Mountain High

Our exhaustive study has proven incontrovertibly that not only does climbing Vermont's Camel's Hump mountain (a.k.a. Saddle Mountain, le Lion Couchant, and the Camel's Rump) have benefits that are both physical and spiritual, but making your way to the top of its 4,083-ft height has the effect of heightening the sensitivity of one's taste buds, making Vermont's already impressive range of delicacies that much more delicious.

Before we present our findings, you should know that the Camel's Hump is Vermont's third highest peak, but that it's #1 when it comes to undeveloped (or relatively undeveloped) peaks--meaning no ski hills, no radio towers, etc. Its summit sits above the tree line and consists of a delicate balance of rock formations and alpine vegetation. It also affords a glorious 360º view of the region. Not surprisingly, the Camel's Hump is one of Vermont's most beloved state parks.

Scramble your way to the top, stare eastward over the precipice, and the view looks something like this:

fig. a: due east

Put on your sunglasses, gaze westward toward Lake Champlain and the Champlain Valley, and the view looks something like this:

fig. b: due west

Lay your weary bones down, bask in the bright sunlight, and stare up into the sky and the view might just look like this:

fig. c: due up

Crouch down and take a close look at the surface of the Camel's Hump and, if you chose the right spot, the view would look like this:

fig. d: due down

Return to Red Hen

You know how we feel about Red Hen. We were so impressed when we visited Red Hen back in April that we wrote about them twice: here and here. This time we stopped in en route to the Camel's Hump. We were hoping to pick up some of Nutty Steph's granola for the trail at the same time, but it was a Monday, and Nutty Steph's was closed. Red Hen was open, though, and we took full advantage of their offerings: coffee, a couple of loaves of bread, a couple of sandwiches, and several pastries. The pastries--including one of their awesome ham & cheese croissants, an apple & ginger scone, and a plum & cheese Danish that Michelle promptly announced was "the Danish of [her] dreams"--were what we conducted our tests with. We had a couple of bites in the parking lot near the base of the Camel's Hump, then had the rest once we'd reached the summit. No doubt about it: flavors that were already complex and extremely satisfying became exponentially so at the top of the Camel's Hump. Remarkable!

Return to the Alchemist

You also know how we feel about The Alchemist. Our visit back in April was our craft beer highlight of 2009. Until now, that is.

This time we weren't 100% scientific--we didn't dare try the "before" and "after" thing, and we didn't haul any growlers to the summit to celebrate our triumphant ascent. We just paid a visit in the late afternoon, after we'd gone to the mountain (literally) and worked up a mean thirst. That said, as we settled into our bar stools and began quaffing our first pints, we both had the same impression. We both love our beer, but beer had rarely, if ever, tasted this good. Particularly refreshing on this particular post-hike evening was their Celia Framboise, the most satisfying fruit beer either of us has tasted outside of Belgium. Outstanding!

fig. e: signpost

The Green Cup

Even less scientific, but no less enjoyable, was the test we conducted in Waitsfield. We were thrilled to be back in Waitsfield, and excited to be trying out somewhere new, but the fact that we'd never been to this particular establishment before meant that we couldn't fully gauge the effects of hiking the Camel's Hump on our dining experience.

We first heard about The Green Cup back in April when we visited our friends at Hen of the Wood. We had a particularly excellent server that night--she was knowledgeable, even passionate about her wines, she fielded all our silly, nitpicky questions with grace and charm, and she was happy to discuss Vermont's farm, dairy, and dining scenes at length with us. She gave us a number of tips that night, but the one that really stuck with us was The Green Cup, a tiny café/restaurant in Waitsfield that she claimed had one of the best kitchens in the state. In fact, she told us that Eric, the chef at Hen of the Wood, had had the very finest meal he'd ever had in Vermont at The Green Cup. Given our experience at Hen of the Wood, this struck us as high praise. I'm sure we would have gone the very next day if they hadn't been closed for their Spring Break.

It took us a few months to make our way back to Waitsfield and The Green Cup, but it was definitely worth the trip. Get this:

Rhode Island Squid and Elephant Trunk Sea Scallops with grapefruit, red onion, celery, lemon, and basil

Cornucopia Farm Skirt Steak Salad with lemongrass, cilantro, red onion, avocado, lime, mint, and leaf greens

Seared Arctic Char with Chanterelles three ways (tempura, raw, and roasted), green beans, and white grits

Homemade Fettucini with poached artichokes, a medley of mushrooms, browned garlic, and sweet basil

Again, I'm not sure if it was the effects of all that mountain air, but our meal at The Green Cup was nearly flawless. We loved Chef Jason Gulisano's intricate, perfectly balanced compositions and, quite frankly, Michelle just about lost it when she had that Vietnamese-inspired skirt steak salad. She couldn't have been happier.

