Filtering by Tag: Ingredients,Pub

Rise Brewing Co: Nitro Cold Brew Coffee Made in CT

Ingredients Features Ingredients Coffee Brewery

CTbites Team

Years of drinking bland and commonplace cups of coffee began to take a toll on Connecticut natives and founders of RISE Brewing Co., Hudson Gaines-Ross, Grant Gyesky, Jarrett McGovern, and Justin Weinstein. In 2014, they decided to take matters in their own hands by hitting the drawing board in their New York City apartments. Bean after bean, one roast and cold-brewing method after another, they finally created a cold brew coffee, making them the founders of RISE Brewing Company. Traversing the concrete jungle with their product, they asked experienced mixologists if it was the real deal. One day, in a Brooklyn café, the espresso machine broke; RISE cold brew came to the rescue, and was a hit amongst the customers. The product became available for purchase in July of 2017.


The Social Craft Beer Bar & Kitchen in New London: 50 Hyper-local Craft Beers on Draft

Restaurant New London Beer CT Beer Bar Comfort Food Pub

CTbites Team

Sick of the same old greasy bar food consumed with flavorless big beer brands while out with colleagues or friends on Friday night? Me too. Skip the ho-hum bar and head directly to The Social, a relatively new spot on Bank Street in New London. Providing a new and much needed hang-out spot, the Social gives diners great food, a family-friendly atmosphere, and an extensive beer list; it definitely knocks it out of the park as a new place to spend Fridays after work or Saturday evenings with family or friends.

Largest Selection of Craft Beers on Draft in Southeast CT

The Social has selected hyper-local, local, regional, and U.S. beers, serving a whopping 50 on draft.


Field Trip Premium Beef Jerky Opens 1st Retail Shop in Westport

Ingredients Features Ingredients Snacks Specialty Market Openings Westport

Stephanie Webster

On December 11th, premium jerky & snack brand Field Trip opened its first store at 153 Post Road East in Westport CT.  The 500-square-foot space will be the company’s first ever brick and mortar establishment.  You can find Field Trip jerky in 50,000 retails outlets nationwide, but this is, and will be their ONLY dedicated store.

The first 1,000 customers over the weekend of December 15th/16th will receive a free meat stick if they mention having read about us on Westport Moms, Dan Woog, CTBites, or via WestportNow!


Silvia Baldini & Alina Lawrence Launch "The Secret Ingredient Girls"

Features Ingredients Online Store Local Artisan

Stephanie Webster

Silvia Baldini is a local CT chef, and a national expert and celebrity in the food and media industry. Alena Lawrence is of the few women Olive Oil experts in the US, and was the owner of Olivette, an award winning boutique and olive oil tasting room in CT. The two met several years ago and immediately discovered they shared the same passions: cooking, traveling and living a high-quality life to the fullest. Now, they have joined to create The Secret Ingredient Girls, a curated site that sells only ingredients that adhere to their discerning taste and expertise in the food industry. 


Barcelona Wine Bar & Restaurant Offers Guests Garden-to-Table Dining

Features Fairfield farm fresh Farm to Table Ingredients

CTbites Team

Robert Atkinson is impatient with Mother Nature. The 12 vegetable beds beneath the patio of the Barcelona Wine Bar & Restaurant in Fairfield are awaiting the seeds for their sixth year of providing homegrown ingredients to the Fairfield restaurant’s kitchen, but the New England weather has not been cooperating.

This will be the sixth year of Barcelona’s vegetable garden, which offers patrons the opportunity to select ingredients for preparation by the restaurant’s kitchen staff. “I always like to tell people it’s better than farm-to-table,” continued Atkinson. “It is garden-to-table, and there is no transportation because the farmers aren’t even driving it over.”


CT Guide To Raw Milk: Why Raw and Where To Buy in CT?

Features Ingredients Ingredients Farm to Table CT Farms Local Farm

Luke Shanahan

I submit that raw milk might just be the most real of all foods. 

Start with the fact that milk is the only food created specifically to feed something. (Honey doesn’t count, as the pollen honey is made from has its own agenda.) Synonymous with nourishment, raw milk is the first food most human beings—all mammals—ingest. And raw milk, for it to be free of any off flavors and to be safe to drink, requires painstaking care to produce. Every little step in the process matters.

The subtle and intricate flavors in raw milk, the very opposite of the one-note flavor of pasteurized milk or, worse, the waxy cardboard taste vacuum of skim, come from the undenatured biocomplexity in unpasteurized milk. When I read chemists-for-hire claiming, on behalf of big commercial dairy, that there isn't that much nutritional difference between pasteurized and raw, I choose to trust my palate. Well, my palate and the biochemists who say that the difference is real and considerable. 


