After less than a year in operation, Burlington’s Maudite Poutine will close its poutine restaurant at 156 North Winooski Avenue at the end of February to refocus on mobile operations, said Joe and Leah Collier, part of the founder-owner sibling team of three. The business, which started as a food cart in 2016, will still use the Old North End restaurant kitchen to prep food for its three trailers.
After a two-month break in March and April, the Colliers said, they will restructure and expand the Tiny Community Kitchen part of their operation, which hosts local food entrepreneurs who offer pop-up meals at the small restaurant. Menus have ranged from Southern-style fried chicken to Iraqi food; upcoming February events include Betzy’s Latin Flavors, Empress Levi Soul Food and Mas Comida.
Poutine sales at the restaurant “kinda flatlined about six months ago,” acknowledged Joe, 36. Meanwhile, interest in pop-ups has remained high.
Leah, 39, said that by giving up Maudite’s Thursday-through-Saturday hours, the Colliers can concentrate on their busy mobile business and offer a robust, predictable pop-up schedule with more opportunities for local cooks and chefs.
Details of the Tiny Community Kitchen expansion remain to be determined, but Leah said one possibility is for the restaurant to be open regular evening hours, Thursday through Monday, with a rotating roster of food vendors. Maudite could still fill any empty dates with a small poutine menu.
Such a schedule would offer more consistency to the public, too.
“A lot of the feedback we got over this experiment over the last six to eight months was that, because there’s so much going on and so many moving parts, people had trouble deciphering what was happening there,” Joe said of the restaurant. “We’d really like to be a little bit clearer with what people can expect.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Maudite Poutine to Close Poutinerie but Expand Guest Chef Program”
This article appears in The Love & Marriage Issue 2023.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
