Parkville Market’s Portly Pig barbecue to open location in downtown Hartford
The Portly Pig, a barbecue restaurant inside Hartford’s Parkville Market food hall, will open a standalone location in downtown Hartford in a few months, its owner said.
The location is in the 100 Trumbull St. building, in a vacancy where a Quiznos sandwich shop used to be. Portly Pig owner Jonathon Shivick plans to knock down a wall to use the vacancy next door, too, creating a space of about 2,700 square feet.
“That spot has never been used for anything other than an old leasing office. It’s a blank slate,” he said. “We will have a kitchen and takeout side and a dining room and bar on the other side.”
The Portly Pig’s Parkville Market location will remain open for a while, though. “We are staying at least through the end of our lease, which is almost exactly a year from today,” he said. “Whether we will close that location or not, we’ll make that decision when we come to it.”
Shivick said he started looking for a space about a year ago and scoped out locations in Manchester and Avon. Then he heard about Pratt Street-area development possibilities and contacted Kevin Kenney, vice president of Lexington Partners property management.
“It turns out he had tried my food before and was a huge fan,” Shivick said. Together, they zeroed in on the Trumbull Street spot.
He said the build-out should begin this month and he hopes to open in the fall. He said the menu will be larger than the one at Parkville Market.
The Portly Pig specializes in what Shivick calls New England-style barbecue.
“New England style is something we invented as we went along. We didn’t want to be stuck doing one style of barbecue, especially one perfected by other people. Plenty of places do Texas style, St. Louis style, Carolina style. When you use those styles you gotta follow the rules or people get upset,” he said.
“We decided to throw the rules out the window and pick and choose delicious and different pieces of regional styles and combine it with fusion flavors and locally sourced ingredients,” Shivick added.
Another Parkville Market vendor, Twisted Italian Cafe, is looking for a place to open its own freestanding restaurant. Twisted is owned by Michelle and Mark Maturo. Michelle Maturo said they want a downtown place with room for both a bar and a restaurant, but are still in the early days of looking.
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility that we will be [in Parkville Market] for another year. We’ve got our feelers out with commercial brokers and folks in the Front Street district area. We’ll see what happens,” she said.
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
