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Tony Ridgway (1) isn’t much for standing pat. Since 1971, he’s been running some of Naples’ best restaurants. And while he has preferred to stay in the Third Street South area, his efforts have gone through several incarnations.

The 8-year-old Ridgway Bar and Grill is making some changes of its own. This month Ridgway and long-time business partner Sukie Honeycutt launched a new menu (2) as not only an update to their familiar offerings but as a way to keep their business running smoothly.

What follows are highlights from Ridgway’s menu along with Ridgway’s thoughts on the restaurant culture and his menus choices.

Appetizers

Soup of the day or gazpacho Cup $4.95 Bowl $6.95

Chef’s New England clam chowder Cup $6.50 Bowl $9.50

Sun dried tomato tapenade and coarse duck pate crostini $9.50

Skillet roasted mussels Appetizer $14.50 Entrée $21.95

Panko-crusted fried jumbo shrimp $14.50

Backfin and lump crab cake $13.50

Lump crab and avocado $14.50

Salads

Julienne apple salad, walnut oil, focaccia crostini with Bibb lettuce and grilled shrimp $14.95

Fried goat cheese with oven-roasted beets, greens, fresh oranges, citrus vinaigrette $11.75 (3)

Simple seafood & meats

Market price for a black grouper, red grouper, lane snapper, red snapper, yellowtail snapper, swordfish, mahimahi, farm-raised salmon, wild salmon, cobia, wahoo or triple tail. Can be grilled, sautéed or blackened

Sauces: remoulade, mango salsa, lemon-caper beurre blanc

Grilled rack of lamb $32

Center cut 8 oz. Filet of beef $32

Center cut 14 oz. choice New York strip $32

Veal bone-in strip $25

Comfort cuisine

Butternut squash ravioli $14

Country meatloaf $18

Chicken pot pie $17 (4)

Pappardelle Bolognese $19

“Bell & Evans” herb-roasted chicken $21

Prime Beef American Burger $15.50 (5)

The Chef’s Dinner Caesar

Salmon $18 Chicken $18 Shrimp $26

Truffles Crispy Fried Grouper $26 (6)

Available Fridays only

Chef’s Creations

Sliced hanging tender steak $20

Roasted eggplant ravioli $21

Vegetable terrine $22

Lamb stew $21

Pan-roasted shrimp $27 (7)

Backfin and lump crab cakes $26

Goujonettes of sole and sautéed jumbo shrimp $26

Mustard and herb-glazed lamb rack $34

Short ribs of beef $26

Bone-in veal strip steak $32

1. Quick Bio: Ridgway had no real training when he bought the Wurst Place back in 1971. “I just came from a family that loved food,” he says. The Wurst Place, which was behind a gas station near the site of Handsome Harry’s, launched what has become a long legacy of restaurants. He still makes a few dishes that were on the first menu he ever wrote.

Less than a year later, Ridgway opened the Chef’s Garden, a restaurant that would be around in some capacity until 1996. Truffles opened in 1978 and closed in 1996. He followed up with the Terra, which was on the site of his eponymous restaurant, in 2001.

If all of this is a bit hard to follow, try living it.

“You learn from your mistakes,” Ridgway says. “We learned a lot.”

2. “This is the strangest time in our lifetime for the economy,” he says. “Everyone is going to feel the hurt.”

One of Ridgway’s latest selling points is price. Ridgway spent the past few months on a soul-searching quest to find ways to lower the prices. Across the board, items are down by about $2 and some considerably lower. With his steaks, he dropped the price of his 8-ounce filet by $6 and while the price of the strip steak remained the same, he upped the size from 11 ounces to 14. The biggest drop is the hanging tender steak. The dish used to be served with lobster mashed potatoes and cost $33. Now it’s served with fries for $20.

“Sukie and I have been talking for a year about the economy,” he says. “The restaurant industry as a whole is down 10 to 15 percent in the past year. How long could Ridgway buck the trend?”

The answer? Not long. “We had a great season, but the early Easter pretty much killed everything. Then we were down in May. And then down ‘Oh God’ in June. So we had to find a way to make our restaurant more affordable.

3. “Most of the food on the menu is stuff I like to eat, it’s what I enjoy,” Ridgway says. “People go nuts with goat cheese. They have goat cheese on everything. Now I like goat cheese a little bit, but it’s not something I want a lot of.

“What I love is herbs. I love citrus and I love vinegar. You’re going to see a lot of those flavors on my menu. But I try not to be so driven by my passions that I ignore what people want.”

4. “I love comfort foods, foods that make people happy. Whenever I get to feeling stressed, I just go downstairs and have a chicken pot pie for lunch. I can just feel the stress leaving my body when I dig into the crust.”

5. “My accountant once asked ‘Why a 10-ounce burger? Most people are serving 8 or even 6.’ I told him 10 ounces just cooks better. With six-ounce burgers you only have two options, rare or well done. We can cook it to any gradation you like. And we use 30 percent fat ground beef. Not the 7 percent stuff they are selling in the supermarkets now. If you want a burger, eat a burger. ”

6. “This was a dish that one of my chefs at Truffles, Stuart Kopf, created for me. By today’s culinary standards it isn’t much. It’s a good piece of grouper marinated and fried twice. It ended up being one of our most popular dishes.

“If a dish is a success then you try to put it on the menu every night. But we’ve found this works better on Friday nights. People can think, ‘Oh, it’s Friday night. I should go get some crispy fish.’

7. “I get nervous anytime we change anything. But you can’t keep things the same forever, it just wouldn’t work.”

One dish he changed slightly on his new menu is the pan roasted shrimp. He still uses the same prawns but he got rid of the fried green tomatoes and corn salsa in favor of a sweet corn grits cake.

“I had a customer come in recently whose favorite dish here is the pan roasted shrimp. After he ate it he said ‘Tony, I like it. But why did you have to change it?”

Money might not be the whole answer, but Ridgway’s change did trim $4 off the entree’s price.