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Date: 5/5/2021
SOMERS, CT – Somers-based restaurants are preparing for the spring/summer season with plans to enhance the dining experience. Some are offering live entertainment and games of trivia, others are expanding their menus and outdoor spaces, all in hopes of rebuilding their clientele.
Joanna’s Restaurant, located on 145 Main St. Route 190, will have their newly constructed patio open – which includes tented and open-air seating. The patio is open annually from April to October, weather permitting. Manager Jeffrey Lipton said they have capacity of well over 100 guests on the patio. The restaurant added an expanded menu for Fridays and Saturdays with specials of prime ribs and seafood. They will also have complimentary entertainment featuring local area talent, either outside under the patio or indoors every Friday and Saturday evening, along with most Sunday late afternoons.
Joanna's Restaurant first opened on February 22, 1999. “I’s Italian-American food; it’s dining so no one has to wear a suit and tie to come in to eat,” said Lipton. “For about nine weeks, we suffered greatly back when we closed on March 17, 2020. We had a patio permit since 2016, but had never constructed or done the patio. Because we were closed for indoor dining, it was a necessity that we have dining so we went ahead and built that patio.”
Lipton told Reminder Publishing that everything changed. The restaurant used to host a lot of banquets and receptions, which went out the window when COVID-19 hit. With social distancing and the use of the patio, they became a destination for the patio-going crowd last summer. All of the banquets the restaurant had booked prior to COVID-19 had their deposits returned and were cancelled. On the other hand, the pandemic increased their take-out business almost by double last summer.
“For those who didn’t want to go out to restaurants or couldn’t go out to restaurants, basically a lot of it was pick up and bring home. We offered curbside pick-up and during that eight or nine-week period when all we had was take-out, we delivered to people’s homes. Once the patio opened, we stopped the delivery,” he said.
They are currently booking their banquet hall for the coming months with expectations that many of the restrictions will be lifted soon. Visit Joanna's Restaurant at joannasbanquets.com. They’re open from Monday-Thursday 11 a.m. – 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. –11 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. – 11 p.m.
Cedar Knob Restaurant and Banquets, located at 446 Billings Rd., will be kicking off their Friday night dinners on May 7, which includes their slow roasted prime rib, hand crafted burgers and house made fries with fresh cut potatoes made by Chef and Owner Carl Cox.
“It's casual dining,” said wife and Co-Owner Tanya Cox. “It’s a public golf course so the public can come up. We have a beautiful patio that overlooks the golf course and then we have live acoustic music on the weekends.”
Cedar Knob’s dinner menu will begin the following week. Tanya said Cedar Knob has had many requests and significant recommendations for their food, leading to their plans to expand their dinner menu this year. The restaurant will be hosting dinner Tuesday through Saturday with their specialties still on Friday night. They have added New York strip, ribeye, Filet Mignon, haddock, chicken Francaise, eggplant rollatini, vegetable stir fry and many other dishes to their selections.
“Last year, it was actually a lot better than we anticipated. It was a rough start only because we couldn’t have seating and it was really hard for somebody that ordered lunch and not be able to come in or sit outside,” Tanya said. “Once we were able to have outdoor sitting and follow the guidelines of the social distancing, we expanded our outdoor seating and we did a lot of to-go dinners.”
Carl and Tanya’s goal is to make sure that their patron’s dining experience is just as good as their food. They noted that they want Cedar Knob to be a place where people remember coming in, having a great time and feeling welcomed. “Somebody can go in a place where the food could be excellent, but if the service and atmosphere isn’t something to their expectation they probably won’t come back,” Tanya added. “We want people to come out and have a good time.”
For current hours at Cedar Knob Restaurant and Pub, call 860-749-4877 or go to their Facebook: Cedar Knob Restaurant and Banquets. The pub menu, which has breakfast sandwiches, appetizers, burgers, grilled sandwiches and more is served everyday starting at 8 a.m. until the kitchen closes.
Mario’s Pizzeria & Ristorante, located on 48 South Rd. in the Southfield Corners Shops, opened on March 16.
“You could call us a pizza shop, but we’re so much more than that,” said Owner Mario Ferrentino. “We have different Italian dishes and meals. I’s not your normal typical pizza shop. Our menu offers something for everyone with choices of appetizers, soups, salads, wings, grinders, pizzas, pastas and many classic Italian dinner entrees."”
