Italian Gourmet Deli & Bakery

Italian Gourmet Deli & Bakery
15 Hartford Road
Newington, CT 06111

(860) 665-1467

Open Monday through Friday 7A-4P

This little gem is right on the Area 16 corner of Main and Stoddard. They have daily lunch specials for $8. You get an entre such as Swedish Meatballs, fresh carved turkey, meat and cheese lasanga, sheppard's pie, stuffed pork, and two sides. The menu changes daily. You can pick up a monthly calender listing the choices. They also have excellent homemade pizza for $2 a slice and deli sandwiches made with fresh baked bread. Very delicious food.

Here's the shepard's pie with a double side of green beans.



You also get a buttered fresh made Portugese roll. Here's roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy and mixed vegetables.

Newington Meat and Marketplace

Newington Meat and Marketplace
847 Main Street
Newington, CT 06111
(860) 666-3431

This place is just up the street from Subway, yet for years when posted in Newington, I ate at Subway. Shame on me. At Newington Meat, for $4.50 you can get a great deli sandwich with fresh sliced meat and fresh bread. They also serve grinders such as Chicken Cutlet, meatloaf, Italian sausage and corned beef. You can get hot soup, local sodas and chips. They also have more formal entrees they can pop in a microwave and heat up for you.

Cisco’s American Breakfast and Mexican Cuisine

Cisco’s American Breakfast and Mexican Cuisine
254 Hartford Avenue
Newington, CT 06110
(860)666-0703

Mon-Thurs 5:30 AM – 3 PM
Friday 5:30 AM – 9 PM
Sat 7 AM – 9PM
Sun 7 AM – 3 PM

Cisco’s serves a traditional American breakfast and then authentic Mexican food for lunch and dinner. I ordered two soft shell tacos (chicken and pork) for $4.50 and got them within 3 minutes. They were very good. My partner got two hard shell tacos and they were homemade shells. They offer the full array of Mexican specialties: enchillads, burritos, tamales, fajitas, chile rellenos, gorditas, quesadillas, etc.

Bombay Olive

The Bombay Olive
450 South Main Street
West Hartford
(860) 561-3000

From 11:30 to 3 everyday the Bombay Olive has a lunch buffet. Takeout is one price, fill your Styrofoam container to capacity, and pay $9 and some change including tax. I got rice, curry goat, chicken tiki masala, tandori chicken, some other other kind of chicken, some potato and peas combination, some fried appetizer that was good and several pieces of garlic naan bread. It filled me up and was quite tasty.

A. Dong Supermarket

A Dong Supermarket
160 Shield Street
West Hartford, CT
(860)953-8903

Open until 8:00 P.M.

The A. Dong Grocery on Shield Street is a grocery from a different world. As soon you walk in the door, you can see roasted ducks hanging from their heads, next to roast pork and sometimes even a roasted boar's head. There is a Chinese bakery, which excellent pastries, a produce section that has vegtables and fruits you may have never seen before. The seafood section has unusual fish, too. They had live eels there one day, another time some kind of live buffalo fish the size of small pigs, and another time a bin of live blue crabs. There is a cold drink section that offers drinks like fungus and Lychee. There is an entire supermarket row just of different kinds of tea -- tea for the colon, tea for the liver, tea for the back, tea for the sex life. You name it, they have a tea for it. This place is an adventure just to walk through.

I go there sometimes for the roast duck. $7.95 for half a duck, chopped up with or without the head and packed into an aluminim foil pan. If they don't have one already sliced up, you can watch the woman behind the counter take down the duck and then make quick work of it with her meat cleaver. The barbequed pork here is so much better than what you get from a Chinese restaurant. It is fresh cooked her on premesis.

Note: I have yet to try the boar's head.