Category: Restaurants

Pressburger comes to Wilton

Pressburger quietly opened in Wilton last week and more people are finding it every day. This is the third Pressburger in Connecticut: they also have stores in Norwalk and New Canaan. The menu is fairly simple: build-your-own burgers, a few specialty burgers, hot dogs and grilled cheese. But they are all prepared to order on the spot. They anticipate adding a few more items in the future.

So what is a Pressburger? They start with fist sized balls of fresh ground beef, lay them on the grill and close the lid, pressing the meat into a patty. This amounts to cooking the burger on both sides at once, and sealing in the flavor more effectively. This is shown in the pictures of the press in use and what the press looks like when they use it. That latter photo is from the Taylor Company web site. They add the cheese shortly before they taken them off the press grill.

While the burgers are cooking, they grill the Martin’s potato rolls on the open griddle, and then ask you which toppings you want. There are about a dozen free choices (Lettuce, Tomato, Raw Onion, Pickled Red Onion, Grilled Onion, Pickles, Pickled Cucumbers Jalapeños, Pickled Jalapeños, Dill Pickle Relish, Potato Chips, Hot Cherry Peppers, Old Bay Seasoning, Pickled Carrots) and a few specialty toppings (Thick Cut Bacon, Chili, Grilled Mushrooms, Sauerkraut, Cheese Sauce, Onion Crunch) that cost extra.

You also have a choice of quite a few free sauces (House Sauce [Chipotle Aioli], Mayo, Sriracha, Sriracha Aioli, Ketchup, Yellow Mustard, Honey Mustard, Dijon Mustard, Spicy Brown Mustard, BBQ, Smoky BBQ Aioli, Buffalo Sauce, Old Bay Seasoning, Malt Vinegar).

Then they wrap the burger and you pay and go. Or you can eat there, as a number of people were doing when we visited.

In addition to beef burgers, you can order Veggie burgers and Beyond Meat burgers, and a gluten free bun or a lettuce wrap. Hot dogs also come in beef, chicken or Veggie.

Their menu includes a house salad, kale Caesar salad and banana pudding or whoopie pies for dessert, as well as four flavors of milkshakes. You can select from a number of specialty beverages from a chilled display or get one of the Coke products from a fountain dispenser.

So, how are these burgers? We’ve been there twice and are pretty impressed with food, service and the pleasant staff. But that’s not enough. How do they compare with the competition?

To find out, we bought a single burger from Five Guys, one from McDonalds and one from the Wilton Pressburger, all within 30 minutes and took them home to compare. We also weighed each of the three patties. Their cooked weight was

Pressburger — 2.36 oz
Five Guys – 2.01 oz
McDonalds – 1.13 oz

Pressburger wins. Our taste test of slices of the three burgers made it clear, that Pressburger also tasted the best. Pricewise, Pressburgers are competitively priced, with single patties for $6.99 (plus $1.00 for cheese). A similar Five Guys is $7.89 (plus $1.10 for cheese), and the teeny McDonald’s burger is $1.49. Fries at Pressburger are $4.99 while those at Five Guys are $5.99, and at McDonalds are $2.99.

As far as fries go, McDonald’s always receives high praise, but in fact it isn’t very long before they are limp and soggy. And while Five Guys gives you enough fries to fill a Motor Home, they deteriorate in just a few minutes. The crinkle cut Pressburger fries were still warm and tasty even an hour later.

Pressburger fries are cooked on the spot from frozen crinkle cut potatoes. And as Kenji Lopez-Alt has reported, frozen fries are actually better, because the ice crystals improve the surface of the fries when they are cooked. They also offer sweet potato fries

We think that Pressburger is a winner and are happy to have one so close by in Wilton!

Haven Hot Chicken opens in Norwalk

Haven Hot Chicken opened yesterday in Norwalk, at 596 Westport Ave. The store is in the left end of the store group just to the west of Whole Foods. The grand opening featured balloons and a sandwich give-away, long over when we came to get our dinner around 5:30pm. At that time, it wasn’t all that busy. This is the third Haven restaurant in Connecticut: the others are in New Haven and Orange. The first two feature Uber Eats delivery, and this new one presumably will as well once they get fully open.

