‘We can’t keep our heads in the sand’: Being ‘hypervigilant,’ new Eagle restaurant opens

Dinner will be served at a new Eagle restaurant starting this week.

Lunch, too — if you wait a day.

After months of preparation, Coyne’s officially debuts to the public at 5 p.m. Monday before opening daily at 11 a.m. starting Tuesday.

The restaurant and bar at 676 E. Riverside Drive is a new dining destination from Kevin Settles, who owns the popular Bardenay Restaurant & Distillery chain in Idaho.

After talking with his management team Monday morning, Settles decided to proceed with opening, despite potential business challenges caused by the coronavirus. From Boise to Berlin, customers have become scarcer at restaurants across the globe.

“We’re going to give it a go,” Settles said. “… We can’t keep our heads in the sand as restaurateurs. There’s still a lot of good things going on out here.”

Precautions include moving tables farther apart and making sure employees have no signs of sickness, Settles said. Any staffer who traveled recently is being held away from work for a few days, he added.

“It’s really social distancing to the extent we can within the restaurant, and then just making sure that people who come in the door (to work) are healthy,” he said. “But remember, we’ve been running that way for years. If you’ve got the flu, you’re not supposed to come to work. I think we’ve always been vigilant; now we’re just hypervigilant.”

Idahoans got a first taste of Coyne’s over the weekend at well-attended, invite-only preview events. Leaning toward fine dining, Coyne’s delivers a more refined experience than Bardenay. Reservations are accepted. The 6,000-square-foot restaurant and bar normally can seat about 200 inside. A heated, covered patio outside has a capacity of about 50.

Coyne’s American-style entrees range from seafood to chicken and red meat. The menu includes a half-pound gourmet cheeseburger for $16. Or you can go big with a $62 steak — a 24-ounce porterhouse served with beefed-up maître d’ butter, sea salt, a Hasselback potato and your choice of side.

House specialties include Butler’s steak risotto ($26), feta brined rotisserie chicken ($18) and Jamaican jerk rotisserie chicken ($18). Besides that porterhouse, the Coyne’s Reserved part of the menu features splurges such as a 20-ounce T-bone steak ($52) and charbroiled halibut ($30).

Business at Bardenay restaurants has dropped about 20 to 25 percent in the past two days, Settles said. He doesn’t expect Coyne’s to be stampeded with patrons. And he’s fine with that.

“I don’t want to be packed to the gills,” Settles said. “I want a nice, smooth opening that’s busy enough to cover our basic expenses, but not so busy that the staff can’t keep up. From that standpoint, opening up during a slowdown is pretty ideal.

“Having it for this reason,” he added, “is not ideal.”

Once the threat of COVID-19 has passed, Settles said, Coyne’s will embrace larger crowds.

“When we hit an extended period without new cases being discovered in Idaho, people will start to come back out,” he predicted. “People like to go out.”

Online: coynesrestaurant.com.

This story was originally published March 16, 2020 at 1:23 PM.