Ivy’s Gourmet Offers Completely Unique Granola You'll Want To Eat All Day

Features Ingredients Ingredients Local Artisan Breakfast

Sarah Green

Move over, all you factory-produced, sugar blasted, oat-heavy granolas - there’s a new-chew in town. It’s just about that time of year when your pantry could use a purge so make some room for Sarah Tamm’s small-batch delights; time to stock up on IVY’S GOURMET granola.  With a predominance of fruits, seeds and nuts as the base for all her granola blends, Tamm uses dynamic spice combinations to brighten the palette and creates interesting flavor profiles - both sweet and savory. Sure, you can purchase Chocolate Almond or Cinnamon Raisin if the “norm” is what rolls your oats. But why not be daring and try something out of the ordinary? Curry Cashew, by chance? Strawberry Rosewater? Sarah Tamm has created bold and satisfying artisanal granola, sold in several sizes from snack to bulk.


Friday Froth: Taking New England Out Of Hazy IPAs

Features Beer CT Beer Ingredients

James Gribbon

Lately I've been doing some studying up on hops, which is - naturally - why I'm going to start this week's column off by being mad at yeast. I am comprehensively sick and tired of unfiltered IPAs; exhausted and at my wit's end trying to find an existing beer I can rely on to not look like milky pond water upon its exit from the can. Unsightly floating clumps, and my beer burning my throat, aren't even the biggest irritations. The worst is the style has had, until just now, "New England" in its name. Thankfully this week the Brewers Association has officially renamed it "Hazy or Juicy IPA." The BA's Beer Style Guidelines are effectively the AP style book of beer writing, and they've relegated the defacto descriptor of juice-bombs to the backseat. Hooray for the BA, and death to trub, amen.


Stew Leonard’s Chocolate Bunny Milk is BACK March 20th

Ingredients Features Specialty Market Holiday Ingredients

CTbites Team

Yup...It's back for Easter. A half-gallon glass jug of Stew’s Chocolate Bunny Milk will be available for $5.99 starting on March 20, 2018 at all six Stew Leonard’s locations.  Stew Leonard’s signature farm fresh milk is mixed with creamy milk chocolate to create a sweet, irresistible chocolate milk that tastes just like a classic chocolate Easter bunny.  Stew Leonard’s milk is delivered fresh to our stores from award-winning dairy farms in upstate NY and is free from artificial growth hormones (rBST) and antibiotics.  The milk will only be available for a limited time. 


Local Ingredients: The Araucana Egg, A Wild Blue Wonder

Features Ingredients Ingredients Local Farm Specialty Market

Luke Shanahan

Writer Luke Shanahan contemplates the virtues of a truly excellent fresh egg with Lloyd Allen of Double L Market. 

Consider the egg. 

Any serious cook knows its singular importance in the kitchen. Many cooks—serious and novice alike—remember the egg as the first thing they ever learned to cook. 

In the book The Next Course, rock-&-roller chef Marco Pierre White, who at 33 became the youngest cook ever to be awarded three Michelin stars, reveals his country side when he suggests that scrambled (gulls) eggs with celery salt served with mayonnaise—an emulsion of egg yolk, acid and oil—may be a worthy last meal on earth.  (Here's a handy list of local CT farms that produce fresh eggs.


Stew Leonard's Christmas Cookie Milk Back For The Holidays

Ingredients Features Holiday Specialty Market Ingredients Kid Friendly Kids

Stephanie Webster

Stew’s Christmas Cookie Milk will be back in stock at at all Stew Leonard's stores in Connecticut this week.  This is the second consecutive year they’ve sold this special milk. 

Stew Leonard's Christmas Cookie Milk is sweet, creamy milk that has the same flavor as a sugar cookie that’s been dunked in milk.  It comes straight from award-winning dairy farms in upstate NY and is free from artificial growth hormones (rBST) and antibiotics.  This milk goes from the farm to each of our stores in as little as 24 hours. 

Stew Leonard's Christmas Cookie Milk is available only for a limited time and is sold in a ½ gallon glass container for $5.99.  


