OLD LYME INN A Classic Country Village Inn On Historic Lyme Street Home of the famous Florence Griswold Museum

At Home with Keith and Candy Green
Reproduced with permission of the the New London Day

For Candy and Keith Green, entertaining has always been a numbers game.

"It would be 10 people for dinner, or 20 people for dinner", says Keith. "But on a weekend night, it would never be no one for dinner." 

Of course more recently, the numbers have gone up exponentially, with the couple's purchase of the Old Lyme Inn in May 2001, which is not much more than a rooster's stroll from their imposing home on historic Lyme Street.
Now the couple is greeting guests daily by the dozens, for lunch and dinner sittings at the inn, which they have been reshaping and polishing and marketing over the last year as an expression of their own spirit of entertaining.

At home, that means more light meals on the run, fewer dinner parties, and, for Candy, less time in the big custom kitchen. When they bought Rooster Hall as a weekend and summer house 15 years ago, Keith designed the kitchen especially for his wife.

"She is a spectacular chef," he said. "I designed it literally to be a theater for Candy, with her up behind the proscenium."

The kitchen is a big space, with a stainless stove, glass-door refrigerator, center work island, country-style table and chairs and a decorating theme which, as in the rest of the house, features roosters, a collection preoccupation for the couple since they started dating.

One teen-age daughter of a guest actually began a rooster count "starting with the tiles, plates, chair covers, pitchers and statues in the kitchen" but gave up at 2,000.

The Greens had met Valenti when he introduced himself after enjoying a meal at the inn. The invitation for dinner at home was impromptu, an inspiration for the night of the Oscars on a weekend Valenti was a guest at the inn.

"First she asked him, then she realized what she had done," said Keith. "You didn't want to sleep with Candy that Saturday night, she was so worried about what she was going to do."

The cozy lamb dinner around the kitchen table continued in front of the television and the Oscars, and Valenti told the Greens he "ate past the point of full." He also admitted that most people are too intimidated to ever ask him for dinner.

For a recent breakfast, the Greens served one of their favorite meals for overnight guests: Candy Green's Crème Brûlée French Toast, stale Portuguese sweet bread baked with cream, eggs, vanilla, eggs and sugar. It was served with fresh berries and crisp bacon and steaming mugs of coffee.

More often, they catch just a cup of coffee on their way to the inn in the morning. Meals there are often taken at the end of long days, after all the guests have been served.

It's a big change of life for a couple who, until 15 years ago, were busy with their professional lives in the city, living in Greenwich Village.

"When we moved to Connecticut, they confiscated all our black clothes at the border and issued us khakis," said Keith. " But this is the center of our universe now. It's like someone changed the channels in our brains."

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Old Lyme Inn
85 Lyme Street - Old Lyme, Connecticut (CT) 06371
Phone (860) 434-2600  -  or  -  Toll free (800) 434-5352
Email: innkeeper@oldlymeinn.com - Website:  A New England Inn in Old Lyme Connecticut