Colchester, CT Restaurants, Restaurant Menus & Dining
Restaurants coming soon!
If you would like to become a dining guide member, please contact us

Very soon after its founding in 1703, Colchester became a vital flourishing settlement with several grist and saw mills humming away and a main street that was nearly 200 feet wide. Eighteenth century Colchester had anticipated the 19th century industrial revolution which climaxed when Nathaniel Hayward along with a man named Charles Goodyear discovered the process of “vulcanizing” rubber, and soon began making rubber based boots and shoes.  Of course the Goodyear name eventually became synonymous with a more modern form of transportation, rubber tires for automobiles! In the 20th century, Colchester again kept pace with changing times and became known as “The Catskills of Connecticut.”  A late 19th century, a German-Jewish financial wizard Baron Maurice de Hirsch, financier of the Oriental Railway / “Orient Express”, created a foundation helping European Jews immigrate to the Americas.  His foundation discovered that Colchester was an excellent settlement place for some of those immigrants and this led to the establishment of at least seven major hotels catering to Jewish vacationers from New York.   The surviving legacy of those hotels is an ongoing Colchester institution named Harry’s Place, a seasonal drive-in that is on the National Register of Historic Places. From 1925, it was run by Ruby Cohen, whose family was part of the Colchester Jewish immigrant wavelet. Another aspect of Colchester’s culinary hospitality is the Priam Vineyards, a noted stop on the Connecticut Wine Trail.  But if you’re still hungry AND thirsty, there is still Marianna's as well as NuNu's Bistro Restaurant.