Shortly after my family moved to Bridgeport in 2019, I spotted a message scrawled on the window of a shuttered business: Halsted, you’ve really let yourself go. It was tough to argue. The main drag seemed characterized by absence. Lots of vacant storefronts. Few pedestrians. We were excited to start our family’s life here, but beyond our front door, the picture of what that would be like was a blank.

The Halsted of Kevin Hickey’s childhood in the late ’70s and early ’80s was different. The Duck Inn chef and Bridgeport native remembers a thriving commercial district with a definitive anchor: the Ramova, a Spanish Revival–style movie house and diner central to local life until their respective closures in 1986 and 2012. “The closure of the theater started to slowly diminish the amount of business happening on the street,” Hickey says.

In late 2023, Hickey joined developers Tyler and Emily Nevius in rebooting the diner, Ramova Grill and Taproom, as part of the couple’s revamp of the entire space. Located at 3520 South Halsted Street, the new Ramova Theatre also includes an outpost of Brooklyn’s Other Half Brewing and an 1,800-capacity music venue. As the doors reopened, a hurdle remained: the neighborhood’s collective memory.

“If you try to re-create it, people are going to say, ‘Oh, it’s not the same,’ ” says Hickey. “So we made a decision to say, ‘No, it’s not the same.’ We wanted to pay tribute without trying to replicate.” From a design standpoint, this approach manifests in nods to the original grill — red vinyl stools, checkerboard tile — woven into a minimalist space lit by picture windows overlooking Halsted.

Similarly, Hickey and taproom executive chef Becky Carson aren’t rehashing the greasy-spoon fare of the old diner. “The majority of the seasoning was salt and pepper,” he recalls. Putting chili, a Ramova fixture, on the menu was nonnegotiable. This version mingles his recollection of the old one with the one at Lindy’s, where his dad was a fry cook.

Hickey applies his fine-dining background to what I think of as happy food, refining it without extinguishing its joy. Beyond chili, the menu centers dishes like duck fat corn dogs and po’ boys. In addition to Other Half brews (four are unique to Ramova), there are cocktails from Brandon Phillips and Sarah Syman; while cheffy (think spritzes with tingling masala spice), they’re kegged, so they can be served with the lack of fuss of a pint.

Already, my family has logged lots of time here and it’s beginning to feel like a second living room. Per Emily Nevius, that’s intentional: “That’s exactly what we want it to be, a place where the community can all come together.” Since the Ramova’s relaunch, Halsted has shown signs of renewed energy: A busy new bar, Electric Funeral, opened across the street, and Tangible Books, the used bookstore nearby, expanded into a bigger space. It’s just the start, Nevius says. “You know the idea that a rising tide raises all ships? The more we have here, the better Bridgeport will be.”