Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [10]
“This is nothing like a normal restaurant, where customers walk in with long faces expecting a serious meal,” Vaughn says. “It is not unusual for half our tables to be occupied by birthday or anniversary parties or even wedding rehearsal dinners. Late at night, Yale teams come to enjoy themselves and toast marshmallows over the fire. Eating here is fun. When people think of The Place, they smile.”
Those who become regulars earn a special honor. Vaughn inscribes their name in white paint on one of the tree stumps that serve as chairs. “It makes sense,” he explains. “Over many years, returning families come to think of The Place as their place, so it’s only right to honor them. I tell them they have become stumpworthy.”
Rawley’s Drive-In
1886 Post Rd.
203–259–9023
Fairfield, CT
LD | $
Rawley’s defined a way of cooking hot dogs that has become gospel for many of the important frank emporia in southwestern Connecticut. Here a dog gets deep-fried. When plump and darkened, it is pulled from the hot vegetable oil and rolled around on the griddle with a spatula—a finishing touch that strains off excess oil and gives the exterior a delectable crackle. The dog is then bedded in a high-quality roll that has been spread open, brushed with butter, and toasted on the griddle until its interior surfaces are crisp, in contrast to the outside, which remains soft and pliant. The kitchen does the dressing, the most popular configuration being mustard and relish topped with sauerkraut and garnished with a fistful of chewy bacon shreds. To our taste, it is a perfect combination, although “heavy bacon”—twice as much—is a popular option.
The restaurant is pint-size: four booths plus a six-stool counter on what used to be a front porch, where an open picture window provides a scenic view into the lively short-order kitchen. As plebeian as can be, Rawley’s is known for attracting celebrities who live or summer in the area. Paul Newman, Meg Ryan, and David Letterman have all been spotted eating these fine hot dogs, and Martha Stewart used to be a regular.
Ridgefield Ice Cream Shop
680 Danbury Rd.
203–438–3094
Ridgefield, CT
$
A former Carvel stand, the Ridgefield Ice Cream Shop makes quintessential soft-serve ice cream by using machines from Carvel’s early days when the formula was not pumped full of air. The resulting lick—our favorite ice cream anywhere—is not sinfully rich or weird-flavored or in any way surprising. It is smooth, dense, and pure, and while it is available with all sorts of toppings, coating, nuts, and fruits, we like ours au naturel: a swirly mound of it piled up on an elegant wafer cone. For those who live nearby, there are also extraordinary ice cream cakes made from the same frozen manna and layered with icing and crumbled cookies.
Although it has a sunny, summertime feel, Ridgefield Ice Cream is open year-round, rain or shine. In good weather, customers lick their cones leaning on their cars in the lot or at one of the picnic tables out front.
Roseland Apizza
350 Hawthorne Ave.
203–735–0494
Derby, CT
D Tues–Sun | $$$
Roseland Apizza (pronounce that second word the Neapolitan way, “ah-BEETS”) started as a bakery in 1934. Today, it has a menu of hand-cut ravioli, four-star lasagna, and a board full of nightly specials featuring shellfish and pasta, but it is most famous for its brick-oven pies. The crust is what connoisseurs know as New Haven–style—thin but not quite brittle, with enough brawn to support all but the weightiest combinations of ingredients and to allay the pizza eater’s primal fears: slice collapse and topping slippage.
Baker Gary Lucarelli uses two ovens to cook pizzas, one that runs hot for those made with the sturdy meats and vegetables typical of pizzeria menus, the other slower for white pizzas topped with fragile seafood. Roseland makes some spectacularly lavish pies, such as a shrimp casino topped with bacon, mozzarella, fresh garlic, and too many jumbo shrimp to count, but for us, the one must-eat