Business

Miyuki Launches ‘Me & U Cookie Co.’ for Popular Cookies on Pine Street

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Miyuki Mirafiore started making cookies not long after opening her eponymous noodle shop in Pine Street Concessions. Located beside her husband Dante’s (equally eponymous) pizza place at 75 Pine St., “Miyuki’s” has become a popular go-to lunch option for many in town since opening in 2017. 

She started with “just a little tiny batch” of 12 chocolate chip cookies, Mirafiore recalled later Tuesday afternoon as the lunch crowd thinned out. 

“I started to realize how fun it was, and everybody loved them,” she told NewCanaanite.com. “And ever since then we’ve just kept making them.”

And that’s a good thing, because Miyuki’s cookies—and especially her chocolate chip cookies—emerged as a number-one overall seller in terms of quantity. 

Recognizing their soaring popularity, Mirafiore this year launched a dedicated brand for the tasty treats. 

On the Me & U Cookie Co. website, customers can order boxes of eight or 12 assorted cookies, as well as party platters and favors of any size. 

“It just grew organically and I started to realize maybe it’s bigger than the other things,” Mirafiore said. “And I started selling online.”

She’s doing a brisk business with the accidental big-hit menu items, offered in a variety of flavors that includes chocolate chip as well as oatmeal raisin, double chocolate, white chocolate raspberry, peanut butter marshmallow and sugar. 

Asked how she landed on the recipe for her locally famous chocolate chip cookies, Mirafiore said, “Trial and error.”

“It took a long time to develop the recipes,” she said, which were “probably based off of” a basic recipe that she tweaked.

Business

Wood-Fired Pizza Place, Japanese Noodle Shop, Fresh Salads and More: Pine Street Concessions Opens Wednesday

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Miyuki and Dante Mirafiore, Culinary Institute of America-trained chefs who have been married three years, long have dreamed of opening up their own eateries. They’ve worked in kitchens in New York City, Connecticut and California, including a recent stint at Alice Waters’ landmark Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Some months ago, the Mirafiores received a call about a place they’d never heard of—New Canaan—and a unique model for delivering high-quality food that they’d never considered. “I love that it’s not a restaurant,” Dante Mirafiore said as he stood at the counter in front of his wood-fired pizza oven at Pine Street Concessions, grating Scamorza—an Italian cow’s milk cheese—into a bowl for his special New York-style pie. “It’s what you want to make it as a customer.

Business

‘We Found Great Chefs’: Noodle Shop, Wood-Fired Italian Food Provider and California-Inspired Organic Eatery To Open at ‘Pine Street Concessions’ This Spring

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Three eateries are slated to open this spring in the newly built gourmet food hall that’s taken shape on Pine Street over the past year, officials say. Featuring a brick-paved curbside plaza out front and communal seating inside, the widely anticipated Pine Street Concessions will serve as a showcase for three artisanal chefs—each with his or her own retail counter space and kitchen—serving classic wood-fired oven pizza and Italian foods, noodles and Asian street food snacks, and California-inspired fresh salads, grain bowls and other organic fare, according to owner Peter Lane of NCLC. Lane said he’s been deliberate in searching for the right businesses to open at 75 Pine St., offering foods that are unique in New Canaan, organic and locally sourced when possible and will appeal to families with young kids as well as adults seeking a casual spot to dine out (beer and wine will be available). “We feel great that we found great chefs,” he said Tuesday morning from the spacious floor inside the steel-framed structure, naturally lit with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street and a 20-space parking lot. When Pine Street Concessions opens, the plaza out front will be all-pedestrian, closed within planters and bollards as per the Planning & Zoning Commission’s approval two years ago and featuring picnic tables for diners.