England may have a good-luck charm for this summer’s FIFA World Cup: Since Joseph Fox opened the Slide In Pub in Shelburne in late March, the teams he and his close friends support have all won long-awaited championships.
Fox, 29, grew up in the United Kingdom and is a fan of Arsenal Football Club. The North London team took home the English Premier League title in May after a 22-year drought. His buddies are New York Knicks and Carolina Hurricanes followers; those teams won the NBA Finals and the NHL’s Stanley Cup this month, a day apart, after 53 and 20 years, respectively.
“It’s just nuts,” Fox said, beaming and showing off his new cannon tattoo commemorating Arsenal’s win.
On June 17, as England won its first World Cup match against Croatia 4-2, the room might have had the highest concentration of English accents in the state. There were roughly 50 England fans around the bar, many wearing jerseys as they sipped beers and ate sliders.
No matter which team you’re rooting for, the pub billed as “Vermont’s first-ever soccer bar” is a good place to watch. The Slide In has 10 TVs, the smallest of which are 65 inches. Fox and his staff will show every single World Cup match, and business hours are currently based around the cup’s schedule, though they average 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. otherwise.
It seems as though every bar and restaurant with a TV — or a newly purchased projector — is showing World Cup matches this summer. Rí Rá Irish Pub on Church Street in Burlington is screening all the games and has long held the mantle as the go-to spot for soccer fans outside the once-every-four-years tournament. The Slide In’s “first-ever” claim is indicative of Fox’s soccer-first focus.
A sports bar doesn’t have to be about the food, and it’s often an afterthought. The Slide In’s quick-service menu of sliders and fries and other fried things isn’t. It’s exactly what you want to be eating while drinking a beer and watching a match. And the not-quite-full-size burgers and fried chicken sandwiches are great when that match is between meals — like at 3 p.m., the start time of the U.S.-Australia match last Friday.
The menu shows some British influence in the form of fried-fish sliders slathered in curry sauce. “But you can’t go wrong with American food,” Fox said.
The Slide In’s culinary MO is “quick, easy, with high flavor,” he continued. The six- to eight-bite sliders are sized to share, and they range from classic smashed beef to Buffalo chicken to a Spicy Nutcase, a beef patty topped with hot-chile jelly, crunchy peanut butter and pickles. Those pickles are made in-house, as are all of the pub’s sauces, dressings, spice mixes, garlic butter, pickled onions and pickled jalapeños.
Drinks are meant to be unfussy, too, Fox said. The Slide In serves several local beers and a cider on draft, as well as bottles and cans of big-name brands — including Guinness, Heineken and Budweiser — and four house wines. The pub doesn’t have a full bar, but it offers canned cocktails and hard seltzers.
When you’re watching a game, you don’t want to be waiting for a drink.
Joseph fox
“When you’re watching a game, you don’t want to be waiting for a drink,” Fox said. “You want to be cheers-ing on every goal that goes in, every good move that’s happened.”
Fox started in the restaurant industry at a young age. His first job was dishwashing and running drinks at a pub at age 13. His family is in the biz, and his grandfather owns a wedding venue and golf course.
“But I never wanted to be in his shadow,” Fox said. “He gave me the guidance to do something like this, but I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to go to America and do it on my own.’”
He moved to Vermont nine years ago, playing soccer for a year and a half at Vermont State University-Johnson. Fox then worked and traveled in 42 states, including stints at a luxury private jet company and as a hotel and restaurant consultant. He went back to his hometown of Essex — the one in the UK — to start a food truck in 2024. When he came back to Burlington, Fox took over the kitchen at the Saint John’s Club in the South End, where he still sells food for members.
Good luck or not, Fox certainly has the charm of an old-fashioned publican, greeting customers as they walk in the door and introducing himself to everyone in the room. His unassuming bar in the Tenneybrook Square shopping plaza could be mistaken for a strip club from the outside — maybe it’s the hot pink sign or the innuendo in the name. (“Slide In” is a dual reference to slide tackles in soccer and the sliders on its menu.) But inside, it has a family-friendly vibe more reminiscent of its predecessor, La Villa Bistro & Pizzeria, which closed in 2021.
