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Community Corner

Bites Nearby: The Lake View Restaurant

This Coventry restaurant and bar comes alive with the summer season when diners can fully enjoy its enormous lakeside deck.

There are three things at the Lake View Restaurant you won’t easily find elsewhere: parking for your seaplane, fried smelts, and a great view of Coventry Lake from your table.

Granted, there are not a lot of folks who need seaplane parking, or who are familiar with the little fried fish. But the view of the lake from this restaurant’s deck is something plenty of people really enjoy.

As it has for the past three summers, Memorial Day weekend will begin the busy season for Leo and Mariana Papa and their staff. The couple bought the Lake View in 2007. For more than 50 years before that, the large building set back from Lake Street had been known as the Lakeside Café. By the time the Papas acquired it, it had become, in Leo’s words, “a dive bar.”

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In fact, Leo continued, many of the bar’s previous clientele were not happy when he set about converting the run-down place into a family restaurant. The renovation took about six months, the Papas said. They spent more money renovating the building than it cost them to buy it, Leo said.

Now the Lake View has room for 200 guests inside and an equal number on its expansive deck that overlooks the eastern end of Coventry Lake. The lake, also called Wangumbaug Lake – is known by local residents as 383 acres of recreational opportunity for swimmers, anglers, boaters, and an occasional pontoon plane.

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Lucky for the boaters and pilots, the Lake View has a dock that can accommodate them while they step ashore for anything from a lunchtime sandwich and beer to a late night martini, loaded nachos or pizza.

There is a large menu of appetizers, salads, seafood, sandwiches, and Greek and Italian fare. Diners can sit for a full dinner – surf and turf, $24.99; chicken and shrimp a la vodka, $18.99 – or linger on the deck all evening over pitchers of beer and finger foods. (An order of Lake View fries comes with mozzarella cheese, bacon and jalapeno peppers.) Friday night is seafood night, Leo said.

Besides the large flat-screen TVs that serve the bar and deck outside, the Lake View has live entertainment on Friday and Saturday nights, usually blues, country or classic rock bands, Leo said. They also have acoustic entertainment out on the deck, which is equipped with an outdoor bar.

Leo and Mariana are both Greek Albanians who met in Hartford. They have owned other restaurants before this one – a pizza restaurant in Brooklyn, CT, for example. Longtime real estate investors, they were able to finance the Lake View property purchase by selling a small shopping plaza they owned on Route 31, Mariana said.

The Papas are local residents, but the restaurant is where she and Leo spend most of their time, she admitted, and their children spend plenty of time there, too. Leo runs the business and has control of the kitchen. Mariana manages the front of the house, including its large bar.

The Lake View Restaurant, 50 Lake St., Coventry, (860-498-0500) can accommodate large groups inside or on the deck. It is open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily for full menu service, and the bar is open Fridays and Saturdays until 2 a.m. The bar is open until 1 a.m. Monday through Thursday.

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