Fahey: Salty Dog restaurant to open new location at Tanger Outlets Center 2
A familiar Hilton Head Island icon will soon have increased presence in Bluffton.
A Salty Dog Cafe restaurant is moving into the former Robert Irvine-owned Nosh, in Tanger Outlets Center 2 at 1414 Fording Island Road, Suite B-160, in Bluffton. The eatery closed in early 2015.
Hilton Head Tanger Outlets general manager Ashley Doepp said the Salty Dog restaurant is expected to primarily feature pizza and Italian food, although the menu will include other items, too.
Renovations to the space are underway. Doepp said owner Bob Gossett plans to open the new restaurant in the first quarter of 2016.
"We're glad to have a sit-down dining option at Tanger 2," she said.
The center's dining options include Kilwin's, Starbucks and the food truck court introduced this summer by Doepp.
The space has been vacant since Nosh closed nearly a year ago. In January, a spokesman for Irvine, who hosts the television show "Restaurant: Impossible" on Food Network, said the celebrity chef didn't have enough time to be as involved as he wanted to be in Nosh's management.
But Salty Dog Cafe has its own type of celebrity status in the Hilton Head area. The original restaurant opened in Sea Pines, where it remains today, is a dining mainstay for locals and tourists.
Part of the fame associated with Salty Dog is in the cafe's apparel. Several retailers sell T-shirts and other merchandise bearing the emblem of Jake (the Salty Dog). In fact, a Salty Dog T-Shirt Factory store opened in October 2013 in Tanger 2, right across the street from the upcoming restaurant.
Doepp said local and out-of-towner recognition of the Salty Dog brand makes the restaurant an ideal choice for the outlets.
Additionally, she said that since Gossett has a Salty Dog retail store in the outlets, he's already a familiar face at the center.
"He knows the shoppers and he knows the trends here," Doepp said. "He goes out of his way to connect to the community."
Follow reporter Ashley Fahey at twitter.com/IPBG_Ashley.
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This story was originally published December 10, 2015 at 6:36 PM with the headline "Fahey: Salty Dog restaurant to open new location at Tanger Outlets Center 2."