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Emily Knapton

Mark7AML516_2025-05-16-07-19-41

We made it to Friday time for Main Street, Connecticut, a chance to showcase our local towns and cities and all they have to offer. This week we're in Norwalk. News 12 Connecticut's Mark Sudall is at Blue Cactus Grill. Mark. Hey Becky, we are at the corner of Magnolia and Stevens up on Hospital Hill right behind Norwalk Hospital. Joining me this morning is the owner of Blue Cactus Grill, Victor and Marino. Thank you so much for being with us, for having me. How did you come up with the name Blue Cactus Grill? So I grew up in, you know, Fairfield County, and after high school moved out to Tucson, Arizona. I lived there for like 10 or 12 years, learned the appreciation. For you know Southwestern food, Mexican food, and I wanted to combine it with like American comfort foods, cheesesteaks, burgers, wraps, salads. I didn't really want it to sound like it was a straight Mexican place but just more Southwestern influence, so we combined a lot of those flavors with classic American favorites and came up with a concept and focused on cheesesteaks, burgers, wraps, salads, and uh. A pretty large menu but uh very original. Everything's homemade cooked to order. Every sauce, every burger, we cut the steak fresh every day. We're the best place in Fairfield County, if not the state for cheesesteaks. I'm not just saying that we've been, we've got a lot of great internet buzz. We have, you know, 5 stars on Google with over. And reviews and people love us, very passionate about our food. Now you're celebrating 15 years. You got a big event on Monday. Monday, Monday morning, yeah, it's our 15 year anniversary, which is amazing. It went really fast and in observance of that we're going to be giving away 15% off all our food to anybody who comes through the doors as a thank you. We're doing a great. Groundbreaking because they're doing a complete the city of Norwalk is doing a complete renovation of the front of our building here. It's been a long time in the making. The mayor is going to be here, a lot of the city officials, and we're going to do a ceremonial groundbreaking and then also just a celebration of 15 years here. Coffee with cops will be here. There'll be a lot of community people, so. And you mentioned the 15% off, yeah, 15% off for anybody who comes through the door that entire day, Monday we're open 9 to 8 p.m. That's a way to be much needed here as you know in this part of town could use a little bit of a facelift, no question. Now I wanted to let people know about this. I found this interesting. You've got a blue cactus here to the wall. So that's just my little take on a fun. The art project that happened in uh in the art world. Some taped a banana onto a onto a platform and they got 6 million for it. So I figured I figured put a blue cactus up there and I'm open for offers. Uh, I'll take 5 million. So that's put it out there. Anybody interested and uh it's negotiable. We'll talk. Victor, thank you so much for the time. Congratulations on 15 years. You got it. You better believe it, Becky, we got more coming up for you in our next hour. All right, but a blue cactus is definitely more valuable than a banana. I think he's got the right idea. Yes, thanks. All right.

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Mark8aml516_2025-05-16-08-22-29

OK, we made it to Friday. Time for Main Street, Connecticut, a chance to showcase all our local towns and cities have to offer this week. We're in Norwalk. News 12 Connecticut's Mark Sudall is at Paula Cafe. Mark. Hey Beckett, you know, for Main Street, Connecticut, we are on Main Street in Norwalk right next to BJ Ryan's here. Pietro is, uh, one of the owners here. It's a family run business that really your dad started 3 years ago. Tell us about. So he, we had a restaurant in Italy and, uh, he had a dream to have this, have a coffee shop in uh in America in Timor or like Italian stuff. In America, so with my brother-in-law 3 years ago, they start looking around places and stuff like that, and this place came up. We don't know nothing about the area nothing about Norwalk, and because we were from Stratford, so. They said, you know what, let's go there. Let's check it out. We came here, we opened this place and it's doing pretty well for 3 years we, you know, teach people how what's the Italian products, you know. Yeah, tell us about some Italian fresh stuff. We have cheeses, you know, all like, you know, the kids like this, the Kinder stuff. We have mozzarella that comes every week from Italy. Um, we have a lot of different imported stuff, you know, the sweetness out of here, you know, with cookies and stuff like that. We have pasta, um, you know, we have eggplant, we have everything. Whatever when you go to Italy, you go to a small supermarket and you look at it's here today. We have, you know, every single thing if people like things we get different things every week. We get the new stuff that come out right away. Then we have, you know, for breakfast. We have cookies, cannoli with pistachio, Nutella muffin. Uh, the little craft for the look like donuts, you know, delicious corneti with Nutella, bashi, uh, pistachio, uh, everything Bomboloi we. At all, so you're open, uh, when we have, we open from 8:30 to 5:30 every day and on Sunday because Sunday is important to be with the family, we close at 4:30 and this croissant looks amazing. Oh, Whoa, how can you not have that in the morning? Little honey in there? I mean, what, go, and the cappuccino. Is is out of this world. I mean the coffee that we use is Cafe Borbona. It's mainly. In Napoli and it's one of the batons. Thank you so much, Becky. Taste Italy right here. I'm losing all my, uh, losing all my, uh, honey here. It's coming right out. All right, we'll let you enjoy your croissant. It looks delicious in such authentic products. It's great. Thanks, Mark.

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