Oak and Iron, Randolph, Vermont

This is a welcome new addition to the dining scene in Randolph. It is housed in a restaurant space I have previously eaten in, and they have done a nice job with it since. There is a well stocked bar with interesting looking cocktails that we did not partake in, and the menu is medium sized, varied, and overall well prepared. I did not care for the iteration of meatloaf I got (I was trying it to see if I got any ideas to improve on my own version and that did not happen--and not because mine is unbeatable) and my husband liked his fish, but we both thought the risotto could use some spice and some work on the texture. The side vegetables for both our meals were very good--well prepared and well flavored. We shared a Caesar salad that was excellent, with white anchovies, a bright and balanced lemon flavor and good parmesan. Randolph overall seems to be on the upswing compared to recent years. The corner restaurant space on Main Street is still empty--which is too bad because it has lots of windows and light and would be an excellent breakfast and lunch place to take advantage of that--but this is a good devlopment, and the fact that there is another new restaurant of note that we will try next year should it survive the winter is good news.

Royal Orchid, Montpelier, Vermont

We return to Vermont with great regularity. We fly into Burlington airport in the afternoon after the traditional lunch hour has ended and have a 1.5 hour drive to central Vermont where we stay. We have searched for a place to eat that we would regularly return to, and while there have been some good candidates, there has not been a hands down winner. We enjoy a lobster roll, but beyond that we have looked for a place that fits our schedule and that serves a meal we would look forward to returning for. This restaurant in Montperlier might be just the thing. It does not serve food continuously, but it does open early, at 4PM, which works with our schedule. The food is excellent--we had two dishes with shrimp, which was of good quality and cooked well. We were there ahead of the traditional dining hour, and there were several tables occupied in the time we were there. It has a broad menu, and we will definitely return. Added bonus was that the food came quickly and we were back on the road in no time. Highly recommended.

Walaiwan's Kitchen, Montpelier, Vermont

Wow, wow, wow! This place has delicious food and at a spectacular price. It lacks indoor space, which in Vermont is a bit of an issue much of the year, but the set up is great. They have a window onto the street, a couple of tables on the sidewalk and a couple inside. They no longer serve anything but main dishes, and while the four tables filled up while we were there eating and occupying one of them, they are primarily a grab and go place.

Here is the set up--they have three things on the menu, and they change each week--which is great if you want to be a frequent flyer rather than someone who has the same dish each time--I would definitely have had both dishes we ordered on a return trip, but would also welcome three other choices, the food was that good). It is not vegetarian friendly--there was a pork, a chicken, and a beef dish when we were there, and all of them had a good level of spice, and very complicated curry flavors with layers of ginger, onion, lemongrass, and basil. It was so yummy and well worth just getting off the highway and making a pit stop to pick up food if you are not actually headed for Montpelier but rather passing through. They do have a call ahead option for ordering.

Bar Hill, Montpelier, Vermont

Bar Hill makes award winning gin, and they have the unique starting ingredient of honey as the source of fermented sugar. They started off in the Northeast Kingdom, a rural part of the state, even by Vermont standards, but with success they expanded their operation and are now located in a facility of thier own making on Gin Lane on the outskirts of town in Montpelier. There is a restaurant, craft cocktail bar, and most appealing to us, a tasting room. We very much enjoyed tasting the variety of gin and vodka products they make, and because we were flying and hoping not to check bags, they have 100cc bottles available to take home in a carry on bag. The facility is as lovely as what they make and I would recommend adding this as a stop if you are in central Vermont or driving through. It is easy to get to off I-89 and well worth it. Montpelier has a lot to offer besides Bar Hill, and is also recommended. The independent bookstore, Bear Pond Books, was featured in a recent New York Times article on independent book stores and the resident animals they have--in addition to books, there is a store cat as well.

Creek House Diner, Bethel, Vermont

I have been going to Vermont for over 40 years, and while I am not big on breakfast, somehow, from the very beginning, I have gone out for a traditional breakfast almost every trip there. One reason is that it is one of the few places you can go and reliably count on getting real maple syrup with your pancakes--the pancakes might not be of the quality that you would make at home, they might have that classic back flavor that comes from a mix, but smothered in real butter and maple syrup that came from a tree and it is delicious.

We have had several "go to" places over the years, most of them in Randolph or Bethel, occasionally we have had to resort to going to further flung towns, but we usually stick close to Randolph Center, where our house is. The last remaining option burned to the ground a couple of years ago, and while we have found a wonderful bakery in teh Red Hen in Middlesex, we did not have what this is--a diner with the classic breakfast. I have to say, this is the best one yet. The food is good, the place has a great vibe, there is an extensive outside seating option should you not be there in the fall, and by mid-day they are have soft serve ice cream if breakfast is not your thing.

