When I landed on a pair of dining destinations 70 miles apart to feature in Seven Days’ Winter Preview Issue, I did not anticipate they’d have much in common beyond their ski-town settings. But I soon learned that Homestyle Restaurant in Ludlow and Mad River Barn in Waitsfield share more than proximity to mountains and the housemade ricotta cavatelli on their menus.
Both establishments are helmed by married native Vermonters — their chef and general manager — who credit deep local ties for their commitment to in-state sourcing.
“We are very locally driven because of our Vermont roots,” said Mad River Barn executive chef Sam D’Avignon. He hails originally from the Middlebury area and works with his wife, Mad River Valley local Adrienne Cady.
Green Mountain childhoods fostered a love of winter sports that helped root all four hospitality pros in mountain towns. Between them, they check off downhill skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, ice hockey and snowshoeing.
Homestyle Restaurant’s executive chef and co-owner, Christian Mayo, can’t remember a time he wasn’t bombing down the trails at Sugarbush Resort near his Warren hometown. His wife, Erin Kirk-Elkin, was a Rutland High School cross-country ski champion. Mayo said the slopeside location helped draw him to work in Ludlow. “I grew up in that lifestyle, and I really like it,” he said.
It struck me as a funny coincidence that Mayo and Mad River Barn’s Cady both grew up in the Mad River Valley. When I mentioned the former’s hometown to the latter, I discovered an even less expected connection.
Was it Christian Mayo, by any chance? Cady asked. “His mom is married to my dad, so we’re technically step-siblings.”
Everyone involved was gobsmacked by the fluke — but we probably shouldn’t have been. Beyond our shared enthusiasm for powder days and local farmers, Vermont can feel like one big extended family.
Home Away From Home
Homestyle Restaurant, 119 Main St., Ludlow, 802-975-0030
Homestyle Restaurant’s chef and co-owner caught the culinary bug almost as early as he took to the Sugarbush ski slopes, rising from dish pit to cooking line. “I just like serving people good food and hearing their reactions,” Mayo, 38, said.
It was meant to be, he quipped, given that his surname is spelled “just like the condiment.”
In 2017, Mayo was cooking in Rutland when he was offered the sous chef job at what was then called Homestyle Hostel. At the time, the warmly elegant 19th-century home with its original fireplaces, wood trim and wraparound porch offered overnight rooms along with meals. Mayo jumped at the chance to cook in a ski town like the one where he’d grown up.
Last year, Homestyle’s original owners, Eliza Greene and Justin Hyjek, decided to sell the business, which has operated solely as a restaurant since the pandemic. Mayo partnered with longtime customers and part-time Ludlow residents Allison and Josh Schultz to buy it. While the chef’s wife, Kirk-Elkin, 46, serves as general manager, Allison works behind the scenes on financials and social media.
Mayo continues to run the kitchen largely as he has since 2021, putting his spin on global comfort-food classics. “It’s all invented in his head with inspiration from things he sees,” his wife said.
Homestyle mainstays include glossy house-baked Parker House rolls ($10), sweetened with local honey and served with spicy gochujang butter; mussels with white wine, fennel and cherry tomatoes ($28); and crunchy chicken schnitzel served over a kale Caesar ($40).
Other menu staples vary on the chef’s whim. Mayo’s current twist on the popular potato smashers ($24) embellishes small, crispy potatoes with swirls of creamy French onion dip, caramelized onions, melted cheese and housemade chile-garlic oil flavored with lemon zest. It all adds up to hearty après-ski nourishment.
The drink menu, created by bartenders Mary Goggin and Kyle Hermansky, more than meets other après-ski needs. During an October visit, my husband and I were equally delighted by the tart, spritzy zero-proof Birds Aren’t Real ($13) and the egg white-frothed, Japanese whisky-based Tokyo Drift ($18), made with Mayo’s inspired addition of toasted-rice syrup.
To nibble with our cocktails, we shared the ricotta toast ($19), crowned with soft, sweet housemade cheese, woodsy mushrooms and a pop of bright-green peas; plus a generous side of roasted beets and whipped local feta ($14) sprinkled with za’atar spice. Both were garnished with peppery nasturtium blooms.
The toast has since rotated off the seasonal menu. Similarly, our main, the tender housemade ricotta cavatelli pasta ($37), will put on some winter heft, the chef said, with a braised local-pork sauce probably replacing Vermont Salumi sausage, summer squash and pesto. We also tried the halibut cheek special ($38). The moist nuggets of warm fish were served with a cool, crisp Asian slaw, speckled with unexpected roasted celery root and parsnip cubes, and topped with fried shallots.
For a sweet finale, the fluffy pumpkin-spice cheesecake ($13) with mascarpone whipped cream and crunchy pepita brittle reminded me how delicious the PSL combo can be, despite relentless fall hype for all things pumpkin spice latte-flavored.
