For a while, it seemed James Avery would redefine Asbury Park’s dining scene, leaving his stamp on the Jersey Shore’s hottest foodie destination.
The Spring Lake native who rose to prominence working with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay on “Hell’s Kitchen” owned two of the town’s most prominent downtown restaurants, and it seemed more were in the works.
But in 2023 he closed his popular seafood spot, The Bonney Read. Avery blamed the closure on limited kitchen space, the Shore city’s boom-bust seasonality and $250,000 in COVID relief funds that never came through.
Avery replaced it with The Mainstay, a more casual concept Avery says was a space-filler while he still had the lease. It closed in September 2024.
“I was done with the Bonney Read, the amount of effort, the seasonality of the concept and obviously post-COVID economics and not getting the support we were supposed to get from the government as a result of the lockdowns, I was done,” Avery told NJ Advance Media. “I said ‘I’ll make it The Mainstay and I’ll go on and do other projects.’”
Avery’s budding Asbury Park restaurant empire suffered another blow earlier this year when he sold The Black Swan Public House, a European-inspired gastropub just a block away from the Bonney Read property.
So, what’s next for the popular chef who seemed locked with the Jersey Shore and had Ramsay visiting Cookman Avenue?
While Avery sold The Black Swan Public House, he said he will still be involved with the restaurant. Avery described his involvement to NJ Advance Media as “a step up, not a step away” from The Black Swan after BarCo Brands acquired the restaurant.
“The Black Swan opened during the pandemic in 2021 and it was fine, it just wasn’t worth the effort I was putting into it myself,” Avery said. “It was a viable business, that’s why it was bought. The reason I sold Black Swan wasn’t because of the business, it was really a personal decision.”
Avery, 43, is adamant The Black Swan wasn’t struggling financially, but again pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as a major roadblock for business. He said he was headed to his best first quarter of business ever before the shutdown and cited industry changes like inflation, real estate costs and the demand for certain types of food.
“COVID changed a lot of things in the industry,” Avery said. “It affected food prices and people’s dining habits.”
Avery hopes his new partnership with BarCo — who also own and operate restaurants/bars The Break, Low Dive, SwimCrush in the city and Deal Lake Bar Co. in neighboring Loch Arbour — will give him the opportunity to expand his footprint in the industry without having to handle the day-to-day operations of a restaurant.
He originally intended to have no connection to the Black Swan, but Avery says BarCo persuaded him to work with them to oversee the restaurant and possibly several of their other businesses.
While you won’t see Avery in the kitchen at The Black Swan anymore, he hopes you’ll be seeing him plenty more in other places. He is currently making appearances on internet talk shows, working to grow a YouTube channel and writing a cookbook.
Perhaps most prominently, Avery is back on television. This past September, he returned to “Hell’s Kitchen” as Ramsay’s on-camera sous chef after a 10-year break. He’s known Ramsay for almost 15 years after initially meeting him on “Kitchen Nightmares,” where he’s also appeared in several episodes.
Avery points to Ramsay, as well as celebrity chef David Burke, as two of his mentors. He wants to follow in their footsteps.
“I see how (Ramsay) is licensing his name, partnering with certain companies and doing all of these things,” Avery said. “Gordon didn’t grow his brand by staying in one restaurant. At some point in time he needed to sell or take on new partners to expand his personal empire.”
The Wall Township resident says his biggest takeaways from working alongside Ramsay have been the power of personal branding and always being able to reinvent oneself to keep up with the times.
So that’s what Avery is trying to do, as well.
“I think being a sole owner-operator of a restaurant doesn’t really align with that other stuff (daily restaurant operations) anymore,” Avery said. “I was looking to make a change. I’m back on TV and I’m looking at other verticals in my life and the restaurants in Asbury weren’t necessarily conducive to my other personal goals.”
While Avery says he’s thinking more big picture these days, he does hope to open more restaurants in the future. He has two ideas he’s working on, and hopes to eventually re-open The Bonney Read as well.
“My goal in life has always been 10 restaurants by the age of 50 and I think I have to understand that I can’t be the sole owner-operator,” Avery said. “I’m more than just a chef, I create brands. That’s what my skillset is and always has been — creating brands, opening and executing them.”
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
Christopher Burch can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @SwishBurch. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us at nj.com/tips/.