Leslie McCrorey Wells has had a jam-packed spring. Not only did she finally open the long-awaited, Italian-themed Alimentari Café & Provisions in downtown Burlington, but the James Beard Foundation honored Wells, the co-owner of Burlington’s Pizzeria Verità, Trattoria Delia and Sotto Enoteca, with a semifinalist nod for its national Outstanding Restaurateur award.
On top of all of that, Wells added in a recent interview, “It was a really hard lambing season” on the Grand Isle farm she owns with her life partner and Pizzeria Verità general manager, Rick Hubbart.
As if juggling three restaurants and a flock of 30 sheep were not enough, Wells has been pulling long days at Alimentari since it opened on April 1 at 196 Saint Paul Street, in the former Café Saint Paul space — though she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Bowls of fat meatballs, sundried-tomato pasta salad and fresh housemade mozzarella balls fill one of the storefront’s many coolers. The cozy seating area’s wall of shelves is stacked high with a global but Italian-leaning mix of ingredients, such as bouquets of dried oregano, preserved golden cherry tomatoes and three different anchovy products. Alimentari also offers fresh pastries, espresso drinks and an all-day sandwich menu. These can all be ordered to go or enjoyed on-site.
Wells, 64, co-owns her other three restaurants on the same street. But Alimentari, a long-simmering pet project, is hers alone. Unlike those evening destinations, café hours run 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., which diversifies her business portfolio and shifts her work schedule in a desirable way, she said.
“I love to get up and do things in the morning,” Wells said. “I like the energy around it.”
On a recent Thursday, Wells had baked tender, lightly sweet corn muffins with sheep’s milk yogurt ($3.95). A few days later, she made moist, crumbly chocolate chip-strawberry scones ($3.95) and was happily plotting a batch of pistachio biscotti dipped in dark chocolate.
The café and market borrows some items from its older siblings: Pizzeria Verità’s popular housemade gluten-free pizza dough will be stocked in the freezer case alongside its frozen regular pizzas. Trattoria Delia’s excellently balanced pomodoro sauce is sold by the jar and with the to-go meatballs. The latter restaurant’s pastry chef, Raya Foldi, will start making its classic tiramisu and some other desserts for the grab-and-go cooler.
But the sandwich menu is Alimentari’s own.
Team member John Hayes and his colleague Dan Cervantes, who was chef at Pizzeria Verità for more than a decade, built the menu by riffing on Italian standards through many recipe trials and tweaking. “We ate a lot of sandwiches,” Hayes, 29, said with a chuckle.
The menu starts with a trio of breakfast options served from 8 to 11 a.m. The crisp fried mortadella with a soft-yolked fried egg, unctuously melty blend of Jasper Hill Farm cheese and pistachio aioli on pillowy, fresh-baked focaccia ($11) was a savory, oozy delight.
The current roster of eight all-day sandwich choices ranges from the Milanese, featuring a substantial fried chicken cutlet layered with housemade mozzarella, arugula and sundried tomato aioli ($13) to porchetta stacked with tender morsels of herby house-roasted pork, housemade pickled giardiniera, arugula and Calabrian pepper aioli ($12). Both delivered vibrant flavor, abundant crunch and rewarding chew.
Hayes said he’s a big fan of both sandwiches. When he and Cervantes tried the final iteration of the porchetta — for which the pork is first cured with a sugar-salt rub and then roasted rolled up with rosemary, garlic, red pepper and lemon zest — they both dug in with such gusto, Hayes recalled, “I don’t think we said a word to each other.”
The pair are similarly “obsessed,” Hayes said, with the Milanese. They are apparently not alone, as it was sold out on my first visit. “It’s like a nostalgic food, like an adult chicken nugget,” Hayes posited. (Pro tip: Ask for a small side of pomodoro to dip it in.)
But if Hayes had to pick a favorite, he said it would be the Bella mortadella ($12), in which Taleggio cheese, roasted red peppers and pistachio aioli embellish a pile of velvety, thinly sliced mortadella. The traditional Italian cured and processed pork is distantly related to another nostalgic American childhood touchstone. As the fourth core Alimentari team member, Pat Hawley, aptly said, “It’s the Cadillac of bologna.”
Like Cervantes, Hawley worked previously at Verità. Hayes is a new hire for the group. Locals may recognize him from previous Burlington stints behind the bar at Hen of the Wood and May Day, or the cheese counter at the now-closed Dedalus.
Many Alimentari sandwich ingredients — focaccia, meats, cheeses and giardiniera — can also be bought by the slice or pound to take home. Hayes is responsible for curating the case full of regional and European cured meats and cheeses that are sliced or cut to order for customers. He also stocks the wall of local and imported ingredients, many of which hail from Italy.
As its team ramps up, Alimentari will add Roman-style square pizzas, host private dinners and carry more locally grown ingredients. Those will include basil, eggplant and tomatoes grown by Hubbart at his and Wells’ Lovestock Farm.
Customers may also get to taste the farm-sourced results of another of Wells’ long-simmering dreams. Now that lambing is over, milking season is here. She’s close to getting certified to sell her sheep’s milk, which she’d love to make into yogurt.
It’s a good thing Wells is a morning person. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Ciao Down | At Trattoria Delia and Pizzeria Verità’s new sibling, Alimentari, well-made Italian sandwiches shine”
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