This is one of a number of chains featuring their take on Nashville hot chicken, which is this case is breaded chicken breast sandwiches at one of 5 degrees of spiciness:

Country – no spice
Mild – hint of spice
Medium – proper spice
Hot – will burn
Haven – for the Hot Head

You can just order the sandwich for $12.99, or a Combo for $3.25 more, which includes a side and a drink. We ordered a Mild and a Medium combo with fries, a Hot sandwich and additional sides of their coleslaw and banana pudding, which totaled $54.45 with tax but before tip.

The spice levels

I personally found the mild, so unspicy that you only noticed it as an aftertaste. By contrast the Medium tastes spicy on biting into it, and continues after each bite. I found the Hot sandwich only a little spicier than the Medium, although, remember this is opening day, and things may change as they settle in.

Most Nashville hot chicken recipes call for frying the chicken normally and then spreading the spicy paste on afterwards. However, it is clear that at Haven, the spice is part of the batter. The chicken breast is coated with the spicy batter and deep fried. This pretty much means that these sandwiches are cooked to order. This would be consistent with the 10-15 minute wait for them to fill your order. At the moment that clearly does not apply to the French fries, however. I would expect this may improve as they gain more experience.

The sandwiches that they call “THE Sandwich” are enormous: they have an awful lot of chicken breast in each one. If your appetite is somewhat smaller, they offer chicken tenders (Tendies in their naming scheme) separately or as a slider. Like THE Sandwich, they are topped with coleslaw, a garlic dill pickle and a bit of Rob Sauce. You can also order several sauces separately: Rob, Blue Cheese, House Ranch, and Sweet Sauce.

Finally, they also offer Chicken and Waffles: two Tendies on a Liege waffle with maple brown sugar aioli and powdered sugar. This looks like an interesting combination we’ll try on another visit. There is a side of pancake syrup available, too.

Sides

Like some other nearby emporiums, they give you quite a plethora of French fries, and you might do better to order one sandwich with fries and another with coleslaw, and share. You can also get a Mac and Cheese side, but it costs $1.65 additional as the provided side, or $4.99 separately.

Finally, they offer just one real dessert, “Banana Puddin’,” that is sweet and huge. Two people or even three could share this hugely filling dessert. The topping at first sight appears to be whipped cream, but it isn’t exactly: its much too thick to be just cream, perhaps with gelatin or other thickeners added.

This is their first day in a new location, and I’m include to overlook their first day issues. We’ll report back to you in a month or so. Meanwhile, Haven Hot Chicken, welcome to Norwalk.

Athithi: outstanding Indian cuisine in Wilton

Athithi opened in the Gateway shopping center last fall and we have found it a delightful addition to Wilton’s restaurant scene. The menu features a wide variety of classic Indian dishes and a few other regional specialties. Note that the Dine-In menu and the Takeout menus are slightly different, because not all of their dishes travel. However, the menu is extensive and everything we have tried has been excellent. The restaurant features two Michelin star experienced chefs: Executive Chef Hemant Mathur, and Chef Chandru Krishnasamy, who along with Executive Manager Prince produce an outstanding experience. The word “Athithi” means “Guest” and we assure you that they treat their guests very well.

We first visited in November, before they had their wine license, and I went last night to brough home an excellent take-out meal. They clearly have that license now, however.

If you dine there, you will start with crispy naan bread served with two dipping sauces: a green one: mint chutney and a red one (coriander chutney), that is warmly mild and spicy with notes of cinnamon. They are good on your bread and on whatever entrée you order.

We tried a couple of interesting appetizers: the salmon and crab cakes ($14) served on an elegant little dish with a suspended sauce dish of green chili aioli. The other was Ragda Chaat ($11): potato cakes with white peas, tamarind and mint chutney. You could share the salmon-crab cakes, and you definitely can share the Ragda Chaat as it is a substantial portion.

For our main courses, we ordered Rogan Josh ($22), a lamb stew with Kashmiri red chili, and Chicken Korma ($20), chicken cooked in a rich and creamy cashew sauce. Note that for your entrees you can specify mild, medium spicy, or spicy. None of them are going to burn your mouth, though. The medium and spicy are only slightly different. In medium, you can taste the spices, and in the spicy version the spice taste lingers in your mouth between bites.