It was Mayo’s final cheesecake variation of the year, he said, but he has a worthy cold-weather substitute in the wings: a warm brown butter-chocolate chip skillet cookie topped with Island Homemade Ice Cream from Williston ($15).
Let the snow fly.
Winter Welcome
Mad River Barn, 2849 Mill Brook Rd., Waitsfield, 802-496-3310. The pub reopens on December 11 and the downstairs dining room on December 18.
On October 22, almost everyone who entered the cozy, pine-walled pub at Mad River Barn seemed to know each other. Hugs frequently accompanied greetings, and customers updated servers on their lives as they put in orders for Vermont brews, maple old-fashioneds, smash burgers and wings. It felt like a goodbye party, and it was — though only for about six weeks.
That Thursday evening was Mad River Barn’s final pub night before a well-deserved stick-season break. The 18-room Waitsfield inn hosts weddings every summer and fall weekend through Halloween, reserving public food and drink service for Thursday nights.
Winter is different.
The 80-seat pub reopens on December 11 for five nights a week through the beginning of April. Starting on December 18, a downstairs dining room — used for private events the rest of the year — will offer reservation-only seating Friday and Saturday evenings, with some additional days during peak holidays.
The annual seasonal shift marks a change of pace for Cady, 42, and D’Avignon, 43. She’s worked at the inn for 13 years and became general manager in 2021, the same year her husband came on board as executive chef. Andrew Lynds opened the inn 14 years ago and has co-owned the business with David Douchkoff since 2021.
Winter is a different kind of busy from summer for Cady and D’Avignon, who try to make time for snowboarding, skiing and snowshoeing with their dogs. Cady started skiing at Mad River Glen “as soon as I could walk,” she recalled. Her husband, a hockey player, picked up the sport when they began dating 13 years ago.
The chef, who has worked in Boston restaurants and at Vermont’s Mad Taco group and the now-shuttered Common Man in Warren, runs one winter menu for the pub and dining room. It builds on his smaller summer and fall Thursday offering and is informed by his wedding catering. But mostly, D’Avignon said, “what local farms have will dictate my menu.”
On my late-October visit, I started with the fresh and crunchy fall salad ($18), featuring Bear Roots Farm greens from Williamstown, roasted butternut squash and beets, Vermont goat cheese, and candied pepitas with a bright cider vinaigrette. When the kitchen reopens in December, D’Avignon said, his salads might include honey-braised carrots and beets three ways with pickled radishes; and grilled chicories with roasted stone fruit, white balsamic vinaigrette and von Trapp Farmstead Mad River blue cheese from down the road.
On the “shares and smalls” part of the winter menu, the creamy butternut squash bisque ($12) from fall will rotate with selections such as parsnip soup garnished with pickled turmeric cauliflower and shaved beets. Cady said macaroni and cheese from her mother-in-law’s recipe is a perennial fave.
In a different realm, D’Avignon said he always offers a seafood appetizer, such as a crab cake or a bluefin tuna crudo, the latter with avocado, miso aioli, fried wontons and soy pearls.
I stuck closer to home when I ordered the meatloaf sandwich ($24). The seasoned blend of Neill Farm beef and pork raised in Waitsfield was sandwiched with pickled red onions, cheddar and bacon on a roll from Hyde Park’s Two Sons Bakehouse. The savory flavor bomb came with a tangy pile of housemade pickles, but I wished for a heartier roll to stand up to the hefty filling.
The meatloaf mix will also feature on the winter menu in meatballs, D’Avignon said, perhaps served with some of the kitchen’s fresh pastas, which all come with a slice of house-baked sourdough or focaccia.
On the veggie side, the chef said, the winter menu will include his crowd-pleasing eggplant katsu sandwich of crisp fried slices, Maplebrook Farm burrata from North Bennington, arugula, balsamic-braised onions and miso aioli.
I saw several orders of cast-iron-skillet chicken ($34) being ferried to nearby tables. D’Avignon said the boned-out breast and thigh are cooked in a very hot pan until the skin becomes “glass-crispy” and served with crème fraîche-enriched potato purée, seasonal local vegetables and a maple jus reduction. A thick Neill Farm bone-in pork chop, served with parsnip purée and red wine-braised cabbage, is another winter staple.
The couple said they expect higher ingredient costs to result in small price increases when they reopen. Sandwiches and burgers range from $20 to $24 and mains from $36 to $42.
It being October, pumpkin was also on the dessert menu in the form of a pumpkin whoopie pie ($8) with a not-too-sweet buttercream and cream cheese filling. Winter might bring a chocolate version with mint filling and this year’s new addition of housemade ice cream, D’Avignon said.
As I headed out, around 6:30 p.m., local musician Madigan Linnane had launched into her first set, a father and son had claimed the foosball table, and friends continued to greet each other with gusto in the bar area.
Like pub night, they’d all be back. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Hometown Hosts | At Ludlow’s Homestyle Restaurant and Waitsfield’s Mad River Barn, Vermont is on the table”
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