Connecticut Steakhouses | SteakMap
The Best Steakhouses in Connecticut
Connecticut has 28 steakhouses across 25 towns — which is very nearly one per town, the most evenly distributed roster in this directory. Stamford has three. Nothing else has more than two.
And the two largest rooms in the state are inside two of the largest casinos in America.
The Connecticut Ten
- David Burke Prime (Mashantucket) — inside Foxwoods, with a glass-walled Himalayan salt dry-aging room and the most ambitious beef in the state.
- Michael Jordan’s Steak House (Uncasville) — inside Mohegan Sun, overlooking the casino floor from a mezzanine. The rival to Foxwoods in every sense.
- Blackstones Steakhouse (Norwalk) — the Fairfield County standard, with rooms in Stamford and Southport.
- George’s (Greenwich) — Italian seafood and steak on the Gold Coast, where the expense accounts are private-equity rather than corporate.
- Joseph’s Steakhouse (Bridgeport) — dry-aged Prime in a city that does not otherwise get written about for dining.
- Mix Prime Steakhouse (Danbury) — with a second room in Woodbury.
- Prime: An American Kitchen & Bar (Stamford) — on the harbor, and the most contemporary cooking in the city.
- Cast Iron Chop House & Oyster Bar (New Haven) — cast-iron searing and a raw bar, a short walk from Yale.
- Butcher Bros Steakhouse (Cheshire) — butcher-led, which is the signal worth looking for anywhere.
- Saltbrick Prime (Branford) — on the shoreline east of New Haven, and the best steak between there and the Rhode Island line.
Two casinos, two steakhouses, one rivalry
Foxwoods opened on the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in 1992 and Mohegan Sun on the Mohegan reservation in 1996, about ten miles apart in rural southeastern Connecticut. Between them they became two of the largest casino complexes in the United States, in a part of the state that had almost no dining economy before they arrived.
Each anchored its restaurant program with a name. Foxwoods took David Burke, the chef who helped popularize Himalayan salt-block dry aging in America, and built him a glass-walled aging room you can see from the floor. Mohegan Sun took Michael Jordan, and put the dining room on a mezzanine looking down over the gaming tables.
It is the same pattern as Las Vegas at a fraction of the scale, and the same one that keeps Deadwood standing: the casino subsidizes the kitchen, and the kitchen gets better than the market alone would support. Rural New London County has two of the best steakhouses in New England because of it.
A state of one-steakhouse towns
The rest of Connecticut is the opposite of concentrated. Twenty-eight steakhouses across twenty-five towns means almost every one is the only serious steak for miles: Salvatore’s in Hamden, Red Fox in Middletown, Gabriele’s in Westport, Madison Prime, Windsor Steak & Seafood, Terra Sole in Ridgefield, Saybrook Fish House in Rocky Hill, and Jack’s in New Haven. Nataz manages three — Clinton, North Branford and Southington.
The national chains
Three: Ruth’s Chris in Newington, Fleming’s in West Hartford and J. Gilbert’s in Glastonbury — all three clustered around Hartford rather than the wealthier coast.