We found the Rogan Josh with tender pieces of lamb the be an excellent choice, but I’ll have to admit that my wife’s Chicken Korma in cashew sauce won the night for us. It was delightful.

Finally, the menu lists four desserts, a Mango Cheesecake, Kulfi Falooda, Shahi Tukda and Moong Dal Halwa. They are probably all delicious as one of chefs has specialized in desserts. We know what mango cheesecake would be, but Kulfi Falooda? It’s a kind of ice cream sundae, made with Indian ice cream (no eggs), sweet basil seeds, corn starch vermicelli and rose syrup. Sometimes chefs add nuts or dried fruit as well. This version was absolutely amazing and I’d order it every time, except that I know the other three desserts will be great as well.

Take-Out

I went back last night to try some more dishes while my wife dined elsewhere. I ordered Punjabi Samosa ($8), which is a common Indian street food, described as a crispy turnover stuffed with spiced potatoes, chick peas, and green peas. Without trying the main course, I can attest to the winning greatness of this snack.

For my main course, I order Chicken Biryani ($19) served with mint yogurt. Indian chefs obsess of making perfect biryanis, where each grain of basmati rice should be separate. The spices may include saffron and garam masala. I ordered mine at the top level “Spiced” and found it smooth and aromatic without being overly aggressively spicy. Like everything else, at Athithi, it was excellent.

I didn’t order a dessert, because the takeout menu doesn’t include any, but there was this extra cup of something beside the mint yogurt sauce. It was a complementary rice pudding!

Welcome to Athithi and we’ll surely come back many times!

Nantucket Breeze Restaurant for breakfasts

With the sudden non-opening of Black-eyed Susan’s, the number of downtown restaurants serving breakfast has dwindled to the Counter on Main Street (for takeout), and the Born and Bread bakery. So, you might want to consider a short walk over to the Nantucket Hotel and Resort on Easton St. Their Breeze Restaurant is open to the public, and serves breakfast daily from 7:30-10:00 am, and Sunday Brunch from 11-2. We stayed at the hotel last week and had most of our breakfasts there.

Their menu is limited, however: there are no Danish, croissants, or muffins available, but they offer eggs any way, omelets, 4 variations on Eggs Benedict, pancakes and French toast. They also have granola and Scottish oatmeal.

Our first day, we ordered 2 eggs over easy, and they were quite good, although mine seems to have had one of the yolks broken. We enjoyed them in any case. The toast was a single thick slice, unbuttered, but they did provide some wrapped butter pats.

We also enjoyed the French toast served with fresh berries and whipped cream, and the Scotch Oatmeal served with blueberries. Both very satisfying and well-presented and served.

Pancakes

But the day we got Buttermilk pancakes, we were kind of disappointed, because the three pancakes in a stack were so flat they couldn’t have been more than ¾ inch high. Clearly, they were using a mix whose leavening had expired.

On the right, you will see the buttermilk pancakes I make nearly every Sunday, to show how much they should have risen. Since the actual recipe has only 6 ingredients, it is silly to be using a mix. And if they aren’t, they should have seen that their baking powder was DOA. Their pancakes came without the promised “whipped butter,” but the server quickly brought me some wrapped butter when I asked.

The sausage they offer is chicken sausage, and it isn’t really very sausagey: needs more spices.

Eggs Benedict

There are four varieties of Eggs Benedict on the menu: Regular ($20), Salmon and Kale ($23), Crab Cake Benedict ($26) and Lobster Eggs Benedict ($30). All of them are served on a tough, uncuttable “Portuguese muffin.”

If you look at their Eggs Benedict, shown on the left, you see perfectly round eggs covered with hollandaise. We call these “Industrial Poached Eggs,” because they are cooked by steaming in a round mold, which produces little “egg pucks.”

Since poaching means cooking eggs in gently simmering water, these really don’t qualify: not only is the texture different, they don’t cook uniformly. In fact, the whites of their eggs were not fully cooked, while this never happens in traditional poached eggs. These were served with a “lemon hollandaise,” meaning that they added a lot more lemon juice, nearly enough to curl your hair. Here is our recipe for making Eggs Benedict, shown on the right. Theirs were OK, but we’d probably skip them in the future.

