New oyster bar from Longoven team finds its space in Scott’s Addition

Lillian Oyster Hall is taking a nearly 2,000-square-foot space along West Leigh Street. (Mike Platania photos)

As a multibuilding project in Scott’s Addition approaches the finish line, particulars about one of its restaurant tenants have been revealed. 

Lillian Oyster Hall is preparing to open at 3001 W. Leigh St., in the “Gem” building that’s part of the Scott’s Collection project by Capital Square that included 209 apartments and 5,900 square feet of commercial space across three buildings at 3001 W. Leigh St. and 2900 and 3000 W. Clay St.

Behind the new raw bar are Megan Fitzroy Phelan and Patrick Phelan, the wife-and-husband duo that rose to prominence with Longoven, a high-end restaurant that they recently shuttered at 2939 W. Clay St.

The Phelans inked the lease for the Leigh Street space in the spring but weren’t ready to share details at the time. 

Patrick Phelan

Patrick said this week that the oyster hall’s roughly 2,000-square-foot space is long and narrow, which allowed the duo to draw up a 52-foot-long bar that’ll have multiple sections. 

“We’ve got a raw bar, a small-plate section where we’ll be doing a seasonal, ever-changing menu, and then we’ll have a portion of what you would call just a traditional bar,” Patrick said. “It’s diner seating, so we’ll serve everything from the counter of that one bar.”

Lillian’s raw bar menu will include oysters from as near as the Eastern Shore of Virginia to as far as the West Coast and Prince Edward Island in northeastern Canada. He said the idea is to have a “robust rotation of oysters at all times,” but also to work with the “bounty of mid-Atlantic seafood” near Richmond. 

“For many years we’d talked about doing a raw bar, and the time seemed right in Richmond,” he said. “There’s Rappahannock (Restaurant) and other great institutions in the city, but where we’re located in Virginia – we’re near one of the best oyster regions in the country.”

Patrick said the pair found inspiration for the counter-service, diner-like layout at Moore Street Cafe, the longtime diner a few blocks away in Scott’s Addition. The Phelans would love for Lillian’s to similarly become a neighborhood spot. 

“It’s one long continuous bar with fixed seating, and there are some high top tables as well for some casual dining,” he said. “It just has some really nostalgic feel to it.”

Lillian’s is aiming to open by the end of 2023, and would wrap a busy year for the Phelans. 

At the beginning of the year they introduced Lost Letter, an Italian restaurant that operated within part of Longoven’s space. In the spring they opened Nokoribi, a Japanese concept within The Veil Brewing Co.’s new taproom, with Longoven co-owner Andrew Manning, who now runs Nokoribi solo. 

Patrick said he and Megan stepped away from Nokoribi when they decided during the summer to shutter Longoven and expand Lost Letter into its space. He said the group split their ownership so that Manning has Nokoribi and the Phelans own Lost Letter.

Longoven started as a pop-up eight years ago and moved into the Clay Street space five years ago. 

“It was a pretty long run,” Patrick said of Longoven. “But at the end of the day, we just came to the decision that running two restaurants out of this building was pretty ambitious and we knew that was only sustainable for so long.”

Elsewhere in Scott’s Collection, Parousia Coffee is preparing to open a cafe at 2900 W. Clay St. after about three years operating as a coffee trailer. Other commercial tenants in the development include the gym CoreFitness RVA and an office for the Capital Square development team. 

The “Viv” building at 2900 W. Clay St. is where Parousia Coffee is preparing to open a cafe.

The development has been in the works for nearly four years. Capital Square’s development associate Prescott Woolley said that the project’s apartments are 95 percent leased and that turning over Lillian’s and Parousia’s spaces over to the tenants essentially marks the end of the development’s build-out.  

“It’s been a long process, especially with COVID in the middle,” Woolley said. “We’re excited to reach the finish line here … and we’re really excited about the diverse tenant lineup here.”

Despite Scott’s Collection wrapping, Capital Square has plenty else to keep it busy in Scott’s Addition. It recently began construction of another three-building development at 2922-2925 W. Marshall St. that’ll bring 352 more apartments to the neighborhood. 

Woolley said that project, which is rising on the former N. Chasen & Son painting complex, is set to go vertical soon, and that Capital Square is still working on plans for another development that would replace the former Dairy Bar building at 1600 Roseneath Road. 

Note: This story has been updated to reflect the change of ownership of Nokoribi.