Zoe Hoerner-LeVell of Enosburg Falls’ Bumblebee Bistro is not your average early-career chef. She is unflappable and utterly consistent. Her from-scratch, farm-to-table comfort food is conceived, cooked and seasoned just right every time. You’d expect all of that from a culinary-degreed kitchen veteran, but Hoerner-LeVell is no mature master chef.
Bumblebee Bistro’s executive chef is a mere 20 years old, an age when most aspiring chefs are slogging through cooking school or relegated to prepping vegetables. She’s never cooked professionally anywhere other than the small, casual eatery her family opened in August 2023; she took over the kitchen six months later to produce palate-pleasing meals. As the Who’s “Pinball Wizard” wondered about another prodigy, what makes her so good?
What enables any chef to create a Reuben sandwich ($14) this good? Bumblebee’s colossus showcases lush, just-salty-and-fatty-enough corned beef, brined for five days in-house, on a par with Jewish delis in New York and Los Angeles — at half the price. On a brunch visit, I tried the corned beef skillet ($14.50), with cheddar, caramelized onions, two eggs and tot-like home fries. Unforgettable.
“I know as well as any pro how things should taste. My goal is to make them taste even better.” Zoe Hoerner-LeVell
A plate of fish and chips ($18) overflowed with crisp, beer-battered hunks of never-frozen cod imbued with sweet ocean flavor that’s rare in white fish. Like the cod, plentiful chips (“fries” on this side of the pond) were crunchy outside and tender within. I didn’t taste a better dish in a chip-shop crawl through England’s North Yorkshire.
When I conveyed compliments to the chef, the top toque emerged from the kitchen — only, she was wearing a baseball cap. It took a moment to grasp that the elfin young woman was Bumblebee Bistro’s head chef.
Quite a few diners react similarly the first time they meet her, Hoerner-LeVell said. “I reassure them I’ve been cooking seriously and creatively since I was 10, and 10 years’ experience is what a lot of skilled chefs have,” she said. “My culinary training is ongoing, as in every day. The fact is, I know as well as any pro how things should taste. My goal is to make them taste even better.”
The only ones who aren’t shocked are Hoerner-LeVell’s family.
“She grew up cooking as a one-and-done learner with uncanny kitchen sense,” recalled her mom, Heidi LeVell, 52, whose four kids’ free-range homeschooling syllabus included cooking. The family moved from Northern California farmland in 2017 “when the wildfires got out of hand,” Hoerner-LeVell said.
They settled in Franklin County’s East Berkshire, where LeVell, a serial entrepreneur, bought a long-shuttered, late 19th-century general store and ice cream shop. Her mission, accomplished with the help of the then-teenage Hoerner-LeVell, was to restore its original identity as “a small-town social hub with edible treats of all kinds.”
Barn Owl Bistro & Goods opened in November 2021, and the pair soon undertook a second project in nearby Enosburg Falls, launching Bumblebee Bistro in August 2023.
The lunch, dinner and weekend brunch destination is airy and high-ceilinged, all whitewash and wood. Vintage touches include 1930s-era luncheonette plates, lamps and silverware — every item thrifted. Classic folk-rock plays on the sound system, and graceful plants from Hoerner-LeVell’s side business, Plant Attic, green up the room.
Mother and daughter led the opening team as comanagers. Hoerner-LeVell’s younger sister, Merren, helped serve, and two established Vermont chefs ran the kitchen. But, LeVell said, they “didn’t have the passion that customers expect from a family-owned restaurant.” After six months, Hoerner-LeVell — still a teen — took over the kitchen, her way.
“We both knew she could do it and do it well,” LeVell said.
The young chef focused on what she calls “craveables.” The wide-ranging menu encompasses burgers, hot and cold sandwiches, mac and cheese, tacos, ramen, wings, salads, and belly-busting “mash bowls.” The bowls (from $13) boast a base of buttery mashed spuds piled with roasted vegetables, cheese and a choice of protein — fried chicken to meatballs — topped with ladles of gravy.
Half-pound burgers (from $12.75) are brawny and ineffably beefy, with topping combos ranging from barbecue sauce with a fried onion ring to caramelized onions, mushrooms and Swiss cheese. Satisfying sandwiches include the Gardener ($12.50), stacked high with veggies, hummus and goat cheese, and an aioli-slathered turkey-cheddar melt ($12.50) with house maple-bacon jam — “which improves nearly everything,” Hoerner-LeVell said.
Hefty wraps cradle fillings such as falafel and hummus ($12.75); the gyro ($13.75) is made with the traditional Greek blend of lamb and beef with garlicky tzatziki. Supersize salads are served untossed, the better to admire their fresh, abundant ingredients, such as hillocks of ham, turkey, bacon and cheddar in the chef’s salad ($16.25).
Crackly-crusted, creamy-cored goat cheese balls constitute an appetizer ($12 for eight) and are the marquee item in the crispy goat cheese salad ($16.25) with pickled onions and spiced pumpkin seeds. The contrast of the cheese balls’ salty, garlicky crust and smooth tang has proven popular: Hoerner-LeVell produces 600 weekly.
“My kitchen is my lab, where the ideas flow,” the chef said. She starts with a basic recipe and improvises, aiming for balanced yet distinct flavors and contrasting textures. Her riffs on comfort classics deftly deploy accents from other cuisines — a kick of chipotle, perhaps, or a bright, fresh herb.
Fine-tuning a dish in a professional kitchen usually entails tasting with a long-handled spoon. But making her culinary accomplishments even more remarkable is the fact that, frequently, Hoerner-LeVell can’t taste her dishes. Allergies to gluten and dairy, which emerged in her tween years, nix even a lick.
But, like a winemaker or perfumer, she has trained her olfactory sense such that “smelling something is as good as tasting it,” she claimed. “Even salt.” Guided by her nose, she can re-create flavor combinations she tasted pre-allergies. “Taste memory is like muscle memory,” she said.
Hoerner-LeVell recalled being 3 or 4 years old, stuffing juicy, ripe blackberries from a neighbor’s bush into her mouth. “I didn’t have the words for perfection, but I somehow knew that this was it,” she said.
The chef channels that memory into sourcing for Bumblebee’s seasonally propelled menu, which is locally provisioned “way beyond maple syrup and Cabot cheddar,” she said. Some ingredients come from just up Route 105, such as goat cheese from Enosburg Falls’ Boston Post Dairy and greenhouse-grown produce from Bakersfield’s Finn & Roots.
These days, things are buzzing at Bumblebee, where devoted customers come from all over northern Vermont and even southern Québec to pack its 32 seats. In January, LeVell and her daughter moved Barn Owl’s barista lounge, yards of penny candy jars and chocolate truffle displays next door to Bumblebee and connected them by way of a shared accessible entrance ramp.
The pair are working on adding vintage stools for seating at the bistro’s bar, where the maple-chipotle Bloody Mary ($12.50) starts with freshly juiced house-roasted tomatoes. It contains neither gluten nor dairy, but the executive chef hasn’t tasted it. She’s under 21.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Homegrown Honey | Franklin County is abuzz over Bumblebee Bistro’s gifted young chef”
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2025.
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