Simon Pearce (Vermont) - A Little Bit About a Lot of Things A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

February 21, 2010 Simon Pearce (Vermont)

So if you can’t afford to buy a set of glasses, at $55 a glass, a nice alternative to shopping is lunch! Located at the Mill in Quechee, Simon Pearce offers picturesque views to it’s diners and shoppers. We arrive at 1:45pm and have a 30 minute wait. We look around, go downstairs to see the glass blowing demos and check out the observation deck that overlooks the falls.

We are greeted by Dawn, our waitress and we are given a nice bread plate. I’m a huge fan of good bread plates. In the down economy, bread plates were one of the things that restaurants cut back on. I love the one at Stephanie’s on Newbury. So Simon Pearce has two kinds of bread. A grainy, slightly dense brown bread and a white bread that is shaped in bite sized pieces. They also have good butter. I also love good butter, sweet and salty that you just want to put it on everything. We order the cheddar soup that we have heard so much about. ($5) It is smooth and creamy, not too heavy and is pure silky goodness. Unlike chowders with the same consistency, this cheddar soup warms you up but don’t sit in the bottom of your stomach. We then order the chicken pot pie ($14) which was a special on the menu and the special quiche of the day which was a crab, dill and caper($14). The food comes with a side salad, you can add on blue cheese crumbles or goats cheese for a small additional fee ($2). The pot pie doesn’t look thick. That’s my pet peeve. I don’t like soupy chili and I don’t like light chowder, I like the things that are supposed to be thick and creamy to be just that. I am surprised when I try it though, yes I have been proven wrong. The sauce is delicious and creamy and they don’t skimp on the chicken. The biscuit is wonderfully light and flakey. The quiche was better than expected. There was a last minute change to the menu that day. It was supposed to be applewood smoked bacon and onions. The capers took over the dish but it was light and fluffy. A lot of quiches can be dense and heavy-making you want to take a 32 hour nap afterwards. This one had a great crust-it might have even been the best part. Golden, flakey and light. The salad was greens with a vinaigrette dressing that was nothing to write home about. I got mine with goat cheese but then when I tried it, I remembered that I don’t really like goat cheese. We decided to split the dessert special, a lemon cake with home made raspberry sauce and peach sorbet ($8). Sounds like all the flavors together could have been a train wreck but they weren’t. I always like to try the specials at restaurants that I am dining for the first time at. Specials are just that, the chef found something great at the local market and decided to put it on the menu. So the cake comes out. The waitress had the kitchen split the cake so we each have our own share. The cake is a little on the dry side, but has a nice hint of lemon. It also has this great sugar crust on the outside. The raspberry sauce is the star of the dish. The flavor is intense and there is no shortage of it. The sorbet is wonderful. It cleanses the palette.

I think that a lot of restaurants that have great views or have some sort of gimmick don’t necessarily have to have good food. Restaurants with a great view don’t necessarily have to have good food because they bank on the view to keep the customers coming back. Chocolate desserts are the most popular with customers, so restaurants don’t have to try hard to make them delicious. This place, it has a great view (which might be better in the summer time when the open up the large windows), good service and the food is delicious.I highly recommend a stop in if you get the chance.