Gallo restaurateurs branch into Danbury
DANBURY — Restaurateur Raffaele Gallo and his longtime business partner, Giuseppe Castellano, have decided to bring their decades of Italian dining experience to Hat City.
Their new restaurant — Gallo Family Restaurant — opened Tuesday in the Newtown Road space next to La Quinta Inn & Suites that Outback Steakhouse occupied before closing in 2020. The restaurant is located off Exit 8 of westbound Interstate 84.
Chief marketing officer and business partner Pat Dagle said the Danbury restaurant is a sister to Gallo Ristorante in Ridgefield, which Gallo and Castellano own.
“We came together as a bigger partnership to do some cooler things and branch out of the Ridgefield locale,” Dagle said.
Contemporary Italian cuisine can be found at both, but Gallo Family Restaurant provides a more casual dining experience than Gallo Ristorante.
“Gallo in Ridgefield provides a button-up, more high end setting and we wanted to bring something to Danbury that’s more available for families,” Dagle said. “It has the top-notch Italian food and white tablecloth experience people know in Ridgefield, but just a little bit more laid back.”
Dagle said the design of the new restaurant is inspired by the island life of Capri, Italy, where Gallo’s family is from.
“We went farm style at Gallo Ristorante — but with this one, we went very nautical and lemon-inspired,” he said, noting that Capri is known for lemons.
In addition to “bold lemon wallpaper with aqua-toned striping,” Dagle said patrons will find vintage framed photos of the restaurant staff and their families.
“We filled the space with about 50 photos of everyone’s families,” he said. “We’re playing off nostalgia.”
Not only is the interior design of the Danbury restaurant different from the one in Ridgefield, but its menu is larger.
“We have anything you can think of as far as traditional Italian and Italian-American food goes — from pastas and pizzas to meats and desserts,” Dagle said. “It will be challenging to find something that’s not on the menu. There’s something for everyone, and the quality of food isn’t played down.”
Castellano — who was raised in Naples, Italy, with family in the restaurant industry — is Gallo Family Restaurant’s executive chef.
Gallo Express
The space at 116 Newtown Road will serve as an outlet for a new meal delivery and retail concept called Gallo Express, according to Dagle.
“We’re putting a lot of effort into packaged meals — an idea that branched out of the pandemic,” he said.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced restaurants to close their doors in 2020, Dagle said Gallo Ristorante started offering to-go meals.
“We really put an effort into bringing the Gallo experience into people’s homes, and it was a hit. We were selling out every single day,” he said. “They came in nicely designed boxes with a bottle of wine and dessert, and meal offerings just like you could get inside the restaurant.”
Dagle said it was so successful that they decided to turn it into a retail concept and acquired the Newtown Road space in Danbury for the purpose of using it as a “ghost kitchen” for Gallo Express.
With more space than needed for Gallo Express operations, Dagle said they contemplated additional uses for the site and that’s how the idea for Gallo Family Restaurant was born.
“It will be a delivery-pickup location for Gallo Express, which will start taking online orders in the next month with a couple retail spaces opening throughout Connecticut shortly after that,” he said.
In addition to opening Gallo Family Restaurant, working on Gallo Express and running other restaurants like the Lantern Bar and Gastropub in Ridgefield, the Gallo Group has other projects underway — including the expansion of its Gran Gusto Trattoria restaurant chain. The original Gran Gusto opened 14 years ago in Cambridge, Mass.
Now, the restaurateurs are working to bring Gran Gusto to New Haven and West Hartford, where the new location is under construction.
For information, visit gallofamilyrestaurant.com.