One of New Haven’s newest restaurants, Heirloom is located in the Study at Yale, a “boutique hotel” occupying what was most recently the Colony Inn.
I lead off with this information because friends have reported driving by this restaurant repeatedly without finding it. Here you see the exterior, the only signage being the small, red-lettered word “Heirloom” on the sign board and in the window behind it.
Visitors will note interesting stylistic details like this sun glasses sculpture to the right of the stairs
and these lamps on the steps.
If you turn left after you enter the building, you’ll find yourself facing the hotel’s check-in desk.
To create this waiting area styled like a reading room,
you have got to have balls.
Parallel design sensibilities rule the restaurant, but a smiling hostess adds warmth that seems missing from the hotel lobby.
There’s a similarly modern waiting area,
a wine wall,
and a bar area (where, again, the smiles of the staff supply the warmth).
Finally, you come to the main dining room,
where the table settings are both functional and attractive.
Our friendly waitress, Lauren,
brought us crusty bread with big air pockets and rather insipid olive oil.
Heirloom’s Restaurant Week menu included three appetizer choices: the soup of the day, which proved to be a corn chowder topped with a crostino,
an iceberg lettuce wedge salad with bacon, onion and creamy blue cheese dressing,
and a Maine crab cake finished with roasted tomato and fennel and a Vermouth butter.
The crab cake was terrific—get the crab cake!
There were also three entrées from which to choose. A wild mushroom risotto was quite cheesy.
However, the other two main dishes were really top notch.
One was seared snapper in a tomato saffron beurre blanc with red rice and mustard greens,
the other a cider-braised pork chop with sweet potato hash and winter greens.
If push came to shove, I guess I would recommend the pork chop.
There were two dessert options, and here you should let your mood dictate your choice. Garnished with an amaretti cookie, the sorbet duo proved to be mango and raspberry.
Served with Tahitian vanilla ice cream and a bulldog-etched square of white chocolate was one of the better brownies I had ever tried.
I finish with a photograph of five young ladies fully enjoying their visit to Heirloom.
Heirloom, The Study At Yale, 1157 Chapel Street, New Haven, 203-503-3919