TV cooking champ to appear on Frieri show
Reality show veteran opening restaurant in West Hartford
Adam Greenberg, a five-time champion on cooking reality shows who is building a restaurant in West Hartford Center, will appear on Feb. 23 on “Guy’s Grocery Games,” according to the Food Network.
On the show starring Guy Fieri, Greenberg will compete against other food-show champions Aarthi Sampath, Marc Bynum and Lee Anne Wong. The winner will earn $15,000 and a spot on a future champions show.
On the show, the chefs cook in a grocery store. On the Feb. 23 episode, according to the network website, “the two winners of the dual pork dish battle face off in a final culinary confrontation.”
Greenberg has won the show “Chopped” four times and “Beat Bobby Flay” once. He also has acted as a judge on Food Network shows.
Greenberg, a native of West Hartford, has worked in several restaurants in town, including Max a Mia, Bricco, Barcelona Wine Bar and Bartaco. He later moved to Washington, D.C., where he had a restaurant, the Coconut Club. That restaurant was a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. It closed for good last spring.
“We were going to try and reopen in the spring of 2021, but with forecasted COVID restrictions and sales, we were forced to close,” he said. “Location was in an up-and-coming area, but we needed time to grow into the
space. COVID put a stronghold on any growth.”
In an interview Tuesday, Greenberg said that since moving back to West Hartford, he and his partner, former Bartaco and Barcelona colleague David Boyajian, have been working on opening a new restaurant in the space at 977 Farmington Ave. that once was occupied by Grant’s. The restaurant will be called Sparrow.
Greenberg said he had hoped
that restaurant would have been open by now, but due to build-out delays, they are now shooting for late March.
“It will have a bar and tavernstyle pizza … with a thin, crackery crust,” Greenberg said. “I want it to be a great cocktail bar with approachable bar food, meatballs, fried artichokes, wings, salads.”
The restaurant, he said, also will have ghost-kitchen capabilities,
called Back Door Kitchen, which will be conducted in the back of the restaurant, adjacent to the parking lot.
“Under the Back Door Kitchen umbrella, we will have two or three or four concepts going at a time,” he said. “Before COVID in D.C., I started a concept called subbies, which was subs. We’ll have that. We’ll have a salad concept for sure. It will be quick and easy grabs for people at a
reasonable price point.
“We need things in town at a price point that is a little more friendly. It’s like the Chipotles of the world. But you can only eat so much Chipotle,” he said.
Greenberg’s episode of “Guy’s Grocery Games” will be shown at 8 p.m. Feb. 23 and repeated four hours later.