Ridgefield Couple Opens Flobee's Featuring Southern Roadside Eats
Nadia Blair has fond memories of being a passenger in her parent’s car driving from Katonah through the charming town of Ridgefield to go visit her grandparents in New Haven. She’d constantly bother her mom with “Why can’t we live there?” questions to be told that the reason is because it’s “too far away from the highway.”
Spring ahead decades later and Nadia, along with her chef husband Aaron, don’t only live in Ridgefield, but they’ve opened a restaurant where southern eats meet roadside New England charm, named after Aaron’s mother, Florence.
Located in what was a Carvel beginning in 1957, then the Ridgefield Ice Cream Shop, Flobee’s is an idea that began as a “just kidding” that turned into reality for the husband-and-wife duo.
The Depression Burger is one of two beef burgers on the menu—each is a blend of short rib, brisket, and chuck. The other is a double smash style with your choice of toppings called “Basic B.”
“I grew up knowing the building, but I never knew it was an ice cream shop,” Nadia says. “It just never looked particularly welcoming before. It was kinda run down. We’d been living in Ridgefield a few years and it went on the market. Aaron mentioned buying it as a joke. I mentioned it as a joke. We’ve remodeled four houses in the past and that’s kinda how everything we do starts. We bought it.”
But it’s not quite that simple. Nadia and Aaron’s story of getting to Ridgefield, let alone opening a spot of their own, is quite something and so it their whole history.
They first met in Austin, Texas where Aaron, a restaurant industry lifer, ran a burger trailer called F.N. Goode Burgers in the back patio of what was Texas Showdown (currently Mockingbird Saloon) with his friend, Ricardo Gutierrez, at the cusp of Austin’s food truck boom.
You could get a hot dog, or…you can get a Bird Dog. See their IG reel for a fast history lesson.
“We (Ricardo and I) were in fine dining before, but when trailers took shape in Austin, I figured I could work for someone else for 60 hours a week or I could work for myself for 60 hours a week,” Aaron says. “It was right behind the University of Texas. Fast paced, long shifts. We did everything fresh, grinded our own meat.”
And that’s where Aaron met Nadia or vice versa. She moved to Austin for college where when she wanted to go out and meet friends, it was at a quartet of bars; The Hole in the Wall, Crown & Anchor, Cain & Abel’s, and Texas Showdown, where Aaron had his truck parked.
“I asked her out multiple times,” Aaron says.
Nadia interrupts, “I would go to his trailer for cheese fries!”
“That was her way!” Aaron says.
She continues, “I wasn’t even friends with you. I was friends with Ricardo. Aaron never hung out with us. He was like this too cool hipster when that was a thing.”
Aaron attended a branch of Le Cordon Bleu down in Austin. He ended up in Austin by way of Providence, where he was born, then 20 years in Houston prior.
A marriage and five children later, it obviously worked out for The Blairs. But a hitch came their way in 2020. Aaron had left the restaurant industry and took on a managerial position at Home Depot for a better work life balance and benefits. Nadia, a teacher with summers off, ended up at her mom’s house on Cape Cod.
“I came back up this way with the kids and he was still in Austin,” she says. “It’s so hot in Austin and we couldn’t do certain things during the pandemic restrictions like go to pools. We spent the whole summer on the Cape and Aaron would come up when he could. He called me at one point into the fall asking if I was ever coming back home. So, I said, ‘What if I didn’t?’ He goes, ‘That’s not the way to tell me.’”
That’s when Nadia’s childhood dream of living in Ridgefield came to light. She had houses lined up for her and Aaron to look at together. They ultimately ended up making an offer on a home after a video call/tour. And since Aaron was, at that point, not in the restaurant industry, he was able to transfer to Connecticut to work in Home Depot locations in Trumbull and New Milford.
By way of New Orleans…a fried shrimp po’boy with shredduce, tomato, and house made remoulade.
Don’t wanna do takeout? No problem. Borrowing from their history in Austin, Flobee’s has a big back patio where you can sit, chill, and eat. And when you order, they’ll personally call out your name over a speaker system when you’d food is ready.
The thing is, Aaron’s a chef. And chefs, not always, but often times when they leave the industry, they tend to scratch that itch and go back to it.
That brings us back to the present and The Blairs purchasing the retro Ridgefield Route 7 ice cream stand.
“This had the same appeal (as what I did in Austin on the trailer) and I love the building,” Aaron says. “I’m a fan of classic cars and anything like that. We spent time bringing the building back up and getting a neon sign.”
Getting Flobee’s up and running was a true family affair in all aspects of renovation and menu R&D. The idea was to bring a smattering of popular roadside southern food to a New England customer base, most of it representing the fast casual fare they missed from their time down south. When menu testing, they called on their best friend for an opinion.
