Peter Havens (Brattleboro, VT)

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***** 

For my birthday, my mom and step-father took me out to dinner up in Brattleboro at Peter Havens, a fine dining establishment that has been around for twenty years, but I somehow had never been to.  They went to a special dinner there the week before, and were quite impressed, so when our first choice, L.A. Burdick's The Restaurant at Burdick was unavailable to us (they only serve brunch on Sundays, not dinner), we ended up in Brattleboro.  While I definitely still want to go up to L.A. Burdick, I could not have been more pleased with the dinner we had.

The restaurant itself is small, with over half of it devoted to the bar area, which consists of a large wooden bar in a rather open area and a few tables, and a second area that is separated by a partial wall that has another half dozen tables.  It is lit just right, not so much that it seems bright but not so little it feels dark (an unfortunate trend in higher end restaurants these days), and it does not seem to be overly loud even with several groups together.  Our waitress was nice, but I like to have wait-staff that are very confident and have strong opinions on the menu; if asked "which do you recommend," there should be an answer, and "well, that depends on whether you're in the mood for X or Y" does not count.  That said, when she finally made a decision it turned out to be the right one.

I started off with the Escargot ("Brandy & vermouth marinated escargots sautéed with garlic, butter

and parsley, served in a puff pastry shell and finished with a touch of cream") at the recommendation of the waitress, who I tasked with choosing amongst that, the house Caesar salad ("Romaine lettuce. tossed in our classic house-made caesar dressing, topped with warm duck confit and  croutons"), and the special soup for the day, a gazpacho that sounded completely delicious.  In the end, while I am sure the soup and salad would have been very good, the escargot was spectacular.  The snails themselves were just the right mix of chewy and tender, the sauce was tangy and creamy, and the puff pastry was a great vehicle for both.  I just had raw escargot in Valras Plage, and while this restaurant lacked the ambiance of being located fifteen feet from a Mediterranean beach, eating them here was pretty delightful as well.  

We also split the Duck Liver Pate ("House made duck liver pate prepared with a hint of brandy, served with whole grain mustard, red onion jam, cornichons and toast points"), and I have one big complaint:  I can't have it every day.  Oh my God, that was good.  Creamy, smooth, decadent pate beautifully served in a small jar alongside some pieces of toast, a little pile of cornichons, which I love, really great rustic mustard that was distinctly German tasting, and the red onion jam, which stacks up really well to the pickled onions on the Pulled BBQ Duck Nachos at The Dirty Truth, which are legitimately crave-worthy.  I just wanted more and more and more of this; probably one of the three or four best appetizers I have ever had.

My entree was switched up at the last minute, as I had intended to go with the Roasted Statler Chicken Breast ("finished with two-mustard sauce and served with truffle mashed potatoes") since my step-dad was going with the Pan Roasted Duck Breast ("with French green lentils, caramelized apple, and sauce bigerade"), but when he switched to a swordfish special, I went with the duck.  Thank God I did.  The duck was gorgeous, a thinly (app 1/4 inch) sliced breast laid out and smothered in a dark, rich sauce that was incredibly savory, though I did not really taste any of the citrus I would expect from a Sauce Bigerade.  The duck itself was maybe the tiniest bit overcooked, but because of the sauce it was not a problem, and it was reasonably moist still.  I am not a huge fan of lentils typically, though when prepared properly they are really awesome, and the French green lentils were not only tasty on their own, but great eaten with the sauce.  The caramelized apple was really delicious, but kind of lame, in that it was just a single small piece about an inch wide and two inches long; it would have been greatly appreciated if there were a couple more pieces.  I am nitpicking here; the entree was awesome, and the meal all in all was one of the best I have ever had.  This is definitely a new favorite.

I had a McNeill's Brewery Dead Horse IPA with dinner, which is definitely a top ten in the category for me.  One of the smoothest IPAs I have had, it was just hoppy enough to make you aware of what it is, but not nearly like many of the other great (and terrible) IPAs that are on the market now, which seem to emphasize the hops to the max.  A great beer, it will get its own review soon enough I am sure.

Curtis' All American Barbeque (Putney, VT)

I love barbeque; always have, always will.  It is unpretentious, seemingly simple food that tends to

"The 9th Wonder of the World"

involve a lot of pork, a lot of spices, and more food than a reasonable person should ever eat in one sitting, and that seeming simplicity falls away as you eat it; it is often, in fact, tremendously complex.  Curtis' All American Barbeque, in tiny Putney, VT, is a fine example of open pit barbeque, a concept that few people are used to in the north.  The meat is smoked first, then put over the open wood fire,where it caramelizes and finishes cooking, adding something just short of a char to the exterior.

