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Woodstock/Quechee The Prince and the
Pauper A cocktail lounge with the shiniest wood bar you ever saw is at the entry of what many consider to be Woodstock's best restaurant. Tables in the intimate, L-shaped dining room (many flanked by dark wood booths) are covered with linens, oil lamps and flowers in small carafes. The lamps cast flickering shadows on dark beamed ceilings, and old prints adorn the white walls, one of which has a shelf of old books. Chef-owner Chris J. Balcer refers to his cuisine as "creative contemporary" with French, continental and international accents. Meals are prix-fixe for appetizer, salad and main course. The soup of the day could be lobster and corn chowder or Moroccan lentil, the pasta perhaps basil fettuccine with a concasse of tomatoes and garnished with goat cheese, and the pâté Vermont pheasant teamed with orange chutney. There's a choice of six entrées, perhaps vegetable-wrapped striped bass with a chive-butter sauce, roast duckling with a sauce of kiwi and rum, and filet mignon au poivre. The specialty is boneless rack of New Zealand lamb royale, baked in puff pastry. Desserts might be a fabulous raspberry tart with white chocolate mousse served with raspberry cabernet wine sauce, strawberry sabayon with triple sec or homemade Jack Daniels chocolate-chip sorbet. Top them off with espresso, cappuccino or an international coffee. A bistro menu is available in the elegant lounge. Hearth-baked pizzas, grilled rainbow trout, sautéed chicken with calvados and Indonesian lamb curry are typical offerings. (802) 457-1818. Prix-fixe, $41. Dinner nightly, 6
to 9 or 9:30; jackets requested. Bistro, entrées, $13.95 to $15.95,
nightly 5 to 10 or 11. Simon Pearce
Restaurant This restaurant beside the Ottauquechee River has as much integrity as the rest of Irish glass blower Simon Pearce's mill complex. The chefs train at Ballymaloe in Ireland, and they import flour from Ireland to make Irish soda and Ballymaloe brown breads. You sit on sturdy ash chairs at bare wood tables (dressed with white linens at night). The heavy Simon Pearce glassware and the deep brown china are made at the mill. Irish or classical music plays in the background. Through large windows you have a view of the river, hills rising beyond. A large dining addition looks through a handsome arched window out onto the falls and, in season, an enclosed terrace with retractable full-length windows that can be opened to the outside is almost over the falls. The menu changes frequently but there are always specialties like the delicious beef and Guinness stew, a generous lunch serving of fork-tender beef and vegetables, served with a small salad of julienned vegetables. Other midday entrées include lamb and rosemary pie, warm goat cheese salad, Maine crab and cod cakes with roasted red pepper coulis, and brochettes of beef tenderloin with crispy sweet potatoes. The pasta salad, a huge heap of spirals, featured many vegetables and a splendid dressing of oil, vinegar, basil and parmesan cheese. Hickory-smoked coho salmon with potato salad and a skewer of grilled chicken with a spicy peanut sauce and a green salad with vinaigrette also were extra-good. The walnut meringue cake with strawberry sauce, a menu fixture, is crisp and crunchy and melts in the mouth. Cappuccino cheesecake, chocolate rum cake, Irish apple cake and pecan pie are other possibilities, but when we go back, which we seem to do often, nothing but the walnut meringue cake will do. At night, a candlelight dinner might start with smoked salmon with a root vegetable pancake and lemon-chive crème fraîche or grilled portobello mushrooms with shaved parmesan, fennel and watercress. Main courses could be grilled swordfish with lime hollandaise, poached salmon with white wine sauce, crisp roast duck with mango chutney sauce, and spice-crusted venison loin with blackberry-peppercorn sauce. Naturally, you can get beers and ales from the British Isles. You also can buy loaves of the restaurant’s wonderful bread and flavored vinaigrettes. (802) 295-1470. Entrées, $20 to $28. Lunch
daily, 11.30 to 2:45. Dinner nightly, 6 to 9. Barnard
Inn Restaurant Innovative new American cuisine is the forte of this dining landmark under owners Will Dodson and Ruth Schimmelpfennig, Culinary Institute of America graduates who operated two neighborhood restaurants in San Francisco. They sold their restaurants and moved into this landmark 1796 brick house with a 50-seat restaurant on twelve rural acres. The husband-and-wife team lightened up the decor in four cozy, elegantly Colonial dining rooms and added a tavern menu to the charming tavern in back. Dinner is prix-fixe ($55 to $65 for three or four courses) in the main dining rooms and à la carte in the tavern. From the kitchen comes the inn’s longtime specialty, roast duckling, the presentation varying but on a recent winter menu pairing medium-rare breast of muscovy duck and a duck leg confit with a classic glace de volaille accented with maple syrup. Other entrées included pan-seared escolar with lemon-caper-herb butter, sesame-seared ahi tuna with ginger-soy glaze and filet of beef with cabernet demi-glace. The first course could be a butternut squash soup with crabmeat and herbs, a Greek salad, Asian pork dumplings, soft-shell crab with cilantro-lime mayonnaise or duck pâté on toast points. Finish with Ruth’s signature Tahitian vanilla crème brûlée, frozen grand marnier soufflé with blackberry sauce, a dark and white chocolate bread putting with butter-pecan ice cream, or a trio of grapefruit-campari, lemon zest and mango sorbets. Dinner in the cozy tavern is a pleasant mix of the innovative and comfort food, from crab and scallop cakes with jalapeño mayo to yankee pot roast (“the real deal”) and von Schimmelpfennig wiener schnitzel. (802) 234-9961. www.barnardinnrestaurant.com.
