A “Special Place” in West Hartford

As Ashley Flagg welcomed friends and family to her brandnew restaurant in January, one particularly special centenarian was there to celebrate, sipping champagne and eating oysters. Her grandmother, who turns 102 this year, was a key inspiration for The Laurel, Flagg’s West Hartford eatery specializing in shareable plates with unique global flavors.

The Laurel, which occupies the former Corner Pug space on New Britain Avenue, gets its name from her grandmother’s home on Middletown’s Laurel Grove Road, Flagg said. She calls it a “special place” where she and her cousins spent much of their childhood.

“She was just a really good host, she was an incredible cook, and she really always made everybody feel so welcome,” Flagg said. “And I want to recreate that here.”

Ashley Flagg’s culinary career in New England is extensive, having worked with chefs like Tyler Anderson at Millwright’s in Simsbury and the former Hamilton Park restaurant in New Haven; Billy Grant in West Hartford, and Jamie Bissonnette at Little Donkey in Cambridge, Mass.

But the desire to open her own restaurant was always there. She and her wife Rebekah, who has a lengthy restaurant management resume of her own, decided to start looking at potential spaces.

They wanted to open their business in Bloomfield, where they reside, but were unable to find the right location for their concept. Their search ended up leading them to the Corner Pug, a West Hartford pug-themed Irish bar that had been a staple in town for nearly 25 years, where owner Ted Vetter was looking to sell and retire.

After five years as the executive chef at Millwright’s, Flagg left her role in October, with sights set on opening The Laurel as soon as possible. Less than three months later, after demolition and renovation, she and Rebekah opened the eatery in late January – ahead of the February time frame they’d initially set.

The Laurel’s menu does not have a set cuisine, Flagg says, but instead reflects the way she likes to cook – using ingredients from multiple continents as well as inspiration from her favorite comfort foods, flavors that intrigue her, and influences from her staff members’ cultural backgrounds. The restaurant’s site notes that the menus are “forever evolving,” and Flagg said dishes will change based on ingredient availability, seasonal shifts, and customer feedback.

A mid-February menu featured “chilled” items, with a selection of raw oysters, hamachi crudo with carrot-coconut vinaigrette, and soy-cured egg yolk, and a poached shrimp tostada with charred jalapeño sauce. Other seafood plates included Hong King shrimp toast on focaccia from Avon’s Small State Provisions bakery, a swordfish paillard, and Manila clams with Thai-style tom kha coconut broth.

“We wanted to have effort put into (these dishes), not just, ‘OK, we have to have a vegetarian thing, let’s put a big mushroom on.’” —Rebekah Flagg

Meat dishes have included Wagyu beef souvlaki skewers with whipped feta, olives and date and seed salad, and a spicy sausage agnolotti pasta with vodka sauce and citrus ricotta. A Ghanaian peanut stew features duck bacon from Bella Bella Gourmet in West Haven, and a burger with pimento cheese, crispy cheddar, and dill pickle remoulade is popular among the bargoers, the Flaggs said.

Vegetable-centered plates aren’t an afterthought at The Laurel, as the Flaggs appreciate plant-based cuisine. The menu offers items like salads, including a spicy Caesar with chili crunch, and grilled trumpet mushrooms with mole poblano and green tahini sauce. Several vegan options include hearts of palm “ceviche” with sweet potato chips, tofu kaju masala with fried cashews and rice cakes, and plant-based Argentinian-style empanadas made with lentils, walnuts, and a chimichurri aioli.

The Flaggs said they were both following a plantbased diet at one point (Rebekah says her diet is still about 80 percent plant-based) and noted they didn’t find enough varied options for restaurant food when they would go out to eat locally. Recognizing that gap, they said they wanted to offer more thought-out choices on their own menu.

“We wanted to have effort put into (these dishes), not just, ‘OK, we have to have a vegetarian thing, let’s put a big mushroom on,’” Rebekah Flagg said. “We have a lot of non-vegan people order these items, especially the ceviche and the empanadas.”

Ashley Flagg said the menu’s artichoke rangoons made with yuzu kosho cashew cream cheese – another vegan option – nod to her nostalgic love of Chinese takeout crab rangoons. The char siu pork belly dish is similar, her play on boneless spareribs, she said.

She gives credit to her wife for helping her create the Japanesestyle kaarage fried chicken dish, which they came up with after Rebekah vetoed the chicken wings Ashley wanted. Instead, Rebekah pulled inspiration from a menu item at a ramen restaurant she’d previously worked at in the Boston area. With chicken bites dredged in potato starch and served with rice cakes, the dish is naturally glutenfree, they said.

That dish is a good example of how well the Flaggs work together, Ashley said.

“This menu is so much better, because of her, than it would have been with me,” she said. “If you see this version of the menu versus what the first one was, this one is just so much more crisp. She’s got the eye of what actual customers want.”

Dessert options lean more toward comfort flavors, the couple said, with a salted caramel crème brulee, a chocolate icebox tart with graham cracker crust, a vegan chocolate mousse, and a tres leches tiramisu, with tres leches-soaked ladyfingers. Kristin Eddy, the former pastry chef at Millwright’s, helped consult on the recipes.

Beverage manager Michela Zurstadt also brings a wealth of experience to the bar, producing cocktails like A Thousand Faces (Trinidadian rum, Vietnamese spiced gin, bianco vermouth, strawberry, pineapple, tarragon, and coconut oil) and Boogie Nights, with Japanese whiskey, Jamaican rum, PX sherry, apricot, orange tawny port and aromatic bitters. The A La Mer features unexpected ingredients like celery, lemon, vanilla, cucumber, and Greek yogurt alongside London dry gin and white port.

Zurstadt and Rebekah Flagg also worked to curate their list of wine and spirits by focusing on companies that are predominantly female and/or minority-owned and operated.

Rebekah Flagg, who serves as general manager, also handled the majority of the design decisions for the restaurant. Using the “really good bones” of the former Corner Pug, she said, she kept the industrial elements like its exposed brick walls and tin ceiling while warming it up with what she calls a “cozy, feminine, almost grandma aesthetic.” The space features tan leather booths and banquettes, floral wallpaper, and a floral mural by artist Jaime La Jones.

For Ashley, it’s a return to the warmth and comfort of her grandmother’s Middletown home, she said.

“My grandmother and her home growing up were always like my safe space,” she said. “The fact that I can walk in here and this feels so comfortable and warm and inviting to me, I just think it’s really special that Rebekah was able to recreate that feeling for me in this space that is collectively ours.”

• The Laurel is located at 1046 New Britain Avenue in West Hartford. Thelaurelrestaurantandbar.com