During the England-Croatia match, the crowd ranged from toddlers to old-timers. Families watched together, along with a few Vermont Green players who were sticking to water between matches of their own.
My husband and toddler walked in as England captain Harry Kane stepped up to take a penalty kick, 10 minutes after kickoff. Kane stuttered, and Croatia’s keeper, Dominik Livaković, made the save. The entire room groaned. But Livaković had moved off his goal line early, and the ref called for a retake.
The second time, Kane buried it.
I asked Fox if it’s hard to root for the striker, as an Arsenal fan. (Kane is the all-time top goal scorer for Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal’s most hated rival.)
“I love Harry Kane,” Fox said, the crowd still cheering.
Fox has that sort of mentality: The bar’s welcoming for fans of Tottenham or Liverpool or whomever. More than anything, he’s a fan of the sport. And he’ll put on baseball, golf or whatever else a customer requests. The bar has a commercial streaming license, and if Fox can find it, he’ll play it. He’s opened early on a few occasions to accommodate European match times.
As the first half of England’s World Cup match progressed, the Slide In’s kitchen got busy. Baskets of sliders and fries flew out, each passing under a yellow and blue “Believe” sign taped up as jauntily as it is in the hit soccer comedy-drama “Ted Lasso.”
My husband went with a classic order: the smashed beef slider and a Buff My Chick ($18 for two). We got fries ($7) for our toddler, which were chunky, fluffy and nicely seasoned.
I chose “messy box” orders of Willem’s Tackle ($14) and the Vermont Green Bean ($14). Instead of a bun, the sliders’ ingredients were spread around over a basket of fries. (Rice and salad bowl options are also available.)
If you’re worried about a slider being too skimpy, the messy box is the way to go. The crispy fried fish pieces of the Willem’s Tackle were an ample catch, and the whole pile was slathered in rich curry sauce — not spicy, but a good kick of flavor. The veggie option had chunks of falafel and breaded fried portobello mushrooms, housemade pickled onions for zing, a handful of greens and a nice tzatziki to pull it all together. Both paired perfectly with the Switchback Ale ($7.50) I was sipping.
As of June 17, Giovanni Gomes had already been to the Slide In for seven World Cup matches. He was keeping track with stamps on his World Cup Passport, the pub’s way of rewarding dedicated regulars. After 10, he’ll get a free slider. Participants get a free meal up to $40 after 20 stamps, a free meal up to $75 after 30 and a free soccer jersey after 40 for the first 10 people to reach that milestone. The first five fans to watch 50 matches at the Slide In get a meal worth $150 and a free lifetime mug membership.
“I hope I get at least the jersey,” Gomes said, sipping a soda solo at the bar. The 18-year-old is from Brazil but had donned an England shirt for the day. A lifelong soccer fan, he said he didn’t expect Vermont to have a place like this to watch.
“Americans don’t really have fame for liking soccer,” Gomes said. “But people here are nice and talk to me about it.”
At first, it took a while to get customers in the door, Fox said. Specials helped — such as $5 burgers and $3 drinks for the final Premier League game of the season. That day “was absolutely packed,” he said, as was the Champions League final soon after. The first U.S. game of the World Cup, on a Friday at 9 p.m., was next level.
Fox roots for England, of course. But he’s hoping the U.S. has a deep run in the tournament “for the integrity of the pub,” he said with a chuckle. Food is 30 percent off whenever the U.S. team is playing; the further it progresses in the tournament, the more you get “fans of soccer that don’t even realize they’re fans,” Fox said.
With his luck, things are looking good: Just after the start of the second half of the England match, Fox got an alert from a sports-betting app on his phone. Declan Rice had a shot on target, the final piece in his parlay. Fox had won $720. He did a lap of the pub, high-fiving everyone in the crowd. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Best of British | Vermont’s “first-ever soccer bar,” the Slide In Pub, fills up for the World Cup”
This article appears in June 24 • 2026.
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