The Lunch Break Chronicles

Join me and a host of other panelists, including Bobby Valentine, at Fairway Saturday as local professional and volunteer firefighters face-off in a bbq “throw down” to kick off the summer grilling season.

Considering the saga that is the Stamford fire task force, this throw down may be a no-holds-barred grudge match.

FAIRWAY: In lieu of helmets, hoses, and axes, Fairfield County’s bravest will instead don aprons, barbecue tongs, and basting brushes when they compete in Fairway’s Firefighters Food Face-Off, a grilling “throw down” that will pit firefighters from Stamford, Darien and Ridgefield against one another to prove whose barbecue is best on Saturday.

The firefighters will compete to cook their tastiest ribs, beef burgers and turkey burgers.  A panel of judges, Jodi Heilman, of the Stamford Patch, Chris Preovolos of the Stamford Advocate, Lou Gorfain of CTBites, Ray Venezia, Fairway’s Master Butcher,  Steve Jenkins, Fairway’s Cheesemonger, and Bobby Valentine, baseball great, ESPN analyst and Public Safety Director for Stamford, will determine the first place finisher basing their decisions on taste and originality.

The winning team will not only receive bragging rights but also a $500 gift card to shop for groceries for their firehouse and the opportunity to name the charity of their choice to benefit from a Fairway “Shopping Night” which the Stamford store will host on their behalf.

All other firehouses will win a $100 gift card to the store. Participating Firehouses are: Stamford Professional Fire Fighters Association IAFF Local 786, Stamford Volunteer Fire Departments, Darien Fire Department, Noroton Heights Fire Department and Ridgefield Fire Department, Local 1739.

Fairway has a long-standing commitment to firefighters.  Its history of supporting fire departments in New York and New Jersey was exemplified in the months following September 11, 2001, when Fairway supplied food for local firehouses throughout the search and clean-up process.  Fairway also offers firefighters in uniform a special shopping discount at each of its seven locations to show its support and thanks.

WHERE: Fairway Market – 699 Canal Street in Stamford

WHEN: Saturday, June 25, 2011 – noon

When Chef Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” came to my neighborhood to reconstruct Cafe Tavolini (now viewable here), I was filled with hope. I had been a steady customer since it opened, and I could sense its decline.

What a disappointment that the restaurant folded soon after the episode wrapped.Tragic for the owners, of course, but a big letdown for the neighborhood as well. Black Rock could have used the boost, and I was looking forward to their promising new menu.

I had never watched “Nightmares” until I learned that their cameras were coming to town, and now I find myself watching every week. Those cameras were also trained on another struggling eatery about two hours up the road — DownCity in Providence. This episode had a much happier ending.

I was in Providence this weekend for the Society of Professional Journalists‘ conference, and when I had a little free time, I found myself checking out the place.

The restaurant is obviously proud of their association with Ramsay, even if the show didn’t always cast them in a flattering light. An autographed portrait of the famed chef hangs in the front window. And it appears Ramsay’s reworked dishes are still on the bill of fare.

The Bridgeport boy in me had to try the calamari. It’s a popular dish close to home, and it often resembles DownCity’s previous incarnation. Ramsay gave it a “salty spicy” coating, a peppery mix with lots of cornmeal. The dipping sauce is a surprise — a retro green goddess sauce, basically herb-infused Caesar dressing that’s hard to find these days. I loved it. Paired with a glass of wine, it was a nice light lunch enjoyed at the bar.

The wait staff comprised the same people I saw on the program. I even spied the owner counting receipts, looking very businesslike and engaged.

I’ll look forward to returning to DownCity next time I’m in the neighborhood. But for now, I’m happy that I got to sample just one Gordon Ramsay dish — the type I was hoping to enjoy back home.

Lee Steele is Hearst Connecticut design editor and blogs here about art and culture.

As someone who grew up on a grass-fed beef farm, I tend to enjoy a big, bulky burger for lunch, but even a crazy carnivore needs a good salad every once in a while. Enter Garelick & Herbs.

This little eatery, located on Main Street in New Canaan, is the go-to spot for a make-your-own salad option. For $7.95, G&H whips up your choice of spinach, mixed greens or romaine lettuce with five toppings, and a variety of dressings. Today I chose the spinach salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, roasted red peppers, chicken, feta cheese with a fat-free balsamic vinaigrette. That’s pretty much a standard order for me, but you can toss in oranges, olives, peas, mushrooms, ham, beets, and well… a lot of other stuff … depending on what your palate’s crying for.

