Carbone’s Ristorante in Hartford will not reopen until employees return to city offices

Carbone’s Ristorante, a Franklin Avenue gathering place that has served Hartford power brokers since 1938, will remain closed with the hope of returning when downtown workers return in sufficient numbers.

The famed Hartford restaurant, shuttered since the start of the pandemic in March of 2020, has suffered from the lack of corporate presence in the city during the work-at-home days of the pandemic, owner Vinnie Carbone said.

“We’re just waiting for things to flow in whatever direction they flow toward us making a decision,” Carbone said. “We at least need 50% corporate return before we can begin making decisions.” Four generations of Carbone’s have run the restaurant.

“We need to flush out this new variant. We need to see what the new year brings,” he said. “We’re trying to be fluid. That’s one thing we learned from the pandemic: try to be fluid and nimble in a situation we’ve never encountered before as an industry.”

Hartford’s hospitality industry has been hard-hit by the pandemic, which has canceled the conventions, business travel and shows that brought people to the city’s hotels and restaurants. Even after the pandemic subsides, the number of workers in Hartford is expected to be far less, as many employees continue to work from home at least some of the time.

Big downtown employers like The Hartford Financial Services Group and CVS Health, which owns Aetna, have both said they’ll move some of their downtown workers to a hybrid arrangement. The Hartford recently deferred a planned December return to the office for some workers due to concerns about omicron. Both companies have planned for some workers to return in January. Property-casualty insurer Travelers Cos. Inc. has targeted Jan. 18 for a broader return of its 7,000 Hartford employees.

For the influential and the politically-connected, an empty Carbone’s is a sign of an era passing.

“I remember long afternoons. Liquid lunches. Great food. There is so much about that place that is just so good. The other thing is the crowd that used to hang out there,’' said Ray Dunaway, the longtime morning radio host on WTIC 1080 who is retiring this month, was a regular at Carbones.

Regulars included former Mayor Mike Peters, business leaders, high-powered lawyers, and top elected officials.

“The service was just spectacular. It was kind of like a clubhouse in a sense. You had a lot of regulars. You went in there and you would see somebody you knew,’' Dunaway said. “It was a place unique to Hartford.”

State Sen. John Fonfara, who says he lives a stone’s throw from Carbone’s, recalls holding meetings there.

“The Democratic caucus, for years we had our first caucus of every term at Carbone’s,” he said. It will be “a very sad day” if it does close for good. “It’s a fixture of life in the South End. For decades, Carbone’s has been the place to be for politicians, for business executives, for families. If this is the end of the line, I am sad for Hartford, for the South End, for Franklin Avenue. This place is an anchor.”

Tom Ritter, who was Speaker of the state House of Representatives from 1993 to 1998, said in his day, Carbone’s was a political hangout “where you’d always see a friendly face.’'

“If you didn’t have plans for lunch and you wanted to get out of the office, you’d just go there and the place was filled with everyone you’d know … Arthur Anderson, Kevin Dubay, Bill DiBella. You’d hang out there and got a lot of business done,” he said.

Ritter said the troubles Carbone’s and other city restaurants are going through “furthers the fact that restaurants are being concentrated in our suburban communities, which is unfortunate. We used to have great neighborhood restaurants.”

Hartford attorney Jim Wade said he had lunch there “almost every day,” first for the quality of the food, second for the camaraderie.

“Part of the reason it did so well was the physical layout of the bar. It was a quadrangle. Everybody was sitting near everybody else. You could be having a good conversation and perfect strangers who happened to be sitting near were suddenly drawn into the conversation,” he said.

However, when he had to talk business, he went to the main dining room. “A lot of stuff I talked about with clients was private. And business people don’t want it spread around what their business is about. That was the dining room,” he said. Wade said if this is the end of Carbone’s, “it will not be easy to replace it.”

Carbone’s other two restaurants, Carbone’s Kitchen in Bloomfield and Carbone’s Prime in Rocky Hill, remain open.

“They’ve been coming back great. But even with them, I am really hopeful that after the first of the year there will be more corporate business,” Vinnie Carbone said. “It has been an honor and privilege carrying on this four-generation ristorante that is deeply woven into the fabric of the community and city of Hartford.’'

Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.