Ever find yourself daydreaming about salty, oily tuscan bread with fresh prosciutto and earthy lettuce? Instead of booking that eight hour flight to Italy, the easier — yet equally tasty option — is located on Tokeneke Road in Darien. Cucina Daniella brings a mix of prepared Italian classics, fresh sandwiches on homemade bread and Italian-imported quality ingredients to Fairfield County.
While the gourmet grocery store opened in January, the project has been a long time coming for Chef and Owner Daniella Palazzolo. Palazzolo grew up in a food-centered Italian home with a love for the food her family in Sicily made. After 30 years in corporate America, she began selling her favorite imported Italian products — namely olive oil — at local farmer’s markets in 2019. During the pandemic Palazzolo obtained her carterring license and began selling prepared foods like meatballs and homemade pasta sauces. After seeing her success on a small scale, she worked with a women’s business development team to apply for a loan for a physical storefront and expansion of her team.
Darien native and chef Peter Crawford is the culinary braun behind lower Fairfield County's newest destination butchery, The Darien Butcher Shop. The shop focuses on high quality meat and gourmet specialty products, as well as events and catering, not to mention hot pressed sandwiches if you're looking for a new lunch option.
We had a chance to chat with Peter, and wanted to know what this carnivore cooks for himself, his preferred cut of meat, and his most memorable meal.
Alina Lawrence opened her wonderful olive oil tasting room and retail shop, Olivette, in Darien days before the New Year, resolving to bring freshly pressed, single varietal Extra Virgin Olive Oils and brilliantly flavored vinegars to Fairfield County. I recently spent a delightful 2 ½ hours sipping and slurping my way around the room, grateful for her resolution.
If you are looking for true Extra Virgin Olive Oil, with all its health and culinary benefits, the grocery aisle is a convenient place to shop, but may not be the best place to find what you are seeking. Tom Mueller, has written extensively on the perils of purchasing olive oil, and recently published Extra Virginity, The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil. To sum up his work briefly, the oil industry is fraught with fraud, and we are not always getting what we expect in the bottles we purchase.
Have you ever wondered why coffee houses bother with options at the brew bar? Do you think you could tell the difference between a $3 cup and a $6 cup if you tasted them side by side? Yes, much like wine, coffee has different varietals, single origin beans, as well as organic options. EspressoNEAT would like to invite you into their coffee obsessed world for an afternoon of sniffing, sipping, slurping, and spitting. (Nobody can handle all that caffeine at once.) They will be using a few handy tools to help keep track of what you're drinking and your discerning palate will never approach a cup of coffee in quite the same way.
Fall is here. And beyond the obvious weather changes: frost alerts, foliage color and the end to most farmers’ markets, there are other exciting changes in the lives of wine enthusiasts: Fall marks the start of the red wine drinking season!
Sure we drink red wine in the Summer, but enthusiasm for the darker reds is tempered by the weather, and the kind of red wine experiences that appear easily from a slight chill in the air can at best be forced in the heat of outdoor dining.
But as the leaves start falling and people begin to spend more time indoors, out comes the Le Creuset for stews, Emile Henry for roasts, the cast iron skillets for, well, that restaurant style pan seared rib eye. We all know that wine is made for food – and Fall food is made for red wine.
So, here, in an inaugural ditty on wine in CT Bites, we wanted to share with you not only our unfettered enthusiasm (break out the mandolines – we’re talking the kitchen variety not featured instrument in Rod Stewart’s Maggie) for thehigh season of food and wine with some recommendations about what to try and buy across the next few months leading up to Winter. (See our local resource guide with recommendations below.)
