Faces Of Nantucket: Sydney Fee

Faces of Nantucket: Sydney "Syd" Fee

Years on Nantucket: 61

Favorite things about the island: "I love how safe it is and the community. I personally love that we're getting more diverse. Growing up here, there weren't many people from other countries, so I'm super grateful that my boys were able to grow up in a place with people from other countries and to learn that we're not all the same and that we're all equal."

Sydney “Syd” Fee has been at the helm of the Henry Jr. sub shop on Orange Street since it opened in 1988, serving up sandwiches using her family’s bread recipe that dates back decades to the original Henry’s on Broad Street, founded by her parents in 1969.

Other restaurants have come and gone, but for 36 years, Henry Jr. has remained a staple thanks to a straightforward philosophy.

“We're a basic sub shop,” Fee said this week. “We're not fancy. If you're looking for fancy, that's not us. I've kept it simple. I kept it the same intentionally. I've wanted it to be basic and good and fresh. We make the rolls every day, same recipe as my parents used. That's all been passed down.”

Fee has been involved with the family business since she was a young girl. With her parents running Henry’s sandwich shop on Broad Street, along with The Skipper restaurant in the Easy Street Basin, she was thrust into the service industry as a first grader. Wearing a sandwich board that read “Eat at Henry’s,” Fee and her younger brother Andrew would head to Jetties Beach during the summer to recruit new customers.

All these years later, Fee is still making sandwiches and seeing some of her parents' regulars stop into Henry Jr. for their favorite sub.

“I love talking to the customers,” she said. “Having the regulars and knowing their sandwiches as they come in the door so their sandwiches are ready, I like that and I really love carrying on that tradition. I think that's rare, and getting more rare on Nantucket. I feel some pride in that, for sure.”

Running Henry Jr. for more than three decades, Fee has learned many lessons about dealing with customers, staff, and the business. But none were more instructive than what she learned from one of her two sons.

“My biggest lesson is Rourke, my son, who has autism,” she said. “Before I had Rourke, I would get really upset if we messed up a sandwich. Of course, I want to make it right, you know, because people are spending their hard-earned money. And of course I wanted to do it right before Rourke came along. I would get kind of angry, but now I'm like, ‘things happen.’ He helped me put things in perspective.”

Fee isn’t the only one in the family who stayed in the sandwich business. Her brother Matt Fee runs another Nantucket sandwich shop: Something Natural on Cliff Road. Is there a friendly competition between siblings?

“I feel like there's no rivalry, like he wins hands down,” Fee said with a laugh. “He's a great businessman and super smart about it. But if he runs out of tomatoes, he borrows my tomatoes. We lend each other stuff. We're on great terms. It's just really different, of course. And it's funny because people come in asking ‘do you have that Matt Fee Tea?’ Or ‘can I have it on Portuguese bread?’ And I say 'yeah we don't have that. Go another couple of miles that way'.”

While the island has lost some of its longtime dining establishments in recent years, Fee said Henry Jr. isn’t going anywhere.

“I'm only 61!” Fee said. “I'm so young, very young. I've only been doing it for 36 years, you know, so that's not long at all…I have no plans, you know, to go anywhere. This place is gonna stay.”