April 1, 2013 (ShapeShiftas.com) -- On Good Friday, my husband and I found ourselves with a rare occurrence -- both girls out, and no pickups needed until the next day. Date Night!
We got the older daughter off on her weekend away, dropped our younger at the school dance, verified the sleep-over arrangements, and then looked at each other with amazement and joy. What shall we do with our parental freedom?
We decided to finally check out a place he's been wanting to go to for a while -- The Worthy Burger, located to the east, over the hills and through the woods, a beautiful drive on this early Spring evening. (and still light out!) Half the land was still snow-covered, the rest muddy and brown and wet. Our destination was the perfect Vermont town of South Royalton (not to be confused with regular Royalton, about 5 miles away), home of the Vermont Law School, the girls' pediatricians, and the SORO Food Co-op. (That's about it.)
There is a town green with a bandstand and a currently melting ice-skating rink, where there's the best Farmers' Market around on Thursdays in the summer. There's a coffee shop/thrift store, a bank, a bar/restaurant with ferns and fixtures from the eighties, and another bar across the tracks that sometimes has live (country?) music I think.
We took the truck, which was appropriate
The Worthy Burger is next-door to the honky-tonk biker bar (ok, I made that part up, no offense meant), on the other side of tracks. You go under this little secret railroad bridge to get to the parking area. Really, the place is hard to find, and this is a small town. We would never have known about it if Tad hadn't been looking around on Yelp for places, any new places, to check out.
It's been open since September, but he couldn't get either his vegetarian daughters or his dieting wife to go before now. (It's really hard to find a place that we all like and want to go to at the same time.) It's also hard to find a truly good place around here, when, most of the time, you can cook it better yourself. We are always seeing restaurant locations that go in and out of business, and even the best ones are frequently empty when we're there.
We've met many local restaurant owners, working their butts off, but still they can't draw enough traffic to keep the doors open and their servers on staff. So we were impressed and amazed by The Worthy Burger right from the start, because -- the place was PACKED! OK, it was a holiday weekend, and this is sort of a college town, but it was as busy as any touristo, Barn-style place at Killington over President's weekend gets.
Everyone was having a great time, too, in part from sampling from the extensive "craft" beer menu scrawled on the chalkboard behind the bar, but also because the place has a great vibe. All the people working there actually seemd to LIKE working there; someone greeted us right away, recommended an IPA for Tad (Editor's note: the IPA is actually called "Sucks." It's very, very good), and found us a table about 10 minutes later, as friendly as could be.
You order your food at the bar, and they give you one of those flashing beeper-thingys that you get at corporate chains when you have to wait for a table; here, it goes off when your food is ready. There's no table service, and so the customers are moving around while they are there, picking up their burgers, ordering another beer, and interacting with the other patrons as well as the staff. It's genius, really -- you make new friends, and everyone feels part of this loose, of-the-moment, community of fellow beer-and-burger lovers in the know.
There's about 12 taps of beer going, listed on the blackboard
Beer (and wine) are served in these unique, oversized snifters
You will probably have, the first time, a signature Worthy Burger, single or double, 1/3 lb. of local grass-fed beef, grilled over a wood fire, with perfect toppings like caramelized onions, thin, home-made dill pickle slices, and Vermont bacon. There's an assortment of local artisan cheeses that can be served pub-style on a cheese plate, or melted on your burger.
Our vegetarian girls can eat here, they'll have the Veggie Burger, house-made with organic ingredients, and a beautiful, all-local greens, beets, and chevre salad (which I didn't get to try but am so going back for). There's a local Turkey Burger, a Fish Sandwich, and a pulled-pork special, all served on these fantastic brioche rolls. Of course the finishing touch -- hand-cut fries that are (unfortunately for the girls) fried in beef tallow, just like McDonald's used to do when their fries were still good.
I did, sadly, skip the cheese, in an attempt at Virtue
The Worthy Burger gets all the details right, while putting a unique spin on their chosen niche. They seem focussed on making their narrow menu perfect. All their ingredients are carefully sourced and thoughtfully prepared, yet there isn't a whiff of the pretentiousness that other "localvore" restaurants can have. Even though there's only a few things on the menu, it would be a long time before you'd get bored with the offerings.
I can hardly wait to see what they'll do in the summer, with outside tables and the Farmer's Market right across the tracks. I did break my diet, but it was Worth it!
peace, Deborah