Ferrentino said he loves the town and family atmosphere, describing Somers as a town he watched from afar. When the opportunity came, he said he knew it was the right fit for them. According to Ferrentino, Mario’s Pizzeria & Ristorante has been “doing good” during the pandemic, and their take-out and delivery has been huge. Mario’s will continue doing deliveries this dining season.
“We’re one of the only few if not the only one who offers delivery in Somers. We wanted to accommodate that because we could see there was a dire need for it in the area especially during COVID and a lot of people aren’t leaving their house,” Ferrentino responded. “It’s something new to me. I’ve never done it before, but so far it’s been good, people seem to appreciate it and hopefully our deliveries continue to go up.”
Mario's Pizzeria & Ristorante is open Tuesday-Thursday 11:30 a.m.- 8 p.m., Fridays from 11:30 a.m.- 9 p.m., Saturdays from 12- 9 p.m. and Sundays from 12- 8 p.m. For more information, go to mariossomers.com.
Hometown Kitchen, located at 48 South Rd. Route 83, was originally named the Plaza Restaurant and widely known for their breakfast menu of corn beef hash, eggs Benedict, and omelets ranging from meat, veggie, western, Polish, Greek, Spanish and Irish. Husband and wife Fernando and Colleen Ceballos brought the restaurant five years ago.
“We came up with the name Hometown Kitchen because the restaurant already had a lot of home style cooking and we wanted to let that be known,” explained co-owner Colleen Ceballos. “The restaurant is family-oriented and kid-friendly. We remodeled it a little bit when we were closed during the pandemic. Overall, it's a family run country place with a seafood special flair."
She continued, "It's been tough throughout the pandemic, but we do have a lot of loyal clientele that's keeping us afloat. We only have five tables limited for outdoor seating because we share a parking lot with other businesses. We're just relying on our indoor dining and we're being very cautious because a lot of our clientele is older."
Ceballos said their goal is to push their fresh seafood specialty that includes a fried seafood platter with scrod, sea scallops, shrimp and clams, a plate of calamari, oysters, stuffed salmon and broiled swordfish. The business is keeping the comfort food that the restaurant always had such as the roasted turkey dinners, with the addition of seafood. In the meantime, the Ceballos are looking for applications for all positions in order to keep up and getting the restaurant steadier.
Hometown Kitchen’s hours are Monday and Tuesday from 6 a.m.- 2 p.m. and Wednesday-Sunday 7 a.m.- 8 p.m. Call at 860- 265-3690 or email at plazahometownkitchen@gmail.com.
Bond 124 on 124 Main St. has been around since 2016. It’s an American-Italian Gastropub with a 26-tab system. They get all of their beer from local breweries in Connecticut and Massachusetts. “We do everything from scratch,” Manager Carmine Manzi shared. “We roast all our own deli meat. We’re known for her brick oven pizzas and our house-made burger. We do private parties, special events, rehearsal dinners, baptisms, communions, etc.”
He went on to say, “When we were deciding to open Bond 124 the ultimate goal was to bring something different to the area that no one had, an American-Italian tap room and an original Napoletana brick oven.”
During the pandemic, Manzi said they’ve been doing family bundle meals as well as take-out and delivery. “We got together with the Somers school system and fed the people in need,” Manzi replied. “All of our tables are six feet apart. We have dividers in between the bar and some of the tables inside the establishment.”
This dining season, Bond 124 will have their outdoor patio open. They have trivia Wednesday nights and live acoustic bands from Thursday through Sunday.
“We want to stay busy and accommodate all of our customers,” Manzi said. “Our goal every day is to accommodate that customer when they come in. Anything that’s not on the menu, we do off the menu for them no matter what as long as we have the ingredients in house, I never say no.”
Bond 124 is open ‘till midnight serving daily lunch specials at 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and serving meals until 11 p.m. Call 860- 698-6011 for further information, or check out their website at https://www.restaurantji.com/ct/somers/bond-124-/.
Reminder Publishing reached out to Italian Villa Restaurant and Pizzeria as well as Cooper House Tavern but did not hear back from the businesses by press time.