You can get a good breakfast at the Breeze restaurant if you skip the pancakes and Eggs Benedict. And, if you want to walk a little farther, the White Elephant serves breakfast, too, 8-11am.

Is Black-eyed Susan’s gone for good?

We were surprised that Black-eyed Susan’s wasn’t open for breakfast this week. The windows show no sign of life and

the web site still says “Closed for the season. See you in April, 2022.” They missed that one.
The answering system says they will not open for Daffodil Weekend. (April 22-24,2022)
They don’t answer messages on their Facebook page
The equipment behind the counter looks to be cleared out.

The best we can find out is that they lost their chef and decided to close permanently. This a real shame and hope they find a way to revive this lovely business.

This has been a terrible year for restaurants on Nantucket. We lost 58 Union, Keepers is closed for the season, Boarding House and The Pearl may open next year, and we really need this one to stay!

Straight Wharf Restaurant

Straight Wharf Restaurant is one of Nantucket’s absolute gems: an excellent seafood restaurant with four star food and service overlooking the harbor. It is great for special occasions or anytime, considering the prix fixe pricing structure they introduced this spring. For $78, you get the choice of any appetizer and any entrée from their extensive menu. There are a couple of items with supplemental charges, like their famous clambake, but they are worth it. It is still a terrific bargain. Dessert are extra, but not terribly expensive.

Our service began with a bluefish pate as an amuse-bouche served with excellent crackers

followed by some excellent bread and butter.

On this visit we each had to again experience their (shell-less) clambake of lobster, littleneck clams, spicey chorizo, fingerling potatoes (as potato chips) sweet corn (as a delicious emulsion) for a $17 supplemental charge. This is nominally a half-sized portion, offered as an appetizer, but it is still a fantastic (and filling) dish, as shown in the photo above. This is their signature dish and we’ve had it several times in the past, and it never fails to amaze.

For one entrée, we had scallops. Now scallops are usually presented as just sautéed and served with little else. But here, in this outstanding restaurant, the scallops were served on a sunchoke mole`, that is a puree of sunchokes with some unsweetened chocolate added for richness, and served with green beans sugar, snap peas and some more sunchokes, along with a mango and gooseberry salsa and some bits of oranges as well. What a delicious and imaginative presentation.

It’s hard to get decent salmon in restaurants, as it is often dry and overcooked. But this salmon was slo-poached, and incredibly juicy and tender. It was served with a tarragon toum, a sort of tarragon-based mayonnaise, roasted beets, hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, fennel, arugula, garden herbs and a preserved lemon vinaigrette. It was outstanding, and our only regret that after that capacious appetizer, we couldn’t finish it all.

Finally, for dessert, we had a delicious warm chocolate-cherry tart. The pudding itself was actually hot, right out of the saucepan, served with a bit of vanilla ice cream, to top it off.

The amazing thing is that including two cocktails and two sodas, our bill, including tax, was only $289. Compare that to some other restaurants and you’ll know what a terrific deal this was. And the service was warm, friendly and attentive.

American Seasons — on Nantucket

One of Nantucket’s long running restaurants, American Seasons has been serving imaginative meals for some years, and opened this year on May 5. The friendly neighborhood style restaurant is on Centre Street, not far from downtown and a very short walk from the Nantucket Hotel and Resort.

Nearly every restaurant on the island has had struggles with their supply chain and finding sufficient staff. But, while the staff was friendly and knowledgeable, the menu was shortened, with just six appetizers (chicken liver parfait, herbed greens salad, roast sea scallops, daily crudo, green bean salad and a duck egg) and six entrees (roast pork shoulder, Giannone [that’s a brand name] roast chicken, honey roasted halibut, salmon filet, rainbow carrots, and Muscovy duck breast).

Our choice of the Chicken Liver Foie Gras Parfait ($23) with house made vegetable pickles and brioche toast was a real winner. It was smooth, rich and delicious, although we admit we really couldn’t finish it all and still have room for the entrée.

But remember Restaurant Rule 1:

You don’t have to clean your plate! Eat what you want and leave the rest!

