La dolce VT: Tourists know best

By  Randal Smathers

Decades of living in tourist country have conditioned me to thinking of public places as tourist/nontourist. It’s not that I won’t go to a “tourist” place, but I prefer them in shoulder season or off-season, when I don’t have to stand in line.

It’s not as extreme in Rutland as it was living in southern Maine, when most places east of I-95 were so busy from Memorial Day through Labor Day as to remind me of the Yogiism, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” There are exceptions to any rule, however, and for me there’s a very short list of tourist-oriented businesses I’ll frequent in season.

Top of that list is Sugar & Spice, the eatery/sugarhouse/gift shop in Mendon. On warm summer Sundays, expect to stand in a line snaking out the door, down the stairs and into the dusty gravel parking lot. The wait is shorter than it looks only because there’s a surprising amount of seating available (front and back ground floor, second-floor loft and a two-tier patio, plus a counter for singletons), and because the kitchen is blazing fast.

For the tourist-trap-wary, there’s a lot to fear here: The gift shop with Vermonty hats and T-shirts, the rustic-cabin decor, the stuffed moose family at the door and the general olde-fashioned feel to the place. It’s like Woodstock with waffles. The food, however, transcends the trimmings.

You should consider the Sugar & Spice in-season, even if you live here year-round, because the food is more consistent when it’s busy. Like most places that depend on both speed and volume, Sugar & Spice is set up to precook a lot of its food and keep it hot or ready to reheat quickly.

Home fries, for instance, take hours to prepare. In any breakfast place, the first cook in the door typically starts a pot of spuds about the time they start the first pot of coffee, which is to say about the time the lights go on and they tie up their apron. An hour or two later, the potatoes are drained, thrown onto a hot griddle with lots of oil and a mix of spices and chopped with spatulas. Every place has its own blend of spices, generally starting with salt for taste and paprika to start putting color into the mix. It takes a good half-hour on the griddle to get a batch worth serving to the public, so we’re talking a minimum of 90 minutes start to finish, which is why it’s so important to get the pot going early.

The mostly cooked potatoes are then scraped into a pan and held in reserve, with enough kept warm on the griddle to keep the plates moving through.

When it’s busy, the challenge is to keep a steady flow of hot hash browns at hand. That’s just timing and paying attention, which is pretty easy. When it’s slow, however, a cook also has to keep the hash browns from getting over-crispy. There’s a fine line between having a nice crust and having a dried-out chunk o’ spud.

A recent (shoulder season) visit during the late morning reminded me of the hazards of the off-season, with the home fries just a little overcooked, the bacon a bit too crispy, with grill cooties from a hurried reheating and the sausage black on one side, all signs of food spending too much time near the heat. I mention it a) because that’s the first time I’ve ever had anything less than ideal at the restaurant and b) because none of those problems happen when it’s busy. I have been other times when it’s quiet without problem, but I’ve never had a problem when it’s busy.

It’s the breakfast restaurant version of getting limp, cooling fries or slimy, translucent lettuce and congealed near-cheese product on a lukewarm patty at a drive-thru at 8:53 on a Tuesday night.

So much for the cautionary tale. Now the good bits.

Most of the time, what you get at Sugar & Spice are generous portions of fresh-cooked, hot food. Pancakes come with the boiled-down sap of the maple tree, not high-fructose corn syrup with natural and artificial color and flavors. The menu even specifies “Artificial syrup extra” for you Jeminaphiles out there.

The pancakes are fluffy and come in a nice variety of flavors (blueberry, maple cinnamon, buttermilk, pumpkin, maple walnut, chocolate chip), the sausages plump and not too greasy, the home fries (generally) very good.

A favorite is the Mendon Miler, a variant on eggs Benedict with Canadian bacon and a quality cheddar on an English muffin. I rarely get to the lunch menu, but a colleague reports the Reuben to be a good bet. It looked delicious, with plenty of extra-lean corned beef, shaved not-too-thin and an enormous side of home fries. House-made ice cream is available for dessert, but the portions are big enough you need to plan ahead if you’re going to get that far. You can get the best of both worlds with the waffle and ice cream.

Kids love this place and the staff handles families well.

Service is prompt and friendly, whether it’s busy or slow. On a summer morning, a Mendon Miler on the deck is the best overall breakfast experience in town, shy of bagels and lox on my patio with a blueberry-mango smoothie and vast lashings of strong, black, dark-roast Vermont Coffee Co. java — and that’s invitation-only, sorry. I’m biased, of course, but I prefer the Sunday Perspective section of the Rutland Herald to complete either experience. It’s a damned civilized way to start the back half of a weekend.

To sum up: Sugar & Spice gets 3-1/2 stars when it’s too quiet; 4-1/2 when there are tourists lined up out the door. Read this next line carefully because I do not expect to write it again in my lifetime: It’s best to go when you see a parking lot full of caution-sign-yellow Jersey plates.