The only thing that didn't totally blow us away was the carrot cake we had for dessert,* but according to Mark Bittman, we should have ordered the coconut cake. If only we'd known then...

So, there you go: hike well, eat well.

aj

p.s. Full disclosure: Michelle was a little sore for two to three days after our visit to the Camel's Hump (yet another effect of our hike!), but all that good food and drink made any and all suffering sufferable.

* Then again, by that time it was several hours after our hike.

...Creameries and Model Farms and Co-ops and Pizzas

fig. a: Shelburne Creamery Building

Shelburne, VT

This was one of the first, uh, sights we came across when we entered Shelburne, VT: the former Shelburne Creamery (you could tell by the enormous letters on the side of the building that spelled "Shelburne Creamery"). We were on the lookout for Shelburne Farms because we wanted to buy some of their cheese, and although it looked a little quiet, a little lonely, a little uncanny--almost like some lost corner of Prague

fig. b: street scene, Prague

--we actually thought this might be the very place where Shelburne Farms made their acclaimed line of cheddars. We were wrong. Yes, this odd-looking building had played home to the Shelburne Creamery, but now it was just another one of those office buildings where you often find doctors' suites. Not 200 feet further down the Route 7, however, we found a general store, one that stocked Shelburne Farms' cheese among their selection of fine Vermont cheeses. We asked a question or two, got some directions, and minutes later we were winding our way west towards Lake Champlain. About a mile along the Harbor Road we came across the Shelburne Farms store at the junction of Harbor and Bay, but this wasn't just any cheese store. Sure, they had their own cob-smoked bacon and hams, baked goods, souvenirs, even antiques,

fig. c: True Vermonter sugaring bucket

along with a selection of their fine cheeses. More importantly, though, the store is housed inside the gatehouse of a sprawling estate, a 1,400-acre parcel of land that was designed, landscaped, and built according to the vision of architect Robert H. Robertson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted for Dr. William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb back in the late 19th century, and that once encompassed 3,800 acres. The idea was to create a model agricultural estate, one that raised dairy cows, sheeps, and Hackney horses, as well as pigs, poultry, and gaming pheasants, one that was clearly meant to simulate an English country estate. The estate has been run as a non-profit organization since 1972, and in addition to its creamery, Shelburne Farms includes an inn (in the former Seward/Webb mansion),

fig. d: The Inn at Shelburne Farms, off-season

a working farm (which called to mind one of the farms featured in Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale),

fig. e: the Farm Barn, Shelburne Farms

and lush grounds and stunning views (both formal and not)

fig. f: the view from the inn, off-season

that are very much open to the public.

It didn't take much convincing to go for a walk, especially given Shelburne Farms almost English sense of picturesque, with tree-lined lanes, broad meadows, and rolling, densely forested hills. Plus, it was at least 60º F that day. We'd come prepared for some wintertime tramping, but the only snow we saw the whole weekend was of the artificially created kind, on some abandoned ski slopes up above Middlebury. In fact, about 25 feet after Michelle deciphered these signs

fig. g: Pyongyang 9412 mi.

and we got our first glimpse of the inn off in the distance, we came across a caterpillar. A live one. In Vermont. In January.

The next day we came back to Shelburne Farms. We'd decided to put off our cheese shopping there until it was just about time to head north of the border again, but mostly we just wanted to go back and have another walk. Especially given the balmy weather. This time around we stayed out of the hills and headed for Lake Champlain and the inn instead, hoping to come across Shelburne Farms' dairy farm. Sure enough, about 1/4 mile from the inn we found their herd of Swiss Browns lunching.

fig. h: Swiss Miss

About an hour later, after we'd toured the inn, taken in the lake, and gingerly sidestepped a skunk, we went back to the Shelburne Farms store, picked up a couple of blocks of cheddar, some bacon, and our sugaring bucket and hit the road.

Shelburne Farms, 1611 Harbor Rd. Shelburne, VT, (802) 985-8686

Ferrisburgh, VT

In all honesty, we really can't tell you much about Ferrisburgh except that it's no more than 30 minutes south of Shelburne, and if you drive down that way along the 7 you absolutely, positively will not be able to miss Dakin Farm unless you've got the mother of all head colds or something. The smell of all that cob-smoked goodness--hams, bacon, and the like--is almost enough to make you veer off the road. If you do find yourself overpowered, as we did, try to manage a controlled veer into the Dakin Farm parking lot. Yeah, it's a bit kitsch--not quite Cracker Barrel Old Country Store-style, but heading in that direction--but, as mentioned earlier, it's worth it for their honest-to-goodness cob-smoked bacon and odds-and-ends alone.

