Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [3]
Colony Grill
172 Myrtle Ave.
203–359–2184
Stamford, CT
LD | $$
Stamford’s Colony Grill wins our vote as the most unlikely source of excellent pizza. Opened as a speakeasy during Prohibition and run by Irishmen ever since, it is a neighborhood tavern in the shadow of I-95, where there isn’t much neighborhood left. Modern life seemingly has had scant effect here. A sign above the dining room door still advises, “No Stags Allowed,” referring to the bygone policy of not allowing single men to walk from the bar into the room where respectable people have supper. The wood-paneled walls are decorated with hundreds of portraits of servicemen from decades past and black-and-white group photos commemorating moments of camaraderie among patrons and staff. Still a hangout where many come just for shots and beers and conversation, Colony’s elbow-bending personality was established by Eugene “Bobo” Bohannan, who bought it in 1961 after working as a waiter following his discharge from the U.S. Navy after World War II. “He used to know everyone who came in,” says his son Gary James, who now runs it with his brother Jim Screwse. Gary notes that Bobo and Robert “Fitzy” Fitzmaurice, who was a waiter from 1946 to 2005, are the only two people who know the identity of every one of the portraits on the wall. “Guys come in with their kids to show them pictures of their fathers,” he says.
Pizza is the only food on the menu, available in one size, about a foot-and-a-half in diameter with crust as thin as a saltine. Nobody recalls how the recipe was developed, sometime in the late 1940s, and no one will share its secrets, other than Jim Screwse’s joke that “It must be the good Stamford water.” Gary said that the process of making dough begins very early every morning about three hours after the bar closes at night, and he told us that the original ovens are sacrosanct. Aside from the wild crunch of their crust, Colony pizzas are known for sweet sausage made across the street at another neighborhood survivor, DeYulio’s Sausage Co., and for the optional topping called “hot oil”: peppery olive oil that imbues them with zest and lusciousness unlike any other.
Pizzas—one per person, please—arrive on age-dented metal trays along with paper plates so flimsy they are useless, except as an emergency order pad when a waitress can’t find anything else to write on. Each slice is crisp and yet so sumptuously oily that your fingers are guaranteed to glisten, even if you forgo the wonderful hot oil. Postprandial wreckage on the table is a giddy bedlam of severely battered trays piled with countless balled-up, twisted paper napkins. Napkins are the only essential utensil for eating a Colony Grill pizza.
Doogie’s
2525 Berlin Turnpike
860–666–6200
Newington, CT
LD | $
Doogie’s used to boast that it was “Home of the 2-foot hot dog,” but price increases have reduced the size of the jumbo dog to a mere sixteen inches. Firm-fleshed and with a chewy skin that gets slightly charred on the grill, it has a vigorously spicy flavor that holds up well not only under any and all extra-cost toppings, but does well when spread with Doogie’s superb homemade hot relish or just ordinary mustard. For those of meek appetite, the same good frank is available in a mere ten-inch configuration, too.
Doogie’s hamburgers, cooked on the charcoal grill where the hot dogs are made, have a delicious smoky flavor. The top-of-the-line hamburger is described on the menu as “the ultimate,” and