Curtis does ribs and chickens, and while the ribs are damn good, the chicken is sublime.  It is not often that a person like me, who craves good pork, would choose chicken instead, but I have at Curtis'.  After all, good ribs aren't that difficult to find, or even make; great chicken though, is a true rarity, something that you can't find many places.  The skin becomes a little crispy, though not the glass-like crunch of a fried chicken.  A little smoky, tender, and surprisingly moist, it is the best chicken I have ever eaten that wasn't thrown into a vat of hot oil.  The ribs have a little smokiness to them as well, and aren't quite the fall off the bone tender that you would find in Kansas City or St. Louis style ribs, but Curtis' method, like the man himself, is from Georgia, and there's some more tooth to the meat.  I actually like this, as texture is important to me, but I have some friends who have tried it and don't love his food for that reason.  It is therefore important to go to Curtis' with the understanding that this is not North Carolina, Missouri, or Tennessee barbeque; it is entirely different.

Curtis himself, finishing a dozen or so slabs under the supervision of his pig CJ

Sauce places a huge role at Curtis', another issue for some purists, who believe that sauce should barely be involved, if at all, in good barbeque, and that the meat should speak for itself.  Well, the meat does speak for itself here, but the sauce adds to that and enhances it, with two options to choose from, a simple mild or a tangier hot.  The mild is a little sweet, with some vinegar coming through, but it's primarily a ketchup based sauce.  The hot is essentially the same, but with, obviously, more heat, and thus less sweetness, or at least the sweetness is masked by that extra heat.  It's not that hot, not even enough to give your mouth much of a burn, but it's more interesting than the mild.  It's good on everything from the ribs to the chicken to the sweet yams.

My gigantic lunch; loaded potato and "small" side of collards

This trip, I went with the loaded pork stuffed baked potato, a mountain of food that is truly scrumptious, improvable only by adding some chicken to it, though maybe that would just be too much.  A potato cooked over the wood fire wrapped in foil, it is perfectly tender without completely falling apart, split open and filled with shredded pork and topped with sour cream, chives, (real) bacon bits, shredded Vermont cheddar cheese (only the best), mushrooms, and barbeque sauce.  There isn't much to say about this other than YUM!  I added a small (a relative term) side of collards, which were fantastic.  Cooked so that the leaves are soft and the cores still with a little crunch, the collards are great as well, with bits of crispy lardon mixed in.  Normally collards are cooked until they are essentially mush, which can taste good, but again, that texture thing keeps popping up; I like a little bite, and the textural differences between the leaves, cores, and lardon is exactly where you see that complexity that I mentioned earlier.  With a bottle of water, I was out about $18.50, which isn't cheap, but well worth both the price and the 45 minute drive.

Curtis' is great for more than just its food; Curtis himself is an incredibly friendly, jovial man, who

CJ "supervising" Curtis

clearly enjoys himself and his work, spending time talking to his customers, his three (at least) dogs, and of course, his pet pig.  CJ is a gigantically fat fellow, who bears more of a resemblance to a wild boar, tusks and all, than to the pigs we eat, and he is the successor to Curtis' old pet Isabelle, who he had for 13 years; the joke he tells is that he assures the pig that he only cooks chicken, a joke he tells with relish and a hearty chuckle each and every time.

CJ eating a carrot Curtis gave my friend to feed him

Curtis' is only open seasonally, from about April to late October, and seating is available inside a large covered pavilion or at a variety of umbrella covered and open picnic tables.  Today there was a pretty decent guitarist playing and singing, which added some decent ambiance, but you're not coming here for elegance.  It is down home, legitimately good southern comfort food, and I do feel comfortable when I leave.  Make sure you bring cash, as Curtis' does not take cards or checks.  They sell some merchandise on both their website and on site, including bottles of their own sauce.  This is one of my favorite place to go, and the best barbeque I've found north of the Mason-Dixon line, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The covered seating

