# At The Essex, the Menu Changes Before You Can Memorize It
Chef Colt Taylor numbers his menus. By the time a regular at The Essex gets used to one, it has often already given way to the next — diners who visited a few weeks apart can find themselves comparing notes on entirely different meals, both from the same kitchen, both under the same name.
The restaurant sits at 247 Main Street in Old Saybrook, across from the town green, in a space that formerly housed a different restaurant before Taylor took it over and renovated down to the studs. He moved the operation here after running it for several years in nearby Centerbrook, eventually consolidating that earlier space for his other restaurant, Los Charros Cantina, and giving The Essex a freestanding identity of its own. The move gave the restaurant a more visible spot in a town with a growing restaurant scene, and a dining room redone with a coastal feel — a seascape mural along one wall, painted by Taylor’s mother, the artist Melissa Barbiere.
Inside, the space splits roughly into a bar area with first-come, first-served seating and a dining room with two reservation windows a night, an early seating and a later one. There is also a six-seat chef’s tasting counter, set up so diners can watch the kitchen work through each course as it’s plated. The room is intimate rather than expansive, which suits the kind of cooking Taylor does: dishes built around small, specific decisions rather than a long menu of safe options.
The food draws from the Connecticut River Valley and the shoreline immediately around it — local seafood given French technique and international touches that show up unexpectedly, a ramen with a rich broth next to a more familiar steak frites, a clam chowder finished with a pastry crust and built on seaweed instead of pork for depth. The tasting menu runs five or seven courses depending on the night, moving from an amuse-bouche through raw bar items, a fish or meat course, and dessert, with the option to step outside it and order a la carte if a multi-course commitment isn’t what someone’s after. Snake River Farms wagyu and a rotating list of oysters sit on the same menu as more straightforward options, the kind of range meant to hold both a special-occasion table and a couple stopping in for soup and a cocktail at the bar.
What keeps The Essex from settling into a fixed identity is partly the chef himself, who treats the frequent menu turnover as part of the draw rather than a logistical headache — guests who eat there regularly come back in part to see what’s changed. It is a small operation by design, built around one person’s cooking rather than a large brigade or a corporate structure, the kind of restaurant that depends on a chef who is still in the kitchen rather than one who has moved on to other ventures. For a shoreline town with no shortage of seafood shacks and casual fish houses, The Essex offers something different: a place where the food is the variable and the room stays the same, season after season.
📍 247 Main Street, Old Saybrook, CT
🕐 Tue–Sat from 4 pm; closed Sun–Mon; check website for current hours
🔗 theessex.com