Neo in Salisbury opens to applause

SALISBURY — They tried to have a quiet slow opening for their restaurant, to give the staff a chance to work out the kinks. 

But fate and the eager diners of Salisbury had other plans for Neo restaurant, which opened (quietly) on Main Street on Tuesday, March 19, in the space most recently occupied by the restaurant Below the Salt. 

“I’m exhausted,” said Gimo Ramadani, one of the owners for Neo, which was named because “neo” means new in Latin but also because it is the name of Gimo’s 5-year-old son. He might have been tired but he certainly looked happy. Despite the unexpected rush of customers, everything went well and all the diners seem to have left with smiles on their faces.

Gimo is in charge of making Neo’s flatbread pizzas. His cousin, Noli Ramadani, is in charge of most of the rest of the menu, which includes salads, burgers, pasta, chicken, most of them with either an American twist to them or a bit of an Italian flair. 

The cousins themselves are not Italian but they’ve been cooking Italian-style food for years (Gimo) and decades (Noli). They are both Albanian. Noli’s family owned Noli’s restaurant in Winsted for about 18 years; the family sold the eatery two years ago. Gimo came to Winsted from his native Switzerland (yes, it’s confusing) eight years ago and went to work at Noli’s, where he learned to make pizza (and to run a restaurant). 

Together the cousins then opened Epicure Pizza in Thomaston, “But the space was too small,” said Gimo  — who was the cousin/chef chosen to do the interview with The Lakeville Journal because, at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 20, customers were still coming in and ordering food and someone had to cook it.

Gimo explained that Noli had ambitions to cook for more people and to try new menu items. They began to look for a restaurant space; they ended up at the former Below the Salt. For those who pay attention to the Salisbury restaurant scene, they were not recruited to the area by Eddie Cania and his brother, Todi, who are also Albanian and who own Mizza’s in Lakeville and the Sharon Country Inn. They are friends of course; in fact, the Canias worked at Noli’s when they first moved to the area. 

After a few months of making some changes to the two kitchens and the dining spaces, the Ramadanis opened Neo on Tuesday night. 

They tried to keep it quiet but their neighbors on Main Street, including the staff at Salisbury Wines, Sweet William’s bakery and even at Town Hall, kept talking it up to their own customers. 

“And as soon as we put up the sign and took the paper off our windows, people kept coming in and asking when we were going to open,” Gimo said.

The staff handled the onslaught with aplomb, perhaps because they are all family and they are all trained restaurant workers. On the team are Gimo and Noli’s wives, Njomza and Diti, as well as some other cousins. Additional wait staff are being interviewed but for the moment the team seems to be doing OK. 

The menu can be found on the Neo website, www.neo.restaurant (which is not completely  updated yet; there are some placeholder photos on the site). Prices range from about $12 for generously portioned appetizers (the calamari received rave reviews) to $27 for rack of lamb to $13 for fat burgers with artisan-looking buns and fries.  The flatbread pizzas are $9 to $13; the most popular one on opening night by a large margin was the prosciutto. 

Neo has its liquor license and has a full bar that includes beer on tap from Norbrook Farm Brewery in nearby Colebrook/Norfolk. Meals can be served at the bar.

The restaurant is open six days a week (closed on Mondays) from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.