A Gem Among Restaurants? Hopes Are High For BixBite

How valuable can one storefront property be? For restaurateur Carl Berg, the location he found inside the along Littleton Road was so valuable that he decided to name it after one of the world’s rarest gems.

While he doesn’t deny the “bite” play on words fits well for a restaurant name, Berg says the inspiration for came from his brother in Utah, the only known location on Earth for the gem also known as “red emeralds.”

Berg hopes that uniqueness and the fact that the BixBite is only found in America serves as a positive omen for his American-style cuisine restaurant taking over the former location of .

“I don’t really know why the other restaurants (here) went under,” said Berg on Taza and previous restaurants at the current BixBite location. “But there was an Italian restaurant that was here for like 20 years, so that’s what I plan for me, that’s the way I’ve worked my lease out.”

BixBite’s opening in December marks the first time Berg has owned a restaurant during his more than 40 years in the culinary industry.

That journey began at the Riverside Café in Brookline, New Hampshire, where he worked from the early 70s to late 80s, which he followed with work climbing up the food service ladder for Marriott until 2007 and a stop as the general manager of TGI Fridays in Marlborough.

 The experience with running day to day operations of a restaurant led him to believe that heading out on his own was the right path, and he searched throughout the Chelmsford/Westford area for a location until he settled upon the former Taza location last July.

“I can see (this place) up and coming, this is the heart of Westford,” said Berg, who lives in Lowell. “I was looking for traffic patterns because I wasn’t interested in having a restaurant out in the middle of nowhere.”

The restaurant has a full liquor license and is open for full service from Wednesday to Saturday, with breakfast only offerings on Sunday.