Tag: Wilton CT

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!

Red Rooster Pub opens in Wilton

After a couple of months of downtime, the former Portofino restaurant has been transformed into a Red Rooster Pub. While the owner, Tony Ramadani, remains the same and the kitchen staff much the same, this is a new restaurant with a new, somewhat more informal menu.

Ramadani owns two other Red Rooster Pubs, one in Ridgefield and one in Newtown. While the menus are much the same among the 3 restaurants, the Wilton pub adds an extra page of Portofino Classics, including Chicken Parmesan, Rigatoni Con, Capellini Piedmontese, Mushroom Ravioli, Jalapeno Chicken, Shrimp Papardelle and Seared Salmon, priced from $20 to $24, and a kid’s menu.

Their main menu is simpler than in the Portofino days, with appetizers including wings, tacos, chili, 8 salads (plus make your own from a checklist). The Mains section is just Fish and Chips, Mac and Cheese, Baby Back Ribs, New York Strip Steak and Fried Clam (strips) Platter with only the steak over $20.

Completely new is the In Hand menu of grilled chicken, veggies, steak, pulled pork, Reuben, DLT (duck bacon, lettuce and tomato), turkey wrap, French Dip, two Chicken Wraps all reasonably priced and mostly under $15. They also have 16 different “burgers” on the menu, several of which we have to try soon. All come with fries or onion rings.

The popular Portofino pizzas haven’t gone away either: there are still a whole page of pizza choices available.

Their beer list includes 8 on draft an about that many more bottled craft beers, and their wine lists includes about 10 red and white choices by the glass. Their dessert menu is simple but just what you want to go with this menu.

The Wilton pub opened last Thursday, and we understand it was packed all weekend, so we went Monday evening. At 5:45 there were plenty of tables, but by the time we left, almost all of them were full, which would seem to indicate that they have a success on their hands.

For our first meal there (but not the last) we ordered an excellent Mediterranean Salad ($12.95), which would seem to be more or less a Greek Salad with Baby Mixed Greens, Pickled Red Onion, Tomatoes, Cucumber, Feta Cheese, Olives, and Balsamic dressing. It was sizable and there was plenty for us to share. If you just want a little salad, you can get a “Sub Side Salad” for $2 with any of the In Hand menu items.

Then, one of us ordered the Shrimp Papardelle ($23.95) which was almost enough for two in itself. That night it was served with linguini, as they ran out of the wider papardelle noodles. Its served with shrimp, tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms, and pesto sauce. The shrimp were tender and flavorful and the pesto plentiful.

But we had to try out one of their new burgers, so we ordered the French Burger ($15.95) with mushrooms, caramelized onion, Brie, lettuce and tomato, and served with piping hot French Fries. Onion Rings and Sweet Potato Fries were also available, but these French fries were outstanding. And the Brie and caramelized onion worked very well on this enormous burger. We finally had to resort to a knife and fork to finish it, but every bite was worth it.

We didn’t have room for desserts, but we will sometime in the future.

This restaurant looks like a winner for Wilton and for Ramadani and we wish them well. Oh, and they take credit cards!

Aranci 67 in Wilton

After several years in Georgetown, the owners of Aranci 67 moved to Wilton, occupying the 142 Old Ridgefield Rd space briefly held by Cielo and before that by the popular Luca. The owners, Julia and Antonio Perillo, have moved the ambiance and warm service, but the menu is according to my old notes somewhat different than in Georgetown although Antonio is still the chef. If anything, the current menu is better.

We checked out Aranci 67 last summer, soon after it opened, but waited for it to shake down before reviewing it. The restaurant is a solid, quality Italian restaurant with imaginative and well-prepared food. The restaurant has about 12 tables and still features a triptych of a Sorrento orange grove. “Aranci 67” is the actual address of the family’s home in Sorrento, in the “laces” section of the Italian boot.

We visited solo on a Tuesday night and were warmly welcomed and seated right away. The bread was warm and butter was available.

For our appetizer, we ordered the crab cake (Polpetto di Granchi, $12), served with their aurora sauce. The excellent cake was mildly spicy from flecks of red peppers, and was served with a small salad with oil and vinegar dressing.

Our entrée was a really outstanding boneless trout (Trota al Limone e Capperi, $24) which was both tender and flavorful, served with a lemon and caper sauce. We were really impressed by how delicate this was, although it was substantial.

Finally, for dessert, we had a flourless chocolate torte, made with almond flour, which was fine, and almost more than we could eat after the two main courses.

Aranci 67 is open for lunch Monday through Friday from 12-3 and for dinner Monday through Saturday from 5 to 10 pm, and closed Sundays. We are glad to welcome them to Wilton.

