There are lots of great local restaurants in Vermont. The locals in most all of the small towns fight the good fight to keep the chains out. We’ve tried a lot of these restaurants, and the food is excellent, with lots of diversity from Thai food to Tex-Mex to diner grub, almost any kind of cuisine you desire (except Indian food, so far, at least within an hour of Dorset). Because of the variety available, I’m not sure what would be the quintessential Vermont meal.

What I associate most with Vermont food is hash. When we first were touring Vermont, we stopped at the Two Brothers Tavern in Middlebury. I don’t remember the whole name of the dish I ordered, but I know it was called something something Hash. It was sweet potatoes, onions, and I can’t remember the other vegetables chopped up and served with a fried egg on top. It was perfectly the kind of comfort food I love.

Since then, we have frequented the many breakfast places around us and there is always a hash or “skillet” (hash in a skillet) on the menu, and I always get that. Some have loads of vegetables, some have corned beef or breakfast meat in them. All are delicious. I never noticed the presence of hash or skillets anywhere else I lived, with the exception of corned beef hash, which is pretty common.

I’m going to venture to say that hearty breakfasts are the signature meal of Vermont. With all the fabulous maple syrup for pancakes,  I’d call that a fair assumption. Also, before gas powered log splitters and chainsaws and tractors, there was a lot of hard work to be done and likely in cold weather and at dawn. A hearty, hot breakfast was a must.

Vermont’s “Unique Poet” Daniel L Cady was moved to write an ode to the Vermont Breakfast. It’s called A Vermont Breakfast. 

When summer days speed up so fast

That August bumps September

You need a breakfast that will last

And, ‘less I disremember,

There’s nothing ’round the morning hour

With which a man can grapple

Like good salt pork, and plenty o’nt,

Enriched with good fried apple.

 

It doesn’t fade away so soon

Your stomach squirms with wonder

A saint can work right up to noon

And not be “sawn asunder”;

It beats them package foods a mile-

That top-shelf ten cent scrapple-

Jest hand me good old fried salt pork

Enriched with good fried apple

 

Good solid pork, a-salted down

‘Way back there last November,

That sputters sweet and spatters brown,

And ‘less I disremember,

Them apples by the garden gate

That had a reddish dapple-

Yes; that’s the kind of pork I mean,

And that’s the kind of apple

 

Jest wipe ’em where your hand is flat,

And slice ’em thin and slanting,

And tip ’em in the spider fat

The while it’s hot and panting;

Say; that’s the kind of morning dish

Which with the soul can grapple-

Good sweet salt pork, and plenty o’nt,

Enriched with good fried apple.

 

A meal that bids the spirit sing-

The dish that saves September;

And yet there’s jest one other thing,

And ‘less I disremember,

A good cream gravy starts the stuff

A-sliding past your thrapple,

And makes that pork celestial pig

And glorifies that apple.

Seems like ol’ Daniel L Cady loved his breakfast as much as he loved semi-colons. I bet there’s never been a pig described as “celestial” in a published work before or since.

Usually, since I’m forever yo-yoing with diets and short lived healthy eating phases, I usually have light breakfasts, and cut out caffeine more often than not. But when I indulge in a good hash and eggs breakfast with real coffee, I find myself motivated to do more and for some reason it really fires my creativity/desire to write or do some crafts or artwork. So, I think there’s something to be said for the occasional Vermont breakfast, and plenty o’nt.

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