When good cooks cook together, great things can happen. Or at least that’s the notion behind Gracie’s Kitchen in Waitsfield, where Grace Holter and John Snell began serving buffet breakfasts and lunches at 4752 Main Street last week.
Many Mad River Valley residents will recognize Holter and Snell from area farmers markets, where they’ve been slinging tamales and jams for years as Gracie’s Tamales and Marsh Hollow, respectively.
When the entrepreneurs realized they needed consistent access to a commercial kitchen, they decided to share a permanent spot, rather than shuffle equipment and ingredients in and out of pay-per-hour kitchens. The former Pizza in the Valley storefront, which has been empty since that restaurant decamped to Rochester in May (and rechristened itself A Wicked Slice), offered just the right amount of space.
Holter’s daily changing menu features home-cooked fare to stay or go. Monday’s pasta bar included sausages, marinara and pesto, green salad and rolls, while Tuesday’s curries came with spinach salad. Thursday’s potato bar will bring baked spuds, chili, roasted broccoli “and all the fixings,” along with retail tamales, jams and baked goods.
Holter hopes Gracie’s will help satisfy a pressing local need for quick, quality sustenance. “I’m a mom of three,” she tells Seven Days. “I’m always running around. And I always wanted something that I could just grab to go and take with me.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Tamale Jams”
This article appears in Sep 28, 2016 – Oct 3, 2017.
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