This is the first holiday season in two decades that Silvermine faces without Lou Aloupis and chef Scott Kaluczky behind the counter at 1032 Silvermine Road. Their market closed last November. A new owner has plans for the 1885 building, but no opening has been announced as of this week. Across the road, Silvermine Arts Center has events booked from late October through December 23. For now, the Arts Center is what draws people to the crossroads, and the closest morning coffee is just over the Norwalk line.
So November in this corner of New Canaan looks different. The places are mostly the same ones, but the stops in a Silvermine weekend have shifted.
The building across from the Arts Center
The Silvermine Market sits "across the street from an established art gallery and school bearing the same neighborhood name," as NewCanaanite reported in March. The building went up in 1885, and various operators have run it as a market over the decades. In its most recent form it served breakfast and lunch every day and dinner on Friday nights. Pavel Jansa, a Weston resident, bought the building for $960,000 in February.
Jansa described his plans to NewCanaanite. He wants a small bistro serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, with "Silvermine" in its name and probably live piano. His picture of it is specific:
"A four-star, five-star restaurant, but affordable. You have a lot of people walking by, jogging. They can come in, drop in during the morning to read a paper, a book, something like that."
That quote also comes from the same NewCanaanite piece. In March, the town Building Department received an application for partial interior demolition at the address. CT Insider reported the same month that Jansa hoped to open in fall 2026, had just started applications with the Building and Planning & Zoning departments, and had not yet picked a name. Fall is now half over. No name and no opening date have been made public yet.
Where the old counter went
While the building waits on its new owner, the two men who ran the market for 20 years have been looking for a place of their own.
In late March, Aloupis told NewCanaanite that he and Kaluczky were "trying to find a new location to do what we did there somewhere else." "After 20 years, the building's old and it was time for us to go," he said. He added that the market had reinvented itself through the 2008 downturn, Hurricane Sandy and the pandemic.
By April 22, CT Insider reported that the pair were still looking for an affordable spot in downtown New Canaan or in the Norwalk or Wilton parts of Silvermine. Aloupis told the paper, "We just haven't found it yet, we're looking for it." Neither of them has announced a new location. If they do reopen, it may well be in another of the three towns that share the Silvermine name, not in New Canaan.
The morning stop moved over the town line
Until something opens at 1032, the nearest café with the same kind of daily rhythm is across the Norwalk border. In March, Jansa named it as his model. He told NewCanaanite he pictured something like the Mercantile at GrayBarns, the café and gift shop that opened "down the street in 2019, just over the Norwalk border."
Mercantile at GrayBarns is at 193 Perry Avenue in Norwalk and is open Tuesday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. It serves coffee, tea cakes, soups and salads, and also sells dinners to go, curated provisions and gifts. For evenings, there is the Tavern at GrayBarns on the same property. Its dinner menu was updated October 8 and includes butternut squash soup, produce from local farms, branzino, and a fall squash dish with chicken.
The property has deep roots in the neighborhood. According to GrayBarns' own history, this was the old Silvermine Inn and Tavern. The Whitman family ran it until 2009, and the Glazer Group bought it in 2015. So the old tavern now serves breakfast to the neighborhood, while the old market's building waits to become a restaurant.
The Arts Center's holiday calendar
Silvermine Arts Center, at 1037 Silvermine Road, has events running one after another from late October to just before Christmas:
- Now through November 21: The 36th Annual Student Exhibition is up in the Student Gallery, open weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Wednesday, October 28, noon to 6 p.m.: The Dikra Gems Sale brings semi-precious stones to Hicks Studio. It is free and open to the public.
- Saturday and Sunday, November 7–8, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.: The Artisans Market, a fine art and craft fair, gathers more than 20 artisans plus gift and craft vendors.
- November 7 through December 23: "Holiday Salon – The Gift of Art" opens the same weekend. The gallery and store are open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
November 7 is the weekend that matters most. The Artisans Market and the Holiday Salon open on the same Saturday, and each brings its own crowd. Some people come for the craft fair, and others come for gallery work they can give as gifts. Mercantile opens at 8 a.m. and the fair at 11 a.m., so a morning stop on Perry Avenue fits before the fair without any rush.
Getting there in November
Getting to the crossroads takes more planning this month. The New Canaan Sentinel reported on October 17 that work on Route 106 was scheduled to start October 7, with town officials expecting about six weeks of construction and traffic detours while it runs. That estimate points to mid-November, which overlaps with the Artisans Market weekend. Officials have only given it as an estimate, so the work could end earlier or later.
The town's Department of Public Works construction updates give the day-by-day picture. On Friday, October 16, Route 106, which is Silvermine Road, was closed to through traffic from Valley Road to Canoe Hill Road. Emergency vehicles, school buses and local traffic could still get through the work zone. The Sentinel also reported that temporary paving on South Avenue was scheduled to start around October 20 and last about five to six working days. Before driving over on a fair weekend, check the DPW page. The department takes questions at (203) 594-3054.
When the corner fills in again
This season, Silvermine's crossroads has an art center with a holiday show open five days a week through December 23 and a building across the road waiting for its next owner's plans. Two neighborhood names will decide what the corner looks like next year. One is the bistro with "Silvermine" in its name, which hasn't been named yet. The other is whatever Aloupis and Kaluczky open next, in whichever of the three Silvermine towns they find space. For this November, the Arts Center is the reason to come, and the GrayBarns buildings on Perry Avenue in Norwalk are the place to stop for coffee or dinner.
Fatou follows these openings, sales and storefront changes in New Canaan's smaller corners as closely as she follows downtown. If you'd like to talk about what is changing in Silvermine and how it bears on your own plans, Fatou Niang would be glad to hear from you. Work With Fatou.