I first stumbled upon the eatery about a year and a half ago when I worked as a reporter at the New Canaan News, and could walk over a few times a week. In the seven months since I came over to the Advocate, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time moaning about the fact that Stamford doesn’t really have a salad spot that stacks up to my Main Street fave — except one:

The chopped salad bar at Fairway is a great lunch stop. The other day, they mixed me a spinach, bacon, strawberry, goat cheese, avocado, tomato salad of comparable size to the New Canaan salad, for about a buck cheaper. But as much as I fawn over their salads, the mix-ins aren’t consistently available (they’ve been out of avocado two of the four times I’ve wandered through the line there). Plus sometimes I just don’t feel like eating in a supermarket.

Of course, G&H has its down sides too. I couldn’t walk out of there today without negating my salad with the purchase of two jumbo cookies for dessert tonight (if I can keep my hand out of the paper bag until then). So yeah, if you’re heading in there with a calorie count in mind, you might want to zoom past the check out line and dessert displays as quickly as possible, and avoid the use of peripheral vision at all times. And if you do end up giving in, I suggest the M&M cookie. Although the chocolate-dipped pretzels looked pretty good too…

My inbox these days gets inundated with deals from sites like Groupon and Living Social — and now Village Vines — which expanded its discounts on upscale dining to Fairfield County this week.

The site, which has been operating in New York and other major U.S. cities, only has deals in Connecticut with Barcelona and Coromandel, but they are looking to expand further.

Notably, the difference between Village Vines and the other sites is that you get 30% off your entire check, after fronting $10, which could be a pretty good deal, especially since it includes alcohol.

HOW IT WORKS:

Members sign up at VillageVines.com – for free.

Members then use the site as a decision making tool for planning fine experiences and access a curated selection of exclusive restaurants to book their reservations.

For a small $10 booking fee, members receive 30 per cent off their entire check, including alcohol.

Patti Woods, our Westport blogger, reports that Bridgeport’s Cafe Tavolini will appear on FOX’s Kitchen Nightmares tonight (Friday).

The last time an area restaurant ended up on Gordon Ramsay’s show, things didn’t end well. Sabatiello’s in downtown Stamford closed not too long after the show aired and the owner, Sabatiello “Sammy” Settembre ended up being charged with causing more than $20,000 worth of damage to the joint on his way out.

This time around, things don’t seem to end well either:

EAT, DRINK, SHOP, COOK: Back in February, the Connecticut Post reported that Cafe Tavolini (3074 Fairfield Ave. in Bridgeport) was being investigated by the Attorney General’s office for closing just after the holiday gift certificate rush. Just prior to that, the restaurant had undergone changes in conjunction with the filming of an episode of the FOX Television series Kitchen Nightmares (hosted by the ever-so-amicable Gordon Ramsay). Well folks, the time has come to find out what really went on behind the scenes. The Tavolini episode will air this Friday night at 8 p.m. on FOX. I’m almost afraid to watch.

A NOTE FROM THE LBC: Lee Steele continues our expansion on the Lunch Break Chronicles with this post out of Bridgeport.

What the elite eat at the Holiday Inn

When our tickets to the Bridgeport Symphony arrived recently, they came with a small flier that let us know that as ticket-holders, we qualified to partake in a $20 pre-show prix fixe menu at the Holiday Inn, about a mile from the concert hall. The offer was exclusively for symphony-bound diners with seatings between 5:30 and 6. Imagining the rarefied air of a private room with the area’s most distinguished longhairs, we phoned the hotel for our rightful spots in the dining room.

I’ve eaten at banquets and parties held at Bridgeport’s only downtown hotel, and they were carried off very well. So it seemed reasonable to think that dinner service for a much smaller crowd would reap great culinary rewards.

As often as I have been to the Holiday Inn, I have never eaten in its dining room. I’ve never been particularly drawn to the nondescript area off the lobby. Even after extensive hotel renovations, which greatly upgraded the cocktail bar and lobby, the brightly lit dining room is amazingly undistinguished. Completely open to the lobby and the corridor that leads to banquet rooms, the area appears geared mainly for the breakfast buffet for hotel guests. But never mind — $20 for three courses of the Holiday Inn’s best food, in the company of the city’s most discriminating patrons, is a deal.

