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Next Door Claimed As COVID-19 Casualty

Lucy Gellman | July 24th, 2020

Next Door Claimed As COVID-19 Casualty

Arts & Culture  |  Culinary Arts  |  Jocelyn Square  |  COVID-19

 

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Cast and crew from Long Wharf Theatre's Pride and Prejudice hold an after-party at Next Door in 2019. Photo courtesy of Next Door. 

It revived the neighborhood bar and experimented with menus constantly. It bridged neighborhoods, punctuated family celebrations, and became an unexpected hangout spot for artists and musicians, drag queens, victorious soccer teams and jittery first dates.

Now, Next Door New Haven is the latest small business casualty of COVID-19. Three years after winning final zoning approval and two after opening its doors, the restaurant announced Friday that its final dinner service will be Sunday Aug. 2.

It comes just a week after the restaurant reopened its doors in compliance with phase two reopening regulations from Gov. Ned Lamont and the State of Connecticut. The restaurant closed its doors temporarily earlier this year, after a statewide executive order closing all nonessential businesses in mid-March. When it reopened, it did so with live music and new menu items.

"It’s because of you, our customers, and our incredible team + family that Next Door became a place to share drinks, food and many wonderful memories," the restaurant wrote on its Facebook and Instagram pages Friday. "We look forward to the next two weekends with you!"

"Let’s bid each other adieu Next Door style!" the post continued. "Thank you to all who have supported us over the past two years, it has been a pleasure to serve you and the New Haven Community!"

The idea for Next Door was born in 2017, when Big Green Truck Pizza owner Doug Coffin, chef Robin Bodak and former business partner Domenic Giannotti won zoning approval to renovate the former Humphrey’s restaurant in the city's Jocelyn Square neighborhood.

By that time, the building had lived many lives: a Prohibition-era speakeasy, family restaurant, neighborhood bar, and chain of short-lived culinary experiments including Carissa's Cafe, Humphrey's East and Park Place East between 2012 and 2015. Coffin, a longtime chef and small business owner who knew much of the history by heart, had a different idea in mind.

“I think you can safely say that a lot of New Haveners had their first drink here illegally [in earlier versions of the space], and we won’t be the place for that," he joked in a 2017 interview with the New Haven Independent. His vision was a pizza joint, with enough variety and quirk on the menu to keep customers coming back.

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Chelsea Peterson and Robin Bodak last year. Lucy Gellman File Photo.

Next Door—as in the phrase, "meet me next door" or "see you next door"—lived up to its name. When it opened in 2018, the restaurant banked on a new-old model centered on neighborhood gathering—for families, for friends, for first dates and bedraggled parents in desperate need of a night out. Customers were welcome to come as they were and often did, turning out in t-shirts, jeans, high heels, summer dresses and puffy winter coats for the pizza, beer and appetizers.

On the menu, crudités with hummus sat beside smoky, salty pizzas, sticky glazed Brussels sprouts and local beer. In an era before pleated fabric masks, gloved bartenders and face shields, it wasn't uncommon for Coffin or Bodak to stop by a table and talk about food and family, no matter how clamorous the dinner rush. Bodak's dress code was stripes, as charming and unpretentious as the food itself. 

Left in charge of the kitchen, Bodak turned out food that was experimental but unfussy. There were New Haven pies with toasty cheese, just-right broccoli rabe and exquisite char, roasted asparagus and beautiful, oozy mounds of burrata. There was the restaurant's homemade ice cream with lemon curd, salted caramel and coconut often folded in.

While Bodak once joked that it sometimes got "a little cheffy" in the kitchen, she also listened to customers, constantly testing and re-testing recipes with chef Chelsea Peterson. If something didn't stick, she said, she never took it personally. She just kept going.

"If you want to be successful, you have to sort of dig in to your principles and stick with it," she said in an interview with the Arts Paper last year. "But you also have to have that wherewithal to say 'this isn't working, we're not gonna do this anymore.' And move on to the next thing."

