Guns & Chocolate

In the summer of 2008, I visited a small vineyard somewhere along scenic Route 169 in eastern Connecticut. I forgot its name almost immediately, and it wasn't listed on the Connecticut Wine Trail website when I later thought to check. But I remembered it was the most rustic of the wineries in the area, and had recently been purchased by a couple who had plans to fix it up and do great things with it. My memory of the details was vague, but I recalled their enthusiasm and my own hope that they would succeed in their endeavor. The location of the winery was excellent, but the remoteness and disrepair that made the place so picturesque seemed as if they would also make running a business there a tenuous prospect.

I forgot about that vineyard until I finally got around to visiting Café Colt in the Sheldon Charter Oak neighborhood of Hartford. Café Colt opened in 2013 with a good deal of implicit pressure, being the first retail tenant in the old Colt Complex. The massive brick buildings known to passing motorists on I-91 for that distinctive blue onion dome also houses rental apartments, a few commercial tenants, and facilities of the Capitol Region Education Council.

Its location in an off-the-beaten-path yet ideal spot makes Café Colt, like that winery (it has since closed, but it was called Heritage Trail Vineyards, and it was in Lisbon) a place you want to root for. Oh, and another similarity between the two? They have the same owners.

I didn't know that when I walked into Café Colt; I didn't know anything about the place, really, except that it's one of those Hartford eateries with weird hours and that, of course, it's in the Colt Armory, which despite the many cars in the CREC parking lot, still looks abandoned in an enticing, full of potential sort of way.

When the miserable weather outside tempted me to stop in for a cup of hot chocolate, I was the only customer in the cozy space. Two very young employees were more concerned with their conversation than with me, though I did get my drink. (They offer both instant and "gourmet" hot chocolate.) While I waited, a man I later realized was owner and acclaimed chef Harry Schwartz, came in and eventually greeted me. Something else I learned while standing at the counter, from a postcard placed there: "Chef Harry" and his wife, Laurie, also have an event space in the building, called Liaison Celebrations.

If it hadn't been quite so frigid out, I would have wandered around the area, properly called the Coltsville Historic District. It is currently a National Historic Landmark, and for years there have been efforts to establish it as a National Park. But it was too cold to do anything but get in my car with my warm cup. As I drove away I remembered that Café Colt and the Colt Complex are on Huyshope Avenue. So in a sense, hope for the future of the brick buildings has been built in all along.