In 1953, it took three days for Mountain View Diners car No. 369 to travel from a New Jersey factory to Burlington. This June, it took the Farmhouse Group the same amount of time to transform the diner car from El Cortijo Taqueria into Burl’s Downtown Kitchenette.
With Burl’s, Farmhouse Group owner Jed Davis and his team have created an homage to the restaurant’s history — it was the Oasis Diner from 1954 to 2007 — while bringing Southern flair to Bank Street.
It’s a smart move, following both national dining trends and foot traffic in downtown Burlington. During the early part of its almost-15-year run, El Cortijo was “a bar as much as anything,” Davis, 50, said. The pandemic practically halted late-night dining in the Queen City. Later, a nearby entertainment venue shuttered for good — Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas, whose moviegoers often stopped at the taqueria for a postshow margarita.
People are eating earlier, and not just for early bird specials. Business Insider reported last week that breakfast sales in the U.S. reached $15.6 billion in 2025, up from $13.8 billion in 2019.
“Breakfast is increasingly the meal that meets the economic mood and cultural moment,” the story said.
Burl’s is the only one of the Farmhouse Group’s five Chittenden County restaurants to serve the morning meal. Though not open 24-7, like big-city diners of yore, it now offers breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days a week.
A diner also fits these belt-tightening times — figuratively, if not literally. The no-frills business model boomed during the Great Depression, when people were drawn to its low prices.
A diner fits these belt-tightening times — figuratively, if not literally.
Burl’s prices are higher than the 10 cents for coffee and 25 cents for a hamburger that the Oasis’ original owners, the Lines family, charged when their diner opened. But portions are large and deals are to be had, including daily drink specials such as $5 margaritas on Monday and $7.50 house cocktails on Wednesday.
The menu is predictable, and that’s a good thing. When El Cortijo opened on New Year’s Eve 2011, customers hoped to find something novel inside the historic metal car. In 2026, according to the National Restaurant Association’s annual culinary forecast, people are more likely to seek comfort and nostalgia.
Burl’s delivers with a big, double-sided menu. Diner dishes harking back to the Oasis share it with Southern-inspired options, including fried chicken and waffles, pimento cheese dip, gumbo, and vegetarian red beans and rice.
Davis’ wife, Noelle, hails from the South, and he’s spent a lot of time in New Orleans. The cuisine is underrepresented in Burlington, he noted, and the Farmhouse team didn’t want to infringe on the turf of other local breakfast spots. Farmhouse Group executive chef Kevin Sprouse is well versed in Southern fare. Now 43, he grew up in Virginia and North Carolina and worked at Southern restaurants before moving to Vermont in 2012.
“We thought, Let’s just let Kevin let it rip,” Davis said.
Sprouse worked for the Farmhouse Group for eight years, left for stints at Philo Ridge Farm in Charlotte and Burlington’s Original Skiff Fish + Oysters, and returned in October. He looked to his mom for advice as he developed the menu for Burl’s, he said. The pimento cheese is her recipe.
“I haven’t told her that it’s hers, but I will,” Sprouse said, chuckling. The fluffy spread comes with a pile of saltine crackers, just as a Southern mom would serve it.
On the line day-to-day is Burl’s chef, Christopher Cross, who spent five years at El Cortijo. He’s stretching the limits of the tiny kitchen to sling pancakes, patty melts — both beef and veggie — and baskets of country-fried Adams Turkey Farm chicken modeled after Popeyes’, which Davis considers “the gold standard.” (Other fried chicken on the menu isn’t local.)
Davis remembers eating at the Oasis when he was a twentysomething renting an apartment in the Old North End. These days, he hears stories from all eras inside the shiny diner, though most are from the tenure of Stratton “Stratty” Lines.
For most of its 53-year run, Lines’ Oasis served as both diner and political hub. Former U.S. senator Patrick Leahy was a regular; in the mid-1990s, he brought then-president Bill Clinton in for lunch. A history of the Oasis on the bottom of the Burl’s drink menu offers a quote from Leahy: “I could learn more in 20 minutes with Stratty than I could with any polls.”