When Bodak wasn't commanding the kitchen, she and General Manager Maria Corina were inviting in artists, comedians, songwriters and storytellers. Sometimes they performed at the literal front of the house, as bartenders served up frothy local beer and watermelon margaritas. Sometimes they were in back, spinning stories into being before soft, blinking blue-and-white lights. Even after COVID-19 shuttered the building, she spent time advocating for local business owners and artists through Unstill Life, a multi-part collaboration with the filmmaker Lisa Tedesco.

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Saul Fussiner at Songs and Stories in 2019. Leah Andelsmith File Photo. 

Saul Fussiner, who launched the monthly series "Songs and Stories" from the restaurant's back room, said he was "heartbroken" to hear the news. Before Next Door's closure in March, he and Corina often joked that the back space was the "late night room," where it was okay to have adult conversations and drop the occasional swearword if a story or song called for it.

Last month, the series held its virtual debut on Facebook Live as a fundraiser for the restaurant. When it reopened earlier this month, Fussiner took it as a sign that it had survived the worst of COVID-19's economic toll. He had come to know it in a way that Bodak had hoped: come for the food, stay for the community.

"It was my son's favorite restaurant," he said mournfully Friday afternoon, on the phone from rural Maine. "With them reopening [earlier this month], I thoughts they'd gotten through it."

"What an irreplaceable sort of place," he added. "I thought it was so smart to have a place that served New Haven style pizza and also have this whole other menu. No one did appetizers the way they did. I thought it filled a unique niche in a lot of ways. Even having a name like 'Next Door'—it fits the mission statement that we are a local place, we love local people."

Musician Frank Critelli also found a home at Next Door. He met Bodak last spring, while he was gigging at the Wooster Square Farmer's Market. Bodak threw a head of lettuce, to inaugurate the first outdoor market of the year. Then she came over and introduced herself.

By July of that year, he was leading a music series called Another Round out of the back room. Friday, he said he is crushed but not entirely surprised: being a small business has become an economic comorbidity. He spent Friday evening at the restaurant—social distancing and all—eating some of his favorites while he still can. He had high praise for the Vinnie's Veggie and broccoli rabe and sausage pies and Bodak's kale salad, sprinkled with pickled apricots and crisp onions.  

"Like everybody, I'm sad as hell," he said. "Not only was it a great place for musicians, and the food was great, they were very community oriented. They gave me a home. it's a real loss for the music community, the arts community."

"I think we're seeing the beginning of it and we should brace ourselves for the worst," he added of permanent closures spurred by shutdowns, shaky economic reopening, and the lack of federal aid.  

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Photo courtesy Next Door. 

The reason for its closure is financial strain due to COVID-19. In March, the restaurant was forced to lay off staff as owners navigated an alphabet soup of federal funding. While the restaurant received close to $130,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), Coffin said that ultimately wasn't enough to keep it afloat through the fall.

"It's sad, but things weren't working out," he said. "It didn't look like they were going to turn around. It was, in the end, just a business decision that it was not going to work out. We tried opening back up, and the volume was not there."

Given concerns with indoor dining and the wait for a vaccine, he said that September—when busin

ess usually picks up—was not looking promising. He added that he expects a second, deeper wave of sadness to sink in after the beginning of August, when he walks past the empty restaurant with the knowledge that it won't open again.

"The reality of walking by a place closed up is going to be more of an impact on me than I'm feeling right now," he said. "I know it was a place that meant a lot to a lot of people. I think, unfortunately, a lot of places are gonna be in the same situation."

Friday afternoon, both customers and employees responded with a sense of loss on social media and in a number of phone interviews. On Facebook, Peterson recalled starting in the kitchen two years ago, after Bodak called her up and suggested there was work available. She thanked her colleagues for making the restaurant a place that she grew into.