Dakin Farm, 5797 Route 7, Ferrisburgh, VT, 1-800-993-2546

Vergennes, VT

Saturday, no more than a half an hour south of Shelburne, we came across signs for Vergennes. Michelle had decided we had to check it out even before we caught a glimpse of it because she liked the sound of the name or something, but then we spied the town center off in the distance,

fig. i: Vergennes, VT, as seen from Route 7 (more or less)

remarked upon how much it reminded us of the way Canterbury had appeared from the Pilgrim's Way in A Canterbury Tale, and knew then and there that we had to take a closer look. Up close, it didn't look as much like 1940s Canterbury as we might have liked, but it was still pretty charming. We came across the town library/museum and we were in the process of admiring it from the outside when we noticed they were having a book sale and used that as an excuse to take a closer look.

fig. j: artifact, Vergennes Museum

And right next to where we'd parked our car, we discovered a fine little chocolate shop, Daily Chocolate. Started up by a couple of chocolatiers from New Mexico a few years ago, Daily Chocolate serves up really rather adventurous (and rather delicious) chocolates, like pistachio-green chile bark (sounds crazy, I know, but it works), featuring their own complex blends of some of the finest American and European chocolates (like Scharffen Berger).

Daily Chocolate, 7 Green St., Vergennes, VT, (802) 877-0087.

Middlebury, VT

We'd heard all kinds of promising things about Middlebury, but, truth be told, we went there primarily to see if we couldn't score some Animal Farm butter (the pride and joy of Orwell, VT) at the Middlebury Co-op because Michelle had heard that they received some deliveries of this highly prized handmade butter (the only handmade butter in Vermont and Thomas Keller's preferred brand) from time to time. We struck out on Animal Farm butter, but we found some other nice things at the co-op, like some Macoun apples and some organic beers, and we fared pretty well at a used book and record store in the Frog Hollow area of Middlebury next to Otter Creek Falls. We had a feeling Middlebury would be a great town for used books and we were dead right. That was where Michelle picked up Noel Perrin's First Person Rural and Second Person Rural, along with 5 or 6 other naturalist classics--the kinds of things she covets. It was late afternoon by the time we finished tooling around Middlebury and we could have just made our way to American Flatbread's Marble Works branch, but we had our hearts set on going to the Waitsfield original, so we got back in the car and began our ascent of the Green Mountains.

Middlebury Co-op, 1 Washington St., Middlebury, VT, (802) 388-7276

Waitsfield, VT

When we got to Lareau Farm maybe an hour and a half later we were glad we'd made the trek. American Flatbread in Middlebury would have been nice, I'm sure, but there's something about that location in the Mad River Valley that we've found particularly relaxing every time we've been to the Waitsfield restaurant over the last few years. We got a great table just off to the side of the pizza-making station, which probably isn't the #1 table in the house, but was a seating we really enjoyed because we got a behind-the-scenes peek into the workings of American Flatbread--the lively banter, the ease with which they handle rushes, the way they try out a prospective pizza-baker. And even though our pizza got demystified somewhat because we saw it (and many others like it) get assembled before our eyes, that half-and-half New Vermont Sausage & Misty Knoll chicken/chipotle-maple BBQ sauce/collard greens/red onions/sweet corn/Grafton Village smoked cheddar deluxe edition tasted just as great as ever.

Those of you out there who still aren't all that familiar with American Flatbread might not be aware of this, but their restaurant is generally only open two days per week. The reason being, they spend the greater part of the rest of the week making parcooked pizzas so that they can freeze them and sell them in health food stores and other grocery stores across a wide swath of the Eastern United States. This time around in Vermont we finally wised up and picked up a couple of American Flatbread's frozen pies at the Onion River Co-op in Burlington to bring back to Montreal with us. We figured, "Why not bring those tastes back home with us?" Sure enough, the experience wasn't nearly as magical as it is when you get a pizza fresh out of that gorgeous earthen oven in Waitsfield (few things are), but you sure couldn't tell it was a frozen pizza either, and it was damn good.

