Jim Barbarie’s:

It Feels Like Family

Established by Jim Barbarie in 1961, Jim Barbarie’s at 47 Padanaram Road is the oldest family-owned restaurant in Danbury. For the last 20 years it has been owned and managed by Jim’s children Melissa and Tom.

It is open seven days a week, serving lunch from 11:30 am to 4 pm Monday through Saturday; dinner from 4 to 11 pm, and to midnight on Friday and Saturday. The dinner menu is served from 1 to 10 pm on Sunday.

 “We offer great service and high quality food — we don’t skimp even when the prices of certain items increase — at reasonable prices,” says Melissa. The restaurant is well-known for its large cuts of roast prime rib and its seafood selection, especially lobster. “We have three 200-gallon lobster tanks in the basement,” she notes, “and they are always stocked with pound-and-a-quarter to four-pound lobsters. If someone wants something bigger and lets us know in advance, we special order it.”

The restaurant seats 200, primarily in a large dining room with a couple of step-up sections. The walls here are dark green and dotted with mirrors; the top half of one wall is fully mirrored. On weekend evenings, a few tables are removed to allow for live music, generally Top 40, and dancing. A list of upcoming performers can be found on the restaurant’s website, www.JimBarbaries.com.

The smaller front room is wood paneled and features a large bar as well as some tables. It is sunlit during the day and the lunch crowd tends to fill it up first. A couple of large sport fish hang on the walls in both rooms. An extensive wine list is also available.

Executive Chef Joseph Yorio, a graduate of Johnson & Wales University with two culinary arts degrees, has been in the kitchen at Jim Barbarie’s since 1995, except for a year spent working for a high-end caterer in New York City, primarily at Columbia University, as well as at the United Nations and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He notes that while the restaurant’s many regular customers have their favorites and expect to see them on the menu, the weekly chef specials allow him more creativity. One favorite is dry-aged beef, which he notes is extremely tender. This week’s specials, for example, include pepper crusted black sea bass fillet served with asiago polenta, grilled asparagus and lemon-beurre blanc, $24; seared ahi tuna served rare with seasoned rice, topical salsa, and wasabi butter, $21; and filet mignon croustade, baked with boursin cheese and wild mushrooms wrapped in a crisp phyllo dough and finished with a cabernet demiglace, served with garlic mashed potatoes.

Jim Barbarie’s also has seasonal specials, such as the very popular six-hour braised lamb served in the fall. Asked what else sets Jim Barbarie’s kitchen apart, Mr Yorio replied, “We have the largest Alaskan king crab legs in town, our lamb is from Colorado, and we butcher all of the meat in house.”

The lunch and dinner menus both offer a variety of choices.

There are nine lunch appetizers, ranging from $5 for potato skins to $9 for fried calamari or shrimp cocktail, and a choice of New England clam chowder or baked onion soup, $4 per bowl. Any of the four salads — chef, Caesar, Mediterranean, or Cobb, $7–$9 — can be enhance with grilled marinated breast of chicken, $4, or grilled shrimp or Atlantic salmon for $6.

The popular half-pound hamburgers, served with fries or coleslaw, are $7 plain, $8 with a choice of toppings. There are hot and cold sandwiches, such as tuna melt or turkey breast and imported ham and shrimp and avocado, for $7 to $12, as well as seafood or chicken seafood entrees, all $9, and eight-ounce grill choices of black angus top sirloin and New York shell steak, $12, or filet mignon, $19.

The dinner menu is more expansive, both in selection and the way dishes are prepared. Four raw bar selections — clams ($7) or oysters ($8) on the half shell, shrimp cocktail ($9), and a shellfish platter ($11) — are added to the appetizer list, which includes such delicacies as escargot nuovo ($11), clams casino ($8), and lump and king crab cakes $10.

The pasta and poultry selections range from penne vodka ($13) and chicken franchese ($14) to lobster ravioli ($25). Most seafood entrees, including fillet of sole, Boston scrod, and salmon, can be requested fried, broiled, grilled, or blackened and cost $15–$19.

Those with hearty appetites have a choice of sizes in the meats and chops section. A 12-ounce New York strip is $19; a 20-ounce, $32. Jim Barbarie’s award-winning prime rib comes in three cuts: petite, $16, queen, $27, and king, $37. Those who prefer lamb chops can order one, $18, or two, $29. Other offerings in this section include two grilled center cut pork chops, $18, New Zealand rack of lamb, $27, and calves liver, $14.

There are surf and turf offerings, with lobster and Alaskan king crab at market price. And special requests from customers are welcome.

Another feature at Jim Barbarie’s is the “early bird specials,” a choice of ten meals, each $10, two slightly more, offered from 4 to 10 Monday through Thursday, 4 to 7 on Friday, 4 to 6 on Saturday, and all day Sunday.

Catering is offered both on and off-premises.

Jim Barbarie’s, 47 Padanaram Road, Danbury; 743-3287 or www.JimBarbaries.com. Open seven days, lunch from 11:30 to 4 Monday through Saturday; dinner from 4 to 11, to midnight on Friday and Saturday. The dinner menu is served from 1 to 10 on Sunday.