Chef Damon Sawyer Opens 29 Markle Ct in Downtown Bridgeport

Andrew Dominick January 08, 2023

“Mixing records is very similar to balancing tastes if you can imagine that. The lows of a record are like beets to me. That funk, the color of it. It’s a deep sound. You add shallots, it’s like a string session. That was a major component into my transition to being a chef. I knew what balancing sound was. Same thing as ingredients.”

A quote like that one could only come from a musician who became a chef.

At Bridgeport’s newest restaurant, 29 Markle Ct, executive chef and co-owner Damon Sawyer has rolled out a menu that’s like throwing down smooth lyrics over a sick beat. But before we dive into Sawyer’s style of smoked cooking that’s intertwined with fine dining, soul food, handmade pastas, and seasonal, local vegetables at 29 Markle, it’s important to tell his story of how he got to this point.

Napa cabbage salad (shaved fennel, basil, mint, chilies, citrus, toasted pistachio dust)

Funny enough, Sawyer’s food journey sort of began because he was a vegetarian. “I was a vegetarian for 13 years,” he says. “My parents are straight up southern. They were like, ‘Dude, get the fuck out.’ So, food started as a way to feed myself. My parents weren’t going to cook vegetarian.”

If that’s where it all “sort of” started for Sawyer—who was a professional musician playing keys and trumpet, and even helped in the initial stages of the Norwalk-based clothing brand Kultjah—his real jumping off point as it pertains to food was in 2006 when he was hired at Whole Foods as a seafood manager. At the grocery chain, he’d break down tuna, halibut, all kinds of fish, and he trained new managerial hires. Sawyer said he also enjoyed the financial part of the job, specifically margins and how to cost out products.

After six years, Sawyer left Whole Foods, stating that he reached the ceiling there and simply wasn’t inspired anymore.

While there is plenty for vegetarians, 29 Markle keeps carnivores happy, too. Braised short ribs, creamy polenta, and crispy sage is a perfect appetizer on a chilly winter’s night.

In 2015, Sawyer took a store manager position at Mrs. Green’s in New Canaan, but that was a short lived stint. Not long after, he started to smoke brisket and launched a lunch delivery service called DayeBar that the town really took onto.

During his time in New Canaan is where he met Rachel Lampen, a local publicist who now runs Rock Paper Scissors Custom Events. Sawyer will tell you that he’d grateful for that connection and friendship.

Sandwiches at 29 Markle include a smoked, then fried chicken sandwich that I’m 100% ordering next visit, plus a fried maitake mushroom sandwich, and the “Markle Burger” with demi glacé, onion, cheddar, and gem lettuce.

“Rachel was my ticket into New Canaan,” he says. “She hired me for private events cooking for her and her friends. I owe her a lot. She put me onto a friend of hers at Bedford Post Inn because they were looking for cooks. It was my first intro to a professional kitchen. I fell in love with it. I never knew I could be so in love with something. I started on the fryer, sauté, pasta, and worked my way up.”

Sawyer would stay at Bedford Post Inn for a year before he moved over to Restaurant North in Armonk, as their pasta guy. When Restaurant North closed up shop, he worked at restaurant all over Connecticut and New York until he got tired of it and wanted to work for himself, so he started a catering service with a couple of friends called Our Table Dinners who had a clientele of music industry executives and artists that led to Sawyer catering five Grammy parties.

In 2019, Sawyer went out to Philadelphia’s Spring Garden neighborhood to design and execute a menu at a friend’s newly launched cafe, Win Win Coffee Bar.

But before 29 Markle was even dreamt up, Sawyer shared that he planned to open something in Bridgeport in 2020. Unfortunately, according to him, “COVID and other circumstances made it fall through.”

Soon after, he had offers on the table and decisions to make.

“Josh (Tanner), the director of NY Prime Beef wanted to hire me to run a new food truck idea called The Steak Truck sometime after I invited him to a swanky party I catered in New York,” Sawyer explains. “He said, ‘Holy shit. I didn’t know you could cook like this. I have an idea if you’d be interested in partnering up.’ Around the same time, I was offered a job at Eleven Madison Park. Daniel (Humm) even wanted me to run a food truck. The Steak Truck was an opportunity to create my own thing from the ground up and make my own schedule. I came up with the program for the food truck and it took off like wildfire.”

On the heels of The Steak Truck’s success—you may have eaten from at the Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater, in NYC or in Westchester—an opportunity arose for a space in Downtown Bridgeport in the bones of a former Turkish restaurant that simply made sense.