******

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Harpoon Winter Warmer

With a deep reddish brown color and a light, creamy head, the Harpoon Bewery Winter Warmer is a beautiful drink when first poured, but the head disappears quickly, leaving only a lacy trace of that foam around the edge of the glass, an early sign of the disappointment that will come from drinking the beer.  The flavor is mild, without anything standing out or coming to the forefront, really just a stronger, deeper version of any basic American ale.  There is almost no bitterness, and no flavor of hops, two things that I look for in a good beer.  It lacks the depth of flavor, or “volume” of a good winter ale, and at microbrewery prices, it is not worth it when there are options like the Geary’s Hampshire Special Ale available.  If there are no other micro-brewed ales available, then it isn’t the worst choice, but like the rest of Harpoon’s offerings, I’m consistently disappointed by what I experience.  I always come away glad I didn’t go for the cheaper, macro-brewed beers, but overall it is lacking.  The high note, sadly, is that it came in a neat custom wine-type glass.  I don’t think I will come back for this one.

As a side note, the only reason I ordered this is because when you're sitting in an airport awaiting a flight you're really not looking forward to (hell, when does any actually look forward to a flight?) virtually any beer will do.  It didn't make the flight any better, but it was worth a shot.

******

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The Big E 2012 (West Springfield, MA)

The Big E, aka the Eastern States Exposition, is the "state fair" equivalent for the six New England states, as none of the six have their own.  Begun, according to the Fair's website, as an exhibition called the "National Dairy Show," it eventually morphed into what it has become, a massive fair visited this year by over 1.3 million people, a record.  It encompasses all the traditional aspects of a country fair, such as 4H and other livestock competitions, games, and, of course, food.  Especially food.

I had never been to The Big E until I was a sophomore in college, despite having grown up in Western Massachusetts, but I've always loved fairs, having frequented both the Franklin County Fair and Ashfield Fall Festival as a kid.  Back then I cared more about the games than the food (other than, of course, fried dough), but these days it's all about the food and the adorable furry animals. (See the adorable piglet and alpaca baby from 2011; I should have gotten a picture of the week old alpaca yesterday, but oh well)

In so many ways like other fairs, The Big E has one major unique feature, the Avenue of States, six scale replicas of the original statehouses of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Maine, each filled with a variety of tourism related booths, including merchants selling representative foods and objects from the state, such as lobster rolls and baked potatoes in the Maine Statehouse.  There are also State Troopers from each of the states, as the buildings are "sovereign territory" of each state, though obviously in practical terms this does not apply, but during the The Big E every year they sell lottery tickets from each at or outside their building.  The Vermont building includes Cabot cheeses, and they always bring a special Big E cheddar, which is aged longer than any of their other cheddars.

Like most fairs, there are also numerous small outdoor shops and food vendors.  These range from the typical corn dog and fresh squeezed lemonade to smoked turkey legs and fried vegetables (fried green tomatoes being my favorite, though I was far too full to end up getting them this time), but there are also a lot of specialty foods.  The Big E cream puffs are the most famous, though I'll admit to not being a huge cream puff fan, so I don't ever get these.  The Craz-E Burger, a cheeseburger with two glazed doughnuts standing in for the bun, has become popular over the last couple years, along with fried kool-aid and fried Oreo cookies.  Popular local burger joint White Hut has a spot, and this year offered a burger sandwiched between two waffles.  The star rookie this year, however, were EB's fried shepherd's pie balls, pictured above with a fantastic Spaten Oktoberfest draught beer (purchased from a real German, no less!), and they were exceptional.  I had them at the suggestion of a co-worker, and by god, he was right on.  The crisp, yet tender crust was perfect, the ground beef was succulent and juicy, and both the gravy that the ground beef was swimming in and that which was offered on the side (or poured over the top) were strong, but did not overwhelm any of the other flavors.  Lacking only the potato that traditionally comes as a part of shepherd's pie, the standard flavors were all there.

Of course I also had a corn dog, which was delicious if unremarkable.  They're my all time favorite, so despite the relative lack of ambition and creativity that goes along with them, they are an integral part of my fair experience, and I got one almost immediately upon arriving.  I also had chicharrones, which were great, though my buddy Jon, who is inexperienced in the eating of them, ended up with a piece of glass-like pork skin stuck in his gum for a couple hours, but otherwise enjoyed them.  A fresh squeezed lemonade was great, but a little overly sweet.

