Testosterone And Estrogen – Michael Daly Cooks Up Two Iconic City Restaurants – Ralph N’ Rich’s, Bloodroot

By Michael J. Daly:

The two restaurants could not be more different: one a Downtown destination for fine Italian attention to beef, veal, pasta and sauce with the whiff of testosterone, the other, an institution nationally recognized for its vegetarian and vegan menu and for its role in the forefront of feminist activism.

Ralph n’ Rich’s, at 815 Main Street, has survived 35 years, from a beginning as a culinary oasis in a Downtown desert, and carries on with the swagger portrayed in the movie posters that decorate its interior.

Bloodroot Vegetarian Restaurant and Bookstore is at 85 Ferris Street, on the bank of Burr Creek in Black Rock in about as close to a pastoral setting as Bridgeport offers. Its walls are covered with photos of strong women and flyers and posters that reflect a history of the women’s movement in America.

Legendary Bloodroot

Ralph and Rich = Silano and Ndini, respectively – still hold forth and just renewed their lease for another five years.

Noel Furie, a Bloodroot founder, has lived through the death in February of Selma Miriam, co-founder, and intends to close the restaurant next month after 48 years

R&R

Ralph n’ Rich’s Restaurant has long been the favored Bridgeport venue for a special occasion. The clincher for me came like this:

One Friday night, at the end of a long work week, I was enjoying a superb Frank Ceccarelli martini with a colleague, when in came Frank Carroll of the Bridgeport Carroll family, an international electrical workers union potentate; Father Tommy Lynch, a well-liked Stratford pastor, and a middle-aged woman.

I went over to say hello. They were waiting for a table for four. The hostess seemed puzzled. The woman held up a shoebox-sized container.

“My husband’s last wish was to have a steak and a Dewar’s at Ralph n’ Rich’s,” she said by way of explaining the need for a fourth set-up, even if it was for a container of ashes.

The other day, Ralph Silano – the ‘Ralph’ of the institution – laughed. He remembered that night. “They actually came back a few consecutive years,” he said.

When Ralph n’ Rich’s opened Downtown in 1990, it was, I once wrote, “a sort of Fort Apache with outstanding gravy and Italian cuisine on the desolate plains of Downtown Bridgeport.” Few lights shined in the vicinity. Reasons to be Downtown after dark – legal ones, at least – were few. A Bridgeport squad car, courtesy of the great Bridgeport fixer, Sgt. Eugene O’Neill, did a slow orbit around the R&R block of Wall, Middle, Main and John Streets on Saturday nights, adding a welcome sense of security.

On Nov. 13, 1990, Ralph Silano and Rich Ndini opened their eatery. Against all odds, it thrived. And today – they had a 35-year party last week – continues at 815 Main St., where they relocated in 2006.

The other day, I sat in the quiet mid-afternoon with Ralph, 69, who runs the back, the kitchen, and his wife, Sarah, for a chat. Rich, 74, front-of-the house figure, has been home for weeks rehabilitating after knee-replacement surgery. Jacqueline, Ralph and Sarah’s daughter, helmed the hostess station.

Ralph and Rich’s friendship dates to the 1980’s when they worked for Mario Testa, the Bridgeport Democratic party chairman who is Ralph’s uncle, at the original Testo’s Restaurant on Madison Avenue, corner of Federal Street. “He taught me well,” Silano said of Mario, who is his mother’s brother. They learned the trade there.

By 1990, the two decided to give the restaurant business a shot on their own. Bridgeport was not their first choice. “We looked around the state,” Ralph recalled the other day. “We looked in Manhattan.”

But when a location in Downtown Bridgeport came up – 121 Wall Street, the old Pjura’s Restaurant – they made their move.

With perhaps unintended understatement, he said, “A lot of people thought we were not doing the right thing, opening in Bridgeport.”

Indeed.

“Sgt. O’Neill,” Silano said, “got some doctors to come down to eat. And once that happened, others started coming.”

From Day One, it’s been a family operation. Silano recalled, “My parents worked, Richie’s brother, Bill. My father washed the dishes. He made the salad. Eventually we hired a dishwasher and a person to make the salad.” And it continues. The restaurant’s 35 employees still include Silano’s sisters and assorted nieces and nephews.

In 2009, after 16 years on Wall Street, the two couldn’t come to terms with the landlord. The space at 815 Main Street, then owned by People’s Bank, came open. “The bank sent Phil Kuchma (developer of Bijou Square on Fairfield Avenue) over to see us, and we made a deal.”

Bridgeport, of course, has changed. Some would say the existence of a fine-dining experience would be one of the contributing factors.

The arena, the now-lamented Bridgeport Bluefish baseball club and the amphitheater have been boosts. Like R&R’s, they offered legitimate reasons to come to Bridgeport after dark.

But 2020 arrived and with it Covid 19. With its masks, social distancing and other restrictions – and fears – American life changed. Restaurants went under. With its cadre of loyal customers, R&R’s survived.

But the effects linger. “It changed the dynamics. Nobody really stays out late anymore. Covid made people comfortable with staying home,” he said.

A quality meal – everything is imported, from the Sclafani tomatoes to the olive oil, cheese and pasta – has been a constant. Sunday sauce, a four-course classic Italian meal for $35 remains a hit.

A note on the restaurant’s décor: A poster-sized photo of Clark Gable, Wallace Beery and Jean Harlow, arm-in-arm, shot on the set of the 1935 swashbuckling movie “China Seas,” hangs above the bar and sets a tone of camaraderie.

