By Michael Marsland, courtesy Yale University
A passion for food
Two restaurants lease space in the Omni. A beer pub with more than 40 beers on tap has a small private room for groups. Barcelona, a glass and steel tapas restaurant and wine bar, has a private room for 60; it can customize special food events like cooking and cocktail demonstrations, or do prix fixe menus.
Restaurants in New Haven face stiff competition. Within a 27-block area, 130 restaurants serve nearly every cuisine imaginable.
But if you want to get a debate started in New Haven, just ask locals who makes the best pizza. Pizza is a passion. Generations of people have stood in line for an hour or more to get into Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria in Little Italy. Down the street, Sally’s Apizza has her proponents. Others swear by the Bar’s potato and bacon version.
Two more hotels
Two other New Haven hotels offer meeting facilities. A Courtyard by Marriott whose 207 guest rooms were renovated two years ago has a large meeting room.
The 118-room New Haven Hotel, renovated from top to bottom in 2010, has a boardroom for 15 and a meeting room for 25. Its restaurant, open for breakfast, is available for groups at other times of day.
Once a medical hotel for people who needed to stay near the hospital, the hotel is now full-service, with a separate wing of 14 rooms for medical guests.
Great beginnings
What do the Knights of Columbus and “My Fair Lady” have in common? Both got their starts in New Haven.
The Knights, a lay Catholic fraternity and service organization with 1.8 million members worldwide, has its international headquarters in New Haven.
The free Knights of Columbus Museum has a mix of exhibits ranging from a gold-leaf bulletproof altar chair used during papal visits to a depiction of War Huts the Knights set up to give soldiers in both World Wars respite from battle. There are also two tiles used as ballast on Christopher Columbus’ second voyage in 1493.
“My Fair Lady,” starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, is one of 300 plays that have had world premieres at New Haven’s historic Shubert Theater, now known as the “Birthplace of the Nation’s Greatest Hits.”
Built in 1914 by the Shubert brothers, it was a favorite venue for Rodgers and Hammerstein to fine-tune shows headed for Broadway.
“It was hard to get a standing ovation from New Haven audiences unless you really deserved it,” said Tony Lupinaci, marketing director. “A ‘let’s see what you’ve got’ attitude has historical roots here.”
Restored and reopened in 1983, the lobby and 1,600-seat theater are available for rent when not being used for shows and concerts.