Maple Syrup: Another Roadside Attraction

We love Vermont maple syrup. Especially the amber variety--which used to be called Grade B--it is darker and more full flavored than the more widely available golden syrup. The lighter variety is the more widely valued, but we prefer the amber syrup. The lighter syrup is collected when it is colder. Most of the sugar in sap is sucrose. When sap is tapped, naturally occuring yeast and bacteria break sucrose down into the smaller molecules fructose and glucose. The warmer the temperature, or the longer sap waits to get collected, the more sucrose gets converted. Fructose and glucose go through a Maillard reaction, or browning, when exposed to heat. Sucrose doesn't. The more fructose and glucose in the sap and the longer the sap boils, the darker the syrup.

Vermont makes more than half the country’s maple syrup, more than any other state. In 2024, Vermont’s sugar makers produced a record of 3.1 million gallons. All that maple is processed in more than 3,000 sugarhouses statewide, from smaller family-run operations to industrial syrup producers. We prefer to buy from a small producer, which is someone who has a sign on the street that they sell syrup. You knock on the door, tell them what you are looking for, they'll name a price and you pay in cash. It is so much funner than going to the super market, and the syrup is delicious.

Vermont: It Never Gets Old

Let's face it--Vermont is the best New England state--I feel somewhat chagrined to admist it, being of Maine roots and having recently driven from the bottom of the state to the top, avoiding the coast (which is both what Maine is known for and the attraction for the non-Mainiac to the state and not my thing, so take this with a grain of salt), Vermont has it beat. I was not a big fan until I met my future spouse and he took me there over four decades ago and I fell immediately and deeply in love with it. First there are the mountains, which are spectacular and everywhere. They interfere with it being much good for row crops, but the fields are ever green and so dairy cattle abound. They make for quaint scenery and also for excellent cheese. Artisanal cheese in Vermont has been a growth industry over the years I have been visiting. It started with excellent cheddar, which is always a winner with me, but now it is one of the best places to get a wide variety of high quality cheese that is locally made. Then there are the multitude of small towns that have good restaurants, a few breweries, a multitude of shops where people make things, and all in all, it is practically perfect. I hope to spend more extended time in state when I retire and have more time on my hands to fill with beauty.

Gallus Handcrafted Pasta, Waterbury, Vermont

What a treat! This new restaurant is in the location of a previous favorite--the Waterbury Hen of the Woods restaurant moved into a very modern building and left this charming (but small) site behind. I love this old mill, aside a stream (of course) with a dry staacked black slate foundation, and now it has new life with a handmade pasta restaurant run by the same chef! The menu is a pared down one, with about bread, about 5 appetizers, 6 pasta dishes, 2 mains, and one dessert. The drinks menu is similarly slimmed down, but wow, everything packs a punch. From our recent visit--and we will be returning--the favorites included: first, the eggplant parmesan, which was a lovely blend of fired eggplan, parmesan, and a bright tomato sauce--I could have had another order and still wanted more. The second for me was the meatballs in the spaghetti and meatballs. They were light as a feather and full of flavor, with the spaghetti being a great foil for them. All the food was delicious, and the few things our table did not try that night were ordered by fellow diners and looked equally tasty to what we ordered. And the swag they have is top notch to boot.

Esmeralda, Andover, Vermont

We had a wonderful pop up sort of dinner at Esmeralda in Andover, Vermont. It is an experimental restaurant from Maria Rondeau and JuanMa Calderón, who run Boston’s beloved restaurant, Celeste--many of the 20 or so guests that we ate with the night we were there came because they had such good memories and food at the mother ship. It is located in a special setting, on a hillside surrounded by nature, at Rondeau and Calderón’s country residence. The idea is that this is a place where guests come together for shared culinary experiences that merge local and Latin American flavors, sounds, and culture. Each month during the Summer and Fall, Esmeralda hosts a weeklong series of events with menus featuring rustic takes on Peruvian classics as well as an all-day feast centered around the pachamanca, the ancient method of cooking in the ground. It is more theater than cooking, and the night we were there the underground oven was filled with pork, alpaca, lamb, chicken, butternut squash, potatoes, yams, pineapple, and the Peruvian version of tamales, only sweeter. The meets and vegetables were delicious, but the sauces that accompanied them were even better. Lunches and dinners are served outdoors on the lawn and patio, as weather permits, or inside the dining room. Guests are encouraged to mingle over pisco sours while jazz plays from the speakers, and take in the stars around the fire pit after the meal. Our evening at Esmeralda was an experience beyond the meal itself — it was a dinner party with guests we would have been unlikely to meet any otehr way.

