In the dining room at grist, a cast-iron scale nearly as tall as the hostess stands near the bar. It’s a holdover from the building’s first life, when the Lower Mill on North Main Street ground grain for the village of Honeoye Falls.
Built in 1827, it fed the town for more than a century. Now it’s feeding the area again, one small plate at a time.
Before grist, the building spent years as the Rabbit Room, an event space with an art gallery upstairs that opened for dinner one night a week. Locals remember it less for food than for what happened inside it.
Slipping into their reviews online, many guests mention great memories there. One simply says, “We were celebrating my wife’s birthday, and we were married in that building years ago. Thank you for making it a special evening for us.”
Lindsay Scott, who now co-owns grist, had her own bridal shower in that same room, and her cousins had baby showers there too.
“We thought it would be a cool place to just open up something we could continue to celebrate,” she says in a video online.
Scott and her husband Seth moved back to her hometown to help her brother Joe Bucciarelli get grist off the ground. Bucciarelli already ran Main Street Café across the street, which was popular enough that he’d opened a second location in nearby Mendon.
When the old mill building became available, it also created an opportunity to partner with chef James Campolieto, a Culinary Institute of America attendee whose résumé includes Rochester’s private clubs as well as kitchens in France.
They gutted the building, then spent the rest of the project making it look like they hadn’t.
“The vision was to keep the historic charm of the building and of the space while creating a destination and experience that people could not get anywhere else,” Bucciarelli says in a video online.
The plaster stayed on the walls. So did the original floors and beams as well as the wheat scale near the bar.
The design is built from familiar elements made personal. Scott says the rustic wallpaper, with its trees and woodland animals, reflects the character of the building.
Though the restaurant’s designers initially pushed back on the bold black-and-gold hex tile behind the kitchen line, Scott was insistent that they needed a nod to Honeoye Falls’s school colors. Elsewhere, a large black-and-gold cougar anchors the artwork, paying tribute to the local high school’s mascot.
And the restaurant quickly earned the community’s love, too. Pubs and pizza have long dominated this charming town, and many online mention it’s the date night destination many have been longing for.
The first thing you’ll notice is that nearly every dish is designed to be shared—which means you can get away with ordering a few more than you normally would.
In this case, it’s a perk because between the housemade focaccia and rotating seafood options, it’s difficult to pick just one “main” dish.
I’m convinced you can never order too much seafood, and grist seems to agree. When I visited, four seafood dishes were on the menu. The poke ($30) was an easy favorite, with thick cubes of ruby tuna served over fluffy white rice. Instead of the finely chopped fish you’ll find in many poke bowls, grist opts for generous cuts paired with a bright, gingery sambal chili sauce and ribbons of cucumber. It’s a satisfying starter for two.
Another stunner I hope comes back once the weather turns is the gumbo ($39). Here, it’s a dark, patient roux loaded with prawns, scallops, lump crab, and andouille sausage, just smoky enough not to overpower it.
Whenever they serve prawns here (which is often), they leave the heads on. It’s more work at the table, but they’re fun to peel and eat.
Then there’s the burger ($30), a 10-ounce patty crowned with aged cheddar. A fondue-like cheese sauce adds richness without overwhelming the honey-glazed bacon, all tucked into a housemade brioche bun and served with thick-cut fries and mill sauce.
Some have compared it to Good Luck’s shareable behemoth of a burger. I feel like each has its own vibe, but grist’s is excellent in its own right. Every component feels considered, and Chef Campolieto upgrades this familiar classic without overcomplicating it.
I would also be remiss not to mention smoked old fashioned ($17). Bourbon isn’t usually my thing, so I typically pass it over, but after seeing a few in the dining room with that dense cloud lingering on the surface, I had to get one.
Rather than using a smoke gun, the cocktail is capped with a wooden lid and torched until it begins to smolder. When the lid is lifted, the smoke appears to hover, leaving an intoxicating aroma. It also tastes incredible, thanks to touches like housemade demerara syrup and bourbon-barrel-aged bitters.
Downstairs, past a door most first-time guests miss, a second bar called the 1827—named, like the restaurant above it, for the year the mill was built—opens Saturday nights with live music and its own short list of drinks.
“It was important to make this a destination while still feeling like it’s part of Honeoye Falls, while also being a destination for people all over the Rochester area,” Bucciarelli says.
Reviewers think it’s working. “As a local who grew up here, I was so glad to see a place like grist pop up,” one writes.
Another, who grew up in Honeoye Falls before spending years away in Washington and Texas, puts it more plainly, calling grist something unique, not just for her hometown, but for Rochester as a whole.
The restaurant celebrated its first birthday in July. It’s a small milestone against a building that’s stood since 1827.
The old mill, it turns out, still knows how to feed a town. It’s just doing it now with great music and better cocktails.
grist.
61 N. Main St., Honeoye Falls
582-6010
This article originally appeared in the September/October 2026 issue of (585).
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