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

Podcast: New Canaan Music Owner Phil Williams

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This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to town resident and Planning & Zoning Commissioner Phil Williams, owner of New Canaan Music. The Main Street fixture, like so many of our local businesses, has been through the ringer in 2020—with a forced closure followed by a restricted reopening and new operational requirements. As a retailer (instruments) as well as a service provider (lessons), New Canaan Music has been through as much as any of our local merchants. Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

Business

Local Businesses and COVID-19: Skin Care By Calie

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For today’s Q&A with a local business owner, we her from Calie E. Crolla of Skin Care By Calie. Recently relocated from Norwalk to 25 Burtis Ave. in New Canaan, Crolla is a certified medical assistant and licensed aesthetician. Here’s more background on Crolla, an alumnus of South School and Saxe Middle School. Our exchange follows.

Business

‘Patisserie Salzburg’ Bakery To Open Sept. 18 on Elm Street 

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A European-style café offering a wide range of fresh-baked goods is on track to open Sept. 18 in the heart of downtown New Canaan, according to its owner. Patisserie Salzburg will open at 25 Elm St., according to co-owner Par Shakiban, who launched the business 26 years ago in Rye, N.Y. and has another location in Stamford, where he lives. “I am very, very excited because a lot of people from New Canaan, they did travel to my other locations and they are giving me a very positive response,” he told NewCanaanite.com. “I think New Canaan needs a good European-style pastry and baked goods shop and we hope we are going to fill in that gap there.”

Shakiban owns Patisserie Salzburg with Albana Murati, also of Stamford.

Business

‘It’s a Great Community’: Adirondack Store Opens on Elm Street

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One of New Canaan’s longstanding and beloved retail shops has reopened in the heart of the downtown. 

The Adirondack Store had closed its New Canaan location after a successful 15-year run, and following a Grand Opening weekend is now open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday in a newly renovated space. “We are excited to be back,” Rahul Saito told NewCanaanite.com Monday morning from the street-level of the shop at 39 Elm St. “People have been just wonderful,” he said. “The community has embraced us and missed us, actually, which has been great to hear.”

First opened in Lake Placid, N.Y. in 1955, the Adirondack Store had a New Canaan location from 1995 to 2009, when it closed due to differences with its landlord at the time, officials have said. The new store occupies the two-level former Family Britches space (that shop is now on Main Street) and includes a café in addition to the Adirondack Store’s signature range of gifts, glassware, pillows and home decor items.

Asked what brought him and Stephen Shin back, Saito said, “I think that a lot of the people who have homes in the surrounding area have second or third homes up in Lake Placid, so the connection didn’t really leave at all, ever.