# Two Off-Duty Cops Started Augie & Ray’s. Their Great-Grandsons Run It Now.
Ray Hutt and Augie Bria were East Hartford police officers with no restaurant experience between them when they opened a hot dog stand on Main Street in 1946. What they did have was a sense of what the workers at nearby factories needed during a lunch break: something fast, filling, and honest. Their stand has stayed in the same family for four generations since, and it’s currently run by Mike and Chris, Ray’s great-grandsons, who grew up around the grill and took over from their father’s generation.
The menu has stretched only slightly beyond what Hutt and Bria started with. Footlong hot dogs are the signature item, served with a chili recipe the family calls simply “The Sauce” — a name that doubles as a wall against the question everyone eventually asks, since nobody outside the family gets the actual recipe. Burgers, onion rings, and fried clams round out the rest, with the clams drawing particular loyalty from regulars who don’t see why they’d drive to the shoreline for whole-belly clams when a plate at Augie & Ray’s does the job closer to home. A relish bar lets customers dress their own food, mustard and onions and sauerkraut all within reach at the counter.
The building itself has held onto its drive-in identity even though cars don’t actually pull up to order anymore. Seating runs along the interior walls, counter-style, the kind of setup where the ratio of staff to customers can feel close to even during a slow stretch and the milkshakes still come out of an old-school machine that takes its time. The walls carry black-and-white photographs from the stand’s history, and the menu board has kept its plastic-letter, mid-century look rather than switching to anything more modern.
East Hartford’s industrial backbone shaped the stand’s customer base for decades — Pratt & Whitney sits nearby, and generations of its workers have treated Augie & Ray’s as a lunchtime fixture. That base has widened over time to include people who specifically seek the place out, driving in from other towns because they grew up nearby or heard about the chili dogs from someone who did. The Hutt family has weathered the area’s industrial ups and downs, ownership transitions within the family, and the broader decline of small drive-in stands across the region, while keeping the format essentially intact: quick service, a short walk-up counter, and a small footprint that hasn’t needed to grow to stay relevant.
Closed on Sundays and shutting its doors by mid-afternoon the rest of the week, Augie & Ray’s operates on a schedule built around breakfast and lunch rather than dinner, true to its roots as a stop for working people on a clock rather than a destination for an evening out.
📍 314 Main Street, East Hartford, CT
🕐 Mon–Sat 5:45 am–3 pm; closed Sun
🔗 augieandrays.com