Half Moon: A local cafe on N. Main Street in Wallingford, CT
Half Moon Café in Wallingford, CT was opened about 10 years ago. The co-owners are Jamaican and Italian. The logo on the sign shown in the picture depicts both the Jamaican flag and the Italian flag. This fusion of cultures is similar to Trinidad Ali’s Roti Shop in Brooklyn, NY. This gourmet food café serves predominantly Italian food with some Italian-fusion options.
The Italian shopkeeper also sells Italian products from “back home.” These products are not found at local grocery stores and food shops. I initially thought that the sale of products from Italy was important as Wallingford and its surrounding region have a large number of Italian immigrants and second generation Italian families. However, the prices of the imported pastas and delicacies are high, which suggests that although food can be a means of comfort for immigrants, the products for sale in this café do not attract recent immigrants. Rather, these high-end pastas and Italian products are aesthetic markers of a specific consumer’s taste, social class and cultural capital.
Neighboring businesses include restaurants, boutiques, day spa, and yoga studio. The old downtown library has been converted into a restaurant, similar to the old bank. The present boutiques and cafes were previously stores where Wallingford residents would go to do their everyday shopping. These local pharmacies and stores have now been replaced with several large grocery stores such as Stop and Shop and ShopRite located nearby. Restaurants downtown seem to have the best business, relative to the boutiques because of the nature of shopping streets and their ability to persist in an age where online shopping and chain stores are growing in popularity. All of the downtown restaurants and stores are individually owned and there are no chain stores due to regulations of downtown. Different from the case of Orchard Street in NY where landlords try to attract the ABCs, the town of Wallingford has a strong influence on the types of stores that are allowed to open downtown.
Every time I go to Half Moon Café, I see local people such as my elementary school teachers, who I know are long time residents of Wallingford. I also recognize many of the patrons as people who work nearby because a few summers ago I interned with Wallingford Center Inc. This organization was similar to a chamber of commerce for the downtown local businesses and part of my job included interacting with local businesses. Additionally, at Half Moon Café, on most days, many students from the local boarding school, Choate Rosemary Hall, are often seen dining.
This café is always busy. It attracts people from surrounding towns and the restaurant was recently written up in the New Haven Registrar, a newspaper distributed across the New Haven region. Wallingford is not a ‘walkable’ town and there is limited access to public transportation. Transportation to this café is limited to people who either live nearby, or have cars. Buses and trains that run through town are on limited schedules.
Simona Fried ’16