Chef In Seymour Cooks Up Business Strategy Amid Pandemic

SEYMOUR — Chef John Brennan mixes eggs, water, and semolina flour to make homespun pasta. As the dough pushes out through the holes of the extruder, Brennan sprinkles the semolina flour and all purpose flour onto the noodles. The semolina flour, a wild wheat flour, prevents the spaghetti from sticking.

Brennan twirls about 10 strings of pasta around his fingers to form a birds nest bundle before placing it onto the portion tray. 

Brennan is cooking up the batch of pasta at Olives and Oil, a new Italian restaurant getting off the ground at 318 Roosevelt Dr. in Seymour.

He’s an old pro, in the kitchen, and in starting restaurants. But those skills are being put to the test as Brennan scurries to keep the new Seymour eatery afloat amid the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brennan comes in every morning to the restaurant in Seymour to prepare rigatoni and spaghetti before attending to the needs of the restaurant’s downtown New Haven location. The same process is used for the rigatoni but with a different die attachment that will lock into the pasta extruder to form a different shape. 

Olives and Oil’s grand opening was in February, right before the shutdown of restaurants due to coronavirus. Brennan opened the restaurant along with co-owners Matt Bailey and Erick Williams, with whom he also owns the Olives and Oil and Elm City Social eateries in New Haven. The business partners met each other 10 years ago while working for different departments of Plan B Burger in Milford.

“We opened up a marketplace here to start since we couldn’t do any seating,” Brennan said of the Seymour location. 

Curbside pickup for fresh ingredients includes pasta sauce and cheese for customers to prepare their own homemade meals. Brennan, executive chef for both Olives and Oil locations, also manages social media, offering family meal deals or selling meal kits. Customers can prepare their dishes simultaneously with Brennan on a Facebook Live cooking session.

“None of it really brought in the sales that we needed to survive,” Brennan said. ​“We’re sort of just trying to do the best that we can right now and weather the storm. We hope that come the 17th, when inside dining in restaurants reopen, that nothing spikes and people feel more comfortable that we can start to get back to normal.”

Cocktails to-go have also helped keep the restaurant afloat. 

“I was the one who fought the state,” said Brennan. ​“I think we had over 2,700 signatures on the petition to make it happen. Within three weeks time, the law wasn’t changed but an amendment was made so drinks could be bottled in sealed containers.”

The new location started with 35 employees; during the shutdown the staff was reduced to 4: a sous chef, one line cook, a front house manager, and one bar manager. 

When the Seymour location first opened, the restaurant was busy, especially on weekends. Brennan doesn’t fear closing down; this isn’t his first rodeo.

“Any restaurant that we take over has been a restaurant that has failed previously,” Brennan said. ​“The Elm City Social location had a history of four to five restaurants that had failed before we took over. Olives and Oil in New Haven was the same thing of constantly turning, but we’re hospitality professionals where this is what we do. This isn’t a side project for us. We’re serious about what we do.”

The challenge of Olives and Oil’s suburban location versus downtown New Haven is that there aren’t any nearby shows or theatre performances to attract clientele. What persuaded the restaurant owners was the large building space available inside and out. There’s a 100-person dining room upstairs and downstairs. During the next phase of the pandemic reopening, restaurants areallowed only half of their usual capacity; the team has decided to seat 30 customers inside and 50 outside. 

With the location being on a main commuter road, a tent was set up in the parking lot to allow extra seating.

Steven De Vellis, the sous chef since opening, said he misses the bustle of the kitchen.

“There’s an adrenaline rush and it’s the best feeling hearing everyone do their part,” De Vellis said. ​“The clink of a pan, the fire of the alla vodka, and it’s kind of like a symphony in the kitchen.”

De Vellis comes in to prepare the pizza while Brennan portions out the pasta. The team takes pride that everything on the house is made from scratch. Including the cannoli shells and tiramisu.

Penne alla vodka is a house favorite.

To prepare it, Brennan starts with a dash of saute oil, then lays on the sweet Italian sausage that sizzles while the pasta is boiled.

A dash of minced garlic gives a pop of flavorful zest. Vodka sets all of the added ingredients into flames.

Two heaping ladles of homemade pomodoro sauce blended with heavy cream puts out the fire . Once the blended ingredients are sauteed, Brennan lays out the thick, extra layers of cheesy, buttery goodness onto the plate. The cherry on top is a scoop of ricotta cheese and a greedy mound of grated parmesan sprinkled on the entire plate.