Our other appetizer was Island Grown greens and Herbs ($19) with apple-walnut oil vinaigrette and Pecorino cheese. A lot of it. In fact, all the grated cheese brought back the old joke about “dust my wets,” referring to pasta dishes. The salad was pretty good, though, if a bit less than we expected.

Our halibut dish, Honey Roasted Halibut with wild mushrooms and sunchoke puree, topped with a hazelnut crust had better be good, since it cost $50. And indeed, it started out that way, but once we’d managed to eat all the sunchoke puree, it was dry and not all that tasty. So we observed Rule 1.

Finally, our other entrée was the roast chicken ($44) with mushroom cream, fingerlings, trumpet royals and a sherry vinegar jus.

This brings up Restaurant Rule 2:

Never order chicken in s restaurant. They (usually) have more interesting things than that.

It was not particularly impressive. It was bordering on dry, and really didn’t have a lot of taste. Our bill was $179 including tax, but before tip, and included two $15 gin-and-tonics.

We hope that they polish up their menu, because this Is usually quite a good restaurant.

The Proprietors is still Outstanding

The Proprietors remains one of Nantucket’s gems. Owned by Michael and Orla LaScola along with partner Anna Worgesss, the restaurant continues to serve outstanding and imaginative food. While the menu may change radically, from year to year, it always consists of a number of small plates and a few larger entrees. You can mix and share these any way you want, and even add another dish for the table while you are still having the previous course. And every one will be both surprising and delicious.

In last night’s visit, we chose two small plates , one sort of medium sized and and one larger portion. We started with an unusual but absolutely outstanding portion of Sourdough Spring Onion Pancakes ($26) with Tallegio, Black trumpet mushrooms, with Everything Bagel seasoning. We called it “stunning,” it was so good, and certainly a surprising combination.

Our other appetizer was a really creating Beet Salad ($24) , with roasted beets, chickpeas, feta, strawberry molasses, mint and bulgur wheat. Again, an unexpected combination of flavors resulting in and outstandingly successful dish! That taco-like shell surrounding the beets was made from chick peas! The textures the bulgur wheat provided along with the feta raised this far out of the ordinary.

The medium-sized dish we order was called Salt and Pepper Shrimp ($36) with house-made chili crisp and sesame mayo. The waitress mentioned to another table that this is one of their most popular dishes. There were 3 large shrimp, head and tail included, but with quite a lot of shrimp in between. The chili flavor was part of the shrimp crust. But it didn’t overpower the delicate shrimp flavor. Despite the medium designation, based on price, this was more that we could eat., meaning there was some to share.

Finally our other main course was roast duck with blackberries, sour crea, polenta, local grilled bok choy and a radish ($47). The duck was tender, moist and perfectly seasoned and a delight to drag through the blackberry sauce, (hidden under the bok choi in the photo.) Simply outstanding!

Our dessert was sort of a chocolate tart, with blackberries over a kind of bread pudding with almond brittle, and a scoop of coffee-chocolate ice cream. All of those toppings were delicious, but the tart itself was rather hard to cut.

Our bill with 2 glasses of wine and one soda was $222 including tax, but before tip, and considering the prices some other places have been charging on Nantucket, this is nearly a downright bargain as well as being one of the best meals we are likely to be having this week.

Baldanza at the Schoolhouse

Baldanza moved into the Schoolhouse restaurant last August and we decided to give them a try now that they have presumably settled in. According to their web site, this is a family business with Sandy Baldanza at the Proprietor, Angela Baldanza as the chef de Cuisine and Alex Baldanza as the General Manager.

The layout of the restaurant is much the same as it was before, with banquettes along the windowed walls and about 16 well-spaced tables within. The hosts are gracious and quick to seat you when you arrive. Water comes right away, and some very good bread and butter soon follows. We particularly like the pecan bread with raisins.

The dinner menu consists of 10 appetizers (mostly Italian), 7 definitively Italian pasta dishes and 7 entrees which seem to be much more American: hamburger, salmon, halibut, strip steak, pork chop, chicken Milanese and tuna au poivre.

There is a one-page wine list, with one prosecco, 2 rose’s, 5 white wines, and 16 red wines, many of them Italian and all but 3 available by the glass or full bottle. We chose the Montepulciano D’Abruzzo 2016, but would try something else next time.

