Mad Hatter Coming to Danbury

The Mad Hatter is coming to Danbury. Fairly soon. Perhaps July 1, said Alice and Roger Manter, who will open an American bistro restaurant they’re creating with a Danbury history theme.

Today, they’re cleaning out the old Maxwell’s at 1 Ives St. Maxwell’s closed two months ago, and Danbury Realtor Deborah Rizzo said two or three different people wanted to open a restaurant there, but what she liked about Roger and Alice was they seemed like your parents, they had lived in Danbury and they wanted to come back.

“They’re warm and inviting,” Rizzo said.

The couple owned and operated an Italian restaurant near Orlando and cooked for hundreds of people through their church.

Today, Alice and Roger Manter, with their son, niece and others are cleaning out Maxwell’s in anticipation of painting the interior and redecorating it with a mural, old photographs and the goal of re-creating an old Danbury landmark, the tap room at the former Green hotel, called the Mad Hatter Tap Room.

The former Main Street hotel at 198 Main St., long closed, is now Ives Manor, but in the old days it was a hotel with a popular bar.

“From street level, you walked downstairs into the Mad Hatter, or you walked upstairs into the hotel,” said Kevin Barry, a life-long Danbury resident. “We used to have a lot of out-of-towners stay at the Green because of the hatting industry. The big-wigs in town used to go to the Mad Hatter.”

The Manters plan to make a room next to the bar into the Mad Hatter Tap Room.

Another change the couple plan to the interior will be cutting the dining room in half to make the room seem more comfortable.

“When people come into a restaurant, they don’t want to see a lot of empty tables,” Alice Manter said. “I want it to feel warm.”

The menu, like the restaurant itself, is under construction, but Alice Manter expects to have theme nights, so customers can know in advance what they can get on a particular day. For example, Sunday will offer a southern-style Fried Chicken dinner with the works.

“I’ll rely on seasonal foods, and I want everything to be fresh, fresh, fresh,” Alice Manter said.

Next door, Tom Devine, who operates Two Steps Downtown Grille, said he’d like another restaurant on the street. He said the lunch crowd will pick and choose between the two restaurants, making the Mad Hatter competition at lunch, but he said the dinner crowd pretty much makes up its mind where they’re going when they leave their house. He didn’t think the two restaurants, side by side, would compete at dinner.

Tom’s partner, Keith O’Mara, said he wants The Mad Hatter to open.

“We want quality operators all around us. Remember when we were once called the Dining and Entertainment District?” O’Mara asked, and then he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial level and said, “We’re the only restaurant left.”