A Saturday Food Crawl
You’d think it would be all about the peanut butter, or the jalapeño that lingers on the tongue, but no. It is in fact the hint of raspberry that is the least expected taste, perfectly married with local Robie Farm beef in the Colatina Exit’s PB & J burger. And if you need even more reason to order it, it comes with crisp rosemary-garlic fries.
Located dead center on Main Street in Bradford, VT, the Colatina has been serving up Italian and other food to Upper Valley residents and visitors since 1971. (That’s more than 50 years. The average lifespan of a restaurant hovers somewhere between four and five years. Between 70 and 90 percent of new restaurants fail within the first year.) The Colatina advertises that it is one of a handful of “green restaurants” in the state, which means it operates with “a driven effort to recycle, compost, buy local, and by constantly monitoring our footprint.”
Extensive menu, friendly service, wooden booths, and an antique tin ceiling. Local families and couples. Most tables sported at least one of the restaurant’s hand-thrown pizzas.
Directly across the street is Out of the Whey, a new gourmet cheese shop owned by longtime Bradford resident Jeri Martino. Many of the cheeses come from Vermont, and tasting is encouraged. On the Saturday afternoon of my visit, several kinds of goat cheeses, including one with honey and lavender, had been set up for sampling. The shop also sells crackers, olives, jams, pastas, oils and vinegars. We snagged some creamy Alpha Tolman from Greensboro, Vermont’s Jasper Hill Farm and some Comté from France. (Click here for the website.)
The beautiful spot on Main Street across from the waterfall has hosted a number of restaurants in the past few years, including one (my favorite) with a Mediterranean menu. It is now home to The Little Grille, which appears to be a sister establishment to a restaurant of the same name in Littleton NH. The website shows take-out options, but after a quick drive-by we are about certain we saw diners lunching indoors.
Finally, a meander south on Route 5 brought us to Honey Field Farm (formerly Killdeer’s), where UVjustbagels (click here) and Hato Viejo Coffee (click here) were selling their estimable wares while families browsed for Mother’s Day blooms. Greenhouses are open. We’re waiting for warmer temps to buy our vegetable starts, but could not resist coming home with an arrangement of . . . parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. You have to be of an age to appreciate the whimsy. Fancy a listen?
(Photos by Susan B. Apel. Thank you to Artful reader Susan Gillotti for recommending the PB & J Burger experience.)
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Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.