Best Chicken Parm in Hartford, CT

Chicken parm in Hartford, CT: our top picks

Hartford’s first Little Italy was downtown on Front Street, near the river. By 1910 Italians were 14 percent of the city, and more than 60 percent of them lived in that one neighborhood of brick tenements with shops below. Floods in the 1930s battered it, demolition began in 1958, and Constitution Plaza went up in its place. The community regrouped in the South End along Franklin Avenue, which still calls itself Little Italy and still has Mozzicato DePasquale’s bakery, though the avenue has changed: Adriatic, on Franklin, is a halal Italian and Balkan room where cevapi share the menu with the pasta.

The Carbone’s story runs the whole route. Brothers Charlie and Tony Carbone opened in 1938, turning a gas station near Bulkeley Stadium into a restaurant, and it became a Franklin Avenue fixture until it closed in March 2020. In September 2026 it reopened on Front Street, back in the part of downtown where Hartford’s first Italian neighborhood stood. (No relation to the Carbone in New York.) The family’s casual spinoff, Carbone’s Kitchen, is in Wintonbury Mall in Bloomfield, with wood-fired pizza, pastas and seasonal plates.

The suburbs hold the rest. DeNovellis, on the Silas Deane Highway in Rocky Hill, opened in 2006; Enzo DeNovellis had run Cousins Cafe in Hartford and Johnny’s, a pizza and grinder shop in East Hartford, before his sons encouraged him to open in Rocky Hill, and several dishes carry family names. Billy Grant opened Restaurant Bricco in West Hartford Center in 1996 and followed it in 2010 with Bricco Trattoria on Hebron Avenue in Glastonbury, a farmhouse-style room with brick walls and a fireplace.

1. Carbone's Kitchen (Bloomfield) — Parm Score 86. Chicken parm comes up in 2 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. It is on the menu, too. 4.5 on Google across 619 reviews.
2. Lenoci's Italian Kitchen (Wethersfield) — Parm Score 76. Chicken parm comes up in 2 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. 4.7 on Google across 245 reviews.
3. Elaine's (Wethersfield) — Parm Score 75. Chicken parm comes up in 1 of the recent Google reviews we sampled. It is on the menu, too. 4.4 on Google across 417 reviews.

We ranked 14 restaurants within 10 miles of Hartford, CT. 9 of them have the parm confirmed, by reviewers or on their own menu, and Parm Scores run from 52 to 86. Confirmed places rank first; the rest are well-reviewed Italian spots where the parm is not yet confirmed, and pizzerias and steakhouses need a mention to appear at all. How Parm Score works.

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