The project is the brainchild of chef-owner Andrew LeStourgeon, formerly of Hen of the Wood. He’s working with pastry chef Amanda Wildermuth, drink experts Nick Roy and Jeff Baumann, and plenty of other local talent.
The eatery will offer “very simple stuff done at an elevated level,” says LeStourgeon. In the morning, that means hash browns, biscuits and gravy, and even a homemade equivalent to Golden Grahams. Later in the day, diners can order patty melts, wedge salads, corn dogs, and a barbecued smoked-pork-belly sandwich on brioche. Chef and butcher Frank Pace has been helping the crew dial in the ’cue.
The décor, LeStourgeon says, is eclectic and handcrafted. Furniture comes from Vermont Farm Table. Artist Duncan Johnson has contributed 40 of his works, and Champlain Leather made the upholstery and parts of the staff uniforms. Complementing their works are marble bars, vintage chandeliers and a painstaking recreation of the tin ceiling that adorned in the space in the 1930s and ’40s.
That attention to detail continued in the development of the cocktail menu. Working from multiple classic recipes for each drink — 15 for the Manhattan alone — the team sipped, evaluated and re-envisioned until they’d created a perfect permutation. “We’ve tested the cocktails for six months now,” says LeStourgeon. “We made them over and over and over.”
Opening a restaurant can be incredibly stressful, but that part, at least, sounds like fun.
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Chubby Muffin does it right because they try to make their classic americana food accessible to the masses.
This does it wrong because it overtly tries to make it inaccessible.
@katherine have you been? Not sure where the hate is coming from? It sounds fantastic to me.
Will it be another overpriced, hipster eatery? We’ll see…the description of the interior seems to indicate an emphasis on vernacular high priced items. Maybe the menu will follow suit. I hope it is affordable for most…
This sounds like a great team! I’d be there in a heart beat if I lived closer. Maybe those of you who do live close by can actually give it a try AND THEN proceed to give your opinions…🖕🏼
Yum
This was, hands down, the WORST restaurant experience I have ever had in Burlington.
I really wanted to like this restaurant. When you walk in, this very modern, clean establishment looks fantastic. The service was warm and friendly, but every single aspect of the food and drink we received fell a mile short of any expectations.
The biscuits and gravy were awful, a soup bowl of floury gravy with two very small, hockey puck biscuits. It was so peppery it was inedible and not worth the $10 price tag.
The quiche was actually disgusting. The size of a small coffee cup and tasting like it was an egg cooked with a cup of sugar, I couldn’t eat more than a single, very small bite. It was served with a salad 3x larger than the quiche itself that was WAY over dressed with lemon juice, to the point where it was not enjoyable to eat and tasted like a low quality sour candy. Most certainly not worth $9.
The $4 hash brown was barely a 2 inch cube, and tasted like a chinese food chicken finger.
On top of it all the coffee was watery and disappointing, with the only espresso options were Nespresso disposable coffee cups instead of real espresso.
When we addressed the issues with the owner, over our plates of clearly uneaten food, we were told they “weren’t comfortable” giving us any refund for our $40 meal but were told to “send an email” when we wanted to come back to get something free, even after we insisted that we would never be coming back.