# The Griswold Inn: Two and a Half Centuries on the Connecticut River
Essex sits where the Connecticut River widens toward Long Island Sound, a village of white clapboard houses and a harbor full of sailboats. At its center, on Main Street, stands a building that has been serving food and drink since 1776 — the same year the Continental Congress declared independence from England.
The Griswold Inn, known locally as “the Gris,” opened its doors during the Revolutionary War, when Uriah Hayden built warships for the Connecticut Colony just down the road and needed somewhere to put up the workers, suppliers, and officials who came through town. What started as lodging tied to a shipyard became something more permanent once the war ended and the steamboat era began. Essex turned into a regular stop for travelers moving between Hartford and New York, and the Gris turned into the place where they ate, drank, and slept along the way.
The inn has not had an uninterrupted run of prosperity. It weathered the temperance movement and Prohibition, when the building was raided and fined more than once for serving liquor anyway, supplied in part by rum runners who came up the river at night. It slowed nearly to a stop during the Depression, when shipbuilding collapsed and travel dried up. By the 1940s, a new kind of visitor — yachtsmen drawn to Essex as a weekend destination — gave the inn a second life, and by the 1960s the completion of nearby highways brought another wave of guests. The Paul family, who have owned and operated the Gris since 1995, are only the latest stewards of a building that has changed hands several times over two and a half centuries while staying open through nearly all of it.
Walking into the Gris today means choosing among several distinct rooms, each with its own character. The Library, the Gun Room, the Essex Room, and the Covered Bridge room make up the inn’s historic dining spaces, their walls lined with one of the country’s more significant private collections of maritime art — ship portraits, nautical prints, and ephemera collected over generations. The Tap Room, separate from the dining rooms, is where the inn’s reputation for liveliness comes from: there is live music most nights of the week, often leaning toward folk, jazz, or sea chanties that suit a building this old. A newer Wine Bar & Bistro offers a more contemporary, tapas-style alternative for guests who want something different from the historic rooms.
The kitchen, currently led by executive chef Shaheed Toppin, serves classic American food — aged beef, seafood, and seasonal dishes drawing on Connecticut River Valley farms and New England waters — built to satisfy both the casual diner stopping in from the harbor and the guest staying overnight in one of the inn’s rooms. The Sunday Hunt Brunch has become its own tradition, a draw for people well outside Essex who plan their weekend around it.
What distinguishes the Gris from other historic New England taverns is less any single dish than the accumulation of use. The building has hosted Revolutionary War veterans, rum runners, yachtsmen, film crews, and generations of Essex families marking birthdays and anniversaries in the same rooms. It has been used as a backdrop for film and television productions over the years, drawn in part by the very atmosphere that makes it a destination regardless of the cameras. In 2026, the inn marks its 250th anniversary — a milestone that lines up with the country’s own — and it continues to operate seven days a week, much as it always has, a fixture of Essex that predates nearly everything else still standing in town.
📍 36 Main Street, Essex, CT
🕐 Open daily for lunch and dinner, with Sunday Hunt Brunch; check website for current hours
🔗 griswoldinn.com