The diner became Sadie Katz Delicatessen when the third generation of the Lines family sold it in 2007. But El Cortijo was the second-longest-running business to call it home. Closing it was tough, Davis acknowledged, especially as the news prompted a new batch of stories from regulars, such as a family of four who came every year and took a selfie out front.
“It really meant something to people, you know?” Davis said. He’s holding on to the El Cortijo brand but has no immediate plans for it.
His decision to hold on to the existing staff is one reason the transition from taqueria to diner happened so quickly, Davis explained. He didn’t want employees to lose shifts, so the doors were closed for only a few days after El Cortijo’s final fiesta.
The 1950s Streamline Moderne art-deco-style diner car is a historic building with a small footprint; the Burl’s team couldn’t have changed much even if they’d wanted to, Davis said. The biggest updates were new tables and booths to replace the originals, which had gotten “a little gnarly,” he said.
“It’s great to be able to say good morning,” said server Meredith Williamson of the new approach. The early hours offer an easy icebreaker: She asks every table if they want to start with a cup of coffee.
I said yes to coffee when I went in for a meal with a friend recently. We grabbed the only empty maroon booth — there are seven total, plus counter stools — and started forming a game plan. It was 11 a.m., and with the exception of pancakes and eggs Benedict, Burl’s breakfast menu keeps going all day. We did the kind of have-it-all ordering you can only do at diners, where the time of day is mostly irrelevant and you get whatever you’re in the mood for.
The very first thing on the menu caught my eye: an old-school grapefruit brûlée ($6). It arrived with a serrated grapefruit spoon, which I tapped on the glass-like caramelized top for a little diner ASMR. It shattered pleasingly when I got serious about digging in and was a refreshing, tart contrast to the rest of what I was about to eat.
We decided to split the pimento cheese ($8) and fried green tomatoes ($11.50), which shifted me from breakfast into brunch. The buttermilk-and-cornmeal-coated slices were thick, quickly fried, but not greasy or mushy. I dipped the first few into the accompanying tartar sauce, then ate the remaining tomatoes on their own, enjoying their high-summer flavor.
With all that to start, I opted for a couple of sides instead of a full sandwich or fry basket, and I’m glad I did. I was running out of room by the time I finished an ample bowl of grits ($4) — the richness was cut with kernels of corny sweetness — and a side of smoked-pork hash ($8.50), made with succulent house-smoked meat, potatoes and onions.
My dining companion opted for the lunch menu’s hot-honey chicken biscuit ($15) and deemed its warm, flaky vessel “a good biscuit for sandwiching.”
Breakfast has been busier than expected, Davis later told me, while dinner has been slow to take off. Burl’s cocktails will entice me back for the latter: hurricanes, Alabama slammers and other house drinks are just $11, while Sazeracs and other “fancy cocktails” are $15.
My second visit ended up being for takeout, when a last-minute meeting changed my plans for a leisurely tuna crunch melt ($16) at the counter. If you’re the kind of person who brings tuna to the office (me), be warned that the bottom slice of bread was soggy after my 10-minute walk. But that’s to be expected, and it would have been as golden and delicately toasted as the top slice if I’d eaten it on the spot.
The sandwich’s other textures were preserved: The potato chips inside were as crunchy as the sweet pickles, both contrasting with a heap of well-seasoned tuna salad. I dumped the bag of chips that came on the side into the remnants of tuna and pickles that had spilled out, creating a diner version of the ubiquitous “pile of chips” wine-bar snack.
Burl’s tuna melt encapsulates the restaurant itself: comforting and unexpected, retro and fresh, and a good reason to head to a Burlington landmark. I’m not sure Burl’s will reach the local-legend status of the Oasis, but I’ll happily eat those fried green tomatoes for the next 50 years. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Diner Times | With Burl’s Downtown Kitchenette, a Burlington diner is a diner once again”
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