Even in a town experiencing a renaissance, which many say is the case in St. Johnsbury, beloved businesses close. In January, Cosmic Cup Café, which specialized in sweet treats and farm-to-table lunches, ended its four-year run on Railroad Street, one of the burg’s main drags. Nearby Kingdom Table, a locavore restaurant established in 2019, closed in February. Five months later, so did its decade-old downstairs sister, Kingdom Taproom.
But unlike in past eras, when certain Railroad Street storefronts stood vacant for years, both locations were quickly snapped up by young business owners looking to expand on their already successful ventures.
First, in early May, Darrell “DJ” and Katey McLaughlin, who own bustling Boule Bakery just down the block, took over the Kingdom Table space and opened Birches, a brunch and dinner restaurant emphasizing local ingredients and handmade pastas. They’re preparing to expand downstairs, into the space formerly occupied by the Taproom.
Then, in June, following a lucrative Kickstarter campaign that raised $30,000 toward startup costs, the Buttery opened in the former Cosmic spot. It’s run by Maggie Gray, owner of Haven — an upscale thrift store for home goods, located just around the corner — and her romantic partner, Gavin Wynkoop-Fischer. The sweet and petite eatery offers grocery items, natural wines, coffee drinks, and seasonal snacks and meals.
We headed to St. Johnsbury to see what the new businesses are serving up.
Butter Days Ahead
The Buttery, 379 Railroad St., Suite 102, St. Johnsbury, 424-1710, thebutteryvt.com
Walking into the Buttery for the first time raises some valid questions: Is it a store? A coffee shop? A restaurant? Even better: It’s all three.
On the left, separate from the rest of the business per Division of Liquor Control regulation, are shelves of natural wines, their prices written on the bottles in chalk marker, most ranging from $18 to $45. As Gray explained, natural wine is made “the way wine has been made for thousands of years” — that is, sans the more than 80 additives, including sweeteners and preservatives, that might be found in other wines.
Against the walls on the right are a cooler and a rack holding grocery items, including Sobremesa and Pitchfork Farm pickles and ferments; a basket overflowing with Jasper Hill Farm, Maplebrook Farm and Vermont Creamery cheeses; mackerel, smoked rainbow trout and other seafoods packaged in tins with whimsical art; and a Mediterranean- and Asian-leaning selection of sauces and condiments.
“I love a well-stocked and well-organized pantry,” Gray said, “and I wanted to offer a lot of the things that Gavin and I were driving a long distance to procure.” That includes cult fave Huy Fong “rooster” sriracha, which has become hard to find in recent years. “Some people are like, ‘How did you get [this] sriracha?’ and I’m like, ‘That’s for me to know,'” Gray said with a smirk.
At the Buttery, Gray is in charge of choosing the wines, stocking the retail shelves and developing the menu for the café, which has striking potted plants, a tiled bar with a live-edge top and walnut-colored chairs around a handful of tables. She earned a degree in nutrition, with a minor in culinary skills, from Bastyr University near Seattle, and she loves putting together Vermont versions of the so-called “Bastyr healthy plates” that she learned about in school.
These plates prominently feature vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and either leafy greens, fermented vegetables or both. Animal proteins maintain a lower profile. “I’m sort of a believer … in beautifully sourced meats that are more of a garnish than a main,” Gray explained.
One key feature of the Buttery’s menu is that no matter a customer’s dietary preferences, they can customize to their heart’s content. The base “charcuterie” platter ($12) is actually vegetarian, featuring half of a Boule baguette, cornichons, radishes and an herby white bean spread. All the available meats, cheeses and seafoods are add-ons. It’s much the same with the baguette toast breakfast ($3), which can be gussied up with fig jam ($1.50), anchovy butter ($2), Jasper Hill Farm’s Harbison cheese ($6), tinned cockles ($11) or a “full lox setup” ($10), among other delectables.
Currently, Gray and Wynkoop-Fischer are working with their interim kitchen manager on autumnal dishes. “We opened this business with no oven or stove,” Gray explained. “We had an induction burner and two pizza ovens that have gotten us through the summer.” Their newly acquired stove will be installed this week, leading to the immediate launch of a new evening menu with more robust dinner entrées and seasonal small plates.
Wynkoop-Fischer’s domain is general management and hot beverages. Before cofounding the Buttery, he spent nearly six years working at Lucky’s Coffee Garage in Lebanon, N.H. “I grew with the business in a very organic way, where I had a lot of ownership over it and a lot of say over the way things ran.”
