Restaurant Reminiscing: Ground Round in Connecticut

I was BS'ing with a few buddies over the weekend about the places we used to hang out at back in the day, one of our favorite places to go around Connecticut was the Ground Round Restaurants and bars. Ground Round was a family-style restaurant that served up American-fare like burgers, chicken sandwiches, fries, and steaks. I remember they used to play black and white cartoons, and bowls of in-the-shell-peanuts and popcorn were brought out. God I loved cracking those peanuts open and throwing the remnants onto the cluttered, crunchy floor.

The Ground Round in Waterbury was on Lakewood Road near the intersection of Wolcott Street. The building is still there, it's been a couple of different things over the years since the Ground Round days, currently it's a Japanese steakhouse

The Danbury Ground Round location was adjacent to the old Ramada Inn on Newtown Road. It transformed into an Outback Steakhouse, which has also recently shut down. There were almost 200 Ground Round restaurants at their peak of popularity, I did a little research, and found that there are still 16 Ground Round's in operation as of Summer 2020.

You'll have to do a bit of driving, though, if you want to crunch some of those peanuts under your feet again. The closest Ground Round to us is on Long Island, Brook Haven, NY to be exact. There are also three more Ground Round restaurants to our North, with one in Rutland, VT, and two in Maine - Bangor and Hallowell.