Sawyer, along with partners Wesley Saintil Arbuthnott and Ishalee Green (Sawyer’s sister-in-law), came up with 29 Markle Ct. It’s a grown up, sexy, more upscale spot that serves food and drink that’s different for the City of Bridgeport. It’s not only bringing in locals, but curious out-of-towners from nearby towns and cities and as far as Queens and Manhattan.

The menu they’re all getting excited about is this melting pot of seasonal, local vegetables and meats using lots of smoked methods of cooking, as well as homemade pastas, seafood, and flavors from Louisiana, the Middle East, and some reimagined soul food dishes.

“We’re cooking organic, local vegetables and meat,” Sawyer says. “We want to deal with farmers rather than big distributors. It is kind of cook whatever I want, but it’s seasonal, and I’m also drawing off some of the things I grew up on like our shrimp & grits, but we’re using a guinea grit, a strain that was the first to come to the Americas from Africa.”

Sawyer, who works closely with Westport Farmers Market for local fare, did mention that we should expect some menu changes so as to stick to 29 Markle’s seasonal approach. But we should see some menu additions, too.

Behind the stick is bartender Razul Branch. Branch is heavily involved in Bridgeport’s art scene as an event design consultant and manager, as well as a public art strategist as the owner of BPT Creates and he’s the director at Bridgeport Arts & Cultural Council. He just so happens to make excellent cocktails and puts his own unique spin on the classics.

The Napa cabbage salad (shaved fennel, basil, mint, chilies, citrus, toasted pistachio dust) is one that should flex off the menu, but with all hope, it’ll be back. The basil, the fennel, the mint, the touch of heat from the chilies, and the crunch of the pistachios will make you glad, for once, that you ordered a salad on a night out.

I’d expect the roasted, glazed carrots, the spicy curried chickpeas, and the parmesan-salsa verde-chili fingerling potatoes will stick around at least through winter months.

Top left to right: Blood Orange Chipotle Margarita (Tanteo Tequila, blood orange, agave, lime), Brooklyn (WhistlePig Piggyback Rye, maraschino, vermouth, bitters), Smoked New Fashion (bourbon, bitters, orange)

Additions, according to Sawyer, should be a few new creative veggie appetizers like charred bok choy with ginger syrup and a Brussel sprouts dish, plus a salmon entrée, chargrilled oysters with sake granita, and a mushroom “Bolognese” that he says, “you won’t be able to tell is even meatless.”

Some new pasta should arrive, too, like a sweet potato risotto, and the potato gnocchi (the lightest, most pillowy potato gnocchi I’ve had around here) that are currently dressed in a garlicky, creamier version of a cacio e pepe sauce should get a makeover soon, though I wish it would stay forever.

If there are menu mainstays, the first is Manmita’s black rice and crab, essentially a soul food version of arancini. The balls are deep fried and crispy on the outside and filled with tender grains of rice and delicate blue crab on the inside. The Old Bay crème each sits on provides fat and salt, while the Haitian inspired pikliz brings vinegary heat.

The second signature is the spiced & smoked half bird that’ll make you rethink the whole “chicken is boring” stereotype. Sawyer is keeping this signature dish a bit of a secret, only revealing that it’s brined for 24-hours and “slow-smoked some hours.” It’s not only juicy, but you can taste the smoke and secret seasonings, and you probably won’t even need your knife to cut it. When you get to the leg and the wing, just pick that bad boy up and get in there. Stop caring if you’re being judged.

What Sawyer is stressing a lot when it comes to 29 Markle is that it’s not a one man show, but it’s the team that’s important. In the kitchen alongside him is chef Tevin Snider who Sawyer gives a lot of credit to. “Tevin has been a huge, huge help for me,” he says. “Chefs get into this thing of ‘it’s my world, I created it,’ but I can’t do all this by myself. The team we have is important. And we’re gonna fucking kick ass.” And just to the right, behind the bar when you enter, is bartender Razul Branch who’s not only a friendly, smiling face, but he’s meticulously and expertly mixing up cocktails so well-crafted that you’ll want more than one.

Left to right: Tevin Snider, Wesley Saintil Arbuthnott, Razul Branch, Ishalee Green, and Damon Sawyer

Come springtime, Sawyer revealed that the back room they’re currently using for private parties will soon host a chef’s tasting once or twice per month featuring all off-menu small bites to see how far they can push the envelope at 29 Markle and in the city.

“We’re just getting our feet wet first because this community isn’t used to this,” he says. “Bridgeport had a need for something different, a little more upscale, and not regular to the people around here. I know it’ll get some criticism but the positive outweighs the negative.”

29 Markle Court; Bridgeport
203.296.4796; 29marklect.com