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.
“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.)
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.

Maybe the next time Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez eats at Penny Cluse Café, she’ll be president. The Congresswoman from New York City got my vote when she reminded the world that men verbally assaulting women is “just another day.”

Maybe by then, the day that never seems to end — in this case, the pandemic — will be over. And we'll be eating at the Penny Cluse counter again, with its endless refills and stool-by-stool camaraderie.

Meanwhile, for $12, I got to eat Penny Cluse’s riff on my childhood birthday meal: smoked salmon, chèvre, sliced tomato, red onion, capers and buttered, grilled baguette.  I drank a spicy bloody Mary ($8) from a plastic cup  with my to-go salmon platter — 'cause I’m no longer nine and because these days could use a little oomph.

My birthday lunch — smoked salmon, bagels, cream cheese, dill pickles, potato salad — was sourced from a Jewish deli. For a lot of my life, I thought Nova, aka smoked salmon, originated from a place like Barney Greengrass the Sturgeon King on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

One day a few years ago, I caught a glimpse of  Maura O’Sullivan, Penny Cluse chef, slicing a salmon filet with a very sharp knife. It got me thinking about the fish and what happens to it at the Burlington café.

I found out Friday, when I was scanning the online menu at Penny Cluse for a meal that costs $12 or less. Spotting the salmon plate, I remembered that glistening filet and rejoiced that a piece of smoked fish could be mine with the click of a computer.

“Happy birthday!” I told myself, placing an online order — though my birthday is actually a few months away. Twenty minutes later, after a drive downtown to fetch my food from the pickup window, I was sitting at our table in private celebration.

I smeared chèvre on a length of baguette, placed smoked salmon on the cheese, laid sliced tomato on top of that and crowned the open-faced sandwich with red onions and capers. Times two.

The salmon, I learned from Penny Cluse owner Charles Reeves, is cured, dried and smoked in-house. Barney Greengrass has nothing to do with it.

“We have a really cool smoker,” Reeves told me.

The salmon and tomatoes — from Pomykala Farm in Grand Isle — match each other in consistency: fleshy but firm. The capers, not a thing when I was a kid, add a little zing.

AOC ate scrambled eggs and rye toast when she and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ate together at Penny Cluse last year. Next time, she should indulge in a meal fit for a kid on her birthday — and possibly a prez.

Dining on a Dime is a 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.

It's normal for me to get a restaurant recommendation along the lines of, "You have to go there for the chicken."

Less normal: "There's an actual, real-live chicken who has taken up residence on the restaurant's patio."


Dubbing her "Henrietta," the staff kept a close eye on their surprise guest, despite the fact that she hadn't made a reservation.

She was seemingly wary of crossing the road, the staff said, which might be more of a statement about the construction on St. Paul Street than the setup for a classic joke.


At one point over the weekend, Gildersleeve made Henrietta a nest out of his hoodie and a few clean aprons. "She snuggled into it overnight," he said. The staff applied their excellent customer service to their chicken guest, giving her water, lettuce, leftover cooked rice and a little bit of bread, as a treat.

"It really got us through Sunday," said Gastrogrup barkeep Will Reuss of caring for the bird.

I first heard of Henrietta's presence on Sunday night, when Seven Days staffer Katie Hodges posted a series of selfies with the chicken to our office-wide Slack channel.

Hodges was on her way to Gastrogrub for dinner before a show at ArtsRiot. "We knew they had good apps and beer," she said. After parking up the street, she noticed the chicken outside.

"The bartender started making jokes about how fresh the chicken was as soon as we sat down," Hodges continued. "From where we were sitting at the bar, she was right under the sign for chicken wings, which was hilarious."

"It made my night," Hodges said. "It's so weird, and so Vermont, especially because everyone was so excited about it,"

By the time I made it to Gastrogrub on Tuesday, "Henrietta," whose real name turned out to be Gladys, was no longer camped outside. It's a happy ending, though — she was reunited with her owner on Monday.

"Her owner thought she was dead," Gildersleeve explained. "She got in a fight with a raccoon and flew the coop, ending up here."

Gastrogrub staff had called the Green Mountain Animal Defenders, who arranged for the chicken to be adopted to Richmond before her original owners were aware of her three-day bender. After a few phone calls, though, she's back where she belongs.

"They're happy to have her back," Reuss added.

My natural reaction after listening to Gildersleeve and Reuss recount the whole saga was pretty messed up: I ordered the wings.

Gastrogrub wings come in a variety of flavors and spice levels, including maple jalepeño, dry rub, salt-'n'-vin, barbecue, medium or hot. I ordered the dry rub, which came with eight big ol' wings and a choice of ranch or blue cheese ($11).


My coworker, who tagged along in hopes of meeting the chicken, ordered fries ($5 for regular, $8 if you're feeling fancy and want a truffle upgrade). The fries are herb-flecked, skin-on, and my favorite balance of crispy and soft. They're great with the ranch, too.


We were eating around 4 p.m., so it wasn't quite a full meal, but there are plenty of dining-on-a-dime options that are more substantial at Gastrogrub.

I'll go back — chicken or no chicken — to try the fish tacos with black bean and pineapple salsa ($10), pulled pork sandwich ($12), 1/2-pound burger ($12), and yes, the fried-chicken sandwich ($12).

If  all this chicken talk has you considering going meatless, Gastrogrub also has vegan and vegetarian options: a tempting arugula salad ($9), the meat-alternative Beyond Burger ($14) and a Beyond burrito ($15). The "Beyond" options don't quite fit in our $12-or-less parameters. But you'll be several bucks ahead of me in the moral bank, so it might be worth the splurge.

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.

On a recent afternoon at the Pour House in South Burlington, the televisions were playing sports highlight reels: Kobe Bryant slam-dunking on one screen, football players slam-slamming on another.

I read my menu – grilled chicken salad ($9.95), beef and chicken nachos with the works ($11.95), open-face roast turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes, gravy and vegetable ($10.45), deep-fried, beer-battered cod, fries and cole slaw ($10.95) – and had a mini-epiphany: The Pour House offerings are a Dining on a Dime highlight reel.

I’d gotten a sense of this from the Pour House's Facebook page, which lists daily specials. But I wasn’t aware of the breadth of the $12-and-under options until I showed up for a late lunch. The soup/sandwich deal ($10.45) caught my eye, but it was beat out by Yankee pot roast with mashed potatoes and green beans ($10.95).

My meal was set before me so quickly — on a red table decorated with ads — that I'd had just one sip of Switchback before the food came. The tender hunk of slow-roasted beef and mound of potatoes were covered in gravy; the beans were diner-style, cut short and cooked soft.

I studied the ads as I ate, including a centerpiece teaser for CBD splashed in a green that matched my beans. Product placement for this fad has gone too far, I thought, when you're hit up eating comfort food in a sports bar. I checked out the sports memorabilia on the wall, including a poster of Muhammed Ali from his float-like-a-butterfly days. Did the Louisville-born champ eat Yankee pot roast?

After I ate, I talked with the couple at the next booth, Pamela and Ellsworth Lake of Jericho. Pamela, a retired seamstress, told me she and her husband eat at the Pour House about once a month, when she gets a craving for the turkey club sandwich. The Lakes share the classic triple-decker sandwich and split an order of fries. With two draft beers, the meal comes to $21.

The quality of the sandwich is matched by the service and the atmosphere, the Lakes said. “It’s amazing,” Pamela said. At $11.45 with chips, the turkey club makes the highlight reel.

Dining on a Dime is a 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.