Scout & Company Café Opens in Burlington 

Burlington's New North End has a fresh place to get coffee and pastries. Scout & Company opened on Monday, April 21, at 237 North Avenue in the Packard Lofts apartment building. The airy café is a collaboration of Thomas Green of mobile espresso unit Scout Coffee Co. and Andrew Burke, a former Misery Loves Co. line cook and current co-chef of the Hawker Stall, one of the pop-up restaurants hosted by ArtsRiot Kitchen Collective.

Coffee specialist Green has started with a succinct menu of single-origin coffees. Massachusetts company George Howell Coffee provides the grind Green uses for espresso, while drips include roasts from cult brands Blue Bottle Coffee, Coava Coffee Roasters and Heart Coffee Roasters. Green says he chose those companies for their flavors and for their ethic of working with small farms to make "better than Fair Trade" single-origin coffees.

Tea drinkers aren't being ignored. Green serves Harney & Sons teas both hot and cold; the iced tea on offer uses the brand's Russian Country smoked black tea blend.

For now, edibles come from MLC Bakeshop in Winooski, making Scout the bakery's first wholesale account. On Monday, the counter inside the first-floor storefront was lined with cookies and croissants.

But Burke is known for crafting another treat: ice cream. He's filed the necessary paperwork to make his own on site and hopes that, by June 1, Scout & Company will become an ice cream destination as well as a coffee stop. He mentions his smoked maple with sea salt as a possible regular item. Another of his recent favorites is a wintry flavor: vanilla ice cream infused with oak chips.

By the time he begins serving ice cream at his own business, though, Burke imagines creating summery flavors such as fresh berry with burnt rose. "I definitely want it to taste like Vermont on a flavor and emotional level," he says.

So don't expect the exotic durian ice cream Burke perfected at the Hawker Stall. He says the stinky fruit won't appear at his café, scout's honor.

The original print version of this article was headlined "Be Prepared"