Restaurant set to hook Westminster
By Caitlyn Kelleher Journal Staff Reporter

The Angler: Fish Market and Chowder Co. 1 Village Square, Westminster Hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The start of 2007 will bring a new flavor to Jason Kimball’s life as he is set to open the newest restaurant in Westminster.

Kimball is the owner of The Angler: Fish Market and Chowder Co., which will be the first of the seven new businesses to open in the expanded Village Square.

“I decided life was too short to be miserable,” Kimball said. “I was miserable in my other job.”

The former quality control officer quit his job with a fiberoptics company more than a year ago.

“I wanted to take on the challenge of my own business,” he said. “You only live once.”

Kimball expects to have the fish market portion of his business open around Jan. 1, and then his goal will be to keep expanding the business over the next couple of months.

“We’re at first going to focus on the fish market,” he said. “Then we are going to move to the take-out and then into the eat-in.”

The 1,240-square-foot shop will include seating for 20-25 people. Kimball also has received one a license to serve liquor on the premises.

Kimball said the two places he sees as competition are in Fitchburg — S.S. Lobster — and in Leominster — Little Anthony’s.

“A lot of my business ideas came waiting in line at S.S.,” he said.

He hopes to attract Westminster residents as well as people from Gardner and other Route 2 towns.

The ability to stay close to home was another benefit for the Westminster location for the 1990 graduate of Oakmont Regional High School and Ashburnham native.

Kimball and his wife, Christy, have lived in Westminster for the last five years. And he wants to take that smalltown New England feel into his new store.

The food will include mostly traditional New England seafood fare but Kimball does plan to include some more exotic foods, such as large king crabs.

Kimball also will be serving prepared foods, especially soups. The daily menu will include a combination of New England Clam Chowder and seafood stews or lobster bisque.

Other prepared foods that will be available at the fish store will include shrimp cocktails, scallops and bacon, baked haddock, seafood stuffed mushrooms, and some marinated fish.

“This is so people can just take it home and cook it,” he said.

Kimball said it was his love of seafood as well as the many hours spent digging clams with his father and catching fish that motivated him to open the market.

“My father had a commercial fishing license my whole life,” Kimball said. “My experience is through my family.”