Honey Road Restaurant Named in New York Times “Best” List

Big news for Honey Road, previously a James Beard Award-nominated restaurant in our own Burlington, Vermont. This past weekend it was included in The New York Times’s “23 of the Best American Dishes of 2023.”

“ . . . our reporters and editors eat hundreds of meals in dozens of states. Inevitably we come across that one dish that we almost wish we’d ordered two of, and wish we could find closer to home.” —The New York Times

According to an article in the Burlington Free Press, because the dish, halibut chraimeh, was a seasonal special, it is not currently on the menu, owner Cara Tobin “ . . . told the Burlington Free Press in a Dec. 13 email. ‘Although I guess we should evaluate and maybe put it back on.’” Yes, please.

I have not had the pleasure of dining at Honey Road yet, but learned that Tobin previously cooked at Oleana, chef/owner Ana Sortun’s award-winning restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I once had a memorable dinner (on a below-zero winter evening) composed of several small plates of Turkish and Middle Eastern food. Not surprisingly, Honey Road sounds similar; it describes itself as serving “Eastern Mediterranean Mezze.”

So, while we await the return, if ever, of the now famous fish dish to Honey Road’s regular menu, you might try making something with chraimeh sauce at home. Here is a terrific dish (recipe here) I have made many times—Tofu and Haricots Verts with Chraimeh Sauce—from Yotam Ottolenghi’s SIMPLE (photo, above.) He wisely recommends making extra chraimeh sauce. Surely you will find use for it, maybe for a nice piece of halibut?

To read the New York Times article (though there may be a paywall), click here. More information about Honey Road can be found on its website.

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And in case you are wondering . . . 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.