Boule Bakery Team to Open Birches in St. Johnsbury

A cookie from Boule Bakery Credit: File: Suzanne Podhaizer

Boule Bakery has been a hot spot in St. Johnsbury since its opening in 2021; this spring, its owners will add a restaurant across the street.

Darrell and Katey McLaughlin will open Birches in mid- to late April at 397 Railroad Street, the former home of Kingdom Table, which closed permanently in early February. (Kingdom Taproom, the subterranean restaurant and beer destination from the same group of owners, remains open.)

“It’s a beautiful space, and it’s been the nice place to go in town for a long time,” Katey said of the street-level space where Kingdom Table opened in 2019. The McLaughlins plan to keep the “upscale yet approachable feel” they’ve created at Boule, she added.

Birches’ American- and French-influenced menu will include breakfast and lunch to start, the couple told Seven Days. All the breads for the new restaurant will come from Boule, including English muffins for eggs Benedict and sourdough waffles. The all-day menu will feature duck confit, salads, a few sandwiches, pasta and seafood, plus Bloody Marys, mimosas, Irish coffees and espresso drinks made with coffee from Roasted in West Burke.

The team will launch dinner — with similar dishes and “a nice steak,” Darrell said — when staffing allows.

“There are a lot of things we’ve wanted to add to the bakery that we don’t have space for,” said Darrell, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America. “This is a chance for me to do what I’m good at. Katey is the baker, and I’ve always been a chef.”

Daily operations won’t change at Boule, which expanded into a larger attached kitchen space in 2022 and has continued to grow “tremendously,” Katey said. “We’re busy, busy, busy.”