Rocky Hill: Complete!

Rocky Hill: Complete!
Denovellis

Here is the CTMQ Guide to Rocky Hill with my list and stories about everything I’ve done there!

After a decade of writing CTMQ, I decided to try to “complete” towns. In that decade of traveling and writing, I had already done a lot of stuff in many of our towns already. However, I have been continually surprised by how much more there often is to do. This page includes my “town completion celebration meal” and recap of my Rocky Hill experiences.

Let’s get to it.

Rocky Hill was my: 35th town completed
First CTMQ Page: Rocky Hill – Glastonbury Ferry, 2008

The Celebration

When I pause to think about some of the things I’ve accomplished with this website, it strikes me how long I’ve been plugging along. Just above it notes that my first page about anything in Rocky Hill was in 2008. I’m writing this in November 2024. That’s 16 years in between that ferry ride from Glastonbury to sitting down for a celebratory lunch at DeNovellis.

And Rocky Hill is tiny! And not too far away from CTMQ Global Headquarters! So what took me so long? My friends, CTMQ is all about the journey, not the destination.

Eh, who am I kidding? I love the destination. I love “completing” towns. And I love the celebratory meals when I do so.

I’ve heard about DeNovellis – which is sometimes written as “Denovellis” but never with any sort of apostrophe – for years now. It’s always one of the “best lowkey Italian restaurants in the state.” People who know Italian food love this place, and it’s been in Rocky Hill since 2006, so there was no debate on where I’d celebrate.

DeNovellis is a family owned and operated restaurant that serves northern Italian cuisine. Enzo is the father, and at least two of his sons work in the kitchen. After owning Cousins Café in Hartford for eight years and the pizza/grinder shop Johnny’s for 16 years in East Hartford, Enzo’s boys encouraged him to open another restaurant in Rocky Hill where his family grew up.

He did just that on the Silas Deane, but moved to the current location a few years later. Another DeNovellis down in Clinton was open from 2016 to 2021.

The focus from the beginning is on “family.” The full restaurant name is DeNovellis Family Restaurant.” Their menu caters to families; those celebrating as well as those on a budget. There are pizzas and grinders as well as veal and seafood dishes.

I sat at a high-top in the bar area for lunch. The horseshoe bar was disturbingly crowded at noon on a Thursday with a lot of people drinking a lot of mixed drinks. Very few were of retirement age. Several were very loud. They all did a great job of ignoring the weirdo sitting alone in the corner (um, me), which I very much appreciated.

I ordered a glass of pinot noir (remember, I’m celebrating) and a plate of the fettuccini carbonara. I’m not an Italian fare expert, but that seems like a decent enough dish to see what this place is all about.

With my rather affordable $18 plate, I got a bunch of fresh bread and a decent sized house salad. And since fettuccini carbonara is so rich, I didn’t finish it and Calvin got a pre-training meal that night. He had no issue downing the 1,000 calories in mere minutes.

DeNovellis has a more formal dining room as well as a private room or two. If you want quiet, head to the dining room. These guys downing vodka tonics were dropping f-bombs left, right, up, and down. On the one hand, okay, heeeeyyyy, Italianooooo, eh? What are youze gonna do about it, eh?

On the other hand, dude, shut up. They were clearly regulars, but I could tell the bartender was annoyed and because this place is all about family, I got to see the owner and patriarch Enzo gladhand the room as well as his chef son make his rounds.

Everyone was having a blast. At noon on a Thursday. My pasta was delicious. Cooked perfectly. Not the most exciting dish in the world, but Rocky Hill isn’t the most exciting town in Connecticut.

Nothing here is frozen. Everything is fresh and made to order. They are up front about the fact that a large party with entrees might take a good hour to prepare. Which is how it works here. The portions are large and the prices are very, very fair.

If you’re into good Italian food without the West Hartford, Litchfield, or Darien upcharge, go here. You’ll thank me later.

Denovellis Family Restaurant

Rocky Hill Wrap-Up

I can’t quite say that Rocky Hill wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. The trails at Quarry Park and Dividend Pond surprised me for how cool they were. But beyond that, yeah, Rocky Hill is Rocky Hill. Split by I-91 and again by the Silas Deane Highway, it’s known mostly for I-91 speed traps and Silas Deane hellscapes. Oh, and Dinosaur State Park of course, a required visit of every family with five-year-olds.

But I love every Connecticut town… or, rather, I love every Connecticut town I’m able to complete. There’s almost always one place in every town that holds up my celebration. Here, it was the Rocky Hill Fire Museum, a tiny appointment-only joint wherein my emails went ignored for years. (One phone call took care of things though.) The ferry is certainly cool. You all should ride our state’s two river ferries at least once.

That’s pretty much it. Rocky Hill is geographically very small and lots of it is floodplain farmland. But in the end, yeah, if you’re not from there, you’ll stop thinking about the town when you finish skimming this page.

Thought exercise: If I had to send someone to Rocky Hill for a daytrip, I would tell them to do it between April and November so they can arrive in style via the Rocky Hill-Glastonbury Ferry. You have to go to Dinosaur State Park, if only because it’s the number one reason 99% of people make trips to Rocky Hill. Pop on over to Dividend Pond to check out the waterfall and why not take a stroll around the trails there? Relax afterwards at Still Hill Brewing Company for a final, solid, “hey this place isn’t bad” experience that sums up Rocky Hill perfectly.

Surprise: the diversity of terrain and flora between the river, floodplains, Quarry Park and Dividend Pond
Favorite fact: No dinosaur fossils have ever been found in Rocky Hill; only fossilized footprints
Disappointment: The Still Unsolved Shad Horn Mystery of 2019

Rocky Hill: Done!

Previous completed town: Hartland!
Next completed town: Barkhamsted!