Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [5]
Harry’s Drive-In
104 Broadway
860–537–2410
Colchester, CT
LD (summer only) | $
A completely al fresco eat-place with wood-slat picnic tables arrayed under groves of flowering trees, Harry’s has been a favorite stop for people on their way to and from the beach for more than eighty years. One of the best things about coming here is waiting for a meal to be assembled. There is no curb service. Exit your vehicle and stand in line; place an order and pay, then slide sideways to the pickup window. The view is breathtaking: two dozen hamburgers lined up on a glistening hot grill, sizzling and sputtering and oozing juice. They are formed from spheres of meat that get slapped onto the grill and lightly squished so they flatten a bit, but the craggy patties remain unspeakably luscious inside their rugged crust. With a mantle of melted cheese and a few strips of bacon, garnished with slices of summer tomato, lettuce, pickle, and mustard, sandwiched inside a lovely bakery bun and held together with a long toothpick, this might be the best drive-in hamburger anywhere. Hot dogs are grill-cooked, too, and are especially excellent when bedded in a split-top bun atop a spill of Harry’s chili sauce.
Kitchen Little
135 Greenmanville Ave.
860–536–2122
Mystic, CT
BL | $
“Kitchen Little” isn’t just a cute name. This place on the road to historic Mystic Seaport really is minuscule: 400 square feet, including the kitchen, with tiny tables packed so close together you need to keep an eye on your plate to make sure a neighbor doesn’t accidentally fork up a piece of your linguiça sausage.
Because this little eating hut has exactly twenty-three indoor seats, including a handful at a counter with a view of the closet-size kitchen, plus a handful of picnic tables on a deck out back, you must expect to wait almost any day, especially on weekends. If the weather is pleasant, the delay can be delightful. There are a couple of wood-slat benches out front under a tall pole topped with the U.S. flag, and the steel-blue water lapping up against the grassy shore just beyond the café is hypnotic.
“AM Eggstasy” is the house motto, and the omelets are stupendous, as is the Mystic Melt, which is eggs scrambled with crabmeat and cream cheese served with raisin toast on the side. There are Benedicts, heart-healthy egg-white omelets, and sizzled-crisp corned beef hash. If you don’t come for breakfast, there is a whole menu of fried clams (strips or whole bellies), a beautiful hot buttered lobster roll, and a half-pound hamburger, plus excellent clam chowder. It is southern New England–style chowder—creamless, steel-gray, and briny—a great winter warm-up meal.
Laurel Diner
544 Main St. South
203–264–8218
Southbury, CT
BL | $
Table seating is available, but we highly recommend a seat at the counter facing the Laurel Diner’s pint-size grill. Here you have a spellbinding vision of time-space management as two short-order chefs fry, scramble, and flip eggs, fold omelets, butter toast, pour pancakes, and squish down patties of the diner’s legendary corned beef hash.
The hash is a coarse-cut mélange of spicy beef shreds and nuggets of potato cooked on the griddle until a web of crust begins to envelop the tender insides. If you ask, the grill man will cook the hash until it is brittle-crisp nearly all the way through, which is a great idea if textural excitement supersedes succulence in your hierarchy of culinary pleasure, but we personally enjoy it the regular way: forkfuls of corned beef that are brick red and moist, their pickled zest balanced perfectly by the soft pieces of potato.
As for the potatoes that come on the side, there are two choices: chunky home fries, which are excellent, and hash browns, which are even better than that.