News

There’s One Place Like Home: Chef Luis

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Over the past decade, give or take a couple of rounds of musical chairs on the New Canaan dining scene, Chef Luis has created a restaurant that’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s a game-day go-to, a fixture on the local shortlist for lunches with friends and date nights, and a dog-friendly outdoor patio in warm weather. Just don’t call it Mexican. Owner & head chef Luis Lopez will always crank out a dependable list of greatest Tex-Mex hits, like perfectly-turned pork shoulder Al Pastor and skirt steak fajitas. His La Americana Burger is decidedly one of the town’s very best.

Business

Who Knew? Five Cheeseburgers Your Cardiologist Doesn’t Need to Know About

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Who Knew?’ is sponsored by Walter Stewart’s Market. I’ve never been able to understand more than six words of Marcel Proust, but from what I can gather, Remembrance of Things Past is 4,200 pages of inscrutable French about a cookie. 

 I can relate. I spend an impractical amount of time contemplating my Platonic ideals of food. Ice cream: Arethusa Farm coffee. Tomato: garden-grown, mid-September, still hot from the sun.

Business

Chef Luis To Reopen As Soon As Friday; Classic Menu Items Returning

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Luis Lopez, one of New Canaan’s best-loved chefs, is set to reopen his eponymous restaurant in the heart of the downtown. ‘Chef Luis’ and many of the popular Nuevo Latino menu items that made it a go-to destination for food-lovers, could be back as early as Friday, Lopez said. “I’m very excited, a little nervous because I am concerned about the health of the community,” he told NewCanaanite.com. “So I am trying to make sure we doing everything required and possible to protect everybody.”

The restaurant at 129 Elm St. will focus on takeout to start and is awaiting approval of a liquor permit.

Business

‘Chef Luis’ Restaurant To Reopen on Elm Street

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One of New Canaan’s most beloved local chefs is preparing to reopen his restaurant in the heart of the downtown. Luis Lopez, owner of Chef Luis on Elm Street, said the restaurant is on track to open in its former space in the coming months. “I’m excited,” Lopez said Monday afternoon amid racks of glassware near the bar inside 129 Elm St. “I’m ready to go back and do my thing.”

Chef Luis left his eponymous restaurant in the summer of 2017 and it closed soon after, bookending a successful 10-year run. The commercial space—located opposite Francos Wine Merchants—has been occupied since then by two food service establishments.

Business

One29 Restaurant on Elm Street Closes; Baldanza Moving In

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One29, an Elm Street restaurant featuring American contemporary cuisine and located the former Chef Luis space, has closed after a months-long run downtown, according to a worker at the eatery. The restaurant stopped operating as One29 on Sunday, according to a man who answered the phone there, but has remained open under new auspices. Baldanza is moving up from “the alley” at 17 Elm St., and now is operating in the larger space, the worker said. At least some of the One29 staff is staying on with Baldanza, he said. According to a post on Baldanza’s website, that restaurant will officially open Sept.