A picnic can be many things, from a roadside sandwich scarfed in the back of your car to an elaborate endeavor with a wicker basket, checkered blanket, silverware and maybe wine. I love them all.
Eating outside has its challenges, of course, including bugs, inclement weather, uneven ground and bears. (Thanks for that fear, Yogi and Boo-Boo.) But the views are often worth the trouble, especially if you pack the essentials.
As we waited for trails to dry out and lakes to warm up, the Seven Days food team traversed Vermont from Alburgh to Stratton, checking out new and newly reimagined cafés, bakeries, bodegas and general stores stocked with pastries, sandwiches and sweets to pack in your basket. We also got local intel on where to picnic nearby.
A picnic is enjoying really good food somewhere outside, ideally with good company.
MATT ALLEN
Elmore Store manager Matt Allen summed it up best: “A picnic is enjoying really good food somewhere outside, ideally with good company.”
“A solo picnic is good, too,” he added.
Whichever you choose, don’t forget the bug spray and bottle opener — and be sure to pack out what you pack in.
Gourmet Grab-and-Go
Bondville Bodega, 59 Route 30, Bondville, 802-787-3584
When I lived in New York City, bodegas were lifesavers. Forget milk? Bodega. Need a breakfast sandwich? Bodega. Want to pet a snarky cat? Bodega. The tiny convenience stores are always nearby, full of whatever’s missing from your life.
Bondville Bodega doesn’t have a cat. But if you’re near Stratton Mountain Resort in southern Vermont, the new grab-and-go spot from the team behind the Crooked Ram in Manchester has breakfast, lunch, pastries, prepared foods, pantry staples and wine — everything you should be eating and drinking by a river. This summer, the bodega will add a back deck overlooking the Winhall River and picnic tables right on its banks, making it especially convenient to do so.
The market, deli and café launched in February, catching the end of Stratton’s ski season. Its opening meant the end of coffee and pastry service at the Crooked Ram, which is now focused on dinner in its elegant dining room until the more casual Yard opens out back on June 20.
Moving Alli Ford’s excellent laminated pastries to the new bodega wasn’t an easy decision, owner Peter Campbell said. In the past three years, the Ram’s morning offerings had developed a regular following — and the 15-mile drive up the mountain isn’t one most folks make for a croissant, at least not daily.
But a lot of the team lives up near Stratton, Campbell, 44, said, and there’s a whole new community there that hadn’t really been to the Ram. More than anything, a “little sister” biz with less overhead, quick service and affordable offerings is a response to rising costs, staffing challenges and unpredictable traffic in Manchester, he said.
I knew Ford’s pastries were good, but my late-April lunch visit was the first time I’d tried the lead pastry chef and kitchen manager’s breads. They’re well deployed, from sausage-egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwiches on soft Portuguese rolls to house-smoked brisket on perfectly swirled marble rye. (Tiara Adorno — the Crooked Ram’s chef who recently earned a James Beard Award semifinalist nod — collaborates on menu ideas.)
“We’re just trying to do simple sandwiches but really take care of the ingredients,” Campbell said. “It’s pretty easy to make a good sandwich with what’s around us.”
I ordered one of the simplest sandwiches there is: a jambon-beurre ($12), a picnic classic. Bondville Bodega’s version zhuzhes up the French combo of ham, butter and crusty baguette with mustard, rosemary butter and cheddar joining the ham.
I paired it with a container of bright and crunchy broccoli slaw ($8) and a celery-lovage-cardamom soda ($6) from Bristol’s Savouré. And because Bondville Bodega’s wine selection is full of the fun natural bottles I’ve come to expect from the Crooked Ram, which started as a bottle shop in 2017, I also picked the appropriately summery Lemonade rosé ($28) from Oregon’s Day Wines.
It was 50 degrees and raining when I later asked Campbell to recommend a picnic spot, but he gamely suggested the Stratton snowmaking pond, where locals swim, paddle and walk their dogs in the resort’s offseason. Before the Crooked Ram was a full-scale restaurant, it was known for its cheese and charcuterie boards. Those will make an appearance at the bodega this summer, Campbell said, boxed up and ready to hit the slopes.
Give a Kid a Cookie
The Elmore Store, 1208 Route 12, Elmore, 802-888-2296
When my kids were little, I often incentivized them (OK, fine, bribed them) with a sweet reward to hike just a little bit farther. I cannot imagine a better motivator than the recently upgraded chocolate chip cookie from the Elmore Store.
The fully renovated general store reopened last July under new operators, Becca and Tim Lindenmeyr, and has gradually added housemade deli and bakery items. The crew, headed by lead cook Wren Martin, started making a brown butter chocolate chip cookie using a recipe refined by the Lindenmeyrs’ oldest daughter, Elsa.
