Let’s get this out of the way: Gold Restaurant has dollar oysters. As the price of briny bivalves has gone up, the once-common deal has practically disappeared, replaced by “Two-Buck Shuck” and other monikers that reflect rising rates. From 4:30 ’til 6 p.m. every day that Gold is open — currently Tuesday through Saturday — the new restaurant in Burlington’s Old North End is the place to slurp.
But cheap oysters aren’t the only reason to head to Charles Spock’s cozy, Italian-inspired spot, which took over the former Little Morocco Café space on North Winooski Avenue in July. Handmade pastas, small plates with ingredients sourced from staff gardens, and well-made (and -priced) drinks position it as the place for an easy neighborhood night out.
Spock (who uses they/them pronouns) named their first solo restaurant for Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” a poem that appears on each night’s menu. The chef captures Frost’s fleeting feeling — “Her early leaf’s a flower; / But only so an hour” — with a menu that changes weekly based on available ingredients. Regular specials include a $12 pasta night menu on Tuesdays. The idea, Spock said, is for diners “to get a little bit of something new each time they come in.”
I dined at Gold on a night that felt particularly fleeting: one of late September’s stunning sunny days, when it still feels like summer, yet darkness has fallen by the time you leave the restaurant after an early reservation. The menu captured the mood, with a bright bounty of tomatoes and peaches alongside the looming squashes and braises of fall.
My husband and I arrived at 5 p.m. and were greeted by Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” filling the restaurant, just loud enough that I was tempted to sing along. I knew Spock, 42, had renovated and added an eight-seat bar to what was previously a dark and underwhelming space. But I hadn’t expected Gold to actually sparkle.
Gold accents and light wood surfaces reflected the sun, and the vibe matched. Our server, front-of-house manager Steph Volkari, seemed to embody the ease that permeated the small, 30-seat space.
Volkari, who previously worked with Spock at Winooski’s Four Quarters Brewing, is one of a small but mighty team the chef has assembled, including sous chef Alzona Watson and lead bartender Charlie Rooks.
I found Gold’s late-September menu to be widely appealing, smartly seasoned and surprisingly affordable.
Looking over Rooks’ cocktail menu, I remembered Spock mentioning a Pimm’s cup when we first talked about the plans for Gold in early July. The classic British garden-party drink is a favorite of mine, featuring the fruit-and-spice-filled Pimm’s No. 1 gin-based liqueur. Gold’s version ($13) came garnished with an entire fruit salad, just as I’d hoped, and a gold-flecked compostable straw. That summery drink is at the end of its season, Spock said, but the team is working on a cold-weather version.
Our other drink of choice was the slightly less classic Black and Gold Negroni ($13), in which Rooks somehow merged a bitter Negroni with an espresso martini. I was also tempted by the list of natural wines, many available by the glass for less than $12; and the thoughtful selection of nonalcoholic drinks, especially a refreshing watermelon shrub spritz ($8).
It’s hard to know what to expect from a restaurant that changes all the time. That uncertainty can slide into anxiety for picky diners — not everything can be a hit, right? But I found Gold’s late-September menu to be widely appealing, smartly seasoned and surprisingly reasonably priced for the times, from the $13 cocktails to the entrée-size plates, all less than $25.
“We’re trying to give people something affordable and not necessarily over the top,” Spock said. “Something you’d want to do on a weekly or biweekly basis.”
I’ll go back on a Wednesday or Thursday, when the small plates are half price before 5:30 and after 8:30. Or on a Tuesday for pasta night, when a special pasta menu offers three or four extra options for $12 apiece and glasses of wine are $8. The excellent gluten-free pasta from Lyndonville’s Trenchers Farmhouse is always on hand, Spock said.
We were early enough on a Saturday for the $1 oysters. Since we had a lot of eating ahead of us, we started with just half a dozen Edgewaters, delivered fresh from Wood Mountain Fish and simply presented with lime-ginger mignonette.
Spock attributed the rising price of oysters to the effects of climate change — more immediately, of hurricanes halting their harvest. Many restaurateurs “are realizing that they’re getting them [from distributors] for a dollar, and they don’t want to resell them for a dollar,” they said.
Gold sells them at cost for that sweet hour and a half each day; the chef’s reasoning is that folks coming in for a dozen oysters are likely to pair them with a glass of wine or a cocktail. And the deal gets customers in the door early, before the restaurant would otherwise fill up.
Our next move was to share two small plates: Maplebrook Farm burrata with greens and peaches ($15) and focaccia erbazzone ($13). The burrata arrived slightly hidden by its produce accompaniments and a lovely handful of Thai basil, with cherry balsamic drizzle and an ideal amount of pink peppercorns and flaky salt on top. I didn’t need the focaccia crostini that came with it, as I was too busy swiping various bites around the plate to catch every morsel of seasoning and all the possible flavor combinations.
Some form of focaccia is usually on the menu, Spock said, because it’s something they love to make. Erbazzone is a traditional northern Italian wild-greens pie with a flaky crust. Gold’s version put the focaccia to good use as a crust replacement, thinly sliced and filled with a rich mixture of local cheese, braised spinach and chard from staff members’ gardens, mushrooms, and roasted garlic that tasted like the cheesy part of lasagna. The top piece of focaccia posed a slight structural challenge (I almost sent it flying on my first attempt to cut through it, and the filling oozed everywhere), but the combination was otherwise effective.
Spock has cooked a variety of cuisines over the past few years, from the original Mexican menu at the Big Spruce and pub fare at Hatchet in Richmond — where they were a co-owner — to smash burgers at Four Quarters. The lighter Italian fare at Gold calls back to a previous phase of their career at Stowe’s Cork restaurant and natural wine shop. That’s what Spock likes cooking best, they said, especially the handmade pasta.
The pasta dish I tried on Saturday night was a vegetarian ravioli, filled with butternut squash and ricotta tossed in sage butter ($21). It was delightfully thin and had the right chew, but what I appreciated most was the dish’s cross-seasonal accoutrements, combining the fall squash flavors with bright cherry tomatoes, earthy mushrooms and sweet caramelized onions.
We also ordered the carne di manzo ($25), a slow-braised, grass-fed hanger steak atop crispy gnocchi with maple-roasted spaghetti squash. It’s a real meat-and-potatoes dish (Spock has been quick to note on pasta night menus that gnocchi isn’t technically pasta but a potato dumpling), but it had layer on layer of texture, from fork-tender beef to slightly chewy gnocchi to crispy onions on top. A sauce the kitchen team calls “Italian salsa verde,” with added capers and olives and lemons instead of limes, gave the whole thing a briny pop.
“We’re not purists,” Spock said of the team’s Italian-ish approach. Pasta will be Gold’s backbone, they said, “but we’re gonna find out how we can make our own style of food.”
Nothing gold can stay, as the menu shifts more fully into fall with apples, cranberries and pumpkins replacing tomatoes, corn and peaches. But I hope Gold becomes a neighborhood staple, for the oysters and much more.
The original print version of this article was headlined “All That Glitters | Gold Restaurant brings an Italian-inspired sparkle to Burlington’s Old North End”
This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2024.
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