Home Slice

My hometown of Windsor, CT, is no culinary hotbed, but it has its charms. Every May, the village elders hold a giant carnival/craft fair/roach-clip-market called the Shad Derby to celebrate the arrival of A. sapidissima as it makes its way up the Connecticut River to spawn. As I remember it, there was always  fried dough, candy dots, a bounce house, and Seventies-style ground beef tacos from the Saint Gabriel’s School PTO booth. It was a time.

Fishing tournaments were, and remain, the major draw of the Derby. But for us, the pinnacle of the whole to-do was the crowning of the Shad Derby Queen. Watching the Court roll by on a flatbed float—it was the parade that launched a thousand dreams. By the time I was old enough to enter, I had decided that the whole thing was an offense to womankind, but now I’m sure I’d enjoy the spectacle.

I digress. Unless you like tasty, bony fish, Windsor has fairly modest food options. There are a couple of diners, an independent donut shop, a cafe, a surprisingly solid Indian restaurant. And now, to my parents’ delight, there’s a pizza place that might well be worth a special trip.

The Tunxis Grill looks the kind of American “Bar and Grill” you see everywhere these days, with lots of exposed brick, a few too many flat-screen TVs, and black-painted woodwork—the ’00s equivalent of the fern bar. But it has a lively, neighborhood-y vibe, friendly service, and, most importantly, really fine pies with good sauce, crispy-chewy crust, and fresh toppings. Our sausage/onion/olive combo hit all the right notes of smoke and tang. I can’t say they rank on the same level as New Haven’s finest, but they did remind us of Santarpio’s here in East Boston. And that’s saying something.