American Flatbread, 46 Lareau Rd., Waitsfield, VT, (802) 496-8856

Onion River Co-op/City Market, 82 South Winooski Ave., Burlington, VT, (802) 863-3659

That's kind of the way we feel about Vermont. We love to spend time there ("Love it!," as Michelle has been known to blurt out), but we're pretty fond of bringing back souvenirs, too.

aj

Glorious Return: American Flatbread

By last weekend we really were in need of a little getaway, so we got in touch with Kazi and decided to do a daytrip down to Vermont in search of fresh air, New England scenery, artisanal cheese, and a pizza or two. Our route was plotted out based largely around a number of Northern Vermont creameries—Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Cabot Creamery in Cabot, and the Vermont Butter and Cheese Co. in Websterville—but the real goal of our little escapade was to get ourselves in close proximity to Waitsfield by around 4:30 in the afternoon so that we could sign ourselves up for a table at American Flatbread. We didn’t quite make it to Websterville—we ran out of time—but we made our two other stops on our creamery tour easily (more on this here), and we had no problem doing what it took to make our rendezvous in Waitsfield. All three of us had been to American Flatbread before and it’s safe to say that we’d all had memorable experiences there. We had plenty of incentive to guide us.

Michelle and I had been to American Flatbread about two and a half years earlier. It was July of the summer of 2003 and we’d set out on a much more "adventurous" daytrip than last weekend's, one that began in Saratoga Springs, NY with a trip to the Saratoga Race Course to play the ponies. Several hours later, after a near-miss on a 44 to 1 longshot (!), lunching at the cantina that catered to the Mexican migrant workers that tend to the thoroughbreds, and a lovely drive up Hwy 4 along the Hudson and then into Vermont, we found our way to American Flatbread on the grounds of the Lareau Farm in the Mad River Valley. It was probably about 6:30 by the time we got to American Flatbread that evening, and we were familiar with the lore that surrounded their pizzas--which is why we'd been trying to make it there "early"--but we definitely weren’t prepared for the carnival we found when we got there. We’d taken Hwy 4 all the way to Hwy 100, and the drive got more and more sleepy and more and more photogenic the further we headed north along the 100. But when we made that sharp turn into the dirt driveway that leads down from the 100 to the Lareau Farm we suddenly found more cars than we’d seen since we passed Rutland an hour or two earlier. The parking lot was packed and there was quite the crowd gathered on the porch of the big old refashioned farmhouse, hanging out around a big wood fire in the firepit, traipsing across the meadow behind the farmhouse, and dining in the outdoor seating area. Michelle made her way into the restaurant to add our name to the list and when she came back she announced that there was a three to three and a half hour wait for a table. I said, “Excuse me?” Neither of us had ever heard of such a wait, so we balked for about 30 seconds or so, but then we decided, hey, we came all this way, and it really is a beautiful evening out (because it was, it was the perfect summer evening, warm and humid, with clear skies above and a gorgeous sunset in the works), and we don’t have any other place to go to, and, after all, American Flatbread is located in a town called Waitsfield, so what the hell. We ordered a couple of beers from the bar inside, brought them out to the porch, fetched a couple of books and the New York Times crossword from the car, and settled in to our surroundings. Before we knew it, a couple of hours had passed by, and by that time the sun was setting, the stars started to appear, and the fireflies were joining them over by the meadow. We were absolutely, perfectly relaxed by the time our name got called (a little earlier than expected, as it turned out), and we moved to our outdoor table and had one of the most memorable meals of the last few years. The food was great, no question about it, but this was one of those meals that was more about the all-around experience than just the food. It had to do with the weather, and the scenery, and the farmhouse, and the kids running across the meadow, and the conversation around the firepit, and the stars, and the fireflies, and the locally and organically grown ingredients used by the kitchen, and the sense of community that filled the air.

This year we talked and talked about going back, especially on another warm summer night, but, sadly, our glorious return to American Flatbread never really materialized. They’re only open for dining two nights out of the week—Friday and Saturday—and, between the two of us, we were working both of those days all summer long. Suffice to say, we were overdue for a visit by the time last weekend rolled along.

This time around there was definitely no warm, humid weather, there sure weren't any fireflies, and things at Lareau Farm were quite a bit more subdued than they had been in 2003. We showed up right at 4:30, right at the time that the staff at American Flatbread starts taking names for the evening’s dining, and we had no problem getting ourselves put near the top of that list. We hadn't really eaten since we filled up at Cosmos early in the morning, so we opted to be seated at the first available seating time, 5:30. With an hour to relax, we decided to do a little tramping across the meadow and through the snow. Night was coming on quickly and things were getting pretty dark, but one of the hosts was kind enough to lend us a headlamp (he even went out to his truck to grab it for us!), so off we went.



