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Alexandra Martinakova |
Jul 11, 2025 4:30 pm
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Alexandra Martinakova Photos
The small space got crowded fast as everyone checked out the new location.
Ten months after Elm City Market closed its 360 State St. location, the grocery store reopened its doors Friday in a new, smaller site a few blocks away, in a ground-floor commercial space at the old Coliseum site.
“Fresh, fabulous and photogenic Elm City Market,” city Deputy Economic Development Administrator Cathy Graves said during a celebratory ribbon cutting. “Elm City Market is not just a grocery store, it’s an experience, so come on down.”
Colin Caplan: “This is like playing a pizza game — and we have to play by the rules.”
Doug Coffin and Liane Varipapa: Ready to serve a record-setting 5,000.
To make pizza history on the New Haven Green, you’ll need to eat two full slices — and stay until the very end of the party.
That’s just one of several strict requirements New Haven must follow as it attempts to break the Guinness World Record for the largest pizza party. The current title is held by the Pizza World Champions in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where 3,357 pizza-eating participants gathered on Jan. 21, 2023.
New Haven’s goal? A record-crushing 5,000 pizza lovers on the Green this September.
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Alexandra Martinakova |
Jul 8, 2025 11:35 am
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Alexandra Martinakovas Photos
The theme of the week: Berries.
Pie + Music = Westville.
Nnamdi Udeh’s blueberry-almond cobbler took the cake Monday, by winning the top prize at the first Hi-Fi Pie Fest of the summer.
“I like blueberry cobbler more than pie, so I did a cobbler topping, and then to give it some crunch I put some turbinado sugar on top,” Udeh said. “I hope it was interesting. I like baking. This year I was able to get enough time off to put it together and it was really exciting to win.”
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Sonia Ahmed |
Jul 4, 2025 10:57 am
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Shalepia Piper grills a sausage at her cart Thursday afternoon.
A regular hot dog with chili cheese and New York-style onions, Shalepia's go to order for herself.
Shalepia Piper recalled dusting off her father’s hot dog cart in his garage a couple months ago as she decided to start a business of her own — as a second-generation New Haven food cart vendor.
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Sonia Ahmed |
Jul 3, 2025 11:06 am
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Chef Ming Zhang slicing noodles to create the house special stir fry dish.
Chef Zhang at work.
Chef Ming Zhang sliced fresh hand-pulled noodles before tossing them with bok choy, carrots, and onions in a wok. He then topped off the noodle dish with marinated beef, shrimp, and a tea egg — to make one of the more popular dishes at the recently opened Kung Fu Kitchen on Orange Street.
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Mona Mahadevan |
Jul 3, 2025 8:21 am
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A small but mighty herb garden sits right outside the Tortilleria Tacaná food truck, parked at 16 Bright St.
Floridalma Morales applied her experience as a gardener to the herb garden sitting outside of her food truck.
In the middle of a Fair Haven parking lot, cilantro, red chiles, oregano, and bright blooms sprout from a movable wooden platform. Just behind it, the bright red Tortilleria Tacaná food truck turns those herbs into flavorful salsas, marinades, and garnishes.
Joseph Iannaccone making "Caramelle" pasta at the new restaurant Casanova.
One of the most popular dishes at Casanova, a new Italian restaurant on Park Street, starts with a pork chop sizzling in a pan of clarified butter, while a vodka sauce — made of crushed tomatoes, basil, and heavy cream — reduces in another pan.
The sauce is then drizzled over the pork chop, topped off with pecorino cheese and crispy speck, put in the oven, and then served up as pork chop parmigiana.
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Allan Appel |
Jun 26, 2025 2:50 pm
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Allan Appel Photo
Lori Martin with super volunteer Bill Flynn and food contributed by Hotel Marcel and its chef Megan Gill, at Wednesday's fundraiser/celebration.
Our area’s premier food rescue organization celebrated an eight-digit milestone with a tasty party at the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven on a humid but festive Wednesday night.
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Alexandra Martinakova |
Jun 23, 2025 10:13 am
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Alexandra Martinakova photos
During Saturday's Fair Haven food tour, as led by Lee Cruz (center).
Chicken tacos at Salsa's.
Drinking Malta at El Coqui.
In the midst of hot summer weather, a group of 17 people from all over the city walked a mile across Fair Haven Saturday afternoon for Arts & Ideas’ Grand Avenue Gastronomy Tour.
Led by neighborhood stalwart Lee Cruz, the tour filled attendees’ plates with chicken tacos, guacamole, pork bellies, ceviche, fried rice, and a deeper appreciation of the neighborhood’s culinary delights.
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Alina Rose Chen |
Jun 20, 2025 4:06 pm
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Alexandra Martinakova Photos
The lamb shank.
(Updated) Even for a group of Gen‑Z interns, it’s hard to resist the millennial charm of ROLi, the new Hungarian-influenced “modern European” restaurant that is set to open June 25 in Wooster Square on the corner of Olive and Chapel.
With its polished concrete floors, visible pipework, and floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains in a deep, saturated blue, the space leans into a familiar modern, industrial aesthetic complete with gold accents and mid-century modern globe-shaped light fixtures. During a soft opening preview, we were seated near the open kitchen, where a cinema-style marquee listing their featured dishes added a retro flair that was at once charming and nostalgic.
