Montville — For years, regular drivers along Route 32 in Montville have been watching a new building take shape. The massive, stone-covered structure looked for a while like it might be a castle, or maybe a fortress, as a stone-covered wall took shape around the perimeter of the property.

The latest addition to the Route 32 landscape is really a restaurant that Norwich resident Jason Lin has been working on for more than a decade. And it’s finally open, with 220 seats available for dim sum, sushi and Chinese food, or any of the above.

The Oriental Bar and Grill hasn’t had an official opening yet. The bar isn’t open, and the restaurant doesn’t even have a website. But the main dining room was bustling anyway on a recent weekday at lunchtime.

“Most of the (advertising) is by word of mouth,” Lin said. He said he expects to attract a customer base of both tourists at Mohegan Sun looking for food near the casino, plus local fans of Japanese and Chinese cuisine looking for something new.

Lin is sticking to the slow-but-steady approach that has kept his idea for a restaurant percolating for more than a decade as he and his uncle and business partner, Michael Chin, have worked to expand the family’s place in the region’s restaurant business.

Lin’s maternal grandparents ran a Chinese restaurant in Norwich that closed soon after the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos opened in the 1990s, he told The Day in 2015.

Other family members have in the past run Connecticut restaurants in Plainfield and Brooklyn, which have since closed, Lin said. His brother and sister manage Jai Mei Asian Kitchen in Madison, he said.

Lin has been overseeing construction of the building for more than 10 years, and the site still is unfinished. He said the restaurant officially will open in the next two months.

The stone façade surrounding the building, and the matching wall around the perimeter, were covered with stone that Lin collected from a “30-foot mountain” of material that was left after the juvenile court and detention center that used to occupy the property was demolished.

There was so much material there that even after they covered the building in stone, there was still more left over.

“So we decided to build a wall,” Lin said.

The restaurant sits only a couple miles south on Route 32 of a Chinese food institution, Golden Palace. Like the Oriental Bar and Grill, Golden Palace serves food on separate menus for dim sum, American-style and authentic Chinese cuisine.

But Lin said he doesn’t see Golden Palace as competition.

“I want to be my own individual (place),” he said. “I do my own business here.”

m.shanahan@theday.com