Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [34]
Lunch is served cafeteria-style. There is pizza on the weekends, and Tuesday through Saturday, you can have a panini, open-face, or regular sandwich, quiche or soup or salad.
The place itself is beautiful: a sun-bathed baking cathedral with a full view of the open kitchen where doughs are kneaded and hot breads pulled from ovens.
Note: The bakery is closed during April and most of November, but opens again at Thanksgiving.
Blue Benn Diner
314 North St.
802–442–5140
Bennington, VT
BLD | $
The Blue Benn, an original Silk City dining car, was planted on this site along Route 7 in 1949. To this day, it remains a true-blue hash house with a menu that includes such square meals as pot roast, turkey dinner, and meat loaf and mashed potatoes. In addition to the expected, there are international dishes including Syrian-bread roll-ups and vegetarian enchiladas, and such modern fare as a grilled salmon Caesar salad. In fact, the interior is plastered everywhere with literally hundreds of kitchen specials, plain to fancy. Breakfast delights include corn bread French toast and stacks of Crunchberry pancakes with turkey hash on the side, as well as eminently dunkable locally made donuts.
Curtis’s Barbecue
Route 5 (exit 4 off I-91)
802–387–5474
Putney, VT
L&D Apr–Oct (closed Mon) | $$
Pitmaster Curtis Tuff’s self-proclaimed “Ninth Wonder of the World” serves fine ribs and chicken in high roadside style. By that we mean that this place is not actually a restaurant at all. It is a picnic. Place your order at the window of one of the blue-painted school buses that are permanently anchored in the meadow. When you have paid and it is ready, you will be pointed to a stack of cardboard cartons that are useful in toting the plates to a table, either in the sun or shade. Dine al fresco, then toss your trash in a can and be on your way.
Of the two things Mr. Tuff smoke-cooks, we go for ribs. They are available as slabs, half-slabs, medium orders and small. A half-slab is a hearty meal. The ribs are cooked so the meat pulls off in big, succulent strips that virtually burst with piggy flavor and the perfume of smoke. To dress these dandy bones, Mr. Tuff offers two sauces: mild and spicy, both of which are finger-licking good. On the side you want a nice baked potato, a cup of terrific beans, and/or ears of sweet corn.
Note that Curtis’s Barbecue closes in October and reopens in April. It is open for lunch and supper in the summer from Tuesday through Sunday, and fewer days of the week in the late spring and early fall.
The Dorset Inn
8 Church St.
802–867–5500
Dorset, VT
BLD | $$$
The Dorset Inn sings of Green Mountain character. Its two-century history, its setting on the village green, its broad front porch just right for rocking, its inviting hearth and broad-plank floors all contribute to an enveloping sense of place that could be nowhere else. When you eat here—breakfast, lunch, or dinner—you are savoring Vermont at its very best.
Chef-owner Sissy Hicks calls the meals she makes comfort food, and they are. But like the town of Dorset itself, this is a very fine kind of country comfort with an unmistakable air of elegance. Yes, you can have meat and potatoes for supper, but the meat may be pot roast Provençale and the potatoes may be roasted reds stuffed with pureed yams. Not that there is anything ostentatious