An acclaimed restaurant in the Port Washington business community that opened twice has now closed permanently.
The bistro Secrets of Flight, at 170 Main St., is back up for lease, according to a sign in its window.
Chef and owner Aleksander Betko, who previously worked at Balthazar and Boqueria Spanish Tapas in Manhattan, and at Port’s the Wild Goose, originally opened the restaurant in November of 2018.
Its name, Betko said in 2018, was a tribute to both the rich aviation history of Port, which hosted the first commercial transatlantic airline in the U.S., and a line from Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
Upon its opening, Secrets of Flight won critical praise, earning three stars in Newsday from food critic Peter Gianotti, who called the bistro “a charmer.” The Port Washington Business Improvement District also awarded the restaurant $2,000 in March of 2019, and the bistro also participated in 2019’s Taste of the Town.
Six months after its initial opening, though, Betko elected to close the bistro in May of 2019. The owner changed his mind four months later, reopening in September and joining the area’s Restaurant Week that year.
Efforts to reach Betko were unavailing.
