Co-owner and head chef Skyler Melton at work inside the newly opened vegan-vegetarian Cannon pub on Dwight Street.
Cannon's vegan rice noodles in garlic chili sauce.
This is the story of a vegan-vegetarian, Arsenal-loving, English-style pub featuring rice noodles in garlic chili sauce.
But first let’s get a few things straight.
The Cannon.
The Cannon, which opened last month inside a midnight-blue single-story flat-top structure on Dwight Street as a bar, restaurant, and gathering place, has a lot going for it — and not just the otherworldly rice noodles.
Its menu is designed for vegans and vegetarians, with food made 100 percent from scratch. The laid-back neighborhood pub, the rebirth of a former dry cleaning establishment, is designed for Arsenal fans, members of The Gooners; The Cannon takes its name from the logo of the London-based soccer club.
The Cannon co-owners Kevin MacKenzie, Tessa Davis, and Skyler Melton.
A protracted wait to open during the pandemic and now for approval of the liquor license, said co-owner Tessa Davis, “has forced us to get creative by really focusing on our food, which is basically comfort food, pub food, and our one rule for that is vegan, vegetarian. And Skyler’s been pretty much a genius when it comes to execution.”
Co-owner and head chef Skyler Melton.
Skyler is Skyler Melton, co-owner and head chef, who was adding chopped snow peas and carrots to the garlic sauteeing in a pan in the brightly lit kitchen on a recent afternoon.
Upon joining up with Davis and co-owner Kevin MacKenzie last year, Melton put himself through a boot camp to master vegan and vegetarian cuisine, trying out dishes on his family and friends.
“I made a seitan steak and chicken, and they couldn’t tell the difference,” he said, as he added a spoonful of garlic chili sauce to the vegetables.
Melton grew up in North Carolina, traveling to New Haven every summer to visit family. In August 2012, his grandmother needed help. This time he stayed.
In October 2012, he was hired as a line cook at Heirloom. “No formal training, just on the job,” he said, pouring liquid into the pan. “Cassava pasta water,” he said. “That’s the secret. That thickens it.”
He dipped a colander of rice noodles into the boiling water.
“What I like about cooking is the feeling that it gives people when they eat something good and you know that you made it,” said Melton, who went on to occupy the position of head chef at Ordinary, among other gigs.
With that, he combined the rice noodles with the vegetables, a flame leaping up, before topping the dish off with fresh chopped scallions.
To hear MacKenzie tell it, Melton has been among the bright spots in a 26-month stretch that has seen the three owners scrambling to keep the dream of The Cannon alive.
“When everything shut down just after we signed the lease in February 2020, we probably could have gotten out of it,” he said, seated at the bar in the honey-colored light.
They didn’t.
MacKenzie, a former high school and college soccer player; decades-long, die-hard Arsenal fan; and member of the Arsenal-supporting Gooners before they were The Gooners, knew they had something.
They just had to hold on.
Lisa Reisman Photo
“We knew we had our following through The Gooners and the greater soccer community in New Haven,” he said. With the closing of Anna Liffey’s and Christy’s, “we knew there was a void for a meeting place for those communities.”
“We knew we had something different with our vegan-vegetarian menu,” said MacKenzie, a dedicated vegetarian.
“New Haven has this huge vegan-vegetarian community, but not a lot of places that serve that kind of food with alcohol. So this could be a destination spot,” Davis added.
And they knew they had the chops, with a combined 30 years of food service experience. As the bartender at Rudy’s over seven years, MacKenzie had been saving money and distilling a vision for a neighborhood refuge where, as he put it, “I’d like to go and hang out.”
As a seasoned bartender with stints at Barcade, The Beer Collective, and Three Sheets, Davis relished the chance to do her own thing. She also saw the need to keep prices reasonable. “We want this to be welcoming for everyone,” she said.
Then there was the matter of the pandemic. And then the Small Business Administration shut down the pandemic-relief program for enterprises like theirs, killing their chances at a loan.
“It was the same story over and over again,” Davis recalled. They didn’t have tax documents to show they’d been open a year, disqualifying them from renter forgiveness and utility forgiveness, banks told them. They were an established limited-liability corporation, but they didn’t have a payroll, loan officers said.
They “were hemorrhaging money,” as MacKenzie put it, but they held on, drawing support from family and friends, holding fundraisers for their future home.
Last month, their food service license came through.
“We said to each other, ‘Let’s go, let’s get these doors open, let’s keep everything moving, and when we get the liquor license, this place will sell itself,’” Davis said.
Until then, check out The Cannon for the atmosphere and, if Melton’s rice noodles in garlic chili sauce are any indication, the menu.
The dish was a delight, with the rice noodles delicately balancing the pleasant crunchiness of the snow peas and carrots. The garlic sauce announced itself with low-key flair. Overall, it was a light and nourishing meal, and tasty to boot.
So much so, in fact, that there was no need for any alcoholic beverage to enhance this correspondent’s dining experience.
Follow The Cannon on Instagram @TheCannonNhv. Doors open at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, May 1, for Arsenal’s match against West Ham.
I stopped by on a Friday afternoon to check it out. With friends who are vegan, vegetarian and gluten intolerant, it's been hard to find a place that we can all enjoy together. This is the spot!
I especially liked the coconut mango dessert😋.