If you’re looking for a single sentence capsule review: Everything we ordered was excellent, and we’ll certainly go back.

One of our appetizers was an outstanding Fritto Misto ($21). It contained fried calamari, rock shrimp, and fried zucchini with a marinara sauce and a red pepper aioli, The portion was enormous and completely greaseless. It was excellent but save room for your main course!

Our other appetizer was an amazing composed Beet Salad ($18), with red and golden beets, tangerines, pistachio, green beans, apples, fennel, dates and goat cheese. I don’t think we’ve ever had a better one. What a great combination of flavors!

One of our pasta dishes was Risotto with Jumbo Gulf Shrimp ($39). It was served, or course, with arborio rice, along with asparagus, cherry tomatoes and saffron. The flavors were outstanding, although the shrimp were so large that they were a little difficult to cut.

Finally, our other entrée was Tagliatelle Roma ($28), which was their house made tagliatelle served with prosciutto, peas, mushrooms and a cream sauce. The waiter added some grated cheese as well. It had a smooth texture with little spikes of prosciutto throughout.

We would have like to tell you about their desserts (several are pictured on their web site) but we were much too full to order them.

However, next time, we are sure to try their Caesar salad and their meatballs, either as an appetizer or in their Rigatoni con Pallotine. Their Chicken Milanese looks interesting too….

Our bill was $143.95 with tax but before tip.

All in all, this was a delightful evening, and we welcome Baldanza to Wilton!

Galley Beach: how a top restaurant navigates COVID

Galley Beach, under chef W Scott Osif has been a high end fixture in Nantucket for many years. With its setting on a beach point, you can admire the food and the sunsets almost any night.

This year, they have moved to an two-course prix-fixe menu for $89, with several dishes having supplemental charges. They also have taken a big step and added the 23% gratuity to every check, which means the prix-fixe is really over $109. Oh, and they charge $15 for valet parking, an almost unavoidable charge since street parking is pretty difficult.

We’ve written about Galley Beach in 2019 and in 2015, praising its cuisine and service. This year, the service remained of high quality, but the food seemed far less successful than in past visits.

We started with an appetizer of Caesar salad, described as having white anchovies, parmesan croutons and creamy garlic dressing. As you can see from the picture there is one huge anchovie and one crouton, and the shredded cheese may ore may not be parmesan. We didn’t taste any parmesan, garlic or egg in the dressing, nor any lemon, vinegar, mustard or olive oil. We called this a “perfunctory Caesar salad.” We also note that it was served on some mixed greens rather than on romaine.

The right hand picture shows they one they served in 2019, which was very good.

We also had a Crab Cake for our other appetizer, which required a $15 supplemental upcharge, or $18.45 with the mandatory gratuity. It came with tomato, cucumber & mint salad. champagne beurre blanc. It certainly had plenty of crab and little filler, explaining the upcharge, but very little flavor. Now Maryland style crab cakes always contain spicy mustard, or sometimes just hot sauce, but this contained none of those, and was just kind of bland. We had the same dish in 2015 and praised its flavor.

Our entrée was Pan roasted halibut with duck fat Brussels sprouts. summer squashes. sunchoke puree, and a $10 upcharge. The halibut was perfectly cooked, but without much flavor from the minimal puree. The “duck fat Brussels sprouts” were supposed to be sweetened by browning in duck fat. Actually, they were burned. You would think some head chef would be checking plates before they go out the door and catch things like that. We were not impressed.

Our other entrée was housemade orecchiette. rock shrimp. buttered corn. capers. lemon. old bay. midnight moon. Not a lot of shrimp. Tasted like mac and cheese, but we’ve had better mac and cheese.

The waiter suggested desserts and there were only four rather standard choices, each $19:

Warm chocolate brownie with ice cream and salted caramel
Crème brulee with macerated blueberries
Turmeric Panna Cotta (Come on! Really?)
Strawberry shortcake

We chose to skip the dessert. Our bill, including 3 glasses of chardonnay, tax and a $57.50 service charge was $325. It’s not that we begrudge the inclusion of the service charge, but for an indifferent meal, this was an awful lot of money. Even so, it was cheaper than the Company of the Cauldron!