Maria Makes a Move on Stamford

Dominick Caiati got his first restaurant job at age seven. “We’d spend all family birthdays at the restaurant my grandparents owned,” he told me recently. Dominick’s grandparents, immigrants who relocated from Calabria, Italy to Westport in 1912, started a neighborhood Italian restaurant in the Saugatuck section of Westport not long after they arrived. “They called it The Arrow, because the building came to a point,” Dominick said of the building at 67 Saugatuck Ave., now occupied by Westport Chinese Takeout. “On my seventh birthday, I blew out the candles on my cake and my uncle threw an apron at me and said, ‘C’mon, you’re going to work.’ It was the best gift he ever could have given me.”

Fast-forward a few decades, and it seems that Dominick’s uncle really did do him a favor that day, because he’s poised to launch a major culinary destination on the Stamford waterfront with the help of a celebrity chef or two. “Maria…The Restaurant at Stamford is a concept location,” explains Dominick of the space at 112 Southfield Rd. in Stamford now occupied by 203 Studios, a full service filming, production and photography studio located directly on the Stamford waterfront. “We have big plans for the space,” Dominick explains, “and we’re starting off with celebrity chef demonstrations and dinners, eventually growing into a group of independent but cooperative culinary-based businesses. In the long term we’re planning cooking classes, a gourmet market and pop-up restaurants for this location. But for our first event, we’re hosting a dinner featuring Dave Martin, of Top Chef fame,” he says of the season one runner up of Bravo’s hit series.

That dinner, cooked by Dave Martin himself, is happening Thursday, May 19, and will be Maria…The Restaurant’s inaugural event. An evening of expertly prepared food and thoughtfully chosen wine, it is likely to be one of this spring’s seminal gastronomic events.

“It’s our first dinner, so we’re keeping the seats pretty limited,” says Dominick. “Our focus at the beginning is narrow,” he says. Not unlike the pointed space in which his ancestors began. “Eventually, we plan to build out the space down to the river, extend the boardwalk to the apartments and businesses that are being built and beginning to thrive down here. It’s going to be big.”

So, are you interested in having Dave Martin cook dinner for you?  Want to be the first to sample Stamford’s  latest waterfront dining experience? You can snag tickets for Maria’s first event, featuring Dave Martin, for $197.00 per person. Or you can purchase a table for eight for $1,576.00. For more information on how, check out Maria’s blog. You can expect a delicious dinner—without an apron being tossed at you.

Are you intrigued by Maria…The Restaurant’s concept? Post your questions here, or email your comments to me at mmorelli@mainstreetconnect.us.

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