for two years, the Four Seasons hotel and at Larchmont Avenue Oyster House. He hopes to be open in about six weeks.

The 411 is coming. Til then: 2098 Boston Post Road, Larchmont. 914-834-9463. vintage1891.com.

If you saw the long lines here a few weeks ago, you’d swear they were giving away something for free. Well, they were.

Photos by Matthew Brown/TJN

HomeMade Pizza Company, founded in Chicago, was offering up free slices, presumably to get everyone hooked on their concept: You pick the toppings, they assemble the pizza, then you pop the uncooked pie in the oven when you get home.

bartaco (I had originally misspelled it as Bar Taco), a new taco restaurant and tequila bar, is now open in the spot where Ebb Tide was on the Byram River in Port Chester. Sasa Mahr-Batuz and Andy Pforzheimer, owners of Barcelona, the wine and tapas bar with six locations in Connecticut, are behind the new place.

The restaurant will have a beach-shack feel with wainscoting and light colors — not the typical Tex-Mex decor of bright colors, sombreros and serapes. “Very casual with a little bit of sophistication,” Mahr-Batuz told me earlier this year. “High quality of food, very affordable, great music.” The dining room will have big communal and individual tables made of ipe wood, and there will be a lounge seating area.

There will be two bars: one outside on the deck, which overlooks the river; and one inside. The menu will include made-from-scratch margaritas and authentic tacos. The partners recently returned from a research visit to Mexico City, and Mahr-Batuz says they learned a lot from the street vendors there.

The tacos will be 3 to 4 inches in size, cooked on the griddle and filled with all sorts of grilled and stewed meats, poultry and fish and traditional combinations such as al pastor, which is pork and pineapple cooked on a spit. The menu will also include soups, salads and sandwiches, and the restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner.

The web site has photos and a menu: bartacousa.com