Elm in New Canaan: Phase 2.0 Features Renovations and Remixed Menu
Chefs that have a bustling restaurant never take a full month off. For Luke Venner, “vacation” wasn’t pina coladas in the Caribbean, nor was it one of his fishing or hunting excursions. Instead, he was mostly in New Canaan, at Elm, remixing popular dishes, creating new ones, and reimagining and renovating the entire dining room.
Don’t freak out. Your beloved Double-Double was unharmed in the process.
But the dining room? Transformed. And it’s something that Venner—who’s in his 10th season as Elm’s executive chef and co-owner—has been meaning to tackle for quite a while. Talk to him about it and you can tell he’s feeling refreshed about all of it.
“There were little kinks we lived with here like the host stand being in the entryway; it was awkward,” he says. “The acoustics weren’t great before either. We don’t want it to be like a library in here, but the sound, it’s better. I didn’t want it to look totally different, just reimagined and lighter. We started with the upholstery and once we got to the design, we knew if we’re really gonna do it, we needed to bring someone in.”
One fresh menu addition are the duck a l’orange bao—four to an order—an ode to one of Venner’s favorite Chinese dishes, Peking duck, but also incorporating his French culinary background.
Deviled eggs with pickled carrot and hot smoked trout
The mushroom flatbread (black truffle and sweet onions) didn’t go away.
That “someone” is Christian P. Arkay-Leliever, who’s likely designed the interior inside the restaurant you’re eating at this week, and who Venner praised by saying, “he can see things other people can’t see.”
Safe to say that blockade of a host stand was amongst the first obstacles to get knocked down, and by doing so, there’s a clear path to a fully redesigned bar, making room for a few extra bar stools, and an overall more open feel.
The cocktail menu has been overhauled, focusing on classics, and classics with minor tweaks.
Negroni - Malfy Gin, Bitter Roma, Carpano Antica Vermouth, Campari
Daiquiri - Bacardi, pineapple, lime, strawberry dust, egg white
The now much brighter dining room can also be transformed to be semi private, to host standing cocktail receptions, or even one big community table when Elm has a private event on the books.
The proper word for this version of Elm is “remix.” And that applies to the menu, too.
“It feels like a new start,” Venner says. “It was an opportunity for me, when the machine stopped for a month, to look at each dish and think about it differently.”
Don’t worry, though, even as you continue reading, the Double-Double is still as you remember it! The pasta? Still made fresh and in-house, and the tuna tartare and the steak tartare, “remixed,” according to Venner, and served with homemade waffle potato chips.
Regulars will quickly notice the menu is now broken up into sections; tartare, salads (the super popular warm lobster cobb with bacon and green goddess is still there!), fruit di mare, meats and chops, burgers. You get the idea.
Elm’s “Meats | Chops” section gives diners more, beefier choices like veal Milanese, filet, dry aged striploin, bone-in dry aged ribeye, or a skirt steak with chimichurri.
Branzino w/sweet and spicy julienned veggies
Lobster chitarra, calabrian chilis, and heavy on the lobster.
Gone, is the smoked section, something that Venner wasn’t into anymore.
“We contemplated opening a small brick-and-mortar with casual BBQ,” he says. “We looked across the street (even where Van Leeuwen is), but didn’t find anything we wanted in the right part of town. People associate us more with fine dining. The ribs had a little fine dining flair, but I grew tired of that. I’ve been here over 10 years and if we’re gonna make this place more mature and more elevated, then I looked at the menu in the same way. A lot of it is stuff I like to eat when I go out. There’s always French influence since I trained in French restaurants my whole career, but I fell in love with Italian when I moved to the East Coast. Now our cocktails are classics with little twists and a wine list that we like. I’m trying to create something timeless that people want to return to.”
Some of Venner’s additions are deviled eggs with hot smoked trout, a whole butterflied crispy skin branzino, dover sole with cauliflower, capers, almonds, and brown butter, a fun mashup of Chinese and French in Peking duck a l'orange bao, and a roasted half chicken that chef calls his “favorite thing on the menu.”
Elm’s overall seasonal philosophy will remain in place, changing out certain dishes quarterly, and that will include one of the burgers, listed on the menu as “Dry Age Special.” Currently, that special is the burger that Venner created for the movie theater next door. Now that he’s no longer involved in that project, his affinity for that pub style burger made the cut for Elm’s reintroduction.
“I felt like we should have three burgers; one is a tribute to my obsession with Hillstone Restaurant Group’s veggie burger (ours is a homemade brown rice, red quinoa, roasted carrots and beets, caramelized onions, and black beans all ground together) and some kind of tavern burger, a style that I prefer,” he says. “We could obviously never change the Double-Double. And burgers are a good price point if you feel you don’t want to spend a lot of money, you can have that and be satisfied.”
As for the Dry Age Special, that will rotate seasonally, and the tease for fall is “something with truffles.”
Pavlova (juicy blueberries, violet cream, meringue) and an espresso martini, if you desire.
Another major menu overhaul comes from consulting pastry chef Alexandra Puglisi of Le Coucou who created her interpretations of classics like chocolate lava cake, panna cotta, and light, airy ricotta zeppole with boozy banana dulce de leche, something Venner said was necessary for Elm’s maturation.
“I never had time to pull back and recipe test, even though I have formal pastry training,” he says. “It’s one thing to get an ingredient at a farmers’ market and throw a special on. It’s another thing to recipe test and change it up by the gram. It’s nice to have her come in. She’s awesome.”
And by the time you read this, Elm’s afternoon tea on Fridays and Saturdays will have a refresh courtesy of Puglisi, who will do the sweets, and Venner who will do the savory. Your tower of tea snacks, and a remixed restaurant, no matter when you go, await your presence.
73 Elm Street, New Canaan
203.920.4994, elmrestaurant.com/
