Chef Bolivar Hilario spent years working some of New York's most demanding Michelin-starred kitchens before cold-calling his way into one of Connecticut's most mysterious restaurants. Twenty-five years after it opened, RSVP's secret is out.
For 25 years, getting a seat at RSVP in West Cornwall meant knowing someone, or knowing to call back and not let getting ghosted by the owner deter you. The French bistro, run out of a small space on Railroad Street by chef Guy Birster and his partner Charles Cirona, took no credit cards, provided no menu, and offered exactly one seating a night. It built a cult following of regulars, many of them serious wine collectors from the surrounding towns, and a reputation as one of Connecticut's best-kept secrets.
This fall, RSVP has a new chef at the helm for the first time. Bolivar Hilario, a 2026 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Northeast and the former executive chef at Community Table in New Preston, took over the lease and reopened the restaurant on September 1, keeping its name, its BYOB model, set menu style, while rebuilding almost everything else around it.
Hilario arrives with an impressive resume. He grew up cooking in Florida then moved to Litchfield where he built his skills before working his way through a run of serious New York kitchens: Chumley's, the Michelin-starred Musket Room under chef Matt Lambert; the two-Michelin-starred Nordic restaurant Aska; and Shoji, a high-end omakase counter that earned three stars from the New York Times' Pete Wells and was reportedly on track for more accolades when the pandemic hit.
He has no culinary degree, letting his experience speak for itself. He credits chef Nick Marchenko, a Gramercy Tavern alum he worked under at South End in New Canaan, with talking him out of cooking school altogether. "He said, 'Stick with me, and I'll teach you all you need to know,'" Hilario recalls, "'unless you just want to go give your money away and have a plaque on your wall.'"
He returned to Connecticut during Covid, eventually landing at Community Table, where he became executive chef in 2023 and led the kitchen to wins for Best Restaurant in Litchfield County and overall Connecticut Restaurant of the Year from the Connecticut Restaurant & Hospitality Association.
At RSVP, that background shows up as a menu that travels the world. "I don't think I have a cuisine I could say, 'Oh, I'm this type,'" Hilario says. "There's no rules. You're not putting yourself in a box." A recent tasting ran from a Japanese chawanmushi custard through a tart shell of miso-cured trout belly and pickled local pears, into a crudo of black bass or fluke dressed with aguachile, and sourdough made from a 12-year-old mother dough named Lorraine. There's also been a white-fleshed fish, flounder, tautog, or grouper depending on the week, in a butter sauce alongside whatever vegetable is best right now. He's sourcing heavily from nearby farms, including Ridgway Farm in West Cornwall and Steadfast Farm in Bethlehem for quail as the kitchen moves into game season. The portions run smaller and lighter than the version of RSVP longtime regulars remember. "I didn't want a menu where everybody gets really full and isn't able to finish their wine, or eat dessert," Hilario says.
Birster, a chef trained in France, and Cirona, who grew up in Chicago, met at a restaurant in Pasadena in the late 1980s and moved to Litchfield County in 1993, first opening a full-service restaurant called Brookside Bistro before narrowing their concept into RSVP in 2001. The format stayed fixed for a quarter century: a five- or six-course prix fixe built around whatever Birster wanted to cook, served Friday and Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 6pm to a dining room that functioned, by design, like a gathering at a friend's house. "They treated it like a dinner party," Hilario says. "People would come to eat, bring their own wine, and share it with each other." Reservations went through Cirona directly, and getting one wasn't guaranteed. "It was very, very hard to get in," Hilario says. "I think they had a circle. They already knew what these people liked. They didn't care if new people were going to like it or hate it."
Hilario has kept the structural DNA Cirona and Birster built: BYOB with no corkage fee, cash and check preferred (though he will use Venmo in a pinch, but don't tell anybody), and a tasting menu built around what's in season. He's changed nearly everything else. There are now two seatings a night instead of one, 5 to 7pm and 7:30 to 9:30pm, and Tuesdays bring a shorter, half-menu offering at half the price, open to walk-ins and aimed squarely at locals who might balk at the regular $180-a-person tab. "My hope is to attract more of the local community," he says.
A sommelier now reaches out to guests ahead of their reservation to suggest wines that will actually pair with that week's menu, rather than assuming French reds are always the go-to. The decor has been modernized, a deliberate break from the room Hilario remembers from his first visit years ago, back when he was a young chef at Ore Hill & Swyft nearby and a last-minute cancellation freed up a table. He remembers the duck course, a heavy, French-leaning menu built to pair with red wine, and the decor. "It was dated—reminded me of Christmas," he says with a sympathetic chuckle, "red, gold, green trim." The place was in desperate need of an update, he thought at the time, but for the way he wanted to cook, the model itself, small, intimate, built around a single chef's instincts, was alluring.
That instinct eventually became an actual opportunity. At an RSVP dinner in fall 2025, Hilario overheard wine-world acquaintances talking about Birster and Cirona, both in their eighties, looking to sell. He got Cirona's number, which turned out to be the same number used for reservations, and left a voicemail introducing himself and asking to talk. Weeks passed before Cirona called back. When they finally met, Hilario learned there was already a serious buyer in the picture, one Cirona described as still "on the fence." Hilario pressed his case anyway. "I was like, can I do this?" Hilario says of the moment it became real. "The first thing is fear. I've always worked for people." The deal came together, and Hilario signed a lease with the owners.
RSVP may be less of a secret than it used to be but it’s still this fall’s most exciting reservation… Now that you can actually get one.
RSVP, 7 Railroad Street, West Cornwall, CT 06796
Wednesday–Saturday, two seatings nightly, 5pm and 7:30pm; Tuesday industry/local night with a shorter menu
BYOB, no corkage fee; cash and check preferred. Reservations at rsvpdining.com or (860) 672-7787.
