The building on the corner of Easy Street and Steamboat Wharf was known for years as Schooner’s. It was the first place you saw as you hopped off the Steamship throughout the ’70s and ’80s. In 2009, it reopened with the simple yet apt name, Easy Street Restaurant. During the summer of 2015, a restaurant named Nabe served sushi and mac and cheese there, though it only lasted for a year.

But for the past decade, the building has mostly sat empty, save for a few short stints as a retail pop-up. This spring, the building will reopen, once again as the Easy Street Restaurant. “Every time I would walk by that place, it was empty, and for me, I always thought that this is the face of Nantucket,” said Milan Basnet, the owner and manager of the new restaurant. "You get off the boat and the first thing you see is an empty building. I said, ‘This place needs life.’ It’s right on the water, right outside the ferry.”

Basnet—a former manager at a handful of off-island restaurants such as The Friendly Toast, IHOP and TGI Fridays—struck a deal with longtime property owner Todd Arno to lease the property earlier this year, receiving the green light from the town for a 200-seat restaurant that he said will focus on quality local ingredients, with a modern and experimental spin. His recipes include an island fried rice with pineapple, buttered rice, peas, bias-cut green onions, sweet chili glaze, and chicken or beef.

Nantucket is not entirely new for Basnet. His fiancée Rekha has been coming to the island for years, working as a nurse at Nantucket Cottage Hospital. Basnet said now that he’s on the island, his goal for the restaurant is to have it open for breakfast, lunch and dinner as a gathering spot for a good time and good meal. “We’re incredibly excited,” he said.

Before Basnet took over the space, the 0.8-acre property had been eyed for years by town officials, as well as by the Land Bank and Steamship Authority, who saw it as a strategic location. Town officials even met in executive session as recently as 2023 to discuss a potential joint acquisition of the lot that would see it used to expand and potentially raise Steamboat Wharf, provide open space alongside the Land Bank’s recently developed Easy Street Park, and improve parking for the Steamship. In an April 2023 statement, the three entities said the property would improve Steamboat Wharf “as the gateway entrance to the island for future generations,” citing a need to enhance “public safety, coastal resilience and economic security.

”The Easy Street Restaurant puts a damper on those plans, at least for now—though the restaurant is a welcome sight for diners after years of dormancy on the bustling corner. As Basnet told the Nantucket Current in March, the building “has so much potential. I always wanted to put some life into that place."