Local Businesses and COVID-19: Farmer’s Table

For today’s Q&A with a local business, we talk to Robert Ubaldo, chef-owner at Farmer’s Table. 

The celebrated Forest Street restaurant is open 4:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and is trying to take advance of an expanded outdoor dining area (though, according to Ubaldo, some problems have arisen with respect to plan recently approved by the town that had been developed by a group of citizen volunteers). Here’s our interview. 

New Canaanite: You recently have been allowed, as per the state, to open an outdoor dining area, after weeks of only doing pickup. How’s it going for you? Robert Ubaldo: It’s been real tough, because we only have a limited number of seats outside. The tables all have to be six feet away from each other and then also away from the curb and our fit-out barrier, so you can’t fit many people out there.

New Digs, Same Philosophy: Farmer’s Table Re-Opens on Restaurant Row

After a short move across Forest St. and a lengthy renovation to the former Bistro Bonne Nuit space, Farmer’s Table quietly re-opened for business last week. “I love it here, it’s really, really nice,” chef/owner Robert Ubaldo told NewCanaanite.com.  “We’re kind of moving along slowly here because we have to accommodate all the changes we’re going to make. “

The most notable change is the space itself. The new Farmer’s Table has 46 seats, nearly three times as many as the previous restaurant.

Farmer’s Table To Reopen with Expanded Seating, Menu in New Forest Street Space

 

The Farmer’s Table restaurant on Forest Street on Tuesday closed its doors at number 21 as it started moving equipment and furniture across the road to number 12, where it’ll open within a couple of weeks, its chef and owner said. “That ought to be confusing enough, flipping those numbers around,” Robert Ubaldo said with a smile from the sunny sidewalk of New Canaan’s “Restaurant Row.” Ubaldo said a part of him is sad to leave the spot where the restaurant started three-plus years ago—formerly the Lindner motorcycle shop located next to the old Griffin Ford dealership. “It still had parts in the basement when we moved in,” Ubaldo recalled. A mixed residential-and-retail space is planned for the second half of the downtown Forest Street block.