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Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Dining on a Dime: Conscious Eatz Food Truck

Posted By on Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 1:58 PM

Conscious Eatz food truck - MELISSA PASANEN ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Melissa Pasanen ©️ Seven Days
  • Conscious Eatz food truck
Burlington's vegan scene got a bit bigger — and more mobile — this month.

Conscious Eatz rolled into town on September 3, spending a week down near the waterfront before parking in its current location near the top of the Church Street Marketplace at 6 Clarke Street.

Partners Jane Morgan and Tyler Weith have followed a plant-based diet for a few years. After moving back to Burlington last summer, they noticed a "major gap in vegan and vegetarian foods," Morgan said.

"For such a progressive city, it really surprised us that there weren't more options," she continued. "We love to cook, and love to make plant-based things, so we figured we could bring plant-based options to Burlington in a really approachable way."

Buffalo-cauliflower tacos from Conscious Eatz - MELISSA PASANEN ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Melissa Pasanen ©️ Seven Days
  • Buffalo-cauliflower tacos from Conscious Eatz
Approachability is key to the food truck's menu. Items like buffalo-cauliflower tacos ($12) — a play on a buffalo chicken wing adapted into taco form to make it street-food friendly — and the maple-glazed tempeh burrito ($11) have been popular from the get-go.

"I've found that friends of mine who aren't plant-based can get intimidated by some of the vegan ingredients and foods," Morgan said. "We really tried to make all of our ingredients and menu items things that would appeal to anybody."

Morgan and Weith had started conceptualizing Conscious Eatz prior to the pandemic, and their planned business model has adapted well. "It's mostly takeout, and now we're set up with some of the delivery services," Morgan said. "Everything's pretty contactless, and it's working out well for us." 

The mission of Conscious Eatz is to serve food that has a positive impact on the environment, animals and personal health, Morgan explained.

"If one person who typically eats meat decides for one of their meals, one day a week, to not eat meat, that in itself has a positive impact," she said.

Chickpea tuna sandwich - JORDAN BARRY ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Jordan Barry ©️ Seven Days
  • Chickpea tuna sandwich
With that in mind, my dining companion and I skipped our usual omnivorous lunch plans over the weekend and placed an order for two sandwiches from Conscious Eatz: the chickpea tuna sandwich ($9) and the Lucerne club ($9), both of which came with an ample side of potato chips.

The "tuna" successfully mimics the classic sandwich. The combination of chickpeas and smooth hummus — spiked with celery, of course — has everything except the fishiness.

It would be a perfect polite solution to a tuna craving at the office, if sitting near coworkers for lunch al desko were something we could actually do.

Lucerne club with carrot bacon, shredded carrots, sprouts and peanut sauce - JORDAN BARRY ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Jordan Barry ©️ Seven Days
  • Lucerne club with carrot bacon, shredded carrots, sprouts and peanut sauce
The Lucerne club strays further from the original (no frilly toothpicks), but it's a twist worth trying. The sandwich is piled high with shredded carrots, sprouts and crispy "carrot bacon," and slathered with a Thai-inspired peanut sauce.

In a world of increasingly expensive sandwiches, these felt like a good deal at $9. We'd been tempted by the desserts — particularly the blueberry cheezecake ($5) — but skipped it to stay under our $12 per person limit. That ended up being for the best, as we were stuffed.

Conscious Eatz can typically be found on Clarke Street Wednesday through Sunday, barring special events that take the truck elsewhere. Check out the weekly schedule online and on social media.

Dining on a Dime is a weekly series featuring well-made, filling bites (something substantial enough to qualify as a small meal or better) for $12 or less. Know of a tasty dish we should feature? Drop us a line: food@sevendaysvt.com.

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Monday, September 28, 2020

Vermont Restaurants and Retailers Support University of Vermont Cancer Center

Posted By on Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 1:41 PM

Chef-owner Donnell Collins and former co-owner Bob Conlon of Leunig's Bistro & Café, the first restaurant fundraiser participant - FILE: LUKE AWTRY ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • File: Luke Awtry ©️ Seven Days
  • Chef-owner Donnell Collins and former co-owner Bob Conlon of Leunig's Bistro & Café, the first restaurant fundraiser participant
Things may look very different at local restaurants this fall but many are continuing their seasonal tradition of supporting the annual University of Vermont Cancer Center fundraiser.

In partnership with Farrell Distributing, 20 restaurant plus 20 retailers will donate $1 to the Cancer Center for every qualifying bottle of wine from the Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits portfolio or 12-pack of von Trapp Brewing beer sold during September and October.  (See here for a full list of participating locations.)

