A freight train still passes by Lee’s historic railroad depot-turned-restaurant a few times daily, a reminder of how the location served as the town’s transit station from 1893 until the 1970s. For the most part, however, new things are afoot. This spring, the depot has new owners, a new name, and a refreshed look and menu.
Dubbed The Station, the self-described chef-driven, chef-owned gastropub welcomed patrons for its grand opening on Thursday, April 3—and is now gearing up for Berkshire County’s busy season. Co-owners Anand Singh, head of operations, and Kevin Orozco, kitchen manager, were handed the keys to the depot in November 2024 and quickly transformed the space by early March, when it quietly opened for business. Well before opening night, they’d hosted a birthday party, established a New American menu to build on, and, thanks to Sonu Rahman, the bartender and a third co-owner in the venture, introduced five signature cocktails—including the Spicy Mai-Tai and a new twist on an old fashioned—with five more plus three mocktails added by the official opening.
Singh, who hails from West Bengal, and Orozco, a Berkshire local, met while working together at Lee’s 51 Park restaurant. In contrast, Singh and Rahman met as teenagers in hospitality school in India. Singh and Orozco’s first joint venture was Charlie’s Bistro Bus, which would be parked at various locales—such as the Burmese Bowl in Lee or Balderdash Cellars in Richmond—over the past two years. The food truck’s home base is now in The Station’s parking lot, adjacent to the large kitchen.
According to Singh, the food truck business is necessarily limited, and the pair had more ambitious—and stationary—goals. “We needed more kitchen space, more storage space. Then we were thinking, ‘Should we get our own place?’ We had a dream to have a brick and mortar where we can do what we want to do to bring all these things together,” he says. The partners were also excited to get into a traditional kitchen as it would allow for “taking our time to put things together on the plate,” Orozco adds.
Singh came to the Berkshires in 2016 in the same way as many restaurant workers before him: through the kitchen at The Red Lion Inn. Bartender Rahman recently arrived in town from Denver, Colorado, where he’d worked for several years at a casino. After visiting the area last fall, as Singh recalls, “Sonu said, ‘I’d love to do something here with you guys,’” and I said, “Sure.’”
The three owners undertook significant cosmetic updates to get the space in shape. The restaurant had been dormant for about a year after Antojito’s, an Oaxacan restaurant—that had, in turn, taken over when Lucia’s Kitchen moved—closed up shop. Namely, they polished the wood and added a long mirror behind the bar, which now looks much as it had during the Sullivan Station restaurant run from 1981 until 2017, complete with a toy train running overhead (not yet in working order). Credit goes to Dan and his then-wife Marilyn Sullivan, owners of Sullivan Station (and furniture rehab hobbyists), for painstakingly restoring the old station, keeping the original ticket window and an antique cash register, which still works.
Records show the Sullivans purchased the depot from Penn Central Transportation Company for $7,500 in 1976, five years after passenger service to Lee was discontinued. On the day the restaurant first opened—September 11, 1981—prime rib of beef was the most expensive item on the menu, costing seven dollars.
Today’s menu prices are reasonably updated for the area, with the chefs “trying to infuse international cuisine with an American style,” Singh says. Hence, their tagline: “Globally inspired and locally made.” Alcohol, too, is locally sourced where possible, an aim that includes getting beer exclusively from Hot Plate Brewing in Pittsfield.
Soon enough, these three energetic entrepreneurs will have their hands very full with the restaurant, food truck, and catering business. Singh and Orozco are also behind Berkshire Cone, an artisanal ice cream trailer in Lenox.
As with prior iterations of the depot, the gastropub hopes to host live music events on the weekends, featuring a special tapas and drinks menu from 9 p.m. to midnight. Another goal is to get “the caboose” up and running as a private event space, where customers will have a dedicated server—a “private butler,” if you will—for an extended evening’s party. Back in the heyday of rail travel, the caboose, which comfortably seats 10 people and has a small loft, would have been a private traveling car for a family. Once the weather allows, outside seating will be available on the deck beside the caboose, giving the restaurant a 100-seat capacity.
Singh has tried to keep the faith with what came before. “If you look at the old [Sullivan] Station pictures, they have a nice-looking bar, they have a nice-looking dining area, so what we are doing is bringing that memory back with a modern touch to it, but also keeping the character of the building inside.”
The Station (109 Railroad Street) currently serves lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and dinner every night except Wednesday from 5 to 10 p.m. Once the busy season hits, they plan to be open seven nights a week for dinner.
