Shed gets another lease on life

Dave Brooks

Once a rowdy biker bar, then a famous hamburger joint and breakfast

spot, the Shed on 5th Street is about to enter its third incarnation:

Italian restaurant.

The historic white building, which has sat empty for a year since

former owners Bill and Phil Gallegos retired, is about to be

revitalized by business partners Michael Savage and Ed Bernardino.

The pair hired former BJ’s Pizza & Brewery manager Frank Savage,

cousin of Michael Savage, to run the yet-to-be-named restaurant and

get it open before Memorial Day weekend.

In May, local pub owner John Gallagher purchased the building and

agreed to lease it to the pair. Savage and Bernardino never opened a

restaurant before, but the real estate moguls have experience in

Italian food. Savage owns Lino’s Italian Cuisine and Pizzeria on

Edwards Street in Huntington Beach and the two share an ownership

interest in Augustino’s in Garden Grove. Bernardino also owns a

Chinese restaurant in Santa Ana.

The pair has about 60 days to complete a major remodel of the

restaurant known for its red brick interior and large, north-facing

windows. The men want to redecorate the rear patio that runs along an

alleyway shared by several businesses on Main Street, but they plan

to keep the Shed’s historic wood bar in tact and remodel an entrance

deli area into a cafe.

“That’s going to be the casual element of this family restaurant,”

Savage said. “It’s Huntington Beach, so we want it to be accessible

to everyone.”

The Shed was first built in 1924 during the city’s oil boom days

and was a pool hall and then a garage, former owner Phil Gallegos

said.

In the 1950s, the building began to change hands many times,

reborn in each exchange as a rowdy biker bar with names like the Old

Southlander, Grape and Ale, and 5th Street Saloon.

When Phil Gallegos and her husband, Will Gallegos, took over the

restaurant in 1983, they struggled to change the tough-guy image of

the watering hole famous for its bar fights and bullet holes in the

fire place.

“Our neighbors were really worried because of all the problems in

the past,” she said. “There were so many fights that usually ended on

a nearby front porch with a couple people crashing through someone’s

window.”

Making the transformation was difficult, Gallegos said.

“In the first six months, I told a lot of people that I did not

want them here,” she said. “I think we turned away more customers

than we took in.”

The new restaurant will seat about 250 people, Bernadino

estimates, and serve mostly traditional Sicilian dishes, focusing on

light pastas and seafood dishes by former Duke’s chef Jason Triail.

“This is just our next move,” said Savage. “We really wanted to be

Downtown. This is a great period for growth in Huntington Beach and

we wanted to be a part of it.”

The pair’s plan to open the restaurant on 5th Street comes at a

time when city planners are trying to revitalize Downtown’s second

most traveled arterial street. A mixed-used development designed by

local architect Jeff Bergsma will soon be built in an empty lot next

to the restaurant. Construction teams are also laying the groundwork

for the massive Strand shopping mall and hotel, just a block away

from the Shed.

“We’re hoping to catch a lot of those people as they’re leaving

the Strand. We think it will be really good for business,” said

Bernardino.