Chester, Vermont

This is yet another very quaint town in Vermont with a population of 3,144, centrally located, and in close proximity to several ski areas, the Hall Art Foundation, and has a Main Street studded with craft shops and galleries. The Stone Village Historic District and its sweet main street and green claim spots on National Register of Historical Places. My spouse and I were going to a pop up afternoon meal nearby and so spent a few hours enjoying ourselves here and would recommend it. We were there on a perfect late summer day and sat on benches next to the Hearse House (which was previously known as Hearse Shed, which is a bit more accurate when it comes to size, but it does has a very clean public bathroom), situated near the cemetary. The town website does have a downloadable map of the historic buildings, and the one pictured here was for sale when we were there--a seven bedroom, 8 bathrooms house which needs updating but has good bones and could be a lot of fun.

Lois Dodd Exhibit, Hall Art Foundation, Vermont

The exhibbit of Lois Dodd's work juxtaposed that of Leon Golub, and seemed an inspired choice to me for the Hall Art Foundation to make. I loved everything about this. She is known for creating intimate and deceptively simple, yet acutely observational paintings, and this exhibit brought together approximately 50 works that span Dodd’s career from the late 1950s to paintings completed last year.

For decades, Dodd has painted views of her immediate, everyday surroundings at the places where she lives and works — the gardens and woods at her summer home in rural Mid-Coast Maine, landscapes around her weekend home in New Jersey near the Delaware Water Gap, and views from the window of her New York City loft on the Lower East Side. Preferring to work quickly, Dodd’s paintings are usually completed in one sitting, are based on direct observations of her surroundings, and when possible, en plein air. They are pleasing to look at and poeaceful in the way that views from your walks outside or from a cosy room can be. FFrom the exhibit: "Dodd’s everyday subjects frequently include architectural details of her home, tumbling down clapboard barns, clotheslines, trees and woods, detailed closeups of plants and flowers, nocturnal moonlight skies and precise views framed by windows. Dodd returns to familiar subjects repeatedly at different times of the year and works with urgency to capture a specific time of day. Carefully composed and distilled to their essential elements, her paintings possess an underlying geometry, and become studies of color, light, shadow, and form."

Leon Golub Exhibit, Hall Art Foundation, Vermont

I love the Hall Art DFoundation space, but I also like the way they do a comprehensive presentation of an artist's work. Leon Golub was married to a cousin of my mother-in-law's and if I had to sum it up, he was a painter of men, and as his career advanced, a painter of violent men in the act of fighting or more commonly beating up or subjugating other men. He did not focus on the good in men. This exhibit spanned his career from 1947-2003, and some of his early works, this one os Abe Lincoln included, were much lighter in tone but did not stray from a life long theme of depicting powerrful men. He also had a series of portraits of famous dictators, many known for their ruthlessness. Here is what the exhibit had to say about him: "Leon Golub believed that art must have an observable connection to real world events to have relevance for the viewer. Since the 1940’s, he created paintings that are psychological, emotive and deliberately up front – as topical today as when they were first made. Working in a distinctive figural style influenced by classical and primitive art, photography, print and broadcast media, Golub depicts scenes of private and public conflict to investigate the frequent and complicated ways in which power is abused. His works challenge the stereotypical polarities of victim and aggressor, while balancing an investigation of modern-day political problems with timeless and universal human issues."

Hall Art Foundation, Vermont

This is an amazing museum, and one not to be missed. In the fall of 2012, the Hall Art Foundation in Reading, Vermont opened its doors to the public – welcoming visitors to view its program of rotating, temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. Exhibitions are held seasonally, from May through November. The setting, just down the road a piece from the much more touristy town of Woodstock, Vermont, is rural and beautiful.

Converted from a former dairy farm, the campus of converted galleries consists of a 19th-century stone farmhouse, three barns, as well as a reception center and cafe. The property’s 5 historic buildings make up approximately 6,000 sq. feet of museum-quality exhibition space. The farmhouse and barns sit next to a waterfall on a tributary of the Black River, and are surrounded by approximately 400 acres of pastures, hayfields and extensive woodland. Outdoor sculptures by world-renowned artists are installed throughout the grounds.

The sculptures weave through the remains of an apple orchard, and the gallery spaces are varied and beautifully done. This is a must see in central Vermont.

The Gryphon, Burlington, Vermont

The number of times that we are in Burlington is enough that you would think that we would have all sorts of favorites, but the truth is that the places that we have eaten that we would go back to is relatively small, and when we found ourselves there on a Sunday morning recently we were at a bit of a loss as to where to eat. The criteria are that it had to be open, and the menu would ideally veer into some more lunch-like options as I am not much of a breakfast person (even in Vermont, where they are at least very likely to have real maple syrup for things that would be good with). This restaurnat was perfect. it was kind of funky inside, crowded but able to seat us right away, and a nice array of non-breakfast items. Myspouse had an eggs benedict variation, whereas I was able to have a seafood chowder and shrimp and grits. Everything was well prepared, well seasoned, and the seafood was fresh, delicious, and something that is harder to come by in our land locked upper Midestern home state.

