In the Kitchen: Gemini Seafood & Raw Bar’s Colin and Sean Kleeman and Patrick Brenner

Twins Colin and Sean Kleeman, along with longtime friend Patrick Brenner, have some of Boston’s most highly touted restaurants on their collective résumés. They all met at the since-shuttered Tiger Mama, where Brenner’s front-of-house leadership merged seamlessly with the Kleemans’ back-of-house mastery. The three would expand to work at other Boston favorites, but when a concussion sidelined Colin, he returned to the industry in an entirely new way: working on the tech side of exCater, a nationwide workplace catering platform.

“That’s how I made my transition out of food initially into technology, and then I was like, ‘This is cool,’ and I ended up bringing Sean along with me,” says Colin. But the two never strayed far from their passion for cooking, crafting creative menus, and the energy to entertain and enthrall guests with extraordinary dishes. “In these first, early years of tech, we still very much had one foot in each door,” says Sean. Meanwhile, Brenner had settled in as the general manager of Chickadee in Boston’s Seaport District, and one afternoon Sean hosted part of his team from ezCater there. Regrouped, the conversation between the friends quickly turned to restaurants, and getting the band back together.

Soon, the three were calling Rhode Island home. “This is definitely a cool place to live and a cool place to have a food business. Everything seemed right, and the stars aligned,” says Colin. Between their day jobs, the trio created Gemini Seafood & Raw Bar, a pop-up seafood concept and culinary project operating out of culinary incubator Hope and Main at their new West End Kitchens facility. The name came easily: “Gemini” is the Latin word for “twins,” and Brenner’s astrological sign is Gemini. “So the three of us operating as a unit made the name feel meant to be.” Even more fortuitous, in mythology, the Gemini twins are known as the protectors of sailors and seafarers. “Connecting a coastal food concept to that lore just felt right,” he added.

Gemini Seafood & Raw Bar made its debut earlier in the year at Hope & Main’s signature events, including Fresh Batch and FoodCraft, before hosting its first “off campus” dinner in June. Unfolding at sunset on the rooftop garden at Providence’s Peerless Building, the trio served course after course of local seafood in conjunction with the Italian street-food-concept food truck La Gatta Salata. Wine pairings from Eno Fine Wines rounded out the experience. Since then, they’ve popped up with Palo and CRU in Providence, arc{hive} book + snackery in Warren, and Branch Line just outside of Boston, and the Hope & Main Twilight Party at the schoolyard of the Warren campus, with other partnerships coming down the pike.

The trio say that pop-ups let them “stay nimble and lean,” allowing them to try new ideas, design menus based on what’s seasonal or coming off the boats and out of the fields, and connect with guests in different neighborhoods. “Every space has its own personality and energy, which keeps us on our toes and keeps things fun,” they say. “Rather than coming to a restaurant and choosing what their favorites would be, people are really interested in seeing what we’re putting out, and so the creativity side is really there for us as well,” says Brenner.

The three are also capitalizing on the bounty of Rhode Island’s robust farms and spoils of the sea, sourcing longtime favorites, building new relationships, and even tapping into the talents of their West End neighbors. “Rhode Island has some amazing purveyors and people who are working hard in farms and fishmongering, and so we have a lot of local people that we work with,” says Sean. Some of these include fish and shellfish from Andrade’s Catch in Bristol, veal sweetbreads from Fred Rick Veal on Federal Hill, stone-ground cornmeal from Kenyon’s Grist Mill in West Kingston for their Johnnycakes (which they serve with foie gras for an unexpected twist on the iconic Rhode Island dish), and a variety of finds from Four Town Farm in Seekonk and Johnson’s Roadside Farm Market in Swansea, MA. “When we bring a dish to a table, we tell guests where it’s from and who harvested it,” they say. “The folks growing and harvesting this stuff work incredibly hard, so the least we can do is pass their stories along to the person enjoying it.”

And because pop-up dinners have reservations, Gemini can minimize food waste by purchasing quantities specifically for the set number of guests. As for the future, Brenner and the Kleenman brothers say the dream of a brick-and-mortar restaurant still shines bright. One might even say it’s in the stars. Follow along on Instagram for pop-ups at @gemini.seafood.