Thomas Breen Photo
Bar manager Emanuela Stakaj (right) at the newly opened Il Gabbiano restaurant.
The owner of Adriana’s Restaurant has opened a new “Italian steakhouse” on Long Wharf in the former home of Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale — on the future site of hundreds of planned new waterfront apartments.
That new restaurant is called Il Gabbiano, Italian for “The Seagull.”
On Monday afternoon, restaurant owner Valentin Stakaj joined dozens of friends, employees, and supporters for a “soft opening” of the restaurant at 501 Long Wharf Dr.
Restaurant owner Valentin Stakaj (right) with daughter Emanuela.
Sitting at one of the tables looking out over the sun-flecked Long Island Sound and New Haven’s oil-tank-lined industrial harbor, Stakaj described the new restaurant as an “Italian steakhouse.”
The menu is filled with “pasta, fish, and a nice selection of steaks,” he said. It’ll be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner service.
Its bar is also up and running, with what bar manager — and Stakaj’s daughter — Emanuela described as a diverse array of wines, martinis, gins, and tequilas on the menu. (Her favorite? “The espresso martini.”)
Il Gabbiano marks Stakaj’s fourth restaurant that he’s opened in Connecticut since the Albanian-born Italian immigrant moved from Rome to the United States in 2003.
Stakaj already runs Adriana’s on Grand Avenue in Wooster Square, as well as two other restaurants in North Haven. He said all three existing restaurants will remain open, even as he’s broached this fourth culinary venture.
Pasquale Pagliarulo
This is “fantastic,” Madison resident and fellow Italian immigrant Pasquale Pagliarulo said as he ordered a Campari soda from the bar.
How does he feel about another Italian restaurant opening in New Haven, already an epicenter for Italian cuisine?
“The more the better,” he said with a smile.
Steve Orosco...
... with wrestling on the TV behind him.
As a wrestling match played out on the restaurant television behind him, Orosco described how new Italian restaurants in New Haven only make the city that much better of a place for Italian food and drink.
“I’m big on being in a hot spot, the center of the universe,” he said.
“If you want to be in entertainment, you go to L.A. If you want to be in finance, you go to New York. If you want to be in fighting, you go to San Diego.” And if you want to be in Italian restaurants, you go to New Haven.
“You go to the mecca,” he said. “It makes everything thrive.”
501 Long Wharf Dr.
The waterfront building that Il Gabbiano now occupies used to be home to Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale, which closed its doors in October 2020 due to the pandemic. (Before that, it was home to the restaurant The Rusty Scupper.)
The site itself is owned by the Fusco Corporation, which last fall won zoning permission from the Board of Alders to build up to 500 new apartments at that very same waterfront location.
A representative from Fusco did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article regarding the latest with those residential development plans, and how this newly opened restaurant will play in to whatever gets built next.
The Independent asked Stakaj how long he plans on having Il Gabbiano at this location, given the landlord’s plans to build hundreds of apartments on that very same spot.
He predicted this restaurant will be here for a while.
Does he have a lease for a year? Longer?
“I don’t put all this money in for a year lease,” he said. He predicted the restaurant will be in this spot for a longer time than that.
The motorcycle, hot-car crowd might ruin this place just like they did Lenny & Joe's. Just awful. Hopefully, Ms. Stakaj has a promise from the NHPD that they will put an end to this chaos.