Some days, you just don’t want to cook at home, but you want to serve yourself or your family a healthy delicious meal. Sure, you can order in from a local restaurant, but those dishes seldom come with an ingredients list, and more often than not, are a long way from locally or organically sourced. Enter Hemma Kitchen, a Fairfield County based meal planning solution to the never ending conundrum…what do I serve for dinner tonight?
In Swedish, the word "hemma" embodies the concept of home. In today's fast-paced world, the significance of eating at home and having healthy meals cannot be overstated and directly impacts our quality of life. Eating at home provides an opportunity to take control of our nutrition, allowing us to prioritize wholesome ingredients. Hemma Kitchen allows you to enjoy healthy home cooked meals every day of the week.
At the helm of Hemma Kitchen is a chef with whom you may already be familiar, Chef Molly Healey. Healey was the owner of the much beloved Manna Toast in Westport before launching Hemma.
Hemma Kitchen offers an a la carte menu, easily browsable online, that changes weekly. Menu items are based on the seasons as well as what Healey can procure at local farmers’ markets and specialty stores carrying organic ingredients. For Healey, finding the very best organic ingredients, sourced as locally as possible, is critical to her mission. 100% of her meat is from Matt Storch’s Saugatuck Provisions. Her organic salmon is from Maine. Everything you find on the Hemma menu is also free from: refined sugar, seed oils, preservatives, gums and fillers
You’re probably still recovering from the seasonal avalanche of candy corn, but the “other” holidays are now peeking around the corner-and it’s always better to be ready for them when they jump out at you. Whether for cozy and familial Thanksgiving gatherings, spirited and sparkly holiday parties, a Let’s-Get-2023-Right New Year’s celebration or any of your special events and holidays next year, these caterers will help you feast and fete with panache. Best part about this listing is that many of these caterers work throughout the entire state of Connecticut and even the tri-state area. Go forth and celebrate! Here are 18 Connecticut Caterers who will make your next event a stress-free delicious success!
Tired of cooking? Or maybe you love to cook but just can’t face the stove one…more…night. There are a million reasons why help is sometimes needed in the kitchen: a dear friend had a baby and hasn’t slept in 3 weeks, a neighbor is sick, your parents are getting older and you want to make sure they eat well, you’ve been away on vacation and would love to have some meals for when you return, or, well, you’re just plain sick of cooking (as we mentioned). It is vacation time, after all. Whether you need prepared meals for someone special or just to supplement your own cooking and streamline life a bit, there are plenty of options that make it easy. And delish! That’s precisely why we are highlighting these eight fantastic services. Some cater to dietary needs, some focus on local or organic ingredients, and all offer many tasty options to satisfy.
Here are 8 home meal delivery services we have enjoyed in Connecticut.
I’ve got to be honest. I really don’t like to cook. I LOVE to eat, but like many parents, the daily dinner drama is, well, just that…a ground hogs day “oh lord not again” situation. For this reason, I have spent a good deal of time, sampling and reviewing the local meal delivery services/caterers who can provide me with a dinner experience that feels “home cooked” but only involves my heating things up in and around my oven. #lazyandlovingit
One might think that identifying this type of local ‘heat & eat’ meal delivery service would be an easy task, but the requirements involved in successfully prepping large quantities of food that fares well in transit, and then is to be re-heated by an “at home cook,” is trickier than you might think. Meal prep like this requires determining the proper balance of par-cooking dishes, heating instructions for dummies, and developing meal plans that work for any and all family dynamics.
There are some ingredients in this world that, when you add them to anything, they pretty much make it spectacular. Bacon, for example. It would probably make a sneaker taste good. “Air” is another ingredient. Air-a bizarre ingredient on an episode of Chopped? No. Air, as in fresh air. Eating outside. Have you noticed that when you eat a lobster roll outside on a deck overlooking the ocean, it makes you happy? Or eat a grilled burger at a picnic table on a warm summer evening? Or sip a frothy cappuccino at a sidewalk cafe? What is the common ingredient here? Fresh air. Good food combined with a hefty dose of the outdoors.
