Around Town

Biz on Biz: Weed & Duryea on Favorite New Canaan Foods

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In this installment of Biz on Biz, we traveled to Weed & Duryea on Grove Street to ask about a favorite product or service of another business in New Canaan. The hardware store, which has been running as long as our town’s railroad system, was founded soon after Francis E. Weed returned from the Civil War in 1865, historians say. Inside, we asked retail manager Barry Coleman about local favorites and he responded by reviewing New Canaan eateries he likes most. The first place he mentioned was Chinese restaurant Ching’s Table, right on Main Street. “I’ve been going there for years,” said Coleman, a Trumbull resident.

Biz on Biz

Biz on Biz: Mackenzie’s Enjoys Eating At Ching’s Table

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For this installment of Biz on Biz—a chance for local business owners and workers to tell us about a favorite product or service from a fellow merchant—we caught up with South Avenue mainstay Mackenzie’s. When we decided to to take a look inside the newspaper, candy, greeting card, and office supply store, we spoke with owner, Jim Berry, to find out about his favorite places in New Canaan. Immediately Berry responded telling the New Canaanite that he liked all of the restaurants in New Canaan. “Well I like the restaurants,” Berry said. “They are all very good.”

Although Berry likes all of the restuarants in town, Ching’s Table would have to be favorite.

News

‘Loving the House and Everything in It’: The Kantors’ Sustainable New Canaan Home

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New Canaan resident Etta Kantor can’t pinpoint just when her passion for the environment and sustainable living took hold. Yet one day about 11 years ago, she turned to her husband as they drove away from their Weston home in her Chevy station wagon and said: “I want to get rid of the car.”

Kantor thought at the time that she’d get a Prius (and put down $500 with Toyota of Westport), but then she read something about cars that run on vegetable oil, and soon bought a new VW Jetta, retro-fitted it to run on vegetable oil (with just a little help from diesel to start the engine), started getting her new “fuel” from Ching’s Table on Main Street and Hunan Taste on Elm and launched a small side business selling filtered oil to fellow “veggie car” drivers. “We had an argument about it,” a smiling Kantor recalled Thursday of that long-ago car discussion, sitting in the rustic, hemlock-beamed Great Room of what local Realtors call a rare if not singular New Canaan solar-powered home (94 percent of its energy is solar). “But that never deterred me. My poor husband.