Bites Nearby: Elmo's Dockside Restaurant

If Elmo’s Dockside Restaurant is the oyster, then its food is the pearl.

By owner Roberto Zaccardelli’s own admission, he spends a lot more money on premium ingredients than any profitable restaurant should.

Blue Point oysters, Maine lobster, sturgeon, striped bass, clams, calamari -– Elmo’s spares no expense in obtaining the best seafood available from suppliers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Zaccardelli says. The same goes for the French-cut pork chops and Black Angus beef on the menu.

The benefit of such high food costs accrues to the select group of diners “who know what they are getting” and appreciate great food, Zaccardelli says.

To be sure, Elmo’s neat but understated nautical-themed décor does not foreshadow what is on its way to the table.

It is only when it gets there, fresh from the kitchen, that guests fully understand what makes Elmo’s what Zaccardelli calls his “special little restaurant.”  

(Not that he’s the only one who thinks so. Elmo’s was named as Tolland County’s best seafood house by Connecticut Magazine; and the restaurant’s longevity would support that assessment.)

It is the Zaccardelli family’s long history of success at the Vernon location and others throughout Greater Hartford that enables Elmo’s to be the kind of restaurant it is today, Zaccardelli says.

Roberto’s father, Elmo Zaccardelli, arrived in Connecticut from Italy in the late 1950s. Over time and with long hours of hard work, he grew a business that today includes four restaurant properties and other real estate holdings, Roberto said.

Income from the entire enterprise is what enables Elmo’s Dockside to spend more money on food and high-grade ingredients than most restaurant’s would find economically feasible, Zaccardelli said.

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Roberto decided he would prefer the balanced life of a father and restaurateur rather than his high-pressure job in Manhattan; so he returned to Connecticut to help run the family businesses. Roberto and his brother had grown up working in the family’s restaurants, which included a big one in East Hartford called The Horseless Carriage.

The elder Zaccardelli and a business partner had originally opened the Vernon eatery at 48 Hartford Turnpike in 1968, naming it Casanova. It was restyled and renamed Elmo’s Sea Catch in the late 1980s when the head chef wanted to open his own restaurant and asked to keep the Casanova name, Roberto said.

Roberto took full command about six years ago when his father decided to retire to Florida with his wife, Clara.

Roberto gave the restaurant a make-over inside and out; and, perhaps more importantly, doubled the size of the kitchen, he said. It was way too small to accommodate the kind of menu he wanted to present, he said.

Zaccardelli and his longtime chef Ali Kharboush now pride themselves on making nearly everything from scratch, including the soups, chowder, side dishes, stocks, dressings and bread.

“We don’t cut any corners on seafood,” Zaccardelli said.

Take the lunch-time lobster roll, for example.

It’s a toasted New England hot dog roll overstuffed with chunks of lobster meat fresh from the claws. Its brethren are hanging out in a tank just inside the front door.

 Kharboush, who got his culinary training in Egypt, has been the chef at Elmo’s for 14 years. He said he tries to give his diners something more than they expect. (Recently, for example, he is experimenting with making his own sweet potato fries.)

Elmo’s menu runs the gamut of seafood choices – everything from oysters on the half shell to crab cakes, seafood crepes, swordfish, scrod, scallops and whole belly clams. Cioppino, a specialty, is a combination of shrimp, scallops, calamari and mussels served over angel hair pasta.

The restaurant also has prime rib two nights a week and a full selection of chicken, pork and steak. It can accommodate large parties and also serves food in its large, casual and quiet bar.