Ndini and his late brother Bill, were film buffs and had a collection of posters. Another that hangs above the bar is a sizzler from the Federico Fellini 1960 classic film, La Dolce Vita.

Turns out the partners’ sensibilities go way beyond veal chops and braciola.

The warm blue and burgundy interior of the bar-and-booth front of the house come directly from the hues in the La Dolce Vita poster. The other day, Ralph, with clear pride, pointed to the floor tiles, the wood and the walls and described how he and the Ndinis came up with the plan.

Likewise, the back dining room’s airy tones come from the champagne and green tinges in a poster from the 1951 Italian film, Miracolo a Milano.

A final note on the décor: A chandelier that hangs over the booths the partners bought from a long-gone Manhattan restaurant, Beau Geste, that was in Bill Ndini’s Hells’ Kitchen neighborhood.

“We brought it back from New York in the back of a pick-up truck.” He shook his head. “It was an adventure.”

“Oh, It’s been an adventure,” interjected Silano’s wife, Sarah. She laughed. “We got married on October fifth (1990) and opened November 13^th.”

“I tell people I got married twice, basically within a month. Once to my wife and then to the business,” Silano added.

Odds are, R&R will make it to 40. Despite ongoing issues with the landlord, they exercised their option to extend their lease for another five years.

Keep the gravy coming.

Bloodroot

There was nothing short-lived, though, about the Bridgeport restaurant that took the plant for its name when it opened in 1977 in Black Rock, tucked away at the end of Ferris Street on the bank of Burr Creek.

Bloodroot Vegetarian Restaurant and Bookstore has thrived through springs, summers, falls and winters for 48 years, growing from a small operation started by two self-described “angry, radical feminists” to a widely recognized model for feminist camaraderie.

But the end time comes to all of us.

One of the founders, Selma Miriam, died at her Westport home in February at age 89. After her death, the other founding partner, Noel Furie, of Bridgeport, said she was not going to make an immediate decision on the future of the endeavor.

But now, with her 81^st birthday approaching in December, Furie has decided: Bloodroot will close its doors, its salons, its bookcases, next month. The target date is Dec. 21, the winter solstice.

“I’m at a place where I didn’t have a choice,” Furie said the other morning as we sat in the empty, spacious Bloodroot dining room.

“My physical health is not what it used to be,” she said. “Organizing the reservations, on the phone, paying the bills. It’s too much for me now, which is why I can’t do it anymore.”

“I’m older. I’m tireder,” she said. She paused. “You know, I tell people I’ve been chopping onions for 48 years!” She laughed.

Gloria Steinem – Furie’s calico cat of that name, that is – leapt and curled up on a chair next to me. A woman named Yorda, a recent immigrant from Eritrea, is doing some prep work in the kitchen. Bloodroot has worked closely over the years with Bridgeport’s Mercy Learning Center, bringing an international flavor, literally and figuratively, to the operation.

“The feelings are so mixed,” Furie went on. “I’m glad to not have the burden and responsibilities I have here. But on the other hand, these are my friends, my customers, my life.  It’s very hard to depart that. It was a difficult decision.”

Miriam and Furie told the Connecticut Post in 2017 about how they as two “angry, radical feminists” wanted to establish someplace inviting to all, particularly women, where they could share their vegetarian recipes.

Mirian’s accomplishments have been well documented. Two notes of local interest: Her father was Elias Davidson, founder of Davidson’s Fabrics, a downtown Bridgeport landmark for decades, and her partner at the time of her death was Carolanne Curry, a well-known Democratic activist.

Furie was 33 when she and Miriam met in the 1970’s, in an international surge of the women’s rights’ – Women’s Lib – movement. They met at a local chapter meeting of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Both women were married to men. Furie has two children, Sarah, 56, of Bridgeport, and Adam, 54, of Brooklyn, N.Y. Sarah, a teacher in Trumbull, occasionally comes in an helps out at the restaurant. Furie relocated from Westport to Bridgeport’s West Side with the two kids in 1980.

Miriam, Furie said, was the “genius” behind the idea for the restaurant. “And I said, ‘If she’s going there, I’m going, too.”  Another close NOW friend of theirs was Priscilla Feral, of Darien and Friends of Animals.

The restaurant would be vegetarian. “You couldn’t be a feminist without taking into account the struggles of other species,” Furie said.

The building and grounds at 85 Ferris Street are conducive to the retreat that Bloodroot is. Adirondack chairs face out on Burr Creek and Bridgeport Harbor and Captain’s Cove. Inside, on the walls, there’s barely space for another photograph, poster, flyer or piece of feminist ephemera.

Bookshelves are lined with books by and about women and a warren of nooks and sunlit spaces with chairs and tables wind off the dining room, the locales for the “consciousness-raising sessions,” as Furie put them, that took place “back in the day, where women discussed the political situation and came up with conclusions about the need for change. We needed to be able to discover ourselves without the male gaze.”

Not to say that the place does not have a male clientele. “Over the years, we’ve had a lot of male friends whom we love and who love us and we think that part of that is a shift in their thinking due to feminism,” Furie said

The restaurant is going out in a blaze of activity. “We’re cooking two to three times more than we usually do. We were twice as busy Saturday night as usual. People want to get their last meals in. They have so many memories,” she said.

What’s ahead for Furie?

“I’ll volunteer. There’s no shortage of things to do in Bridgeport. But first I’m going to take a good rest. I need that.”

I mention how warm and inviting the space is. Furie leaned in and said, “I tell them it’s the estrogen.”

(Contact Michael Daly at mjdwrite@aol.com)