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Adam Walker |
Jun 20, 2025 2:39 pm
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Officials, family members celebrate new sign
New Haven served up a slice of history Friday as city, state, and federal leaders gathered to dedicate the corner of Wooster and Brown Streets as “Frank & Filomena Pepe Corner” — honoring the founders of the pizzeria that helped make Elm City the nation’s “Pizza Capital.”
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Gov. Ned Lamont, Mayor Justin Elicker, and Wooster Square Alder Ellen Cupo were among the many officials who turned out to celebrate a century of thin crust, white clam pies, and family-run flavor that’s become a cornerstone of the city’s identity.
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Sonia Ahmed |
Jun 20, 2025 12:23 pm
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Contributed photo
Sandra Pittman (right) beaming proudly with her niece Sarina Richardson outside the restaurant on Juneteenth.
Bourbon ribs and shrimp po’ boys were on the menu — and customers visited from all across Connecticut — as Sandra’s Next Generation in the Hill celebrated Juneteenth with a special lineup of meals and an especially busy day.
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Lisa Reisman |
Jun 18, 2025 10:21 am
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Lisa Reisman photo
Rachel Allen (right), with Isabelle Harris: “This keeps me going, keeps me happy.”
At precisely 5:10 p.m., Rachel Allen knocked on the door of Isabelle Harris’ first-floor flat at Victory Gardens Apartments on Dixwell Avenue. Harris was expecting her.
“Hey darlin,’” Allen said, handing her a Styrofoam container.
Allen, 80, has been bringing meals to 15 of her neighbors every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday since early 2024. The food comes from the Fresh Starts program, which was established by her grand-nephew Marcus Harvin. The program, headquartered in the basement of Pitts Chapel Unified Free Will Baptist Church, has Harvin and his team, including Harris, assembling meals from excess food from area universities, as well as Haven’s Harvest, to ensure no one goes hungry.
Home, sweet (and savory) home: Claire Criscuolo at WNHH FM.
If you stop by Claire’s Corner Copia Saturday for a slice of Claire Criscuolo’s signature Lithuanian coffee cake, you can also pick up Criscuolo’s signature — in her latest cookbook.
Belen Orduno, Fernando Lopez, Madison Reynolds, and Jesús Ramos.
Shah's Halal Food photo
Now available on York St.
Braving the long line that started on York Street and wound down to Broadway, Fernando Lopez was on a mission. Accompanied by his friends Belen Orduno, Madison Reynolds, and Jesús Ramos, the group waited an hour to get their hands on a chicken platter they had heard others rave about.
Lewis, center, with Santiago — "the best pizza maker in New Haven," according to Lewis — to his left and pizza aficionado Ben McClain to his right.
Londoner Max Lewis was in line at Sally’s Apizza with his friend Dan when a wise stranger recommended the potato pie. It was late 2023, nine months before Lewis would open his own apizza spot across the pond.
“No, I’ve got a plan,” he told the man.
Lewis had come all the way from London just to sample the famed New Haven style, and he’d already thought through which pies to get and what order to eat them in.
Lewis was caught off guard, then, when he got to his table and his server brought over two slices of potato pie. “At this point, I’ve not been in New Haven for an hour,” he told me, recounting the story over a recent Whatsapp voice call. He remembered thinking, “Where does this happen, where people feel so strongly about a pizza that they’ll give you their pizza?”
The answer, he realized over the course of the apizza-fueled year he’d have, was New Haven.
Dooley‑O vs. Hugh Betta Firehouse 12 45 Crown St. May 25
Records, heads, and hips turned Sunday afternoon as DJs Dooley‑O and Hugh Betta spun back-to-back sets at The Bar at Firehouse 12 on Crown Street, playing old-school (with a little bit of new-school) hip hop, R&B, and house tracks in the underground lounge.
The event was set up as a bit of a versus: Dooley‑O vs. Hugh Betta. But if you came thinking you’d witnessed a real showdown, you’d be wrong.
“Let the people think what they want to think,” Dooley‑O said as he prepared to replace one record with another on his turntable. “The ‘VS’ stands for Vegan Soul food.”
He was waiting on a plate of vegan fish and grits from Chef Skyller, who took over Firehouse 12’s kitchen for the afternoon.
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Mona Mahadevan |
May 20, 2025 8:00 pm
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Karla Tejeda Arias, Malby Rojas, and baby Leo pose in their new store.
The ribbon is cut! Featuring Justin Elicker, Thea Buxbaum, Elizabeth Donius, Katya Vetrov, and Malby Rojas.
“Toast a slice with olive oil and a sprinkle of salt,” Malby Rojas told a small group of customers when explaining how best to eat her signature country sourdough bread.
She offered that advice at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday marking the launch of two Westville businesses: Malby’s Pastries and its Whalley Avenue neighbor, Inkberry Art Shop.
Alder Anna Festa, right, makes a motion to cut three proposed finance jobs.
Finance Committee alders voted to leave the mayor’s “primarily status-quo budget” primarily as is — while tweaking it to prioritize food aid, street-level maintenance, and reserves for an era of turbulent Trump funding.
