Today we continue on with our wacky food tour, heading out from Burlington to Waterbury where we planned to go to the Cold Hollow Cider Mill for apple cider and cider doughnuts, then to Ben & Jerry’s for an ice cream tour, followed by the Alchemist brewery and topped off with the Green Mountain coffee tour. The best laid plans….
Turns out Waterbury is only 15 minutes away and well, we don’t want ice cream at 9:30 in the morning (for a $4 tour fee, btw), nor do we want beer that early. So, we end up just hitting the Cider Mill – which was fun and yummy! Hot cider and cider doughnuts (yes, Ed even ate a doughnut! I have the picture to prove it!)
We walked through the mill area (where there was a bus tour – dear me!) and managed to peek around the clusters of bus-people to get a glimpse of how they press the cider – which was pretty interesting actually. Then we beat feet out of there as quickly as possible to avoid the following bus! We headed straight to the Green Mountain coffee center, which turned out to be a nice pictorial history of the coffee company (and found out that they recently bought Keurig – didn’t know that!). But the “factory tour” isn’t really a factory – and there is just a café there which we decided to pass on – I was still full from the cider!
So – we headed down the road to Cabot and the Cabot cheese factory tour. We’ve been there before, but it is still interesting and we love the sampling. Plus we needed to stock up on our popcorn topping! We also bought some more smoked bacon cheese which we found in Boston and love.
Back on the road we headed into White River Junction, wishing there were more places to stop along the way to take pictures of all the great colors and landscapes.
After checking into the hotel, we went back out to reconnoiter the town and the restaurant for tonight’s dinner: Elixir. it is hard to find – in an old train depot, so we blazed our trail and made sure we knew where to go. Next we stopped at CJ’s for a drink (that bartender knows how to pour too!) then back to the hotel for coffee, a nap for me and the gym for Ed!
We headed out to Elixir a little before 7 and thought we might be in big trouble when we couldn’t find a parking spot in the lot. I left Ed in the car to go in and scope out the bar. The owner was there at the door and helpfully pointed out 3 couples who were going to be leaving to go to a play soon. Ed found a parking space and we came inside to wait.
As it turned out, we got seats pretty quickly when one of the local guys gave us his and stood for a while (thank you Chris!). This place was hoppin! And for good reason – the food was excellent and totally reasonable priced! We started with (bad, bad, bad) the French fries with aioli – they came highly recommended and rightly so – very delicate and the aioli was prefect! For dinner I had twin cocoa dusted filets (amazing) and Ed had blackened scallops (which were also superb). The owner was so attentive (not just to us, but to everything) and it was great to watch. You knew he poured his all into this place, and it showed through with everything. Great find!
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