In the Know: Family launches Pearl seafood restaurant in North Naples

Nearly a year after Hurricane Irma irreparably damaged their more than 30-year-old Oyster House restaurant in Everglades City, the Miller family is back with a new dining destination in North Naples.

The Pearl Steak & Seafood Restaurant launched July 31 in the former space of Stonewood Grill & Tavern, which unexpectedly closed in January after operating 17 years in that Fountain Park anchor spot near the southwest corner of Airport-Pulling and Vanderbilt Beach roads.

The Pearl truly is a Miller family affair. General Manager James Miller and his sister Jillian are at the helm of the new restaurant, closely supported by their parents, Bob and Patti. Uncle Richie Miller is executive chef.

The nearly 250-seat restaurant will be open every day for lunch and dinner. Predominately serving local seafood, The Pearl also has steaks, chicken, ribs and salads. The 7,500-square-foot restaurant includes a wine room and a full bar with a frozen rosé machine and craft cocktail concoctions such as Swamp Water, Plant City Lemonade, Afternoon Thunderstorm and Florida Cracker.

“The menu obviously has seafood on it, but we’re still going to have steaks. We’ll still do prime rib specials. We’ll still have a great happy hour. It’s just going to be new and refreshing,” James Miller said. “We’ve actually made the happy hour lounge bigger. We’ve added some high-tops, opened up the bar a little bit more than it was at Stonewood. It will be a longer happy hour.”

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Fans of the former Stonewood will notice a few other changes. A large wooden ship wheel, airboat propellers, a mounted tarpon, ship models and most of the nautical décor lives on from the Oyster House. Booths are upholstered with a coral print.

“It’s a little bit brighter than Stonewood was,” said James Miller. “We kept the same layout, changed the floors, ripped up the carpet. A lot of the décor that you’re seeing here is from Everglades City.”

James Miller, a Johnson & Wales University graduate with local stints at Randy’s Fishmarket Restaurant, Fish Crazy, BrickTop’s and St. Germain Steakhouse, changed The Pearl’s inaugural menu three times before the launch date because he wasn’t happy with it. He still plans to change things up before season starts with goals of making sure the food is right — and different.

“This is not what I want when we open up in season, but this is the best menu we are going to be putting out now. It will only get better from here,” he said. “Our menu is going to be like no other menu. We’re not doing traditional sautéed mussels. We’re doing a beer and bacon sauce with ours to do something different.”

Expect untraditional twists on traditional menu items. For instance, the fall menu will include a stone crab roll.

“We just kind of looked at what the market was and what it needed and put some traditional spins on some things,” Miller said. “Instead of doing a lobster roll, we’re going to do a stone crab roll — a little Florida spin on things."

Look no further than Firetail Gator for a unique appetizer on the inaugural menu. The white tail meat is lightly fried and tossed in a Firetail aioli — a creation of sriracha sauce, mayonnaise, sour cream and lime zest.

“Everybody’s got firecracker shrimp or boom-boom shrimp. Gator is such as good meat,” Miller said. “It tastes like chicken. It tastes like pork. When we had our first tasting everybody loved it. It’s going to be a really big hit here in town because nobody’s really doing gator.”

Instead of offering a string of different fish, The Pearl will zero in on salmon, snapper and grouper to make things simple and more affordable.

“We’ll do day boat specials, playing the market and seeing what we can get off the boat,” Miller said. “We’ll do off catches and stuff like that, but everybody gets in trouble when they put 10 fish on their menu. People are price-conscious. So, we are really trying to control the costs that way.”

The Pearl features Ora King Salmon from New Zealand.

“Basically, it’s the Wagyu of salmon,” Miller said. “We’re going to offer that on our menu. Everybody here offers Atlantic salmon or Scottish salmon or king salmon, so we wanted to add something different.”

That difference extends beyond seafood to items such as french fries — actually potato flats, which are crispy, thin slices of fried potatoes. All of the steaks, which include filet mignon, ribeye and New York strip, are from an organic farm in Arcadia. And Miller raves about the slow-roasted, free-range chickens.