We arrived at 5:30, and some people were already seated.We’re not exactly kids — let’s just say I’m on the cusp of the baby boom and generation x — but we were easily the youngest people there. But it was nice to be in the company of well-dressed and well-mannered patrons. I had the feeling of suddenly, if only temporarily, belonging to a private club. We were the symphony crowd. My joy, however, was short lived.

We knew we were in trouble when we saw the pedestrian choices on the menu — beef stroganoff, chicken Kiev and salmon with dill sauce were the main entrees. Starters were houses salad or mushroom soup and the only dessert selection was coffee cake, take it or leave it, with coffee. Liquor was not included in the price, but the need to take the hard edges off the experience drew me to the very short wine list. The list of red wines was very, very short. Only one wine was available.

The first course didn't look like much, but wasn't bad.

When the food came, the mushroom soup was actually a barley soup that contained some mushroom bits, but was actually pretty good. We each had the beef stroganoff, bland and forgettable — I asked for more sour cream, which improved its thin broth. Our nearby diners had the chicken kiev, perfectly formed beige torpedoes; and the salmon dish, which looked fine from a distance but did nothing to restore my faith in the kitchen. Of course, nothing looks good under the relentless bright lights of this dining room.

Looking around, however, our fellow patrons, all of whom were closer to my parents’ age, seemed pleased. One customer scolded the waiter for taking too long to fetch his check, but we never overheard one word about the food or the ambiance.Thinking back to those times I’ve dined with my parents, the things I complained about are the things they would have appreciated. Ambient lighting and creative cuisine lose their charm once you have to use a flashlight to read the menu and worry if the chef’s concoction will agree with you once you’re seated at the symphony.

This Holiday Inn prix fixe will always have a following, as long as the symphony-going, bargain-seeking, early-bird-dinner generation is around. Before long, I may be joining that very generation.

–Lee Steele

A Taste of Charleston in East Norwalk is no more. But the new guys, “owners of a successful restaurant and bar in South Norwalk,” are planning to open a casual Italian restaurant complete with an authentic coal-fired oven in its place.

I don’t get up to Norwalk much these days, but  this sounds like it may be worth a trip up that way when it opens.

–CP

A NOTE FROM THE LBC: There are big changes in the store for the Lunch Break Chronicles. In an effort to bring you more posts from more places in Fairfield County (and beyond), the LBC is reaching out to some of the talented people in the Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

Like myself, they aren’t culinary professionals but they know and care about food and dining and write for a living, so it’s a natural fit. You’ll see some changes to the look of the site as well as a bunch of new names in the coming weeks.

We start off today with Maggie Gordon, the education reporter at the Advocate in Stamford.

(Flickr.com/Jeff Kubina)

As an Irish-American girl who can’t really stand the idea of drinking a pint of Guinness (seriously, it’s like a milk shake, but way less tasty), corned beef and cabbage is the make-or-break measure of a good St. Paddy’s Day for me.

This is my first Irish holiday in Stamford, and I’m looking forward to celebrating with a plate full of my favorite meal. Hi. My name is Maggie and I’m addicted to corned beef. No really, just ask my roommate. The only problem is that while I’ve been spending my spare time googling around for a place that offers a corned beef and cabbage special next Thursday, I haven’t been able to figure out which offer is worth biting.

That’s where you come in, folks. I need your help. Where’s the best CBC in Stamford?

Here’s what I’ve found:

• O’Neills in SoNo is offering a lunch buffet, featuring CBC, fish & chips, shepherds pie, and other favorites from the homeland, as well as a beer tent out back. No reservations are being taken after 10 a.m. And yeah, there will be live music Irish dancers on scene.
• Tigin, on Bedford Street, will kick off the day with its first-ever kegs and eggs celebration, as well as pints and pancakes. Later in the day, Tigin will serve up CBC  for $13.
• Tiernan’s, on Main Street, will have Irish dancers as well as a performance by the Short Bus at 9 p.m. They’ll also be dishing out CBC and shepherd’s pie, both for $14.95.
• Rowley’s Tavern, on Connecticut Avenue in Norwalk, serves CBC every day throughout the entire month of March. Lunch portions are $10.95, and dinner is $14.95. On Thursday, they’ll have half-priced Guinness (I’ll pass), Irish dancers, bagpipers and a live band.
• What else is out there? And what’s the best?