Business

‘Pesca’ Peruvian Restaurant on Main Street To Close This Weekend

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Pesca Peruvian Bistro, a well-liked restaurant that opened on Main Street nearly eight years ago, is closing this week. Co-owner Wilson Rodriguez said that he is seeking to retire and sees little benefit in remaining open during a general slowdown of the business. “It sounds crazy, I’m not even 60, but that [retirement] is what I want,” he told NewCanaanite.com. 

Rodriguez added: “We really appreciate all of our loyal customers. I don’t want to disappoint them and I hope they will understand. And they will.”

Launched by Rodriguez and fellow co-owner and chef Jose Draganac in December 2018 in the large restaurant space formerly occupied by the Plum Tree, Pesca emerged as a popular option for those seeking Peruvian cuisine, and also regularly hosted parties, business gatherings and fundraisers for local nonprofit organizations, and supported many community causes.

Who Knew? Let’s Have an Adult Conversation About Salads. And, Inevitably, Corn.

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‘Who Knew?’ is sponsored by Walter Stewart’s Market. There was always an unbidden niblet. 

In my industry, the two-martini lunch disappeared around the time Don Draper collected his first pension check. By the time I was a real-deal creative director at a New York ad agency, lunch was a markedly less glamorous occasion: a salad, hastily retrieved and mindlessly consumed with a side of news headlines and online sample sales, from a plastic bowl in my office.  These salads came from the type of place where you’d walk through a roaring, chaotic assembly line and point through the sneeze guard to your desired ingredients. On the other side of the glass, a salad maker chopped and tossed it to your desired consistency.

Business

Local Businesses and COVID-19: Pesca Peruvian Bistro

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For today’s Q&A with a local business, we speak to Wilson Rodriguez, co-owner of Pesca Peruvian Bistro. Located at 70 Main St., the popular restaurant opened about 18 months ago. It’s open 4 to 8 p.m. daily and offers curbside pickup (turn off of Locust Avenue at Joe’s Pizza and drive past the pizzeria to the white fence in back). 

Here’s our interview. New Canaanite: How are you doing there? Wilson Rodriguez: Well we are doing an average of 10 orders per day.

Business

‘Pesca Peruvian Bistro’ Opens on Main Street

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Growing up on the Pacific Ocean in his native Peru, Jose Draganac ate a lot of fish. 

He began cooking at an early age and honed his skills, first at culinary school in Lima, studying under fellow countryman and celebrated chef Gastón Arcurio, then working for 15 years at home and in the United States, most recently with the Z Hospitality, a group of area restaurants that includes Solé, Mediterraneo and Terra. There, he connected restaurateur Wilson Rodriguez—part of a group that had opened Costa Brava in Norwalk and Macarena Tapas in Stamford—and the pair decided to realize a shared vision in opening Draganac’s own place. “It’s always on the back burner,” Draganac said Monday from the dining floor of Pesca Peruvian Bistro at 70 Main St. “As a chef, you want to do your own thing. It’s a passion that you have and something that you have to get the right time, the right partner, the right people to get together to make something successful.”

So far, so good.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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The town received a notice of intent to sue from a New Canaan man injured when his Vespa presumably skidded out on Lambert Road one morning in June. At about 7:04 a.m. on June 12 (a Tuesday), he sustained “permanent injuries” including an ankle fracture and knee sprain, due to “deposits of gravel and/or sand and/or a slippery oil like substance upon Lambert Road which was open to traffic and concerning which no warnings or cautions were posted,” according to a notice filed Aug. 2 by attorney James Hyland, a partner in Hamden-based Mulvey, Oliver, Gould & Crotta. The man was traveling at or below the speed limit, the notice said. ***

The Planning & Zoning Commission on Tuesday voted 8-1 to approve Grace Farms for 12 events at the Lukes Wood Road organization to be auctioned off as fundraising items during its annual benefit in October.