50 States of Wonder
6 Unusual Eats Curiously Cooked Up in Connecticut

Lore has it that, around 1900, a customer ran up to Louis Lassen's lunch wagon and demanded a quick meal. Lassen took some steak trimmings, put them between two pieces of toast, and the hamburger was born that day—at least, according to the Library of Congress.

In a little red building that looks every year of its age, Louis' Lunch continues to serve burgers like it's 1900, cooking patties inside vertical stove towers and serving them on toast. Don't ask for ketchup: only cheese, tomato, or onions come as add-ons. Be sure to square out your meal with a slice of their homemade pie and a local Foxon Park soda. Due to the spread of COVID-19, the restaurant shut its doors for a bit. But now, they're open once more, from Tuesdays through Sundays. To make things easier on customers, the restaurant has recently made a huge concession to the passage of time: they now accept credit cards. (Read more.)

Pronounced “ah-beets,” apizza is New Haven, Connecticut’s iconic pizza style. The pronunciation was brought to Connecticut by Neapolitan immigrants, and so was apizza's manner of cooking: quick and hot until the crust develops a robust char. 

The original pie is a simple tomato: mootz, the old-school by-word for mozzarella, is considered a topping on its own. In the early 20th-century, the local pizza pioneer Frank Pepe concocted a creative combination—a white, tomato-less pie with shucked littleneck clams and Romano cheese. The descendants of Italian immigrants in New Haven set up many a pizza joint since, and several of them serve clam apizza. Around town, everything from your usual pepperoni to mashed potato pizza is available, but for many people, a simple tomato pie or the decked-out clam apizza at Pepe's is the thing. Currently, they're open for take-out and delivery only. (Read more.)

Starting in the 1970s, hundreds of feminist restaurants opened across the country. Often serving vegetarian cuisine, they served as important places for women to plan activism and relax. 

Now, there's only Bloodroot left. This Bridgeport institution has endured since 1977, and still serves up vegetarian, globally inspired recipes. The restaurant's ideals are apparent everywhere from the decor—heavy on political posters—to the protocol: instead of relying on servers, guests bus their own tables and collect their own meals. 

Jerk “chicken” and quiche are available on a regular basis, while other offerings, such as an Ethiopian spread, rotate in and out. The restaurant is currently open for take-out and outdoor dining on the restaurant's patio. (Read more.)

Like many new inventions, burgers went through several permutations before arriving at the current grilled and bun-clad form. But none are as controversial as the steamed cheeseburger, the local speciality of Meriden, Connecticut. 

The idea might bring a certain episode of The Simpsons to mind. But the steamed cheeseburger—or cheeseburg—is more about the cheese. In fact, the cheeseburg started out as steam-melted cheese on a roll, served out of Meriden restaurants in the 1900s. People still make their way to Meriden to try this unique burger style, often heading to Ted's Restaurant, which has been draping molten cheddar cheese over hyper-juicy patties since 1959. The juiciness, by the way, is the result of the sauna-like heat of special steamers the restaurant uses just for cheeseburgs. Proponents say the lack of grease and carcinogenic char makes for a healthier patty. Detractors call steamed burgers watery and flavorless. But their popularity can't be denied. At the moment, the restaurant is serving up steamed burgers through take-out, delivery, and outdoor dining. (Read more.)

Diners en route to Bloodroot might find themselves passing this unprepossessing, empty lot. It's not much to look at now, but once, this was where the Frisbie Pie Company stood. William Russell Frisbie, on his return from the Civil War, developed here a pie empire that distributed baked goods across the Northeast. 

Lore has it that local children, factory workers, and college students at nearby Yale flung around the company's aerodynamic pie tins for fun (though some have contended that it was the lids to the Frisbie Company's sugar cookie jars that could really get airborne). Players called their new practice “Frisbie-ing,” a name that would get slightly modified when some intrepid toymakers tweaked it in 1957 for their new plaything, the “Frisbee.”

While the Frisbee has endured, the Frisbie pie did not. In 1958, the factory shut its doors, and there's only an empty lot left. But the legacy of their pies soars on. (Read more.)

Bethlehem, Connecticut, is just the right place for the Abbey of Regina Laudis. At this monastery—founded after World War II by an American steeped in French culture—an entirely different kind of culture has flourished since the 1970s, when a local farmer gifted Sister Noella her first cow.

From Sheba the cow sprang the monastery's dairy, and their trailblazing cheesemaking operation. In 1975, there was just one other cheesemaker in Connecticut, and it only took two years for Sister Noella to develop Bethlehem cheese, which the abbey website describes as “pressed, uncooked, semi-hard, fungal-ripened cheese, known for its nutty earthy flavor.” The dairy also produces other cheeses, milk, and ice cream. 

The nuns note that their dairy followed ecological practices and promoted local foods long before such ideas were mainstream, but it's also had quite an effect on the abbey residents as well. As one monastic intern noted, before he worked in the dairy he “did not know the difference between Kraft Singles and Gruyère.” While the abbey's store is currently closed for a remodeling project, as of early July, Bethlehem cheese is available for purchase at the nearby New Morning Market and Vitality Center. (Read more.)