Earlier this month, those cookies got even better when Phineas Marvin, the 15-year-old son of Blair Marvin and Andrew Heyn of Elmore Mountain Bread, signed up to make the dough in the family’s bakery with its freshly milled, Vermont-grown flour from Charlotte’s Nitty Gritty Grain.
The cookies ($3) are then baked daily at the store. They are thick and chewy with crispy edges, rich with buttery toasted flavor, and punctuated with bittersweet chocolate chips and crunchy sea salt. The “ultimate decadent” cookie — in the words of Elmore Store manager Matt Allen — provides ample incentive to hike through Elmore State Park on the Fire Tower or Balancing Rock trails.
The Elmore Store also has many pre-cookie picnic options. Coolers and shelves hold an array of local ingredients for a do-it-yourself spread of veggies, cheeses, cured meats and bread. The grab-and-go section has select premade sandwiches (around $12), potato and egg salads (from $4.25), and bowls, such as rice noodles with chile crisp-seasoned pork and sesame cabbage ($12).
On a recent trip, my husband and I managed an Elmore Store twofer. Our mud-season mountain wanderings were well fueled by a mid-hike picnic lunch of the Worcester Range Reuben ($13), with corned beef, Pitchfork Pickle kraut and Cabot Swiss on Elmore Mountain Bread’s focaccia-meets-hoagie roll “foagie”; and the Maple Firebird ($12), featuring smoked local chicken, chipotle mayo, maple slaw and cheddar on the same bakery’s sandwich bread. (West Meadow Farm Bakery’s gluten-free bread from Essex is available for an extra $2.)
The sandwiches were so substantial that, despite a good five miles of traipsing through the woods, we had barely worked up an appetite for a post-hike seasonal ramp pesto, kale and onion cream pizza ($28) on an Elmore Mountain Bread crust. But we each managed a couple of delicious slices on the store’s expanded back deck overlooking the lake, one of my favorite Vermont waterside eating spots.
Not everyone would consider pizza picnic fare, but store manager Allen begs to disagree. “I would take a pizza to the beach,” he said.
The 28-year-old grew up in neighboring Wolcott, and beyond the nearby lake beach and state park, his local picnic destination recs include the Vermont River Conservancy’s universally accessible North Branch Cascades Trail, about a 10-minute drive from the store, and the paddler-accessible Picnic Island at the Green River Reservoir, about 20 minutes away.
When we visited, the Elmore Store’s creemee window — named Chilly Jilly’s in honor of Tim Lindenmeyr’s late mother, Jill, a longtime Elmore resident — was not yet open. It opened on May 8 and, new this season, Allen said, will offer a chocolate chip cookie creemee sundae (from $7) with housemade dark chocolate or salted caramel sauce.
That sounds even more motivating than a chocolate chip cookie.
Weston Wishes
The Green Cat, 613 Main St., Weston, 802-824-5001
There’s a lot of word art on the walls of the Green Cat in Weston, but one phrase stands out: Qui n’aime pas le poulet rôti?
Translated: Who doesn’t love roast chicken?
The phrase was a favorite of Peter Sharp, the founder of the Weston luxury hotel, of which the Green Cat is the newest part. The bakery and café “was Peter’s dream,” executive pastry chef Mary Pisanelli said.
“He wanted to have it fresh and French-inspired — like you would see in Paris — but with New York style,” she continued. “Familiar yet upscale.”
The Green Cat opened on April 10, a few months after Sharp died unexpectedly in January at age 69. The hotel is now run remotely by two of his children, Pisanelli said. From a retail display of French mustard and jam to piles of laminated pastries and delicate desserts, the café’s talented team has certainly brought Sharp’s vision to life.
Rotisserie chickens ($19), unsurprisingly, are a hot ticket. I added my name to the preorder list when I arrived at 10 a.m. on a Friday and snagged the final slot. They wouldn’t be ready until 11 a.m., so I ordered breakfasty items and a cold-brew ($5), made with beans from Burlington’s Brio Coffeeworks, to tide me over. The Fat Cat ($6), stuffed with Boursin cheese, sautéed spinach and seared tomatoes, was a fun take on a bialy — a bagel-adjacent bread that’s hard to find in Vermont.
The impressive amount of sweet and savory croissants, kouign amanns, and other laminated pastries shows off Pisanelli’s classical training. The Johnson & Wales University graduate joined the Weston a year ago, having previously worked at large four- and five-star hotels around the country.
She and her small team of bakers make everything from scratch, and they’re looking forward to berries and other produce that will soon come from the Weston’s own farm down the road. There, farm manager Briana Grosodonia has just under an acre in production, where she grows herbs, greens, root vegetables and greenhouse tomatoes that were already fist-size in late April.
