SaltBrick Prime coming to Branford

Closed Donovan’s to get new life as steakhouse, tavern

2024-01-24 - By Susan Braden STAFF WRITER

BRANFORD — The shuttered Donovan’s Reef was just too good of an opportunity to pass up for the CEO and partner of Foxwood’s David Burke Prime steakhouse and part-owner of restaurants in Chicago, Miami and Aspen.

“We jumped on it,” said Branford resident Stephen Goglia who’s lived in town for 30 years. He is also the owner of Caputo Trattoria — “a beautiful Italian restaurant” — at the Ledyard casino.

Goglia is working now to transform the former Donovan’s Reef into a high-end, “refined” 120seat steakhouse serving his patented aged beef steaks and prime rib nightly.

He hopes to have the restaurant, named SaltBrick Prime, open in late spring or early summer.

“I believe Branford is underserved at a high point,” the restaurateur said. “There’s certainly a lot of high-end, well-run restaurants in Branford — there’s many choices. But a high-end steakhouse is missing.”

“And we realize we have to come in with our A-game,” he said about the lively local restaurant scene.

Dining out is more than just getting a meal, he added. “It’s our entertainment, ‘Where we’re going to eat?’” he said.

But Goglia isn’t opening just one dining establishment, but two at the same spot.

Next door to the main restaurant will be a more casual eatery, Lockworks Tavern, which will offer patio seating in addition to 120 seats inside. The restaurants will be located in Lockworks Square, a historic foundry turned plaza downtown.

Goglia stressed that the Branford venture is not affiliated with David Burke’s Steakhouse. Although he kept the name David Burke Prime for the casino steakhouse, it now belongs to Goglia’s company, Craveable Hospitality Group.

“We did a joint venture with David Burke, and it’s long gone, but I have control of the name at Foxwoods,” he explained.

This is a brand-new business, he said.

“We’re excited to bring it forward,” Goglia said about SaltBrick Prime.

“I’m 60 years old. I’ve spent my entire career in the restaurant industry. This is the most exciting project I’ve ever done,” Goglia said.

“I brought my friends in as partners. I brought my company in as partners,” Goglia explained. “We’re bringing our best products in. I live in the town. It has some extra meaning to me than just going to open a restaurant in Charlestown or Charlotte or Miami. It means a little bit more.”

It was an easy choice for Goglia to open a restaurant in Branford, he raised his family here.

“My three sons have gone through the Branford school system and have families now. I now

have grandchildren in the Branford school system,” he said.

And Branford has treated him well.

“I love Branford. We take a lot of pride. I think it’s a great community from start to finish,” Goglia said. “It’s sleepy. It’s sophisticated. And it’s well managed. And we’ve had a great life.”

His son, Joseph Goglia, will be the managing director at SaltBrick and the tavern. “He’s worked with me his entire life,” Stephen Goglia said.

Goglia’s crew has been working on the site of the old Donovan’s for months.

“We’ve completely demoed the entire building” inside and painted the exterior, he said.

Lockworks Tavern, Goglia said, will “have a sense of style to it. It will have sense of purpose in terms of décor. It will have a full entrée menu with daily specials.” Both restaurants will have full bars.

Glen & Co, an awardwinning New York architecture and interior design firm, will be putting its touches in the pre-Civil War structure, which features 30-foot vaulted ceilings.

“It will be pretty dazzling,” Goglia said.

The menu will be well thought-out as well, he said.

At SaltBrick, in addition to the aged beef, there will be sushi rolls made with Japanese Wagyu beef and lobster, called Land and Sea. “It’s pretty fantastic,” he said.

SaltBrick will also serve Goglia’s signature seafood towers and smoked cocktails, popular at the 414seat restaurant at Foxwoods.

The aged beef is created by Goglia’s patented process using bricks of Himalayan salt.

“We’ve developed and own a U.S. patent on how we dry age steaks. It’s a bona-fide U.S. patent,” he said.

What is dry-aged beef ?

Goglia explained his patented dry-aging process, which takes the moisture from the steak and dries it, leaving intact all of the flavor.

“We use the Himalayan salt; we cut it into bricks. So, if you imagine a clay brick, we take the Himalayan salt, which is one of the oldest minerals on the planet,” he said.

But the unacquainted, don’t expect a steak with juices running out, he added.

“As some people still believe, you cut into a steak and look how juicy it is,” he explained. “And all that juice bleeding out of your steak is flavor that is being left on the plate and not being received in your palate.”

“What we’ve done is we’ve taken that moisture and dried it. But what it does is convert it to flavor. That dry-aged steak should not bleed, and all that flavor is left in the meat.”

The dry-aging process sounds like some sort of alchemy. “It goes into our box. We control the salt. We control the saline,” he said, and the amount of moisture.

“We work the bacteria because we use UV lights. We also have microbiotic shelves that allow the air to circulate around the meat,” he said. “The meat is just sitting on the shelf. It’s not wrapped in any way.”

“It’s pink as the day it was born,” he said of the aged meat. He noted they purchase their beef from Iowa and South Dakota and do all butchering in-house.

The hospitality business

When Goglia is not opening a new steakhouse, his business, Craveable Hospitality Group is involved with Italian restaurants and a gourmet bakery. The group consults for hotels, movie theaters and Barnes & Noble bookstores.

His hospitality business is many-sided, it also has two online businesses, SaltBrick Prime, which sells high-end meats and barbecue products, and PieCaken Bakeshop with celebrity pastry chef Zac Young.

“Of course, during COVID it blew up, it was a very small thing we were doing,” Goglia said about PieCaken. “It’s really exploded to the point where we’ve done some pop-ups called Sprinkletown Café.”

Goglia is also opening a Sprinkletown bakeshop in Foxwoods in March.

When asked if he will open a Sprinkletown in Branford, he said with a laugh, “One thing at a time.”