Grill Like a Butcher: Simple Tips to Nail Your Summer BBQ sponsored post

Features Ingredients Ingredients Specialty Market Local Artisan Homepage

CTbites Team

When Connecticut food adventurer Kyle Rothschild can’t find an ingredient he likes, he makes his own. That led him to his latest venture: Brown Dog Fancy, a line of organic ketchups and mustards that shake up traditional notions of what makes a great-tasting condiment and marinade

Timing is everything in a kitchen, and Brown Dog Fancy’s arrival to the local food scene couldn’t be better.  Cooks, and the people who eat their food, have demanded organic, high-quality, and ethically sourced poultry, meat, and fish for years. Yet, far less attention has been paid to the condiments that accompany them.

“We spend so much time buying responsible and sustainable main ingredients, but then we marinate or top them with condiments that are full of fillers and words I cannot begin to try and pronounce. I want to know what’s in my food, and I think other people do, too,” says Kyle, who began making condiments for weekly beach barbeques that he and his wife, Sarah, hosted for friends near their Stamford, CT, starter home.


Pub Fare Extraordinaire at Inishmor Pub in Colchester

Restaurant Colchester Pub Gastropub Lunch Bar Comfort Food Homepage Burgers

Hope Simmons

Meet Alex Levere—his roots may be French and German, but the luck of the Irish is clearly smiling upon him. He grew up in the restaurant industry on the shoreline, spent some time in Europe—specifically, you guessed it, in Ireland—in his early 20s, then Boston during his college years and beyond.

“Long story short, the economy crashed, I graduated, and there was nothing really going on, so I was bartending at a place, and they offered me an assistant management job. So, I took that, then I went to manager. Then I went to general manager and, right before the place was sinking, the head chef quit, so I took over the kitchen. I was like, I know I can do this, and I did it, but it was too little, too late. And that’s when we came across this place!” Now he’s turning out some truly inventive flavors at the Inishmor Pub in Colchester.


Savannah Bee Company Opens in Downtown Westport's Bedford Square

Features Ingredients Ingredients Specialty Market Westport

Stephanie Webster

Savannah Bee Company is bringing its Southern charm and hospitality to the Northeast, summer 2017. One of the leaders in all things Honeybee has just opened a boutique in Westport's Bedford Square.

Savannah Bee Company is known for its premium artisanal honeys, honey-based health and beauty products, and mission to educate people about the wonders of the Honeybee and preserving the art of beekeeping.


Harbor Harvest in Norwalk: Locally Sourced Retail Food Market w/ Innovative Technology

Restaurant Specialty Market Ingredients Catering Local Farm Norwalk Lunch

Peter Dunay

For Bob Kunkel, the Co-owner of Harbor Harvest in Norwalk, CT, he is a true mariner whose blood is part saltwater and whose first love is the sea. With forty years in the restaurant business and a background in ship builders, Harbor Harvest is a market with a vision like no other. Mr. Kunkel does not settle for anything but fabulous which means all his products are locally sourced and of the highest quality. He makes a point that sustainability and being environmentally conscious is paramount to a healthy community and the world which has to lead to some epic initiatives.


Bartaco's Signature Libelula Tequila Now Available in CT + Margarita Recipe

Ingredients Features Cocktails Ingredients Mexican

Emma Jane-Doody Stetson

If you love Bartaco’s signature margarita we have great news… the tequila used to make their cocktail is now available for purchase in liquor stores across Connecticut!  Libelula tequila made its official debut in the Connecticut market in January 2017, but as the summer months approach it’s becoming more and more visible on shelves throughout the state.

“This is the exact tequila used to make Bartaco’s world famous margaritas!” says Curt Goldman, the Executive Importer of CNI Brands, longtime partner of Bartaco group.  “No change whatsoever!”


Nutty Bunny Non-Dairy Gluten-Free Frozen Dessert, Made in CT

Features ice cream Dessert Ingredients

Renee Weisz

When Pamela Aflalo decided to create a non-dairy, gluten-free, frozen dessert product, her idea was innovative, health-aware, and maybe a little nutty like her brand name Nutty Bunny. After her daughter, Sophie, developed a severe dairy reaction, Pamela’s culinary experience at the National Gourmet Institute and love for kitchen experimentation, especially for “vegan-izing” recipes, combined to establish her current full-time business.


Harlan Publick Still Kicking Up the Flavors in South Norwalk

Restaurant Norwalk SONO Caribbean Outdoor Dining Bar Cocktails Pub

jeffrey schlesinger

The day started with snow flurries in Denver, pre-dawn, long week, long flight, two hours from Kennedy to CT. When my wife asked where we should eat, the temptation for a culinary transport to the Caribbean was too much to resist. After a quick drive to SONO, we were seated at one of my favorite restaurants, Harlan Publick, where Chef Kamal Rose is still creating magical combinations, balancing the spiciness of the Islands, with a delicate focus on subtleness.