Monsoon: Steak & Sushi in Babylon and H2O in East Islip to become Asian Fusion restaurants

One of Long Island's biggest restaurant groups has officially pulled the plug on two of its food and nightlife concepts, choosing instead to rent the spaces out as new Asian fusion restaurants. 

The pandemic forced The Bohlsen Restaurant Group to temporarily close all of its properties, and upon reopening, refocus its efforts on the spaces with outdoor seating, said co-owner Kurt Bohlsen. Monsoon: Steak & Sushi in Babylon and the second location of H2O in East Islip eventually reopened, but weren't succeeding and have been sitting empty for about a year.

"The bar business isn’t what it used to be. People don’t want to be shoulder to shoulder at the bar," he said. "We didn’t have enough servers, we couldn’t find employees. So we decided to focus on the areas with the most potential for revenue." 

So the Bohlsen family put the two buildings on the market, but eventually decided to rent out both.

Monsoon, the glitzy steak and sushi restaurant inside the stunning Bank of Babylon building, will soon become a new location of the Queens-based chain Mito Asian Fusion. With restaurants in Forest Hills, Bayside and Yonkers, Mito Asian Fusion serves a variety of creative sushi rolls with interesting fusion dishes like a Buerre garlic pasta with a sweet miso cream, and crispy fried mashed potatoes with a yakiniku port wine reduction. The restaurant's website also advertises a $195 tasting menu built around Japanese wagyu beef cooked in the yakiniku style of Japanese barbecue. 

Over in East Islip, the space that held the original Beachtree Cafe and later the second location of H2O Seafood & Sushi, will soon be turned into a new concept by the owners of 360 Taiko Sushi & Lounge in Patchogue. 360 Taiko earned two stars in a 2016 Newsday review, which described it as "entertaining, inviting and usually a lot of fun …" The new concept will be called Ushin and feature traditional Japanese tatami rooms for private dining, Bohlsen said. Both restaurants will undergo renovations and should open in the next few months. 

But that's not it for the Bohlsens. Renting out these two spaces gives the group more bandwidth to focus on what's working. The group plans to announce more concepts once the deals have been inked. 

"We're going to expand," he said. 

By Andi Berlin

andi.berlin@newsday.comAndiBerlin

Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.