Chef Jared Falco Returns with Falco—A BJ Ryan's Restaurant, Now Open in Norwalk

Jared Falco poses with BJ Lawless, Keith Torpey, and Peter Carr after breaking the news announcing their partnership to open Falco—A BJ Ryan’s Restaurant.

Photo credit: Melissa Olguin

Since it opened in the latter half of October, Falco, Norwalk’s newest restaurant, is undoubtedly Fairfield County’s hottest opening. Try walking in past 5:30 and you might find yourself babysitting barstools just a to snag a seat when someone leaves. And reservations? I know people that are booking them weeks or more out.

For chef and co-owner Jared Falco, his namesake Italian-American restaurant is his return to form.

Octopus & potato with marinara, pimenton, and lemon aioli is Italian meets patatas bravas.

Falco is small plate heavy. You could essentially fill up on starters here, or, order a bunch if you’re dining with a group. One of his signatures is this pillowy, airy, herby, salty focaccia meant for ripping apart with your hands. It comes with Calabrian chili butter and salted whipped ricotta.

Massive, pounded thin, then breaded and fried cutlets are usually on every table. But it’s not all meat and carbs. A bunch of apps are shareable veggies or salads. If you are sticking with meat and fish, though, expect the finest imported cold cuts, fried beef-veal-pork meatballs, old school shrimp oreganata, and a Hoodoo Brown smoked sausage atop green lentils with salumi vinaigrette and truffle.

After things didn’t work out at Bar Rosina’s, where Falco was previously a partner and executive chef for over four years, he spent a year consulting for Bill Taibe at Kawa Ni and the newly opened hi’Amba, as well as doing a few pop-ups of his own at BJ Ryan’s and Hoodoo Brown BBQ.

“It crushed me (when I was done at Bar Rosina’s) and it definitely impacted my wife and my family, but me, in my head, the way I work is like, I’m comfortable in this area,” Falco shares. “It was still emotional. I thought I was going to be there for the rest of my life. But I wasn’t angry. Somehow, I also felt a sense of relief. I was still working down in Delray Beach on Beach Club and I’m still involved there in some way.”

How Falco, the restaurant, came to fruition started with those pop-up dinners at BJ Ryan’s. Once announced, they sold out quickly, something like 130-140 tickets.

“BJ Lawless always wanted to open a straightforward Italian restaurant because he likes that kind of food and it’s part of his heritage, so he asked me how I felt about consulting on it if he were to do it and he’d give me a piece of it, just like the deal I have down in Florida,” Falco explains.

Believe this, these aren’t the frozen cheese ravioli you had growing up. They’re infinitely better.

Bucatini so thick, you’ll have to lose your shame and slurp.

Around the time when Falco was no longer working in a kitchen full time, he and Lawless, already friends for about 17 years, decided to take a trip to Northport to visit a restaurant that’s important to both of them, Maroni Cuisine, as Lawless and the late Michael Maroni were friends, and Falco had previously worked there under Maroni and cites him as a mentor. Before they feasted at Maroni’s, they stopped off for a drink, and Lawless simply asked before they took their first sips, “is there a chance we can do a restaurant together?”

With the answer being “yes,” Lawless, Falco, and other partners in Keith Torpey (who co-owns BJ Ryan’s East with Lawless) and Peter Carr (former general manager at Peter Luger and BanC House) made the official announcement to attendees at one of Falco’s dinners at BJ Ryan’s in June 2026 that they were already hard at work transforming the space at 2 Wilton Avenue that was most famously the home of The Lighthouse and Ash Creek Saloon.

Prosciutto pizza with marinara, long hot peppers, and ricotta

At the bar, cocktails are mostly classic with a couple fun twists, like this clarified Gotham sour. And if amaro is your thing, the “GG” is a rocks glass full of it with an orange foam float. Of course, there’s plenty of wine, beer, and house-made non alcoholic options, too.

Paying homage to the Italian-American restaurants he grew up going to, Falco immediately gives you that vibe, only modernized. Red and white checkerboard tablecloths aren’t there, but the floor is just that, and on the walls are a mix of family photos (including one of Falco’s uncles with John Gotti), photography of iconic restaurants, and custom artwork by Falco’s wife, Sarah D’Oliveira-Falco. Coincidentally, Sarah’s mother, Kim Nathanson, a prominent interior designer, fulfilled her son-in-law’s dreams of capturing the essence of the golden era of New York’s Italian-American restaurants.