45 minutes later we ambled up to the firepit, where once again a fire was burning, and we spent 10 minutes or so warming up. Then we went into the farmhouse and ordered three beers at the bar and waited for our name to get called. We got seated right in front of American Flatbread's massive and beautiful wood-burning oven--the perfect position to watch the action as well as to warm up some more after our walk in the woods. The oven occupies the central position in the dining room at American Flatbread--the high vaulted ceiling has the effect of making it look like a kind of altar, fittingly enough. Like everything else at American Flatbread, the oven was made from local ingredients like Vermont fieldstone and soapstone (which is particularly well-suited for evenly distributing heat), but, interestingly, the oven was modeled after the clay-domed ovens that were traditional in rural Quebec in the 18th and 19th centuries. I've come across pictures of these ovens like this one that was featured in The Art of Eating No. 69



and places like Au Pied de Cochon here in Montreal incorporate their own modern take on these ovens as part of their charm, but in my travels across Quebec I've yet to come across one as authentic as the one at American Flatbread. On their web site the folks at American Flatbread claim, "These clay domes are considered by many master bakers to make the very best bread." This indicates that there's an entire tradition of bread baking unique to Quebec that was completely extinguished during the push towards modernization. American Flatbread uses only the finest local and organic ingredients in everything that they make, but that oven alone is enough to distinguish their work from that of so many other pizza makers across North America. At the very least you need a well-seasoned oven; American Flatbread's oven is not only well-seasoned, it's also a work of art, a labor of love, and a focus for the sense of community, the commonweal, they've developed over the last couple of decades.

When it came to ordering, we were definitely happy to have Kazi along because it meant that we could order a second pizza and try out another combination or two. On our first visit to American Flatbread we'd tried a half and half New Vermont Sausage and Punctuated Equilibrium pizza and we absolutely loved it. The New Vermont Sausage pizza was especially deluxe--it featured "Hadley Gaylord's naturally raised Waitsfield pork in a nitrate-free maple-fennel sausage," mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes (dried and prepared on premises), caramelized onions, and a blend of cheeses, and that bright fennel-maple flavor was truly something else. The Punctuated Equilibrium, on the other hand, consisted of Vermont chèvre, red onions, roasted red peppers, black olives, herbs, mozzarella, and garlic--as the name suggests, perfect balance shot through with the pungency of that goat's milk cheese and the brine of the olives. We were so impressed by these two combos and we'd been craving them for so long that we decided that ordering them again was the only possible option. This time around we ordered a full New Vermont Sausage pizza along with a half and half Punctuated Equilibrium and Pepperoni and Peppers pizza. We were intrigued by the thought of having a quality pepperoni pizza (for once), one made with an "all natural nitrate-free pepperoni," and we were pretty sure that each half's Mediterranean vibe would complement the other. How right we were! Our Mediterranean Special was a great match--maybe even too good of a match--and ordering a full New Vermont Sausage was one of the best decisions I've ever been a part of. Halfway through our pizzas we found ourselves gazing over at the woman to the left of the oven with fascination and covetousness in our hearts (Who was she? A reviewer? An heiress?). She was sitting at her table solo with a bottle of red wine and not one, but two pizzas on her table. She had about 4 or 5 pieces of her pizzas, drank most of her bottle of wine, and then waltzed out of the restaurant with the loveliest assortment of leftovers you ever saw. Hmm...

Even the desserts were impressive last Saturday night. Kazi and I split the homemade apple pie with homemade vanilla ice cream and Michelle ordered a double order of mignardises, which wound up consisting of two chocolate-covered toffee candies and two chocolate-covered caramel candies. We'd had their excellent apple pie before, but we'd never had their candies and, like everything else, they were both thoughtful and delicious. We accompanied our desserts with two cups of coffee, and it was time to head off into that starry Vermont night and face up to our drive back to Montreal.

Heading down to Waitsfield, VT for pizza might seem like an awfully long way to go for pizza, but when you take into account the quality of American Flatbread's pies, the sad state of pizza affairs in Montreal, and the fact that even New Yorkers regularly make the trek up to the Mad River Valley solely for one of American Flatbread's justly famous pizzas (!), well, to our minds, it seems perfectly reasonable.

American Flatbread is located just south of Waitsfield, VT along Hwy 100. They're open for dinner on Friday and Saturday nights. Unless you show up at 4:30 and make a booking for yourself at 5:30, you should be prepared for a healthy (and potentially relaxing) wait. They're only open twice a week and their pizzas are very, very good. You do the math. Waitsfield is about a 3-hour drive from Montreal.

aj