Take-Out Chronicles: Kingston Kafe, Milford Pizzeria & Little Pub

All of us are stuck inside, but sometimes we need a taste of something different to keep both ourselves and the restaurants we love going. CTBites will be presenting The Take-Out Chronicles, a look at a few picks making up our takeout diet, with a different writer each week. We start with staff bon vivant, James Gribbon.

On day thirty-whatever of quarantine, I suddenly experienced a deep, almost biologically-imperative need for a fried chicken sandwich. Gloves, mask, sanitizer, a ziploc bag for the credit card, all accompanied me as I pressed the starter on my car for the first time in a week, heading to get my current favorite chicken sammy in the state from Liberty Rock Tavern in Milford. Calamities struck twice in quick succession: first, in a two car collision which narrowly missed me on the Post Road (no injuries), and the next when I arrived to find Liberty Rock wouldn't open for another three hours.

Pausing in a nearby bank's parking lot to consider my fried chicken fix, my eyes instead came to rest on a lowly strip mall pizza front with... photos of Mexican food all over the windows? Instinct told me I was onto something. Milford Pizzeria (and Mexican food) brought me chicken enchiladas Atlixcos in a tomatillo sauce with lettuce, tomato, avocado, radishes, onion, cilantro, and sour cream, for $10. The chicken, in a happy coincidence with my craving, was clearly fried fingers, but the enchiladas had been broiled and blistered just slightly before being covered with the truly satisfying blended tomatillo salsa verde (they were out of mole that day), and the entire dish was a delightful bit of serendipity. I'll be back to see how their tacos, tortas, and cemitas stack up.

A small order of anything at Kingston Kafe in Stratford may not look like much food in its clamshell container like an old Big Mac box, but they pack it full of enough chopped jerk chicken thigh, rice and peas, and steamed cabbage to make for an entree sized portion at right around $8.

Every time I've had it, the chicken has been smokey, juicy, spicy enough to grab your attention, and chopped with authentic island-casual regard to cleaver use, which adds a certain level of anatomical mystery to each bite. Exciting. Answer the woman, yes, you would like gravy on the chicken, please, when she asks. Trust me - I eat here a lot.

The lunch alone doesn’t cover the $10 minimum on credit cards, so I added a spicy beef patty, the saffron yellow crust remaining light, flaky, and crisp even after the trip home. The slightly sweet and yeasty crust is a great balance to the soft filling’s double dose of heat. No cheap fast food burger is half as satisfying on the go at this price. My recommendation is to enjoy all of the above - or curry goat, or oxtail, whatever you pick - with a light, crisp lager, extremely cold.

During better times the little Stratford institution offers dine-in service along with a tiny market of bread, sweets, and sauces representing further tastes of home for Caribbean islanders.

Trying to stretch my once weekly takeout trip into several meals, I ordered a build-your-own taco box complete meal from Little Pub in Stratford. The box comes with a protein (I picked shredded carnitas), tortillas, shredded cabbage, cheddar jack cheese, sour cream, pico de gallo, roasted corn and black bean salad, guacamole, and five brownies. The whole kit is $45 at Little Pub's online market, and is about enough food for a family of four or five.

The carnitas were a recommendation, and a good one. They were smokey, flavorful, and just a bit crunchy at the edges. I gave the sour cream a miss entirely and built my tacos with a base of guac, the pork, a bit of cheese, and topped them off with pico and cabbage. "Genius" is a strong word, but who am I to dispute you for thinking it about my taco mastery? It's times like these when we all need to get along, and I'm not going to argue.

Every individual taco-element was a good addition to the whole, and the value was certainly there in terms of both quality and quantity. The corn and bean salad was mixed with a bit of lemon aioli which was sort of bright, but a little too smooth for me, and I livened it up with some pico for flavor and crunch. Two-thirds of the box's contents went to my parents, and I heard from them after dinner to tell me their experience was even better than mine, and they loved the brownies.

Stay at home, stay safe, but when you do go out, make sure it's to eat well. Be good, everybody - I'll see you all out there when this is over.