Restaurants in Stamford

The Sundance Café & Wine Bar's kitchen teems with daily deliveries of crisp, fresh vegetables and natural meat ready for soaking in house marinades. Alongside cups of coffee sourced from around the globe, these ingredients create hearty breakfasts, lunches, and dinners of wraps, parfaits, and fondue. A vast salad bar plates custom greens alongside Spirit of Connecticut paninis, named after neighboring towns such as Milford, New Canaan, and Metropolis. Patrons relax in chairs emblazoned with the café's coffee cup logo as they dip bread and fruit into chocolate and cheese fondue and enjoy sips of fruity wine smoothies. Sundance also caters special breakfast and lunchtime meals, and hosts events such as live music and poetry readings beneath soft spotlights.

The chefs at Kujaku Japanese Restaurant flip filet mignon and scallops on a hibachi grill, deep-fry tempura-battered shrimp, and craft specialty sushi rolls with ingredients such as lump crabmeat, mango, and avocado. Diners can wash down bites with Japanese sodas, beer, or wine, or order a cocktail from the fully stocked bar.

The contemporary wood-paneled elegance of Butterfield 8's U-shaped leather booths and lamp-lit dining room complements the menu of urban American gastropub fare. Quash your hunger with the chipotle brisket nachos, bulging beneath the tasteful weight of pico de gallo, sour cream, guacamole, and chipotle pulled chicken ($12). Buttery mashed potatoes and crispy onions adorn the sauce-drizzled peppercorn skirt steak ($20), and the memphis pulled-pork sliders ($12) satiate mouths with bite-size morsels of flavor. Spread out in the spacious booths and imbibe the alchemical concoctions of specialty cocktails ($10) such as a dirty bleu martini, an ocean of Belvedere vodka bobbing with buoys of blue-cheese-stuffed olives, a drink as elegant as a chandelier in fur coat. Finish the feast with the chocolate-chip-cookie-dough smash, an iron skillet filled with half-baked cookie oozing beneath ice cream and chocolate sauce ($8).

Five Yelpers give Rye Ridge Deli's Rye Brook location an average of four stars, and nine Yelpers give the Stamford location an average of three stars.

For the past decade, Fratelli Market's Brooklyn-bred famiglia has made its pastas and sauces according to a 30-year-old recipe and conjures its mozzarella from scratch throughout the day to serve as a base layer for its genuine Italian sandwiches. Brooklyn-style marinara sauce adds a distinctive accent to a plate of spaghetti or sack of accidentally cooked laundry with locatelli romano cheese and spices. Otherwise, mix and match the bacon-infused tomato vodka sauce with Fratelli's fresh-cut linguine, penne, and angel hair swept from the floors of heaven's finest barbershops. The pine-nutty walnut sauce, however, was created with the market's jumbo pumpkin ravioli in mind.