Continue reading »

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Tuesday, September 22, 2020

USDA Shifts Vermont Farmers to Families Contract to Boston Company

Posted By on Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 7:04 PM

Dairy products in a Farmers to Families Food Box sourced by the Abbey Group - COURTESY THE ABBEY GROUP
  • Courtesy the Abbey Group
  • Dairy products in a Farmers to Families Food Box sourced by the Abbey Group
The Abbey Group, a family-owned food service management company based in Enosburg Falls, has failed to land a contract for the latest round of the USDA Farmers to Families food boxes in Vermont.

It had previously earned two USDA contracts worth $13.9 million to distribute boxes of staple foods to Vermonters experiencing food insecurity due to the pandemic.

Instead, the main Vermont contract was awarded to Boston-based Costa Fruit & Produce, confirmed Vermont Foodbank CEO John Sayles.

Continue reading »

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Friday, September 18, 2020

Stone's Throw Pizza Coming to Charlotte

Posted By on Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 1:56 PM

Stone's Throw Pizza in Fairfax - JAMES BUCK/FILE ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • James Buck/File ©️ Seven Days
  • Stone's Throw Pizza in Fairfax
Stone’s Throw Pizza will open its third pizzeria  — this one at 86 Ferry Road in Charlotte — in late fall or early winter,  according to co-owner Silas Pollitt.

The Charlotte branch of Stone’s Throw will be takeout only. The business will serve pizzas, salads and desserts to-go, and have a retail component that sells beer and wine, housemade pickles and kimchi, and pizza dough, according to Pollitt.

“There’s lots of brainstorming going on,” Pollitt said.  "The concept allows us to exercise the imagination a little bit.”

Continue reading »

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Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Dining on a Dime: Zabby & Elf's Stone Soup

Posted By on Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 9:00 AM

Dinner from Stone Soup - SALLY POLLAK ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Sally Pollak ©️ Seven Days
  • Dinner from Stone Soup

Normalcy — sort of — returned to College Street in Burlington last week in the form of sweet potatoes, kale and brown rice.

The mainstays of the hot bar at Zabby & Elf’s Stone Soup are back in action after a six-month moratorium. The cafe's trio of basics made their comeback along with sandwiches, soups, muffins and bread — and the changing array of items in the hot and cold bars.

The un-normal part is that this last category of food is no longer self-serve, which was Stone Soup’s pre-pandemic way. In the new system, a staffer fills your plate for you. A Plexiglas shield — probably the prettiest in town — guards the food and the people, and separates one from the other.

(Ever been tempted to snitch a crouton or an olive when you serve yourself at Stone Soup? Sorry, that game is over.)

The new system at Stone Soup works two ways: You can guide a staffer and tell them what you’d like — three chicken wings, please, some curried cauliflower and chickpeas and those seared Brussels sprouts! How about some salad and cottage cheese, a spoonful of pickled beets, a hit of roasted mushrooms and dried apricots.

Or you can opt for a chef’s tasting plate: $10 for small, $15 for large. Specify vegan, vegetarian or omnivore, and let a Stone Souper pick your food for you.

I’m always pleased to relinquish responsibility, so I chose the second option when my daughter and I stopped at Stone Soup for dinner last week. Though the dining room is open at reduced capacity, with off-limit tables marked by arrangements of flowers and stones, we took our meals home.
Hanging plants in the open window at Stone Soup - SALLY POLLAK ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Sally Pollak ©️ Seven Days
  • Hanging plants in the open window at Stone Soup
“We’re working hard to create products that work in this setting, but still serving the food everybody has been used to,” co-owner Tim Elliott told me before the September 9 reopening.  “You need to have trust in your server.”

As it happened, co-owner Avery Rifkin was on duty the evening we stopped in and I trust him (and everyone else) to feed me.  I chose the small plate ($10) to qualify for Dining on a Dime, and had $2 left for a chocolate cookie. Rifkin loaded me up with food I’ve been missing for six months: chicken wings,  kale salad, cucumber salad, mac and cheese with vegetables, beet hummus,  a thick slice of whole wheat bread. 

Stone Soup’s reopening coincides with Rosh Hashanah, which starts this Friday at sundown. If I could pick a word to describe the marking of the Jewish New Year at Stone Soup, normal is not the word I’d select. The café’s candlelit celebration is one of a kind. (At least I’ve never seen anything like it in a restaurant.)
Rosh Hashanah at Stone Soup in 2019 - SALLY POLLAK ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Sally Pollak ©️ Seven Days
  • Rosh Hashanah at Stone Soup in 2019
Rifkin said he’ll start working at 7 a.m. Thursday on his Rosh Hashanah preparation, and he'll be at Stone Soup straight through until Friday afternoon. Though the café opens at 9 a.m. these days, people are welcome to come in earlier Friday morning, he said.