"I didn’t know it when I left the kitchen Sunday March 15 that was my last day there in the kitchen I helped build but I already knew the world was different," she wrote. "I am so thankful to all my coworkers past and present, and most to my partner in crime Robin for giving me the chance."

On social media, the initial post gained an outpouring of support in hours. Some customers responded with crying face emojis and hearts. Others remembered favorite dishes, from buffalo pizza to handmade ice cream sandwiches to breaded risotto balls with parsley and gooey cheese.

Chris Fiore, who owns and operates the shop Wine 101 in Hamden, noted that as "we were there opening night and will be there until the end."

"I am so sorry to hear this," wrote Nicole Heriot Mikula, who runs CT Folk. "Thank you for creating a home for musicians, neighbors and building a community with delicious food and drink. This is a total bummer."

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Tagan Engel, a chef and radio producer who has interviewed Bodak on her podcast The Table Underground, said that "I feel heartbroken" and is directing her thoughts to both Coffin and Bodak, two longtime local culinary heroes in the city.

"I think the food at Next Door was exceptional," she said in a phone interview Friday afternoon. "It is heartbreaking to me to see a longtime New Havener and business owner have to close their doors like this—to see such dedicated chefs and food business owner lose the massive investment that they made in that space. To me, it's a big loss for New Haven and it's a big loss for people I care about."

Gorman Bechard, who runs the New Haven Documentary Film Festival (NH Docs) and produced the documentary Pizza: A Love Story, mourned the absence in a phone call, taking a break from a cup of vegan soft serve to talk.

He recalled a meeting with NH Docs staff last year, during which they decided "to walk, literally, next door" when the line at Modern Apizza was too crowded.

When he arrived, was amazed by the pizza—which he ranks just one step outside of "the Holy Trinity"—and the appetizers and ambiance. He waxed poetic on blistered Shishito peppers that he still thinks about. He's been back close to 10 times.

"Nothing about this time is good," he said. His wife Kristine, who runs Willoughby's Coffee & Tea, said she was equally upset to hear about the closure.

Colin Caplan, owner and operator of Taste of New Haven and Elm City Party Bike, said he was reeling from the news. Before COVID-19, he made Next Door a stop on his pizza and party bike tours, impressed with the spin the restaurant was putting on New Haven apizza.

Having grown up in New Haven, he is also a fan of Bodak and Coffin. As a small business owner himself, he has seen COVID-19 ravage the city's economic landscape. He said that knowledge still didn't prepare him for the news, which he saw Friday afternoon on social media.

"I think a lot of places are having to make a lot of tough decisions," he said. "It sucks. it was such a blessing when they opened. it was definitely a destination for me as a pizza lover, a food lover. We brought food tours there. We brought the Elm City Party Bike there. When they brought the energy there, it was a way to invigorate that corner."

Wooster Square Alder Ellen Cupo, whose ward includes the restaurant, said that she's struggling to come to terms with the closure as both a Wooster Square resident, a lifelong New Havener, and an elected official who represents Jocelyn Square and the surrounding community. She said she's glad that she still has time to go and experience the food—particularly Bodak's Brussels sprouts—one last time.

"There is an element of sadness because I know Doug as one of the most generous and wonderful and loving people in New Haven," she said. "The neighborhood really loves him."

Growing up, Cupo's closest friend was Coffin's daughter Hallie. The two watched Coffin start Big Green Truck Pizza when they were in middle school. Years later, watched as he built trust with the Jocelyn Square community, many members of which were vocal in their support for Next door. 

When she married labor organizer Ian Dunn in a small ceremony at City Hall last year, the two chose Next Door as the place to celebrate with their families. Coffin surprised them with a wedding cake. He's just that kind of person, she said. 

"I'm so sad to see the doors of this restaurant close," she said. "I'm very sad to see this chapter close for New Haven, community members, and the people who come and use that space."

"But," she added, "I know it's not the end of Doug Coffin."