And lucky for you, we’ve put together a long list of our favorite eateries (40+) that have lovely outdoor dining spaces.
If we missed an outdoor venue you frequent, please share your find below.
As food writers, photographers, and chefs, we have the pleasure of eating a lot of really great food. Fairfield County has experienced something of a restaurant explosion over the past year, as new chefs move in and move on, and menus expand. We've endeavored to expand our coverage beyond those borders, seeking to cover more of the state and sharing those experiences that are worth seeking out. Instead of coming up with a top ten list ourselves, we asked the CTbites extended family to share some of their most memorable meals and dining experiences this past year.
"My Signature Dish" is a new CTbites column featuring a rotating cast of chefs, and the dishes that define their cooking style, or simply make them happy to fire up the stove.
Jodi Bernhard hardly hesitated when choosing her signature dish at Fortina, Christian Petroni’s "casually hip" Italian restaurant in Armonk. Her eyes gleaming, she said, "It's our Pork Braciole." Braciole, hip?
If you grew up Italian, you probably hold memories of Braciole near and dear. This classic rolled, stuffed meat roast, usually serves as centerpiece for those sprawling homemade Italian dinners that lazily linger across Sunday afternoons into evening. Braciole invokes home. And family. Instant Nostalgia.
Ok, so how does a chef modernize a memory? Autograph a treasured family photo?
“That is the gist of our approach at Fortina,” Jodi explained. “ We try to not stray too far from ‘mom's’ version, but still make it a restaurant dish with our stamp on it. We are true to simplicity and flavor.”
The notion of putting “Mom’s dish” on Fortina’s playful, hip menu was Christian’s, one of the restaurant’s owners. (Patroni and and Jodi once cooked together at Barcelona in nearby Greenwich.) Though she and Christian work as collaborators, the task of “restaurantizing” this homey meal was largely up to Bernhard.
Cooking with wood fire has a preternatural, almost primal appeal. You could argue that as cavemen, it was our first foray into comfort food. The intense heat and smoke has the power to transform otherwise unassuming ingredients. The six-month old Fortina in Armonk, begins with this deceptively simple ethos–Italian food, cooked simply, in wood fired ovens–and elevates it with a thoughtful culinary execution and a familiar, if familial, disarming vibe.
“There is a complexity to the simplicity,” said Rob Krauss, one of Fortina’s three partners along with John Nealon and Christian Petroni, nailing what makes the restaurant’s cuisine tick. I’m fairly certain Krauss is also referring to the restaurant’s team, an extended family of sorts that works equally hard at the food as they do cultivating the culture at Fortina
More than the sum of its wood-fired parts, Fortina relies on the culinary prowess and Italian heritage of partner and Executive Chef Christian Petroni, formerly of Barcelona Greenwich, as both muse and ringleader. “My background is Italian, I grew up spending summers in Ponza. One of my favorite restaurants is Peasant. As a young cook, Frank de Carlo was an inspiration as a chef. I was intrigued by cooking in wood ovens. There is something about it that is so gratifying. It’s a beautiful thing.” Along with chef de cuisine Jodi Bernhard, formerly of Barcelona, the kitchen has the creative chops responsible for its daily printed menu.
Fairfield county residents will be soon crossing the border (passports not required)-- into Upper Westchester County's suburb of Armonk, after this week's opening of Fortina. Chef Christian Petroni, recently Executive Chef of Greenwich's Barcelona Restaurant, is joined by John Nealon, ex-GM of the same provenance and Nealon's childhood friend, Rob Krauss as business partners. Both Nealon and Krauss originally hail from Westport. Petroni, a local himself, is also co-owner of Cooked & Co., in Scarsdale.
Recalling the many memorable meals he had eaten during his time spent in Italy, Petroni's vision was to bring Italy's simple authentic flavors, cooking methods and presentation to the dishes he serves at Fortina. This vision is executed with the help of 2 wood burning ovens imported straight from Naples, Italy which serve as a focal point in the main dining room. In fact with the exception of just a few menu items, everything is cooked in these fiery hearths...even a pasta dish or two! (And you should hear Petroni when he speaks of his ovens...like a proud new Papa )