Prix-fixe, $55 or $65. Dinner by reservation, Tuesday-Saturday from 6,
Thursday-Saturday in off-season. Tavern, entrées, $13 to $21,
Tuesday-Saturday 5 to 8:30. Kedron Valley Inn The dining experience at this inn has been upgraded by new owners Jack and Nicole Maiden. They redecorated the main dining room in Polo/Ralph Lauren equestrian decor and created an inviting tavern/pub with a new bar and a tavern menu. Guests relax on plush sofas and chairs beside a fireplace in the tavern before or after dinner, which is served at white-clothed tables lit by candles in hurricane lamps in the beamed dining and outside on a porch in season. The inn’s executive chef of eight years, Jim Allen, oversees a concise seasonal menu that ranges from sautéed shrimp and mushrooms tossed with fettuccine and reggiano-parmigiano to grilled filet mignon with a roasted garlic-wine demi-glace. The inn’s signature Maine salmon stuffed with an herbed seafood mousse and wrapped in puff pastry with a beurre blanc sauce is superb. We also were impressed with a special of baked pheasant stuffed with local chèvre and topped with roasted macadamia-nut butter. Roasted chicken ragoût and smoked duck salad with a brie crostini on greens were autumn favorites at our visit. Seafood terrine, grilled local andouille sausage and a grilled portobello mushroom topped with mozzarella are typical appetizers. We liked the sea scallops sautéed with citrus-saffron butter and the country-style blend of venison, pork and veal pâté mixed with dried apples and calvados, served with French bread and homemade chutney. The tavern menu offers five kinds of burgers and a handful of entrées. (802) 457-1473 or (800) 836-1193. Entrées, $22
to $27. Dinner, Thursday-Monday 6 to 9, nightly in foliage. Tavern from
5, entrées $12.50 to $15.95. Bentleys Restaurant Entrepreneurs David Creech and Bill Deckelbaum Jr. started with a greenhouse and plant store in 1974, installed a soda fountain, expanded with a restaurant catering to every taste at every hour, added a specialty-foods shop, and then developed the colorful Waterman Place with retail stores and a fun, casual restaurant called FireStones with a wood-fired oven in a 100-year-old house along Route 4 in Quechee. The flagship of it all is the original Bentleys, a casual, engaging and often noisy spot at the prime corner in Woodstock. On several levels, close-together tables are set with small cane mats, Perrier bottles filled with flowers, and small lamps or tall candles in holders. Old floor lamps sport fringed shades, windows are framed by lace curtains, the plants are large potted palms, and walls are covered with English prints and an enormous bas-relief. The menu is interesting as well. For lunch, we enjoyed the specialty French tart, a hot puff pastry filled with vegetables in an egg and cheese custard, and a fluffy quiche with turkey, mushrooms and snow peas, both accompanied by side salads. From the dessert tray came a delicate chocolate mousse cake with layers of meringue, like a torte, served with the good Green Mountain coffee in clear glass cups. Appetizers, salads, sandwiches and light entrées such as sausage crespolini and cold sliced marinated flank steak make up half the dinner menu. The other side offers more hearty fare from maple-mustard chicken to filet mignon with béarnaise sauce. With options like these, it's little wonder that Bentleys is always bustling and crowded. (802) 457-3232. Entrées, $15.95 to $19.95.
Lunch. Monday-Saturday 11:30 to 3 (late lunch menu 3 to 5). Dinner
nightly, 5 to 9:30 (late dinner to 11).
Sunday brunch, 11 to 3. Material excerpted from Getaways for Gourmets in the Northeast, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth, copyright 2006, and from Inn Spots & Special Places in New England, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth, copyright 2004. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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