I picked up a new client this year for work and unfortunately for me, they are based out of Norwalk, CT. It's close enough that I can obviously make a day trip out of it which is nice, but it kind of sucks when your clients aren't in an exciting or fun place to visit and Norwalk is most definitely not a fun place to visit. Norwalk/Darien lives up to all the stereotypes of what a typical CT town is like - it's cute, adorable and super super WASP-y. I felt very out of sorts there. Even though it's not that far from the city, none of my clients were willing to come down to NYC, so I have to make the trek up there. We scheduled a lunch meeting and sadly there is nothing in the immediate vicinity of their office that wasn't a chain restaurant so we had to branch out a bit and go to Darien, which is only a 10 minute drive away.
There is a main drag next to the train station that has a bunch of boutique and restaurants which is very cute and Main Street USA. I found Ten Twenty Post after scouring Yelp and other sites to find a place that wasn't a Chipotle or casual dining place. This place definitely fits the bill for a nice client meal - it's sit down with white table clothes but still casual enough that it didn't feel too stuffy or formal. The menu is fairly traditional New England fare - it's got a fairly strong seafood slant with a nice line of sandwiches and salads for lunch. I would have loved to have gotten something from the raw bar but since we were on a time crunch, I opted to go for the Greek Salad with Pesto Rubbed Shrimp ($22). A bunch of other people at the table got the lobster mac and cheese, steamed mussels and other pretty good sounding seafood dishes. Since we had almost 20 people at the table, the service was understandably slow but they were very nice about it. I had originally made the reservation for 6, then changed it to 8 and then changed it to 13 and then we ultimately ended up with 18 and they were super nice about it which was great.
While the salad was listed as a Greek Salad it's not the typical or traditional Greek type that I'm used to at a real Greek restaurant - one with super juicy red tomatoes, large fresh chunks of feta and cucumbers (and they usually don't actually come with any lettuce or mixed greens). Instead it was more of a mixed green salad with small bits of feta, a handful of cucumbers and small tomatoes served with pita - which actually is a pet peeve of mine as I find nothing more irritating than having some kind of breaded product with my salad (like croutons). I should have told them to leave off the pita because it was taking up too much space on my plate. But the ingredients used were fresh and the pieces of shrimp were fairly substantial, plentiful, and quite tasty with the pesto rub on it. I would have just called it a shrimp salad instead. I had a handful of their fries which were sprinkled with truffle oil and parmesan cheese - so what's not to love about that??
Overall, it was a nice and respectable place for a client lunch. Luckily they had the back section that can hold a fair amount of people, so it's good for groups and it looked like they also had outdoor space but it was a bit too cold to sit outside. While I wouldn't ever voluntarily come up here to eat for any other reason except for client meetings, I do recommend Ten Twenty Post as a nice place to pass the time and chow down on some seafood.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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