Popular CT restaurant/tavern will reopen this month with renovations

Management of Millwright’s Restaurant and Tavern be closed through July 18 for renovations and reopen July 19 with new features.

“We will be doing a full refresh to the outside and expanding our bridge into a temperature controlled dining area with 48 seats,” a Millwright’s announcement states, noting that bridge construction will be completed in the fall.

Millwright’s, one of Connecticut’s top-rated fine-dining restaurants, is located in Simsbury in a building, which was at various times a grist mill, a saw mill and a yarn factory, then a tavern that ultimately closed.

Millwright’s Chef/co-owner Tyler Anderson and business partner Chris Nelson had announced that the renovations would take place in summertime.

The pair said that Millwright’s would replace the old bridge with a wider version that can accommodate tables along both sides.

Views will be of either the brook itself or the waterfall below.

“The bridge is idyllic. We always wanted to have seating out there because so many guests ask for window tables, but only about a third of the seating in the dining room overlooks the water,” Anderson said earlier this year.

Nelson, a homebuilder, has said the bridge needs structural repairs and he and Anderson decided instead to replace it with a wider version that allows twice as many waterfront tables served by a central walkway.

Nelson said they will also redo sections of roofing and flooring, and remove a long-unused deck behind the restaurant.