Crowd-pleasing fare, classic Italian flavors and heaping portions: It’s everything you know about Joey Garlic’s, now available east of the river.
The family-friendly restaurant opened its Manchester location July 12 in the Buckland Hills shopping area, on Redstone Road by the Cinemark Buckland Hills IMAX theater. The new Joey Garlic’s joins its Newington sibling, along with Joey’s Pizza Pie in West Hartford. (The original Farmington location, which opened in 2007, has been rebranded as Mama Luke’s by former Joey’s partner Nick Romano.)
“We get a lot of customers that would travel over to Newington” from Manchester, says Anthony Sullo, who co-owns the Joey’s restaurants with business partner Gary Gello. “People were always asking for us to come here. It seemed to make logical sense.”
Sullo and Gello took over the restaurant space once occupied by Carrabba’s Italian Grill, completely redoing the interior over eight months’ time. With many chain restaurants in the area, “we wanted [Joey’s] to look different, feel different,” Sullo says.The 200-seat Manchester location draws a mix of diners: moviegoers, shoppers and customers from surrounding towns. “We’ve been busy since we opened. We’re on a wait most nights of the week.” (There’s an app for that, where guests can add their names to a wait list.)
FEATURED/NOTEWORTHY DISHES: Visitors can expect generous servings of Joey’s classics: the famed eggplant fries showered with grated Romano cheese; penne a la vodka, Bolognese and other pastas; breaded and fried eggplant and chicken Parmesan; “old-school” grinders, like its best-selling Philly cheese steak, and half-pound, freshly ground burgers with lots of free toppings.
Starters ($6.49 to $13.99) include fried mozzarella, spicy meatballs, wings, calamari and cheese-topped “old-fashioned” garlic bread. Among the top-selling salads ($6.29 to $14.99) are the Sicilian orange, with mixed greens, sweet orange slices, kalamata olives and gorgonzola atop flatbread, and the warm goat cheese salad, with toasted pistachios, honey and light raspberry walnut vinaigrette.
Pasta dishes ($11.49 to $17.99) served with a choice of penne, linguini or fettuccine, offer the classics: Alfredo, carbonara, clam sauce, old-school lasagna, broccoli rabe and sausage and baked manicotti. Newer additions to the entree options ($16.49 to $21.99) include a grilled salmon in lemon butter sauce and Anthony’s “veal al capo,” a “humongous” breaded and sauteed veal cutlet with a spicy tomato sauce of capers, hot peppers, mushrooms and Kalamata olives.
Joey’s brick oven pizza ($10.59 to $22.99), with a thin yet sturdy crispy crust, is spotlighted with specialty pie combinations: hot honey salami, vodka tomato, buffalo and BBQ chicken, clams casino. Fresh mozzarella pies are another big seller, says Gello, and guests can create their own pizzas or calzones from a long list of topping selections.
The Manchester location is the first to offer a menu of lunch specials ($5.99 to $13.99, available until 4 p.m.) with salads, smaller portions of pastas and entrees, half-size grinders and pizzas by the slice. Sullo says about 80 percent of Manchester’s lunch customers have opted to order from the new menu.
“We’re known for really large portions, [but] there’s a segment of the lunch crowd that doesn’t want that. We’re giving people options, essentially.” The partners also plan to offer the new lunch specials in Newington.
A kids’ menu ($3.99 to $6.99) offers hamburgers and cheeseburgers, pizza, chicken tenders and pastas, and kids and adults alike enjoy Joey’s hand-dipped milkshakes, Italian ice cream sodas and root beer floats ($3.49 to $5.99) in about 28 different flavors.
THE BAR: Joey Garlic’s bar offers a dozen draft beers, select wines and cocktails that rotate with the seasons, like sangrias, a blueberry pomegranate margarita with Patron Silver tequila and new fall flavors (pistachio and pumpkin pie martinis.)
The Manchester restaurant will also introduce a weekday happy hour in the next several weeks (the first in the history of Joey Garlic’s) with deals on food and drink.
LOCATION AND HOURS: Joey Garlic’s, 31 Redstone Road, Manchester, is open Sunday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. 860-643-1500, joeygarlics.com.
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