1007 boulevard St-Laurent, Montréal, Québec 514-940-3668

Think "ramen" means dehydrated bachelor food? Try experiencing the real deal at one of the new ramen restaurants north of the Canadian border.

Just a few months after Ramen-ya opened in Montréal's Chinatown, Sumo Ramen followed. The restaurant doesn't serve chanko, the protein-rich soup enjoyed in massive quantities by sumo wrestlers, but these are hearty meals nonetheless.

At Sumo Ramen, there are two soup bases available — shōyu and miso. The shōyu is about what one would expect of ramen broth: savory and salty, but not much else. The miso broth is slightly thicker and tastes as much like sesame as bean curd.

The standard bowl comes filled with two kinds of seaweed, bean sprouts, corn, half a hard-boiled egg and a blob of butter in the middle. From there, diners can choose versions with kimchi, leeks or even wontons. Of course, there are noodles too, delightfully elastic ones.

35 Main Street, Essex Junction 662-1501

The Essex Grill opened in April. Every time I passed it, it appeared to be packed. Very interesting... I finally ate there last week.

The building formerly housed AJ's Kitchen, which has now moved up Railroad Street. Don't expect similar diner-style fare at Essex Grill. While the menu features some of the same comfort food, everything is made on-site, mostly from local products.

Essex Grill is open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. I arrived toward the end of their day, around 7 p.m. Diners filled the front deck, eating brightly colored salads and big sandwiches. I was in no danger of leaving hungry. All entrées come with a choice of soup or salad. That night's soup was a thick pea purée, made chunky with thick-cut bacon.

I chose a grass-fed steak from Wood Creek Farm for my entrée (pictured).

1500 Edson Hill Road, Stowe 253-8741

For super-secret reasons that will reveal themselves in next week's paper, I mostly limited myself to eating in last week. For the same super-secret reasons, I was in desperate need of great desserts. One night, there was no choice but to drive 40 minutes to Gracie's for the big guns. I had to get a "Doggie Bag" (pictured).

I don't mean leftovers. I refer to a dessert, that, though it's built for two, could easily inspire snarling and gnashing if anyone else tries to get a taste. Any dessert presented in a pool of double-boiled, salty hot fudge is okay by me. However, this modern marvel consists of a white chocolate bag filled with chocolate mint mousse. The hot fudge lightly melts any bits of white chocolate with which it comes in direct contact. We're talking serious sensuality, here. And they throw a girl a bone — a dog bone, that is. It's a crispy chocolate cookie, ready for dipping in the salty sauce.

Localfolk Smokehouse, 9 Route 17, Waitsfield, 496-5623

I will travel for ribs. A two hour jaunt for pit-smoked meat at Curtis' BBQ in Putney? No biggie. That's why it's a surprise — even to me — that it took me until this weekend to make it to Waitsfield's Localfolk Smokehouse.

The building is a wooden barn with a high ceiling. A moose head wearing an orange top hat hangs near the bar. Even the bathrooms have a unique ambiance, with swinging barn doors and walls painted to resemble a purple-tinged, full-moon-lightened night in Vermont.

The barbecue menu offers three meats — ribs, pulled pork and chicken — all available in small, medium or large sizes. I ordered a medium rib plate and a combo plate with the pulled pork and chicken. Each came with a choice of two sides. Perhaps I made poor choices. Or perhaps the cooks are too focused on flesh.

1439 St-Mathieu, Montréal, Québec, (514) 935-7779

My world revolves around barbecued meat. Kansas City-style pork ribs, Korean bulgogi, Japanese kushiyaki, Hungarian fatanyeros, Bosnian cevapi — you name it, I love it. Somehow, though, I'd never tried Chinese barbecue beyond a sugary skewer on a Pu Pu platter. My visit to Golden Stone in Montréal's China Town 2 changed that this weekend.

The over-the-top cheerful family running the joint took time out from doing tai chi along with the TV to tell me that they come from the northeast of China. Their cuisine, however, spans the regions. I ordered almost entirely from the menu of 18 different skewers, which seemed to have a strong Xinjiang influence. Uyghur food has some of my favorite flavor profiles, a mix of tastes that I generally associate with India, China and Russia, all mixed together. The brochette of beef ($1.25) called to mind a tastier version of my father's interpretation of his Ural-dwelling grandmother's shashlik recipe.