Hull & High Water, downtown New Albany’s much-anticipated seafood restaurant, will open today, Sept. 28 at 4 p.m. at 324 E. Main St., after a silly kerfuffle about the name being too similar to a yet-to-open bar (Hell and High Water) in downtown Louisville.
Owners will sell fresh seafood dishes at moderate prices. Their menu will feature sandwiches, fish and chips platters, po’boys, tacos and a raw bar. Morris, who also owns Gospel Bird, will also offer daily specials based on Morris’s freshest finds. The restaurant will try to keep three kinds of oysters with varying flavor profiles on its menu at all times, one from the west coast and two from the east.
Morris wants the restaurant to be affordable for the average New Albany family, but they had to keep food quality in mind. In a story in the News and Tribune, Petters pondered the balance between pricing fairly and being able to purchase premium quality seafood: “Seafood is a limited resource, and depending on how the seasons go, the price varies,” Petters said. “So we’re doing what we can to keep it at that level. Because I have a family, I have kids and I like to be able to take people out to eat and not have to open up a credit card to pay for the meal.
“Seafood has always been a food of the people,” Petters continued. “The fisherman would come home after fishing and it wasn’t something that was really fancy or anything or something that was out of the reach of the common people. And so, you know, in that tradition, we want people to be able to have seafood, or good fresh seafood, and for it to be approachable.”
Hull & High Water will only serve dinner from 4 to 10 or 11 p.m. depending on the day, with counter-ordering lunch service a future possibility. Other future plans include a rooftop bar overlooking the Ohio River, but at first that not-quite-finished space will be used for overflow seating.
