This was a week of contrasts. It opened with margaritas and tacos back in Newtown with old friends, ran through a couple of NYC days that swung from barbecue to gelato to a slice grabbed between back-to-back meetings, included a celebratory Friday dinner with the family marking two big milestones, and finished with a soggy Memorial Day weekend that turned indoors into one of the better family meals of the season. The forecast may have ruined the cookout plans, but it didn’t ruin the eating. Some weeks the weather cooperates. This one made us improvise, and the improvising turned out beautifully.
Monday: Tacos and Margs at Taco Dia in Newtown
Monday took us back to Newtown to meet up with our old friends — and there’s something about returning to the town where you spent 22 years that makes a casual dinner feel like a little homecoming.
We met at Taco Dia, the taqueria and sports bar from the Bailey’s Backyard team that’s set up in the old Quattro Osteria space on Church Hill Road. Margaritas, tacos, and a whole lot of laughs — exactly the kind of low-key, high-joy evening that old friendships are built for. The margs were cold and generous, the tacos came out fresh and vibrant, and the conversation picked right back up the way it always does with people who’ve known you for years.
One detail worth flagging for anyone in the area: the entire kitchen at Taco Dia is 100% gluten free. That’s a rare and genuinely thoughtful thing, and given the gluten-free cooking that runs through our house, it’s the kind of place I’m always glad to know about. You’d never guess it from the food — everything tastes exactly as it should, just without the worry.
📍 Taco Dia | 32 Church Hill Rd, Newtown, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tuesday: BBQ at Mighty Quinn’s, Gelato at Eataly
Tuesday was back in New York City, and it was hot — 90s in May, the kind of early-summer heat that makes you rethink lunch entirely.
I ran over to Brookfield Place and went with barbecue from Mighty Quinn’s in the Hudson Eats food hall. Mighty Quinn’s does the low-and-slow, wood-smoked thing properly — you order Chipotle-style down the line, picking your meat and sides. The brisket has that proper peppery bark and tender, smoky pull that’s made the place an NYC institution. On a brutally hot day, sitting by the river with a tray of barbecue is a surprisingly perfect move.
Then, because the heat demanded it, I headed over to Eataly for gelato. There’s no better antidote to a 90-degree afternoon than a cup of proper Italian gelato, dense and cold and just sweet enough. Eataly’s gelato counter has bailed me out on more than one hot commute, and Tuesday was no exception.
Dinner that night was light — after barbecue and gelato in the afternoon heat, the body just asks for less.
📍 Mighty Quinn’s Barbeque | 225 Liberty St, Brookfield Place, New York, NY ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Wednesday: A Two-Pasta Night — Penne alla Gricia and Bucatini Carbonara
Wednesday was a dinner I’d been looking forward to all week, and it ended up being two dishes cooked side by side — one gluten free, one gloriously not.
For my wife and daughter, I made Penne alla Gricia, gluten free, using Giada’s gluten-free pasta. Gricia is the unsung hero of the Roman pasta family — guanciale, pecorino, black pepper, and pasta water, with no tomato and no egg. It’s essentially carbonara’s older, simpler cousin, or amatriciana without the tomato. When it’s made right, that rendered guanciale fat emulsifies with the pecorino and starchy water into something silky and deeply savory, and the Giada gluten-free pasta held up beautifully.
For myself, I went the traditional route: Carbonara with bucatini — full of glorious gluten, thank you very much. The key to both dishes was the guanciale, which I’d picked up at Caraluzzi’s in Newtown when I was up there on Monday. Their butcher program is excellent, and they sell some of the best guanciale I’ve had — properly cured, with that deep porky richness that no pancetta or bacon can fake. Rendered slowly until the edges crisp, it becomes the backbone of both dishes.
Bucatini is the right call for carbonara, too — that hollow center catches the egg-and-pecorino sauce and turns every forkful into a proper bite. Two pastas, two crowds, one very happy kitchen.
Thursday: A Stage Door Slice Between Meetings
Thursday was a brutal NYC day — back-to-back meetings with no daylight between them, the kind of schedule where you look up and it’s somehow 2 p.m. and you haven’t eaten.
When I finally broke free, Stage Door Pizza on Vesey Street called my name. Two cheese slices, grabbed fast, eaten faster — and they hit exactly the spot. There’s a particular satisfaction to a classic New York slice when you’re starving and short on time: the fold, the grease blot, the crust with that bottom-crisp. No frills, no fuss, just two slices doing exactly what a New York slice is supposed to do.
Dinner was the best kind of payoff — leftover carbonara from Wednesday night. Carbonara is one of those dishes people say doesn’t reheat well, and while it’s true it’s best fresh, a gentle reheat with a splash of water and a little patience brings it right back. After a day like Thursday, having that waiting at home felt like a small gift from my past self.
📍 Stage Door Pizza | 26 Vesey St, New York, NY ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Friday: A Firehouse Lunch and a Celebration Dinner at Spiga
Friday’s lunch was a Fairfield County classic — a chicken cutlet sandwich from Firehouse Deli on Reef Road.
If you’ve lived in Fairfield for more than five minutes, someone has told you to go to Firehouse. It’s a rite of passage. The red brick building just off the Post Road has been a neighborhood institution since 1969, and their chicken cutlets are the stuff of local legend — real, breaded, fried, never those sad frozen patties. I kept it simple: chicken cutlet on a roll with lettuce, tomato, and mayo. Perfect. Sometimes the simplest build is the best one, letting the quality of the cutlet and the crunch of the roll do all the talking.
