Like a lot of restaurants during the pandemic, The Rustic Café in East Lyme closed its doors — but in this case, the shutdown is only temporary.

The long-running and well-known restaurant off Boston Post Road plans to reopen this spring. When it does, it should have an expanded patio and a new greenhouse covering the entire patio. That would allow the famously small restaurant — the building is 800 square feet — to increase the number of customers who can dine on site.

The plan is to double the size of its 25-by-15-foot exterior patio and encase half the area in a greenhouse. The Rustic owners still need to get permits for the project and put out bids for contractors.

The greenhouse sounds like a genius pandemic-inspired idea, but it’s a notion that has been percolating with the Rustic owners for a while. The building’s capacity, pre-pandemic, was 37 people, and the owners had been discussing how to allow for more seating.

Jeff Keck, who co-owns the Rustic with Stephanie Fesko, says, “We didn’t really want to expand the restaurant. We love the coziness of it.”

Instead, the new greenhouse and patio would be about twice the size of the dining room. The new total seating would be around 48; the site is limited because it uses a septic system.

The owners actually bought the greenhouse in January 2020. They were hoping to put it up last year, but for a variety of reasons, that didn’t work out. But they are looking forward to getting it done this year.

“Imagine having brunch in the greenhouse on the weekend. So on a day like today (which was gray and chilly), it would actually be warm inside the greenhouse. Imagine sitting out there when the weather is 45 degrees outside, but you can still sit in the greenhouse and feel warm,” Keck says.

If all goes well, they expect construction to be done sometime in May.

Keck says they haven’t finalized plans with the town yet but would like to have a smoker outside to smoke ribs as well.

As for inside the Rustic Café building, the big change would be putting a new tabletop on the bar, possibly designing it to look like a map of Long Island Sound.

“Otherwise, we don’t want to change the interior,” Keck says. “We debated on that for about a year, deciding whether we should do an addition or do the greenhouse.”

They also might try to enlarge the kitchen sometime down the line. It’s a galley kitchen, and Keck says it’s probably smaller than the kitchen in most people’s houses.

A storied history

The Rustic has been a landmark in East Lyme for decades. It was built in 1947, changing ownership over the years and existing in various iterations. Early on, it had a cabaret and dance hall. Keck says Frank Sinatra used to stop there on his way between New York and Boston.

That version of the Rustic was three times the size of the current one, but in 1967, the site was “ruined by fire,” as a Day article at the time stated. About 75 percent of the interior was destroyed. Keck says the original owner’s son rebuilt it as the structure that exists now.

Keck and Fesko bought the Rustic in 2010. It is, as its Facebook page describes it, “a cozy bar with an extensive menu, and the new popular term ‘GastroPub’ is fitting for this establishment serving several skillfully prepared dishes typically found in fine dining.”

Rustic has developed a dedicated group of customers, and some even showed up this fall wearing coats and sat under their own umbrellas on rainy days just to have a burger outside, Keck says.

The Rustic stayed open for take-out and indoor seating when only 25 and then 50 percent capacity were allowed by COVID rules, but Keck says the restaurant “is so tiny, it allows for, like, eight people in it. It was tough.”

And with a COVID winter looming, the owners decided to shutter the place for a few months.

“That’s why we just couldn’t sustain it that way (this winter). We were like, ‘OK, the second wave is coming. Let’s just buckle down for the wintertime, and we’ll do a grand reopening in the spring,’” he says.

Some of the funding for the expansion project comes from the Small Business Administration, which, in addition to providing money to keep businesses going during COVID, has offered some capital improvement funds. The Rustic received a total of $263,000, which served to keep the place in business and to help enlarge the patio, which is vital for the venue during the pandemic, Keck says.

Keck says that he and Fesko are very excited for the expansion.

“The Rustic is very cozy, but it hinders the ability to make a profit with the limited seating. The greenhouse seating will answer that while providing more outside seating to get through the pandemic restrictions,” Keck says. “Ultimately the renovation will continue to make the Rustic a super cool destination!”