Rowayton’s Arden’s is continuing their “After Hours” dinner series for the third summer in a row, and we were lucky enough to sit down with owner Jill Lukeman to get a first look at what’s to come.
For those who aren’t familiar, Arden’s is a neighborhood cafe located in the heart of Rowayton. Its coastal decor and delicious fare makes it the perfect spot to enjoy a delicious breakfast, lunch, or cup of joe. Since opening in 2022, the team has hosted monthly dinners to expand beyond their daytime offerings.
“We have always been passionate about entertaining our friends and hosting dinner parties at home. When we opened Arden's, we thought why not bring this same spirit to our cafe and offer something that feels like dinner at a friend's house (without the headache of planning and the clean-up!). We are also passionate about music so we incorporated a music element to make the evenings even more unique and intimate,” Lukeman shared with us.
It’s Nantucket meets the Mediterranean. Arden’s, Rowayton’s newest eatery, is a community cafe offering up simple seasonal fare that’s as beautiful as it is delicious.
Inside the beachy décor is minimalist with hints of flea-market vintage finds. You’ll find antiquated oyster tins, vases filled with vibrant fresh flowers, beechwood furniture, a curated marketplace with specialty gourmet food items, locally fabricated linens alongside local honey, assorted spices, hot chili oil in beautiful glass jars, ceramics and other wonderful finds. Wonderful, whimsical floppy rattan shades resembling oversized straw hats hang from light fixtures overhead. Arden’s welcomes you in immediately with a warm embrace that doesn’t want to let you go.
Stay a while and linger over a simple menu of salads, sandwiches and toasts. While the concept is simple the recipes are elevated using ingredients from several local purveyors including Wilton’s Millstone Farm and Darien-based Flour Water Salt Bread, Nit Noi Provisions and Ilse coffee. Ingredients matter at this health-forward café. At the helm of the kitchen is Moises Aguilar formerly with Southend Backend. Here he is tasked with delivering the ultimate flavor profile from the simplest of ingredients which he has clearly mastered.
Last week I had the privilege of attending a truly wonderful and informative dinner at Wakeman Town Farm on the importance of sustainable seafood. We first heard from Norm Bloom of Copp’s Island Oysters, followed by Kevin Conroy, owner of The Restaurant at Rowayton Seafood and the Rowayton Seafood Fish Market. He was joined by Chef Charles Hoffman the restaurant’s executive chef who prepared a most memorable meal.
The Blooms have been in the oyster business since the 1940s and currently operate one of the last standing traditional oyster farms in the United States. Norm Bloom and Son is a fourth generation family-owned farm that prides itself on high quality, consistent and sustainable products. They have a fleet of 15 boats and their dedicated crew harvests oysters and clams year round from the deep, cold, and nutrient-rich waters along the coast of Connecticut.
First of all: Beacon Falls, Ansonia, Derby, Seymour, Oxford, Naugatuck, Shelton - in acronym, BAD SONS, collectively "The Valley." Once the manufacturing heart of an industrial state, the factories shut down to reopen out west, overseas, or not at all, but their brick shells remained. Once known for hats, watches, and artillery shells, there is new life to be found in old factories in the valley, which have become perfect incubators for the Connecticut brewing industry's baby boom.
The BAD SONS brewery inhabits a space in Derby just down the Housatonic river from the Yale crew team's boathouse, about 300 yds from the Dew Drop Inn. This coal-era brick monolith may be where "BAD SONS" comes to mean "Valley Beer."
Barbeque took a circuitous route to land in Connecticut. The root word, possiblybarbacoa, is reportedly Carib indian for cooking food on a raised grate over a fire. This, then, is Barbeque: the verb. You may hear people using the word this way as we approach the Fourth of July: "hot dogs, hamburgers, we're having a barbeque." Historically correct or not, I am not down with the verb: "barbeque" is a noun. It is meat - deeply, carefully smoked - and the goal is a harmonic balance of aroma and flavor, the joining together of fire and food.
The path to opening the new H'Cue Texas BBQ in Derby has as many twists, turns, stops and starts as the route to its spiritual home in Lockhart, Texas.
"When I was first looking for a location, I didn't even want a place with a kitchen." It's not what you expect to hear from the owner of a bar which has become more famous for food than its drinks. When Bronx-native Jay Carlucci bought the Dew Drop Inn in 2006, "I just wanted a neighborhood bar, I wasn't even looking north of White Plains." One major reinvention and many smaller renovations later, the Dew Drop is a linchpin of both the restaurant and social scenes in Derby, and a regular top three finisher in every list of the best wing spots in Connecticut.
"It was rough then, but it was definitely a local hangout, a neighborhood bar." His vision was to take the concept and make it better. Within the first few months every light beer was taken off the menu, and Carlucci heard about it: 'You're crazy, you didn't make money in the valley selling new beers.'
I was running late early on a Sunday afternoon when the obligatory traffic jam on I-95 caught me like doomed comet streaking toward the Sun and sudden annihilation. It took the sight of a wrecked Ferrari to remind me I'd forgotten my car. I was driving, yes, but the car I'd forgotten - like the aforementioned comet - was set in motion by gravity, not gasoline. Jack's Abby was hosting a pine car derby at The Hops Company in (quelle apropos), Derby, and I'd planned on making the campaign of my old car from Cub Scouts the B-story to this column. The lapse in memory had left me momentarily enraged until I remembered I'd just seen someone's red F430 Spider completely taco'd by the rear bumper of an 18-wheeler. Score one for perspective.
The Hops Companyis the work of Umberto Morale, who spent his early life in his native Rome before coming to the U.S. and bouncing between the restaurant scene, college, and Wall Street. He had the vision of an inclusive, German style beer hall in his head, and looked at properties all over the state before seeing the location in Derby and signing immediately.
LobsterCraft opened its first storefront location today at the entrance to Rowayton on Tokeneke Road, serving the same menu that many of our readers enjoy from its trucks.
When the River Cat shuttered its doors in March, after 12 years on Rowayton’s main drag, the closure of the beloved neighborhood restaurant and bar left a gaping hole in Rowayton’s dining and social scene.
So when I returned to check out the recently launched SAILS, a new American bistro with a spiffed up nautical vibe, I wasn’t surprised that the highly polished teak bar was three-deep with old-timers and new fans, making themselves right at home in a familiar, yet completely transformed haunt.