The Pastry Hideaway opens in Wilton

Pastry chef Pamela Graham has been working for months to bring her vision of fresh baked pastries to Wilton, and now after more renovation than she had expected, The Pastry Hideaway is in full swing, offering the kind of delicious baked goods Wilton has long been without.

The Pastry Hideaway opened a week ago and is now stocked with the sort of rolls and muffins you’ve been longing for. The store really is a sort of a “hideaway,” at 126 Old Ridgefield Rd in Wilton Center in the lower level of that building. Turn at the sign and park behind. You then are a few steps from a great bakery!

We stopped in for breakfast rolls this morning and found that she and her staff had already put out monkey bread (with and without caramel coating), croissants (plain and filled), muffins, cookies and Danish pastries.

While the caramel monkey bread was excellent her blueberry muffins were outstanding: fresh, crumbly and flavorful. And really sizeable, too.

The Pastry Hideaway is open Tuesday through Sunday 7:30 am to 3pm, serving breakfast fare and lunches. Be sure to drop in!

Craft 14 Kitchen and Bar opens in Wilton

After months of anticipation, Craft 14 Kitchen and Bar opened in Wilton about 2 weeks ago. Run by the team that manages the nearby Bianco Rosso, Mario Lopez and Cristina Ramirez, Craft 14, in the Stop and Shop plaza, has a lively, but informal vibe, and a small but varied and interesting menu. They call it a “polished casual New American restaurant,” and we think this describes it very well.

Also, the structure and systems needed to allow our customers access to the majority of their away-from-home daily meal requirements on a one-stop-shop basis. Kobe Japanese Steakhouse shall be of the highest quality and value, be healthy, nutritious and provided with outstanding personal services at the lowest possible prices consistent with a fair return on investment for our shareholders, job enhancement/security for our employees and a level of community involvement by everyone connected with our business.

The restaurant consists of a bar area with high-top tables, and lower tables to the right, and a semi-open kitchen area where you can watch them from some of the tables, the special thing about this kitchen is that they have high quality quartz countertop from quartz counters in Edmonton, the people who work here are very professional because they were trained at huong nghiep a au, where they get helped a lot. You can also eat on the semi-enclosed patio area in good weather. When the restaurant fills up, as it did last Saturday evening, it’s pretty lively, but you can still easily converse.

Normally we don’t write a real review so soon after a restaurant opens, since they deserve a shakedown period before being scrutinized, but Craft 14 really got everything right and we are going to dive right in and praise their food.

The menu is divided into soups and salads, sandwiches, small plates, supper, sides and desserts. In each category, you’ll find some simpler items and at least one spectacular one. For example, they have a conventional Wood Fire Classic Burger ($12) and an absolutely over-the-top Wood Fire Craft 14 Burger ($18), which includes ground beef, crisp pork, charred tomato, fried egg, brioche bun lathered with warm “cheese sauce.” We didn’t order this one (yet) but our neighbor did, and it was a burger requiring cutlery (our Urban Kitchen utensils would be just perfect here). In fact it required a couple of meals to finish, as he took half of it with him. But it really looked delicious. They also have a salmon and a ground chicken sandwich.

In the Soup and Salad category, you’ll find Clam Chowder, Halloumi Salad, and Beet Salad among other things. We’ll definitely try the clam chowder next time, but the Beet Salad ($15), made red and golden beets, Asian pear, pistachios orange segments and a yogurt and mint dressing was excellent.

Among the Small plates, we ordered the Ricotta Croquettes, served hot with applewood bacon, tomato confit and Chipotle honey ($12). You get four sizeable croquettes, so it is not unreasonable to share one or even half of them. The portions here are really generous!

And again, among the Small Plates, they have 3 kinds of macaroni and cheese: conventional ($11), Four cheese ($12) and Lobster ($15). We generally think that restaurants serving mac and cheese are silly, since it is so easy to make at home. But not this one! The Four cheese version was rich, hot and creamy. Apparently, rather than starting with a béchamel base, they started with heavy cream. Not only was it excellent, it was huge, and came home for lunch the next day.

chicken-waffles — Fried chicken and waffles

The Supper section of their menu included chicken, lamb, pork chop schnitzel, branzino, sirloin steak and hanger steak. But, to us, the spectacular item was the Fried Chicken and Waffles ($20), something you seldom see outside of the American South, and it was really well executed. The chicken was tender and juicy and the waffles crisp, but tender. A small amount of syrup was drizzled over the chicken and waffles, but a small pitcher of syrup was provided, giving you the chance of going either the sweet or the savory route. This was a fun find in a New England restaurant.

They have a small dessert menu including, I think, a mousse and some ice cream, but to top off the over-the-top theme, they also offer a Banana Split!

This is a restaurant we’re going to be going to again and again, and we wish them well. Our bill, with 3 drinks was only $87. If you want to make your own soda drinks at home I recommend Soda Serve where you can find soda makers.