We wandered through the various buildings, including a farm building that had, among other things,a coop of chicks, and an incubator for eggs, from which supposedly over 2200 are hatched during the 17 days of the event.  This is also where the alpacas are, as well as llamas, typically some pigs (though I didn't see any this year), and some dogs.  There are a couple buildings with vendors selling everything from the kind of stuff you see on late night infomercials to beautiful hand-crafted Japanese silk embroidered pictures, and also a "Winter Wonderland" area presented by Kringle Candle, the newest creation of Yankee Candle founder Michael Kittredge.

All in all, The Big E is a great experience, a lot of fun, though it's rather more commercialized than the old time fairs in the area such as Ashfield's, or the Cummington Fair, but it's also better than the Franklin County Fair, which is really just a smaller version of The Big E at this point, though obviously a bit more locally focused.  I strongly recommend it to anyone in the area, or anyone who is interested in traveling to the area in mid to late September.

******

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Madison Brewing Co. Pub and Restaurant (Bennington, VT)

Madison Brewing Co.©

Madison Brewing Co. Pub and Restaurant is my kind of place; simple, tasty food, good beer, and a great atmosphere.  My younger step-sister just graduated from Bennington College, and since I was not able to be there, I took her out to dinner in celebration; this was where she chose for us to go, and I can assure you, if she took nothing else away from her college experience, Madison Brewing Co. was well worth the cost of tuition.

Madison offers six year round beers, ranging from a Scottish style ale to a Belgian witbier, along with two "seasonal" beers.  I had the Old 76 Strong Ale, which lives up well to its name; it is a strongly flavored, heavy beer, though lacking the hops that I would have expected.  The beer was not special, but certainly much better than and of the mass produced options, and held up well against even some of the British ales I've had.  This is certainly a beer I can recommend to anyone who finds themselves in Bennington.

Despite being a brewpub, the food was really where Madison shines.  I had the bangers and mash dinner, and the mashed potatoes were fantastic; creamy, rich, with good texture but not so much as to be chunky.  The gravy was heavy and filling, with large slices of cooked onions in it, and while it had its own richness, it did not overwhelm either the potatoes or the sausages.  The bangers themselves, however, were a little disappointing at first; they are not really bangers, but more of a standard pork sausage, and once I got over the disappointment that they were not what I had had in England, I really enjoyed them.  They were extremely porky, which is pretty much my first requirement for a sausage (I have had good beef, chicken/turkey, and fish sausages, but let's be real:  sausages should be pork), with just enough fat to keep them moist but not so much as to feel heavy or greasy, and went well with both the potatoes and gravy.  The last thing on the plate was a small heap of apple chutney, which was an extremely sweet, but welcome addition, with the apples maintaining their crunch to provide a nice contrast to the primarily soft remainder of the platter.

Along with the bangers and mash, Madison offers a pretty great selection of traditional pub food, such as fish and chips (on Wednesdays it's all you can.  Seriously, this place was founded with me in mind), meatloaf, burgers (including bison and venison burgers), and wings, along with less traditional fare including a daily ravioli special, tortellini alfredo, and chicken scalopini.  The smoked gouda mac and cheese sounds pretty damn good too.

Now, I don't normally eat dessert, partially because I'm trying to convince myself I'm eating semi-healthy, but mostly because I just tend to be disappointed by it.  When offered apple pie with a pecan topping/crust, however, that whole "healthy" thing goes out the window, especially when the waitress (who was one of the best I've had in a while; friendly without being cloying, attentive without being intrusive or annoying) insists that it must be eaten warm and a la mode, and boy was she right.  First off, they use good ice cream; this was not that bleached looking "vanilla" that has no character, but instead more along the lines of Haagen-Dazs' Vanilla Bean (a personal favorite of mine).  Secondly, the pie itself was heavenly; think of the best apple pie you've had, and then try this.  It'll be a close comparison, I can assure you that.  While this may not be the best I've ever, it's damn close, with great texture, sweetness, tartness, and apple flavor that just melds perfectly into an overall fantastic eating experience, and one that reminded me that dessert does not have to disappoint.

Lastly, the aforementioned atmosphere:  the downstairs is small, but not cramped, with a tiny bar (maybe 8 seats, if that) and several tables.  Upstairs is separated into two sections, with an expansive indoor area and a moderately sized outdoor area, that has its own bar (though I don't believe you can sit at it), with about 8 or 9 tables.  We sat outdoors, and it was a really great place to sit, with the perfect (not too hot, but sunny) weather enhancing the already delicious meal.  If you have the option of sitting outside and the weather is nice, take advantage, you will not regret it.

******

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