Owner re-imagines Cafemantic, re-opens as Stone Row

After 10 successful years, Cafemantic owner Andrew Gütt has re-imagined and re-designed his eatery. Stone Row is still located on Willimantic's Main Street.
After 10 successful years, Cafemantic owner Andrew Gütt has re-imagined and re-designed his eatery. Stone Row is still located on Willimantic's Main Street.
To mark their 10th anniversary, the culinary team behind Cafémantic got creative, using the months they were closed because of COVID-19 to re-imagine the destination restaurant. Now as they welcome guests back for socially distanced dining, founder Andy Gütt is ready to unveil a new name, Stone Row, and a fresh concept inspired by the restaurant’s tenement neighborhood along the Willimantic River.

“I discovered the Stone Row neighborhood that existed here when purchasing the buildings from my former landlord in 2017,” said Gütt. While doing an environmental survey of the property, Gütt said that he and his team discovered old maps used for fire insurance purposes in the 19th and early-20th centuries.

“There was a whole cluster of granite tenement buildings lining the railroad tracks here, referred to on the map as Stone Row,” said Gütt, noting that it appears the area retained this name until the 1940s. A few of those granite Stone Row buildings still exist, noted Gütt, “including the 12-foot retaining walls along our patio.”

After 10 successful years, Cafemantic owner Andrew Gütt has re-imagined and re-designed his eatery. Stone Row is still located on Willimantic's Main Street.
After 10 successful years, Cafemantic owner Andrew Gütt has re-imagined and re-designed his eatery. Stone Row is still located on Willimantic's Main Street.
Gütt said that the name resonates with him. “The hustle and grit required to forge a good life,” he said. “I’ve struggled... Its part of the entrepreneur lifestyle.” But struggle can breed creativity and upward mobility, noted Gütt.

“The name change largely has to do with my own journey and moving on,” he said. Gütt opened his Main Street restaurant when he was 25 years old.

“Who, if any of us is that version of ourselves?” he asked. Feeling that he’d outgrown the original, Gütt said he was ready for a change.

“It’s like, you are known just for the one hit and stuck in that when all you want to do is explore new ideas or change things up,” he said. “Stone Row is a way of setting the tone for the next ten years,”Gütt continued. “Plus, that brand has a lot more room to grow. There are many other towns and cities with a ‘Stone Row’ type of history.”

Gütt said the re-branding also represents a sustainable vision for how restaurateurs can help write the next chapter for the Connecticut food community, by doubling down on commitments to community well-being, livable wages and sourcing from regional producers.

As a part of the relaunch, Stone Row debuts a new look, a new bar, expanded outdoor dining and a new patio level. Returning for the first time since stay-at-home restrictions went into effect, guests will enter a more spacious, yet still intimate, dining room, where the team has taken extra precautions with everyone’s wellness in mind.

After 10 successful years, Cafemantic owner Andrew Gütt has re-imagined and re-designed his eatery. Stone Row is still located on Willimantic's Main Street.
After 10 successful years, Cafemantic owner Andrew Gütt has re-imagined and re-designed his eatery. Stone Row is still located on Willimantic's Main Street.
“We’re using technology to help us regulate the amount of diners that are on-site at once,”said Gütt, noting that his reservations system implements a capacity monitor, which shuts down reservations when they’ve reached capacity.

Gütt said that the restaurant industry is still wounded from the pandemic, and will be for a long time. “There are still inventory challenges, staffing shortages, and just the general upheaval that we all experienced as a global society,” he said. But returning customers have been overwhelmingly supportive and patient.

“Menus are going to be smaller and undoubtedly things will take longer,” said Gütt. Wearing a face mask while serving food outdoors adds a new level or adjustment for all staff members, he said.

Gütt points to Stone Row’s streamlined, front-of-house, with every player having a hand in elevating the diner’s experience — even the chef will make the rounds.

“Complementing the all-hands-on-deck approach, Stone Row also rolls out a more equitable hospitality-included model, which fairly compensates the whole team, from busser to bartender, for their contributions,” said Gütt.

Executive Chef Tyler May collaborated with Sous Chef TJ Bonomo and Gütt to create an “approachable but elevated workingman’s menu,” with a sense of Yankee ingenuity.

“It’s homegrown food that’s driven by intentionality,” said May, who took the helm last September.

“Our menu starts with the seeds before they go in the ground,” adds Bonomo, noting that Stone Row works closely with regional farmers, foragers and fishers. Menu highlights include the Duck Fat Fingerling Potatoes (with everything bagel vinaigrette), Grilled Asparagus “Benedict” (lacto-fermented asparagus, prosciutto, egg yolk, bacon powder and sherry-Calabrian jam) and Grass Roots Burger (fermented ketchup, Cato Corner Dutch Farmstead, Kindred Crossings beef, turmeric pickles and greens on a Zest Pastry Potato brioche roll).

“The idea of Stone Row is recognizing the humanity of hospitality and the humanity of food,” said Gütt. “Like our neighborhood, it’s comfortable and well-worn. We reinvented the neighborhood with Cafémantic and we’re tenacious enough to do that again with Stone Row. It’s time.”