Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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The town on April 12 issued a permit to demolish the 1952-built Cape at 71 Hillcrest Road down to the foundation (which will remain). A Stamford couple bought the property in March for $900,000, tax records show. The lot includes one acre in the 1-acre zone. ***

New Canaan Police reported this week the department has seen seven vandalism-related incidents through March 2019, compared to just three in the same quarter last year. Authorities also reported during the Police Commission’s regular meeting that fraud-related incidents have declined from 26 to 11 since last year, while motor vehicle violations are up to 1,218 this year from 1,170 in 2018.

Business

Dazzle Me the Old-Fashioned Way: Review of Farmer’s Table

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At some point in the last 20 years, we’ve all dined in a restaurant that was painstakingly designed to astonish its guests, or at least watched a Netflix show about one. Maybe it has a single wall made from 60,000 bottles of Pellegrino or it serves a nest of moss atop a puff of woodsmoke you’re then meant to wash down with an infusion of summer wind. These establishments deserve their ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’, and it’s all very Instagrammable, until you see that there’s a $1,200 dessert on the menu or get hopelessly lost on your way to the spooky coed bathroom. At which point, all the theatrics and architecture and molecular gastronomy in the world can’t distract you from the single most important question to ask about any restaurant: Is the food good? New Canaan is pleasantly devoid of restaurants where function follows form.

Around Town

New Digs, Same Philosophy: Farmer’s Table Re-Opens on Restaurant Row

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After a short move across Forest St. and a lengthy renovation to the former Bistro Bonne Nuit space, Farmer’s Table quietly re-opened for business last week. “I love it here, it’s really, really nice,” chef/owner Robert Ubaldo told NewCanaanite.com.  “We’re kind of moving along slowly here because we have to accommodate all the changes we’re going to make. “

The most notable change is the space itself. The new Farmer’s Table has 46 seats, nearly three times as many as the previous restaurant.

News

Building Permits Sought for Forest Street Residential-and-Retail Complex

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The owners of 21 Forest St. have put in for building permits that will see a widely anticipated mixed residential-and-retail complex come to a commercial block long known as a restaurant hub. Plans call for a three-story structure on what are really three separate lots that total about .72 acres, according to the building permit application made April 16 by Forest Street Properties LLC and plans on file at Planning & Zoning. (See the slideshow at the end of this article for a full look at artistic rendering and plans.)

The complex would include two commercial spaces—at 3,700- and 1,057-square feet, with the larger one on the north side (toward Locust)—as well as seven residential units (five on the second floor and then two larger ones on the third floor), a pocket park and 48-space parking lot. The residential units’ courtyard would include skylights to the commercial plaza below, a stone fireplace and stone-and-wood deck.

Business

New Canaan Restaurants Prep for Al Fresco Dining Season

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Despite rainy days forecast for the week ahead, New Canaan received true, prolonged tastes of spring with picture-perfect weather the past two weekends. With Spring at long last arrived in earnest, local restaurateurs such as Henry Rosenbaum of Boulevard 18 began preparation for the resulting demand for outdoor dining. “We are thrilled,” Rosenbaum said on a recent evening at Boulevard 18, also a top-5 most romantic New Canaan restaurants selection. “We had people out on Friday and Saturday night on the patio, which was the sign for spring.”

In addition to the idyllic al fresco dining on Main Street at Boulevard 18, New Canaan’s “Restaurant Row” has several options, including Cava, Tequila Mockingbird and the soon-to-be-reopened Farmer’s Table where chef Robert Ubaldo and partner Lucia Leone are working nonstop to get the former Bistro Bonne Nuit space ready for business. NewCanaanite.com received an impromptu peek at the new Farmer’s Table space, which will feature an open kitchen and rustic design in addition to the sidewalk patio.