McMuckle’s cures mealtime monotony

Matthew Sadowski serves Mario DiGiacomo.
Kathryn Boughton
Matthew Sadowski serves Mario DiGiacomo.
NORTH CANAAN—The window says it all.
There, McMuckle’s Market proclaims it is a purveyor of “yumminess,” and owner Matthew Sadowski works hard to deliver on that promise.
Word is spreading throughout the region about the quality of the food at the little eatery, located at 85 Main St. in North Canaan, since owner/chef Sadowski quietly opened his doors Dec. 2.
In an online review, Andrew Anderson, enthused, “Came in on a whim, though I had been hearing about this place for a little while. I tried the kimchi & kielbasa fried rice and WOW. Super unique and flavorful. … The service was good, and the ambience was lovely … .”
In another online review, Craig Whiting added to the praise: “Very unique, high-quality food at a great price with a calming atmosphere.”
In a town that once offered little other than Italian restaurants, the range and variety of North Canaan’s cuisine is becoming more nuanced with the glitzy Industry Kitchen and Bar, the cozy Blackberry River Bistro, and the homestyle New England meals served at the Olde School Deli. There is much more than pasta and pizza on the menu now.
“It’s amazing what you can do with fresh food,” Sadowski said as be bustled past with dishes for a neighboring table. “It’s not the fastest thing, but I make as much as I can from scratch.” He even creates his own mayonnaise, mustard and hot sauces.
Many in town watched and waited as Sadowski prepared the location for his new restaurant, taking a year to open. Finally, with the interior freshly redecorated in a lemony yellow contrasted by a dusky blue, a smattering of tables and a long communal bar down one side, Sadowski was ready.
He has been content to let word-of-mouth bring him customers and enjoys it when new patrons enjoy the experience he offers and return. But he does not obsess if people want something else.
“When I started, people wanted Pop’s Diner [the next-to-last restaurant in the space]. But that is not coming back. I like it when get people on board with what I am doing. When they come back, that is a huge compliment, but I don’t want to do what others are doing — let them have that lane.”
What he is doing is simple food, cooked simply and with great skill — with the occasional surprising twist. The product of a Polish home, where pickled foods were frequently served, and a long-term relationship with a Korean woman, he likes to season his foods with pickled vegetables that offer a piquant — but not overpowering — flavor.
“I was turned on to that funkiness as a kid,” he recalled. “It’s natural flavoring without using flavorings that are bad for you. It’s better food and I want to put out a quality product all the time.”
His menu consists of such starters as an egg, “by the each, any time, anyway, with anything” ($2); pickled vegetables, which he terms “yummy probiotic-filled treats to cure a craving and indecisiveness” ($6); a choice of cast iron skillet veggies seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon and fresh herbs ($7); or kielbasa, sliced and pan-seared with tangy mustard for dipping ($5).
A variety of salads are priced at $9, and his hot sandwiches range from $6 to $10. His most expensive entree is a spicy chili garlic shrimp at $19. The Mediterranean sea bass comes just behind at $17.
Sadowski is happy to have people suggest meals. “If you don’t know what you want, I will cook for you and surprise you,” he said. Because all his food is made to order, his biggest fear is becoming too busy and making people wait too long for their food.
Sadowski is used to a much faster pace and happy to have turned his back on it. A cook since he was 12, working at his parent’s mom-and-pop shop with its soda fountain counter service, he drifted into working at casinos in Connecticut and Florida, where he was executive chef at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
“Cooking in casinos is an odd environment,” he said. “You lose track of everything. The work is nonstop and they are not the nicest people.”
Now, in his own restaurant, he feels different as a chef and finds different ideas that “pop out of my head and are more healthy choices.”
McMuckle’s (named for his dog) is open from “about 11” through 8 p.m., Wednesday-Sunday.
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.