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“When you come in and you’re not a seafood eater, you’re going to have the best chicken you’ve ever had, I promise you,” he said. “We’re roasting our chicken, making a chicken jus. We’re doing it the right way. We’re making our own stocks here. We’re making our own sauces. Everything’s made from scratch. That’s what people are going to expect when they walk through this door.” 

The dinner menu has separate sections for land and sea. The seafood entrees ($21.10-$26.10) include herb salmon, saffron linguini with shrimp and calamari, trout almondine, crispy snapper, and shrimp and grits. In addition to the aforementioned steaks ($29.10-$34.10), the land items include half a roasted chicken ($20.10), chickpea cakes ($18.10) and barbecue ribs ($18.20 half or $26.20 full).

Lunch entrees range from blackened or fried fish tacos for $10.10 to Colorado trout at $16.20. With the exception of the Ipswich Clam Strip Fried Delight, the other entrees are sandwiches. The menu includes a chicken sandwich and a Smoke House Burger, but it’s the local twists that make the other handhelds stand out.

The SWFL BLT is seared shrimp accompanied by a classic BLT and pesto aioli on a toasted ciabatta. The Smugglers Sandwich is an Everglades-style Cuban sandwich with fried grouper, Black Forest ham and Swiss cheese with pickles and Firetail aioli. The Oyster Po’ Boy has fried oysters served on a hoagie with shredded cabbage, tomatoes and Firetail aioli.

For lunch or dinner, New England clam chowder is available by the cup ($5.10) or bowl ($10.10), and four salad selections range from a Caesar or wedge for $8.10 to a peach, tomato and burrata option for $12.10.

Appetizers range from ceviche at $9.10 to the Firetail Gator at $13.20. Other appetizers include Buffalo calamari, Big Daddy Beer mussels, coconut shrimp, raw oysters and fresh grilled peaches with spicy capicola.

Culinary talent, creativity and passion run deep in The Pearl’s big kitchen. Executive Chef Richie Miller is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and has decades of experience as a professional chef, including as the former executive chef at Randy’s Fishmarket Restaurant for more than eight years and at Oyster House for four years.

“We’re hoping for great things here,” the chef said. “We’ve got a great team here now. I think they’re going to really do a great job.”

Another CIA grad, Gillian “Chef G” Kogan, is a sous chef and handles The Pearl’s baking needs as pastry chef, creating the restaurant's key lime pie cake doughnuts. Formerly a chef at Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort, Café Lurcat and The Continental, Kogan just returned from Colorado where she opened a huge brewery.

“She’s got a lot of crazy ideas and we kind of fit together pretty well,” James Miller said.

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Miller also tapped sous chef Rushaune “Rush” Thompson, who he met at Johnson & Wales.

“Naples is definitely the spot right now. I’m excited for what we are going to do here,” Thompson said. “We’re going to do a lot of volume and send out some really amazing food. I think this is going to be the next best thing, honestly.”

The Pearl players are already looking forward to the next big thing for their second act. Another location is in the works.

“This is only restaurant number one. There’ll be restaurant number two coming pretty soon,” James Miller said.

Expect the Miller family and their foodie friends to pry open another oyster to find another pearl.

“We’re kind of like a well-oiled machine at this point,” Jillian Miller said. “We are very passionate about what we do and I think we are kind of going for the atmosphere where things are made with love. You can get a made-with-love dining experience here, which is something to talk about, that people can get excited about.”

The Pearl, 7935 Airport-Pulling Road N., Suite 20, is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 11 a.m. to late night Fridays and Saturdays. For more information call 239-591-5939 or go to thepearlnaples.com.

For the latest in local restaurants coming and going, see Tim Aten’s “In the Know” columns archived at naplesnews.com/intheknow, and on Facebook at facebook.com/timaten.intheknow.

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