Grosodonia works closely with Pisanelli and executive chef Brett Combs, who then serves the produce in bistro salads, Brussels sprout Caesars and elegant entrées at the Left Bank, the hotel’s on-site restaurant. The produce is also sold from the retail cooler at the Green Cat.
Weston itself comes to life in the warmer months, with tourists headed to the Vermont Country Store or locals attending Weston Theater Company’s summer season. Both Pisanelli and Combs moved to the area from out of state to work at the hotel right in the center of it all. But they’ve already discovered Lowell Lake State Park in Londonderry and Emerald Lake State Park in Dorset, both picturesque spots for an outdoor meal.
I ended up with two picnics from the Green Cat: flaky pain au raisin ($6) and chocolate ($6) and strawberry ($7) croissants with my coffee on the hotel’s lawn across the street, and the succulent roast chicken a couple of hours later on my lawn at home, which my family and I devoured along with a leaf-shaped loaf of oregano and kalamata olive fougasse ($9). There’s no seating at the café yet — a deck is being built — but some meals are just meant to have on the go.
Worth a Stop
The Main Stop, 113 S. Main St., Alburgh, 802-796-3596
As a customer ordered a late-morning coffee and doughnut on a recent Thursday at the Main Stop in Alburgh, he told the cashier that he’d likely stick around for lunch while his car was at a nearby auto shop. “Oh, I’m Tony’s aunt,” Carlene Letourneau said from behind the counter, referring to the mechanic-owner.
Letourneau is also the aunt of Kara Babic, who opened the Main Stop with her husband, Daniel, last October.
In the small town at the top of the Champlain Islands, you don’t have to look far to find a family connection. You’re also never too far from a state park or other scenic picnic spot where you can chomp into the Main Stop’s hefty sandwiches within view of Lake Champlain.
Babic, 29, grew up working for Letourneau, co-owner of another worthy island sandwich destination, Hero’s Welcome in North Hero, for about 20 years. Just over a year ago, Babic hatched a catering business specializing in charcuterie and grazing boards, which quickly took off. She started looking for a commercial kitchen and discovered that the gas station-turned-restaurant on her hometown’s main street needed a new tenant.
Babic didn’t intend to open a restaurant. She has a full summer catering calendar, Daniel is launching his own electrician business, and the couple have a 4-year-old. “What’s one more thing?” Babic said with a laugh. Having family around to help makes all the difference, she added.
At her aunt’s suggestion, I drove about 10 minutes to the century-old Saint Anne’s Shrine, where picnic tables, expansive green lawns and a beach welcome those who flock there for reasons spiritual or not. On a chilly but sunny late-spring day, I was the only one there and settled on a table between the peaceful lake and gleaming statue of our Lady of Lourdes.
I alternated bites of the Baker Street ($10.99), piled with turkey, bacon, cheddar and veggies, and the Blair Road ($9.99), the deli’s version of an Italian, loaded with banana peppers and lashed with oil-and-vinegar dressing. Stacked on freshly baked 10-inch sub rolls, the generous sandwiches easily serve two.
They can be ordered on bread or in a wrap, but I highly recommend the light, fluffy rolls, which are baked every morning. Babic said she expects the deli to churn through 1,200 to 1,500 weekly during peak tourist season — and cautions that it may sometimes run out.
The lengthy menu of sandwiches — all named for island roads — includes simpler choices such as grilled cheese ($4.99) and housemade tuna salad ($10.99). Breakfast sammies are served 7 to 11 a.m.
Main Stop regular and local school employee Julian Cunningham, a breakfast-for-lunch guy, squeaked in under the wire on May 7. His go-to is the Lake Street ($9.99) with eggs, bacon, sausage, hash brown and maple syrup in a wrap. “It tastes like it’s made at home,” Cunningham said.
The Main Stop’s bakers make freshly fried doughnuts (from $1.65) from old-fashioned to maple-filled, as well as pastries and sturdy cookies ($2.29), such as peanut butter, oatmeal raisin and Snickers. Coolers hold housemade deviled eggs (four halves for $3.99), pasta salad (from $2.99), and Babic’s grazing boxes of meats, cheeses, fruits, veggies and sweets (from $15).
If your four-legged best friend tags along for the picnic, the Main Stop stocks locally made Dig ’Em dog treats (from 50 cents). Her family’s black Lab loves them, Babic said.
As for her son, his favorite Main Stop menu item is the Mini Main Meal ($12.99): eight chicken nuggets, fries, a drink and a sweet treat. Packed in a neat little box, Babic said, it makes a perfect picnic.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Picnic Time | Four new spots for sandwiches and provisions to fuel outdoor adventures”
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