📍 Firehouse Deli | 22 Reef Rd, Fairfield, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
But the real event was dinner — and it was a big one. We met the kids at Spiga Wine Bar & Salumeria to celebrate two huge milestones: one daughter landing a new job in NYC, and our other daughter passing the Series 7 exam.
Two wins in one week. The kind of week that deserves a real table, real wine, and a proper Italian dinner.
Spiga has been one of our reliable Italian spots for a while now (we hit it for Mother’s Day a couple of weeks ago), and Friday night confirmed exactly why. Part of the Racanelli Restaurant Group, three generations of a big Italian family doing what they do best, it’s the kind of place that knows how to hold a celebration without making it feel forced. Warm lighting, that big custom zinc bar at the center, handmade pastas, brick-oven pizzas, and a wine list deep enough to actually explore.
I went with the Orecchiette with broccolini and sausage, and it was excellent. Orecchiette — those little “ear-shaped” pasta cups from Puglia — are made for a dish like this. The cups catch the rendered sausage fat, the bits of crumbled meat, and the slightly bitter, garlicky broccolini, so every bite gets all three elements at once. The pasta was cooked properly al dente, the sausage was well-seasoned and crumbled (not in big lumps), and the broccolini had that perfect tender-with-a-little-bite finish. It’s such a quintessentially Southern Italian dish, and Spiga did it right.
The rest of the table went all over the menu in the best way. The Calabrese pizza came out blistered and beautifully charred from the brick oven — Calabrian heat, that spicy soppressata-and-chili Southern Italian profile that hits in the best possible way. The steak frites landed exactly where it should: a properly cooked cut with a stack of crisp fries that disappeared faster than the steak did. And the penne alla vodka was that creamy, slightly pink, vodka-sauce-classic that no Italian-American table can really do without. Everyone loved their meal. Everyone toasted everyone. And by the end of dinner, the celebration had earned every bit of itself.
Some Friday nights are just dinners. This one was a moment.
📍 Spiga Wine Bar & Salumeria | 136 Main St, New Canaan, CT ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Saturday: Rain, Landscaping, and a Surprisingly Good Frozen Pizza
Saturday was a washout — rain all day, with a forecast calling for more of the same straight through the holiday weekend. So much for a sunny Memorial Day kickoff.
Rather than let it derail everything, I just leaned in and worked outside in the rain on the landscaping. There’s a stubborn satisfaction in pushing through bad weather to keep a project moving, even if it means coming inside soaked and muddy. On a day like that, food becomes pure fuel — you eat to keep going, not to linger.
Dinner was a Rao’s frozen pizza, and honestly? It was actually pretty good. I went in with low expectations and came away pleasantly surprised. The crust crisped up better than most frozen pies have any right to, and the sauce had that signature Rao’s brightness. Not something I’d serve at a dinner party, but on a cold, wet Saturday when cooking felt like too much, it absolutely did the job.
Sunday: A Rainy Memorial Day Turned Indoor Family Feast
Sunday’s rain continued, so we pivoted — if we couldn’t have the backyard cookout, we’d have an indoor party instead. We invited the family over, and it turned into one of the best meals of the season.
My brother-in-law, who’s a genuinely good cook, handled the appetizers. He brought an artichoke dip that was excellent — warm, rich, cheesy — served with smashed potatoes as the vehicle for dipping. That’s a clever move, by the way. Crispy smashed potatoes instead of bread or chips gives you all that craggy surface area to scoop up the dip, plus a little more substance. It disappeared fast.
I handled the mains, and I went big. Chicken cutlets, plus two trays of meat lasagna — one traditional, one gluten free so everyone at the table could dig in. The star was the meat sauce, built from a blend of Wagyu, bison, and sausage. That combination is something special: the Wagyu brings richness and fat, the bison brings a lean, slightly sweet depth, and the sausage brings the seasoning and the familiar savory backbone. Layered into lasagna and baked until bubbling, it’s the kind of dish that fills a house with the right smell for hours before anyone even sits down.
For dessert, I made two things. Anginetti — those soft, lemony Italian glazed cookies that are a fixture at every Italian-American family gathering — and a flourless chocolate cake, dense, rich, and naturally gluten free, which made it a perfect closer that everyone could enjoy. Between the gluten-free lasagna, the flourless cake, and the naturally GF elements, the whole spread was built so no one had to sit anything out.
A rainy Memorial Day Sunday that could have felt like a letdown turned into a full house, a full table, and a full heart. Sometimes the backup plan is better than the original.
Closing Reflection
This was a week that kept getting rerouted, and kept landing on its feet.
Tacos and margs in Newtown with old friends. Barbecue and gelato on a 90-degree NYC afternoon. A two-pasta night with guanciale from Caraluzzi’s. A fast slice from Stage Door between meetings. A Firehouse cutlet on a Friday afternoon and a celebratory family dinner at Spiga that night — toasting a new NYC job and a passed Series 7 over orecchiette, Calabrese pizza, steak frites, and vodka pasta. A surprisingly decent frozen pizza in the rain. And a Memorial Day weekend that traded the backyard for the dining room and somehow came out ahead — Wagyu-bison-sausage lasagna, anginetti, flourless chocolate cake, and a house full of family.
The weather didn’t give us the week we planned. But the food, the people, and a little improvising gave us a better one.
Some weeks you follow the plan.
This week, the plan kept changing, and every change led somewhere worth eating.