Walk down the alley beside the firehouse on Main Street and you reach Doppio. It sits in the space where Vicolo Pizza used to be, and later Best Pizza Shop. Out front, on the street, is Thali by Chef Prasad, which opened in July in the room that had most recently been Chef Prasad Indian Cuisine. Both list the same street number, 62 Main St.
That shared number is where Main Street's dining has collected this year. The bigger change is in how you get a seat at one of them. Thali's most talked-about evenings are no longer walk-in nights. They are dated, prepaid, one-night dinners. Two of them land in the first three weeks of November.
Two restaurants, one number on the door
The overlap confuses people at first. Doppio opened at 62 Main St. in the summer of 2025. Owner Joseph Barresi and his brother Louis, the executive chef, run it, and the name means "double" in Italian, a nod to the two of them. Thali uses the same address but is a separate restaurant. It is Chef Prasad Chirnomula's rebrand of the room he already ran in town.
So one Main Street address now holds an Italian kitchen in the alley and an Indian fine-dining room on the street. Doppio was marking its first anniversary in August, about a month after Thali opened.
Thali came back as a room built for events
Thali carries real history in Connecticut. Chef Prasad first opened Thali in 2000. One location earned an "excellent" rating from The New York Times, and he has been invited to cook at the James Beard House. According to the Greenwich Free Press, the New Canaan room had already hosted his Chef Collaboration Series before the rebrand. Those dinners regularly sold out.
What the July reopening added was a room built around that series. In its September review, CT Insider described soft lighting, a wood-paneled ceiling, a striking bar and an open kitchen. The critic compared the dining room to a classic luxury cruise liner. The same review singled out the Chili Chili Bang Bang, a $22 tequila cocktail with a spicy cold foam. The reviewer called the 48-hour butter chicken a showstopper. The menu also includes Jhal Muri, a puffed-rice street snack from Kolkata that is prepared at the table, and Konkan Crab. The Royal Thali comes in vegetarian and non-vegetarian versions.
The open kitchen is the key detail. It lets two chefs cook side by side in front of a communal table. That is the format of the dinners now on Thali's OpenTable page. The first of the fall run was scheduled for Tuesday, October 27, with Chef David DiStasi of Materia joining Chef Prasad for a Tuscan and Indian evening. The listing called for cocktails at the bar at 6:30, followed by a five-course communal dinner at 7:15 cooked in the show kitchen.
The November calendar, by date
Two more nights are listed, and the first is this coming Sunday.
- Sunday, November 1: Diwali at Thali. A six-course dinner with one seating at 6 PM. Dinner is $135 per person and the beverage pairing is $95, with tax and a 20% service charge added. Reservations are prepaid.
- Tuesday, November 17: Thali and Millwright's. Chef Tyler Anderson of Millwright's Restaurant & Tavern in Simsbury joins Chef Prasad for a five-course dinner. It starts at 6:30 PM with a cocktail hour and passed hors d'oeuvres at the bar, then a communal seated dinner. Seating is limited to 50 and the listing is priced at $175 to $185 per person.
The Diwali menu is the more ambitious of the two, and the listing describes how it moves across India course by course:
"It opens with faral, the festive snacks every family makes for the holiday. Kali Puja Paturi honors the Bengali festival celebrated the same night. Lucknow Lights brings the royal kebab kitchens of Awadh, and the Annakut Thali recreates the 'mountain of food' offered the day after Diwali, with your choice of lobster malabar or Chettinad goat."
Dessert is double ka meetha and qubani ka meetha, finished with gold leaf. Vegetarian guests get their own full menu, course for course. Every guest leaves with a Diwali mithai box. The pairing opens with the Chili Chili Bang Bang and ends with a Chai Espresso Martini topped with coconut foam. Before the dinner, the restaurant contacts guests about main-course choices and allergies.
The Millwright's night brings one of Connecticut's best-known chefs down from the Farmington Valley. Anderson is a Top Chef Season 15 alum and a Chopped champion. He has been a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Northeast seven times and was named the Connecticut Restaurant Association's Chef of the Year. He opened Millwright's in 2012 inside Simsbury's 17th-century Hop Brook mill. The listing pitches the evening as New England's harvest meeting Indian spice, nine days before Thanksgiving. For anyone hosting family that week, it falls on a Tuesday with the holiday still ahead.
Doppio is adding hours at the same time
The alley side of 62 Main St. has been growing too. Doppio spent its first year open for dinner only. It has since added lunch on Saturdays and Sundays, which Barresi told NewCanaanite.com the restaurant plans to focus on going forward.
Doppio's pitch is the reverse of a ticketed tasting menu. Barresi told NewCanaanite.com that the goal was a place for "a special occasion, like a birthday or Saturday night, on a date, but then also that you could come here for dinner on a Wednesday night." The menu is built in sections. There are antipasti, including crudos like tuna tartare, then fresh pasta, pizza split into red and white, and two wagyu steaks among the entrees. The brothers also run playful specials. Lobster rolls have been on the board, which says a lot about how strictly they define Italian. The space had been a restaurant for roughly 30 years before the Barresis took it over. They also turned an underused outdoor area into the patio.
So one address now offers both kinds of night out. You can make a reservation weeks ahead for a single dated dinner at Thali, or walk down the alley on a Sunday afternoon for pasta at Doppio.
Seventy Main is the quieter half of the story
A few doors away, 70 Main St. moved the other way this year. Pesca Peruvian Bistro closed in late July, nearly eight years after co-owners Wilson Rodriguez and chef Jose Draganac opened it in December 2018. According to NewCanaanite.com, Rodriguez was seeking to retire. The restaurant was known for hosting parties, business gatherings and fundraisers for local nonprofits. It filled the large dining room that was once the Plum Tree. As of this writing, no new restaurant has been publicly reported for that space.
The same address picked up a new business in a different unit. The Amateur opened in early August in a former gallery space that had sat empty for several years. It sells technical running, cycling and ski apparel from independent and emerging brands. Founder Alex Holmes told NewCanaanite.com the store had been "a dream of mine since I was a kid."
At 70 Main, the block's largest restaurant room is dark, and a retail shop has opened at the same number. Meanwhile 62 Main St. went from one restaurant to two, and one of them now runs a calendar of special dinners. If you are used to calling Pesca for a group dinner, Thali's 50-seat communal format is the closest thing on Main Street to a booked-out evening for a crowd.
One more November opening is a block over. Sticks, a members-only golf simulator business from Westport owner Ali Loyd, was reported on track to open in November at 28 Vitti St. Membership is capped at about 50 people, with no drop-ins.
Before you book
Thali's regular hours are listed differently in different places. CT Bites reported dinner-only hours on Mondays and Wednesdays and longer hours Thursday through Sunday. OpenTable shows a different schedule, with separate lunch and dinner seatings on weekends. Check the restaurant directly before planning a regular dinner there. The two November events are easier to plan for. Each has a fixed date and start time, both are prepaid through OpenTable, and online bookings take parties of up to 20.
Hosting out-of-town family in November, or planning a dinner around an occasion? I'm always glad to share which downtown rooms suit which kind of evening. April D Kaynor would love to hear which Main Street table you end up at. Let's Connect.
