Fryborg Food Truck Opens Restaurant in Trumbull

Andrew Dominick July 13, 2023

Once a Fryborg special, poutine is now part of the regular menu. The new space is bigger, hence more room to simmer a big pot of gravy.

“A lot of the food we serve is inspired by being a kid,” says Fryborg owner Jonathan Gibbons. “In Milford, an older guy in his 80s comes in regularly and he remarked that my food is like when he was a kid. That made me feel really good. The food, the video game table, the bubble hockey, it’s all about nostalgia.”

For many, me included, “nostalgia” is the right work to describe Fryborg. If you can remember back when craft beer breweries started to take over Connecticut, food trucks did, too. And Fryborg was one of those mobile eateries that was part of that food truck boom. I clearly remember Gibbons’ Belgian-inspired frites sobering me up at least a few times at Two Roads, and I talked a little bit about that back in 2019 when I covered Fryborg’s first physical location which opened in Milford’s Devon section in 2018.

Fried chicken bigger than the potato bun it’s served on

Fans of FRYDAYS can go back and read that article HERE, or you can get all of Fryborg’s history from the freshly painted mural inside of their brand new (as of 2022), bigger storefront in Trumbull.

I love a good sequel, so this felt like an appropriate time to catch up with Gibbons about his new digs and what’s new on Fryborg’s menu. But how a second spot happened was mostly based on reasons of proximity.

A mural, painted by New London based artist, Sofie Groenstein, tells the story of Fryborg starting in 2003 when Gibbons took a backpacking trip to Europe. Safe to say he loved the frites. As for the food truck? It still exists, only now it’s for private events.

“I live like three minutes from here and my girlfriend is a realtor,” Gibbons explains. “Even though this wasn’t a restaurant before—it was a pharmacy—we both were kinda like, this is the perfect spot location wise. It’s not too big, not too small, and it’s close to me, and far enough away from (Fryborg) Milford.”

It’s also a good time to expand upon what’s offered.

Ever since Milford, Gibbons was able to take what began as a food truck that served ONLY fries with homemade dipping sauces and grow his brand’s menu to include griddled hot dogs, an occasional sausage sandwich special, burgers, and of course, other different ways to top his famous frites.

Chili cheese fries. Yes, the chili and the cheese sauce are both homemade.

Fear not, crowd favorites like the Assimilation Fries (fried egg, cheese sauce, homemade Thousand Island dressing, chopped onion), currywurst (grilled Hummel red hots, curry ketchup, and onion), and others aren’t likely going away ever, but he’s added a popular special in poutine (house made gravy, cheddar curds), and a classic, slightly spicy order of chili cheese fries. And yes, they make both the chili and the cheese sauce. There’s no cutting corners here, even despite occasionally having challenges when dealing with the humble potato.

“It has very much to do with the type of potato we use,” Gibbons says. “It’s difficult to keep consistent. People always say, ‘These are darker than last time,’ or ‘these are burnt.’ I’m always like, ‘They’re not burnt and we’re not doing anything differently.’ Suppliers will sometimes say it’s the same type of potato. We could get the same potato for a month, then get boxes that look the same, but they might cook differently. The different brand might take four minutes to cook where before it took three. I always have to explore what works, temperature wise. Unless you can contract farmers to specifically grow a potato for you, it’ll never be the same, or if you’re in Belgium, they grow a certain type of potato specifically for the country for frites. It’s hard to keep that consistent here. Would you rather have good fries all the time or have amazing fries two thirds of the time and figure it out the rest? At minimum, they’re soaked for an hour, but the longer the better. They’re fried at a lower temp, we let them cool all the way, then fried again at a higher temp. It allows them to cook all the way through and be crunchy on the outside. If you skip the first step, you end up with soggy, overcooked fried on outside and not quite cooked on the inside. That’s not great.”

Gibbons is also trying his hand at a cheesesteak because he loves the City of Brotherly Love.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Philly, so I want to do it justice,” he says. “It’s not a steak and cheese like people here say. It’s a cheesesteak! The meat is chopped up, cheese over the top (or sauce spread on the bread), the bread goes on top of the meat to melt the cheese, then you flip it. People would say, ‘there’s no cheese on it,’ but the flip puts the cheese on the bottom. Even my girlfriend, who I love, says she wants to see the cheese. It’s on there! It feels like a losing battle, but I want to do it the best proper way I can. Only thing is I can’t get the bread from Amaroso’s so it’s not all the way proper. I do the best I can.”

Aside from fries and a cheesesteak, Fryborg makes sure to not forget about vegetarians—that’s why there’s a grilled cheese, fried garlic cheese curds, two salads, a portobello mushroom sandwich (sharp provolone, grilled onions, wilted arugula, balsamic mayo), and a veggie burger with a patty made from split green peas, brown rice, mushrooms, bell peppers, onion, garlic, and spices.

And since my 2019 article, Gibbons has added a worthwhile buttermilk marinated, then dredged in a secret blend of flour, herbs, and spices, fried chicken sandwich, simply topped with mayo and pickles. He’s also got a smash burger that looks very much like a dead ringer for Shake Shack’s Shack Burger, plus a patty melt that’s an ode to Friendly’s, a place he grew up frequenting.

“That patty melt was my original idea for a burger,” Gibbons says. “I don’t know if anyone in the history of the world has ever used Friendly’s as inspiration to open a restaurant, but I will say, when I was a teenager—and a lot of my food is about being a kid—my buddy and I, Friendly’s was the place we would go to. I remember they had a bacon cheeseburger on grilled sourdough. I don’t know if they even called it a patty melt. It was on sourdough with a lot of butter and grilled. I know Friendly’s isn’t known for their food, but how bad could you fuck up a hamburger. It’s buttery, crispy, it’s got bacon and cheese on it, and I thought this is a great burger. I always said I wanted to make a burger like that one, but better. I’m not a rye bread or Swiss cheese guy, so ours is American cheese and local sourdough.”

As far as what else is new or might be coming for Fryborg, we’ll be mum on some of it until Gibbons is ready. We’ll only say that he’s considering obtaining a beer and wine license, plus events could soon be a thing, and so could a “sweet” weekend morning food pop up. Stay tuned…

10 Broadway; Trumbull
203.880.9250; fryborg.com