Rifkin will bake 150 to 200 loaves of round challah, the only week of the year the challah is round. The baker will make rugelach, mini-babkas, apple cake and honey cake. The counter will hold candles, flowers, pumpkins and gourds, along with  baked goods.

In years past, apple slices and pieces of cake were set out for people to help themselves. They were placed near a tiered stack of rugelach, an annual engineering marvel.

Who knows what the presentation will be this year. But I have high hopes that Rosh Hashanah at Stone Soup will be — as usual — not normal.

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Monday, September 14, 2020

Home on the Range: Five Spice Café Sesame Peanut Noodles

Posted By on Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 4:56 PM

Homemade version of Five Spice Café sesame peanut noodles - MELISSAS PASANEN ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Melissas Pasanen ©️ Seven Days
  • Homemade version of Five Spice Café sesame peanut noodles
Spanning more than two decades starting in 1985, Five Spice Café on lower Church Street built a fiercely dedicated fan base for its pan-Asian menu.

Beyond iconic dishes like Evil Jungle Prince curry redolent of coconut and kaffir limes leaves, the restaurant was known for jazz memorabilia, dim sum brunch and the outsize personality of co-owner Jerry Weinberg.

Weinberg and his business partner (and ex-wife) Ginger Hobbs sold their restaurant in late 2006 to Samuel Palmisano. Shortly thereafter, Five Spice was gutted by a devastating fire and Palmisano decided to move on to start his own Italian restaurant, Pulcinella's in South Burlington.

Regular customers continued to dream of menu classics like cold sesame peanut noodles, Siu Mai dumplings and Five Spice fritters — described as "four fat little pancakes made out of scallions, onions, leeks, cilantro, eggs and bread."

Weinberg passed away in January 2019. For several years before that, Weinberg and Hobbs' daughter, Cheryl Herrick of Burlington, worked with her dad to occasionally stir up batches of some of the restaurant's signature sauces for sale under the label Dragon and Daughter.

Other than that, fans were out of luck — until now.

A new blog Five Spice Café: Recipes from the Vault, launched last month to help those who still crave their Five Spice favorites and are willing to tackle the recipes in their own kitchens.

John Canning, a longtime fan and friend of the Five Spice family, has been adding recipes gradually from a box of several hundred that survived the fire.
"The goal is to put the recipes into the public domain, so that people can enjoy them!" Canning wrote in an email.

(Canning spins a funny tale about winning the recipes from Palmisano in a game of strip poker. He admitted that was not exactly how it happened, but rather a nod to Weinberg's sense of humor.)

Like many restaurant recipes, the ingredients, quantities and professional kitchen shorthand do not always translate easily for home cooks.

With the assistance of Hobbs, Herrick, Palmisano and former Five Spice staff, Canning has been working his way through the recipes to make them accessible for all.

"It took quite a bit of trial and error to figure out how many cups of mushrooms were really in a 'bucket,'" Canning said, referring to the recipe for Siu Mai dumplings made with pork, shrimp and Chinese mushrooms and "secret spices," which turned out to be peanut butter.

Of those posted so far, Canning said, the Southeast Asian chicken curry and sesame peanut noodles have been the most popular. Five Spice fritters and Siu Mai are close behind.

"My mom and I are delighted, if quite nostalgic, about the recipes [being shared]," Herrick wrote in an email.

Many have quirky details , she said, like the  fritters, which call for French rolls in the written recipe. For the restaurant, she divulged, "Mike Williams of Kountry Kart [Deli] gave us the bread ends from sandwich-making."

Herrick did concede that it feels a little
Ingredients for Five Spice Cafe sesame peanut noodles - MELISSA PASANEN ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Melissa Pasanen ©️ Seven Days
  • Ingredients for Five Spice Cafe sesame peanut noodles
 weird to see the recipes her father guarded so closely go out into the world. But, she said, she and Hobbs are "very glad to get more people more happy with access to delicious food."