“I really fell in love with the café atmosphere,” he added, musing on his career path. “I’m a social and community-oriented person, and coffee is an amazing thing to gather around.”
The Buttery brews and sells beans from Vermont-based Brio Coffeeworks, Carrier Roasting and Abracadabra Coffee, as well as New York’s Touchy Coffee. There are also teas from Vermont’s Free Verse Farm & Apothecary and a dandelion-based herbal coffee from California’s Wooden Spoon Herbs.
The high-quality beverages, malleable menu and warm staff turn strangers into regulars and keep those regulars coming back. After just a few months in business, Wynkoop-Fischer said, “The close community has been incredibly gratifying.”
Gray is amazed by how quickly things came together. It feels “wild,” she said, that opening a place like the Buttery “wasn’t even an idea at this time last year, except that I wanted somebody else to do it.”
Branching Out
Birches, 397 Railroad St., 1st Floor, St. Johnsbury, 424-1289, birchesvt.com
When DJ and Katey McLaughlin opened Boule, which specializes in creative sourdough bread loaves and flaky pastries with seasonal fillings, they knew it wouldn’t be their only business. “It was always our plan that Katey would do her bakery thing and that I would do a restaurant,” DJ said. “We were a little surprised that it happened as soon as it did, but sometimes you’ve just gotta go for it.”
The impetus to “go for it” came when the Kingdom Table space became available. “It matches our aesthetic,” McLaughlin explained. And, with about 95 seats when the patio is open, “The size is good.”
Alongside Noah Owen, his former culinary school roommate and “right-hand man,” McLaughlin is working on the forthcoming fall menu, which will lean more into fine dining than their opening menu did.
“Some of the dishes on our current menu that were a little more ‘out there’ were really well received. It encouraged us to push more in that direction,” he noted. “We’d love to get people out of their comfort zone a little bit.”
The more exotic dishes on the opening menu included a crispy, juicy seafood burger ($19) packed with crab, shrimp and haddock and served with ultra-brown chunks of potato; fettuccine ($22) with a roasted medley of mushrooms, plus sage, browned butter and pine nuts; and local farmed trout ($28), roasted whole, with a citrus-soy glaze.
Some of the meals currently in development for autumn are a vegan coconut curry with roasted squash and a variety of mushrooms; braised short ribs from Danville’s Badger Brook Meats; and a dish that will combine coffee, duck and handmade pasta. The fresh noodles are “a labor of love” to roll out, McLaughlin said with a laugh.
They’re also going to offer black sea bass. “Folks who like seafood want something other than salmon [as a main dish], but that’s all you can find around here,” he observed.
For as long as they can, into the cooler seasons, they’ll keep buying vegetables from Joe’s Brook Farm and Small Axe Farm, both located in nearby Barnet.
Indeed, the folks from Small Axe were spotted on this reporter’s two recent visits to Birches. It’s a testament to the restaurant’s status as one of just a handful of dinner options in town, and as part of an even smaller circle dedicated to using ingredients from area farms.
The dining room has an exposed brick wall, cherry-red banquettes and tables made from dark wood. The décor includes entire, slender birch trees, plus branches attached to modern light fixtures.
The cooking and plating are both adept. Scallops ($14), in a pool of herb sauce, are seared to a crisp on top but beautifully tender inside. A dry-aged steak ($35), with red-wine butter melting on top, is stacked sculpturally atop deep-green broccolini spears and potatoes on a large white square plate.
The dessert menu is small, but both the pumpkin cheesecake ($10) and the espresso-chocolate mousse cake ($10) are pitch-perfect ends to a meal.
As McLaughlin and Owen fancy up the Birches dinner selection, casual fare such as burgers and pizza will land on the menu at the new, subterranean location, opening as a separate business in October. “Upstairs will be more for date night or an anniversary,” McLaughlin explained.
Does the forthcoming spot have a name? They’re working on it, he said. Asked if it would begin with a B, he chuckled. “One of the names we like does start with a B, and there are feelings on both sides about whether we should have three B names or pick something else,” he admitted.
Whatever they choose, the business will surely be beloved.
The original print version of this article was headlined “B Is for Business | Tasting our way through two new St. Johnsbury restaurants: Birches and the Buttery”
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This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2024.
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