“We flew Ricardo up here to get his criticism because he’s been around and he’ll tell us like it is,” Nadia says. “He liked the food and gave us suggestions, all the while, we joked about getting the band back together. He went back to Austin, then asked if the offer was still good. He wanted to cook with his friends again, so he packed his car and drove up two weeks later.”
Gutierrez, who’s been in the hospitality business since he was six years old waiting tables, then beginning to cook when he was just 10, said it’s really about doing this because he loved the concept, loved the food, and most important, loved working with his friends again.
“I came up last October to help do R&D, see the recipes, try the food, and I realized it would work,” he says. “I loved the concept, not that I had any doubts, and I saw it as I get to come up and cook with my best friends again. I made money for other people, so why not do something with people I actually care about?”
What you’ll encounter at Flobee’s all has some southern history behind it or it’s something personal to Nadia and Aaron.
New Orleans inspo appears in fried shrimp po’boys and snowballs—the latter from a SnoWizard shaved ice machine that you’ll find in most NOLA snowball shops. There’s a bird dog, a South Carolina classic, that’s a big fried chicken tender on a hot dog bun with cheddar, bacon, thin sliced jalapeños, and hot honey mustard. And they pay homage to the Depression Burger that was created in Oklahoma during the Great Depression to cost effectively stretch beef by adding onions to it.
And of course, there’s a fried chicken sandwich.
“I cook a lot so some of these are my recipes despite not going to culinary school,” Nadia says. “Aaron and Ricardo can tweak it. Years ago, I used to host a Thursday dinner series for friends where anyone could come, bring a friend, and I’d make dinner, potluck style, but I’m a control freak so I would make an entire meal. Two of the people that came to it ended up getting married. For me, it’s extra special that people are liking the fried chicken being that I’m not even from the south.”
They also tossed something on the menu that’s a throwback to their Austin roots—a meatloaf sandwich. The loaf has a kick from habaneros mixed in and for the sandwich, they cut off a thick slice, hard sear it on the flat top to give it a crunch of a crust, then topped with caramelized onions, melted Muenster cheese, and tangy homemade BBQ sauce.
A stick-to-your-ribs hearty slice of seared meatloaf (infused with habaneros) on a Martin’s Potato Bun with caramelized onions, Muenster, and tangy BBQ sauce.
“When I worked at Café Josie, we’d make meatloaf out of the extra meat,” Aaron says. “I love spice, so I played around with jalapeños and ended up landing on habaneros in the mix. It was popular on the food truck before people went out drinking.”
Even non-meat eater can find something to dive into at Flobee’s. Fried pickles with homemade ranch for dipping, a pimento cheese sandwich, and a falafel “burger” are some of those.
“The veggie burger is what we messed with the most,” Nadia says. “We considered a portabella mushroom burger, but not everyone loves mushrooms. It was going to be a smash style with pesto and tomato. We even considered black bean. I’m Pakistani on my dad’s side, and we traveled a lot, so falafel is something I always ended up making. The sauce on it is similar to tzatziki, but it’s got Greek yogurt in it, mayo, za'atar, honey, and garlic.”
Most of what’s happening in the tiny kitchen at Flobee’s is all in-house. The butchering, the brining, the sauces, and so on.
“Ninety-nine percent of everything, we do, except for baking our own bread or making our own fries,” Aaron says. “We just don’t have the space. But what we do have, we think it’s done right.”
Ice cream for cones, cups, and shakes is via Longford’s—something Nadia grew up eating in Westchester—and it’s limited to eight hard flavors and four toppings, because as Nadia puts it, “We have five kids! We know what it’s like for parents going into a place and that whole decision-making process!”
In the brain storming process for the future, they are keeping the menu as a whole pretty tight, except for a few southern specials (I won’t spill those details) they’re tinkering with, and they’ve expressed interest in sourcing their beef from a local farm once they figure out their own demand and if the farm can keep up with it.
What’s more is Nadia and Aaron’s whole philosophy of pitching in to do things the way they feel is right like using all compostable or recyclable containers, but it’s also about treating employees well and paying them above minimum wage.
“It’s hard to find good help these days,” Nadia says. “Our kitchen staff is phenomenal and all women. The only men in kitchen are him and Ric. We pay them well; they want to come to work every day. We have a chance to do this in a way where everyone has a completely good experience.”
Aaron picks that up, “If you don’t like something, change it.”
“I’m already so attached to this first group of kids working here. It’s like preschool where you know they’ll leave, but you’ll miss them,” she continues. “Our goal is when they come back home, that they’ll come back to work in their spare time or even just to visit us. We have a chance here to do everything 100% how we wanna do it; how we feed people, how we want our employees to feel, and do what we feel is important. That’s all a big part of our ethos.”
680 Danbury Road, Ridgefield
flobees.com