The 160-seat restaurant has a few focal points, too. One being the wine room with a vintage cash register on display (in true BJ Ryan’s fashion) encased in a small glass room in the dining room. The other is at the pizza counter where hangs a picture of a smiling Michael Maroni, symbolizing him looking over the kitchen. There are a few seats there that are meant for VIPs and chefs so they can watch the action on the line.

If you’ve had Falco’s cooking in the past, whether it was back in the day at Bar Sugo, at his two different stints at Fortina, or if you followed him to Speedy Romeo in Brooklyn, the homemade pasta, the ultra-fermented no flop, crunchy pizza, and those updated red sauce joint classics should look familiar, but with a few tweaks.

Mortadella pizza with pistachios, burrata, and ricotta

“We’re blending flours here, so it’s a little different,” Falco says. “In the past, I was using flour that was made in the U.S., shipped to Italy for packaging, then sold back to the U.S. We worked with a company to figure out which flours to use. For the pizza, we use five different Italian flours. You see that V on the bottom when you fold a slice? That’s how New York pizza should be. All that Portnoy stuff, the undercarriage, it’s all smoke. Our fermentation might be more than anyone in Connecticut. It’s naturally leavened, both cold and room temperature, for minimum three days, but we definitely go more. Our fridge runs a little colder, so it builds way more flavor. All that color on the dough is from fermentation and great structure. The cheese is basically baked into the air pockets in the dough. I’m really proud of this pie. Right now, hydration is around 66-percent, but we change it almost weekly. It’s down to a science. We have a guy here who write everything down in a notebook. It’s more technical than I did in the past. More cheffy.”

On the pasta side, Falco is working with pasta maker and instructor, Vita Palmieri of Vita Pasta Lab. Early on, Falco’s pasta offerings are rigatoni with spicy vodka sauce, pappardelle bolognese, cavatelli with sweet sausage, broccolini, bianco sardo, and chili, a super thick-noodled bucatini cacio e pepe, and a cheese ravioli that’s nostalgic to chef’s childhood.

“You’ll find this style of bucatini in Rome right now, and I’ve seen it in Brooklyn, but not a lot of people are doing it here yet,” Falco says. “The ravioli is marinara, a lot of black pepper, parm, and good olive oil. Every Wednesday night, my father demanded cheese ravioli. This is a take on that with sheep’s milk ricotta from Italy with pecorino of the highest quality. All pastas are made here. Vita works here. She’s my chef. Her and I always had a great relationship.”

Photo credit: Melissa Olguin

Tomato + onion pizza, chicken saltimbocca, and an arugula salad with candied hazelnuts, pistachios, plenty of pecorino, and lemon vinaigrette

In addition to the massive, pounded thin, crispy chicken cutlet and a very old school shrimp oreganata, what’s getting attention is a juicy roasted chicken served saltimbocca style, only fancier as it sits on a truffle-lemon beurre blanc, topped with 24-month aged prosciutto, and served with a helping of duck fat fried potatoes.

“Traditionally it’s a cutlet, a veal cutlet,” Falco says. “Some Italian restaurants years ago would say they’re using veal and they’d use pork, sitting it in milk to draw the blood out. Saltimbocca is prevalent to where I’m from on Staten Island and in Brooklyn, Queens, and on Long Island where lots of famous restaurants serve it. A lot of people around here haven’t had it much or at all.”

Once they fully hit their operating stride, Falco should add a handful more of both pizzas and pastas, some of which will involve more filled pastas.

As for Jared Falco, he’s just happy and excited to be back running service and cooking the food he’s become known for.

“It’s a better version of what we started to do at Fortina,” he says. “Only specific restaurants are cooking like this right now like Don Angie and Fausto. If Christian Petroni had a restaurant at this moment, he’d be doing something like this. I’m grateful to be on the same team as BJ. He’s incredible. I needed someone to support me the way he does and allow me to just go.”

2 Wilton Avenue, Norwalk
203.750.9688, bjryansfalco.com