Saap, Randolpjh, Vermont

There are a lot of opportunities in Vermont to have excellent food, but often we have to venture further afield from our central Vermont house in order to find them. Not so with Saap, which is located in a Victorian house on a hill a few blocks from Main St. They have gotten a bit of recognition this year. The chef/co-owner Nisachon "Rung" Morgan of Saap restaurant in Randolph has been named Best Chef: Northeast by the James Beard Foundation in 2022.

The menu is extensive, with many northern Thailand dishes that I do not know or recognize and then some that I do. We opted for four small plates and we surprised ourselves and finished them all off. The flavors were complicated and interesting like the very best of Thai food, and while we opted for a 2-3 spice level, we certainly could have gone hotter and not been slurping a dairy product to cool down our tongues. You never know what the scale is geared to, and so we played it overly safe. This will definitely be on our returned to dining experiences. Only word to the wise is if the on line reservation says they are booked, try calling the restaurant or stop in, because it is not alwys correct.

Junction, Essex Junction, VT

I would say that this restaurant thought more of itself than I did, and while the food was good, it was not knock your socks off good, and it was expensive. It is nestled in a complex that used to house the New England Culinary Institute, and now houses a hotel that offers cooking classes on site. The setting is beautiful, nestled in a town that abuts Burlington, and on a substantial grounds. There was a broad selection of seafood on offer, which is nive, because while Vermont does not touch the ocean (it's neighbor to the east, New Hampshire, barely has a coast), it is not very far from one and that was a real plus. If the food was more affordable, I would consider going back, but even then, there are other options.

Oakes and Evelyn, Montpelier, VT

On my recent trip to Vermont we explored some new restaurants in central Vermont. We were spurred on by a couple of things. One was that a favorite place had no reservations and another was closed for the week. Less wonderful is that some places were shuttered permanently. It is true that no one person can keep a place open, and the intermittent visitor, such as myself, is even less helpful, but it is yet another reminder of what the pandemic has cost all of us beyond the loss of life.

The New England Culinary Institute has also shuttered it's doors in Montpelier, but two of it's graduates opened this restaurant and that is a good thing. There is a lot of seafood on the menu, and if you eat octopus, the small plate of that is highly recommended. The other real highlight was the gnocchi. Do not make the mistake we did of getting the small order. These light, pillowy version of a classic were someof the best I have had, and inspired us to try again to make them at home. So so good.

Michael's On The Hill, Waterbury, VT

This past trip to Vermont was all about going where we had not gone before, and this place is no exception. It's proximity to one of our absolute favorite places means that we will be unlikely to go back if we are on top of it and get a reservation at our preferred place, but this is a nice place, in a beautiful setting.

There were two dishes that we had that I thought were exceptionally good, and both of them are things that I would not sttempt at home if I could avoid it. The first was a calamari salad. The calamari were thin, tender, fried perfectly and the frissee salad was a nice texture and bitterness to foil the sweet squid. The other was a small lobster poached in an herb butter sauce. It was simple, but well prepared and easy to pick the meat out of the shell. A nice fancy dinner location.

Shanty On The Shore, Burlington, Vermont

There are a handful of things that I seek to eat everyday on a vacation. Tiny clams when on the Mediterranean is one. Another is the best lobster roll and very good clam chowder. I could have these two items every day when I am traveling in New England. In preparation for my trip to Vermont last week I looked into a good lobster roll in Burlington. We were flying in there, landing in the afternoon, so we needed a place that served lunch beyond 2 PM. This place fit the bill. Vermont has been very good about vaccinations and so it wasn't until just now that COVID numbers are rising, so masking was low, but the restaurant has a deck that overlooks Lake Champlain (with an admittedly industrial looking area between the shore and the restaurant. The lobster roll was 100% claw meat, light on the mayo and served on a traditional shaped bun that was brioche dough--so essentially the perfect lobster roll. The clam chowder was rich and flavorful, and I would go back and order this duo again.

Vermont Living

I spent an almost perfect long weekend in Vermont recently.  First there was the weather.  The summer can be very unforgiving in a damp house without any climate control what-so-ever.  The heat and the humidity can combine to make you feel like a pioneer.  The fact that most Vermonters have not had to install air conditioning until the last decade makes it pretty common that you will be warm in July, unduly so.  Climate change is upon us, and Vermont is no exception. 
Late summer going into fall is another story, with cooler and more comfortable temperatures that invite a stroll.  We had that kind of luck, which we combined with good food, an auction with a few good finds (and more if we had been closer to home, and in a moving van), and a sense of peacefulness that I get at times when I am there.  Just perfect, like the covered bridge near our house.