Five Spice Café Sesame Peanut Sauce for Noodles

Makes about 4½  cups (can be halved)

Ingredients
  • ¾ cup light soy sauce (not low sodium but traditional light soy sauce versus dark; standard supermarket soy will work)
  • ½ cup unseasoned rice wine vinegar
  • ¼ cup water
  • 1 cup neutral vegetable oil (the recipe calls for soybean oil)
  • ¼ cup sesame oil
  • 2 tablespoons hot chili oil
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 tablespoon granulated garlic (this is coarser than garlic powder, but you can sub the latter; use a little less and add more to taste)
  • 1 cup peanut butter
  • 1 cup tahini
  • ¾ cup hot black tea

Directions
  1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, water and vegetable oil.
  2. In another bowl, whisk together the sesame oil, hot chili oil, sugar and garlic until the latter two are dissolved.
  3. In a food processor or stand mixer, blend the peanut butter and tahini. Add in the hot black tea and blend until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed.
  4. With the machine running, add the sesame oil mixture until blended.
  5. With the machine running, gradually add the soy mixture until fully incorporated.
  6. To use for cold noodles, cook fresh or dried egg noodles, or pasta of choice. Drain  and toss with a little sesame oil to prevent sticking and coat with some of the sesame peanut sauce. Once cooled, toss with more sauce to taste. (Extra sauce can be refrigerated or frozen. You may need to re-blend to emulsify it.)
Note: This is the version on the recipe card, though Ginger Hobbs notes that Jerry Weinberg used red wine vinegar rather than rice wine vinegar, and chopped fresh garlic instead of granulated garlic. Also, he omitted the chili oil, so that customers could add hot sauce to taste.

Got cooking questions? Email pasanen@sevendaysvt.com.

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Burlington Farmers Market Announces Changes for Winter Season

Posted By on Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 4:19 PM

COVID-19 guidelines posted at the entrance to the first summer Burlington Farmers Market on June 6, 2020 - JORDAN BARRY ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Jordan Barry ©️ Seven Days
  • COVID-19 guidelines posted at the entrance to the first summer Burlington Farmers Market on June 6, 2020
The Burlington Farmers Market, whose summer schedule runs through Saturday, October 17, is planning for a “very different winter season” in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, market director Mieko Ozeki told Seven Days.

Given the market’s scale and the risk associated with large indoor gatherings, “An indoor market doesn’t make sense for us this year,” she said.

Continue reading »

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Monday, September 7, 2020

Lion Turtle Tea Opens in Burlington

Posted By on Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 5:25 PM

Tim Williams (left) and Jace Jamason, co-owners of Lion Turtle Tea - JORDAN BARRY ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Jordan Barry ©️ Seven Days
  • Tim Williams (left) and Jace Jamason, co-owners of Lion Turtle Tea
After nearly two years of popping up around Burlington, Lion Turtle Tea has a permanent home at 135 Pearl Street. The teahouse opened on September 1 in the space that most recently housed Papa John's Pizza.

Co-owners Jace Jamason and Tim Williams found the spot half a block from the top of the Church Street Marketplace this spring, after a previous location didn't work out.

"Our timing was super unintentional," Jamason told Seven Days. "We were able to get in here in May, so we knew the pandemic was already happening. But we've been working on opening for about two years, so we were like, 'OK, let's do this.'"

Continue reading »

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Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Dining on a Dime: Honey Road

Posted By on Tue, Sep 1, 2020 at 3:10 PM

Eggplant and corn grape  leaf pie - SALLY POLLAK ©️ SEVEN DAYS
  • Sally Pollak ©️ Seven Days
  • Eggplant and corn grape leaf pie
Some food is made to be eaten, not photographed, and I’d throw Honey Road’s eggplant and corn grape leaf pie into that category.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the picture of this food. But sound effects would serve a better purpose here than a photograph: The sound of me OMGing when I took my first bite.  (And without a photo, we can all start eating faster.)

Still, if I remember correctly — and I’m no Donald Trump (eggplant, corn, dill, grape leaf, labne) — it was a photograph on Instagram that alerted me to Honey’s Road inventive dolma. The price ($12) was a draw. The ingredients, which I can still rattle off  (eggplant, corn, dill, grape leaf, labne, lots of it!), clinched it. Plus jasmine rice. (Try six items next time, prez.)

A mound of vegetables is always going to excite me. When eggplant is part of the mix, sweet local corn is featured, and the meal is set on a grape leaf, it’s enough to make me leave home for the takeout window. (BTW, is a grape leaf a fruit, a vegetable or just a wet vine?)

For us uninventive types who think a stuffed grape leaf  is supposed to look like a cigar, what a revelation to come across one in the shape of a hockey puck. Slap shot. Score.
Dining on a Dime is a weekly series featuring well-made, filling bites (something substantial enough to qualify as a small meal or better) for $12 or less. Know of a tasty dish we should feature? Drop us a line: food@sevendaysvt.com.

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