It’s been a crazy-busy year, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been eating, just behind in our writing. Back in September, we decided to take a weekend to ourselves and head up to one of our favorite cities, Burlington, VT, for a relaxing day of hanging around. After doing some light shopping, we headed down to the South end of town to pay another visit to Switchback Brewery. While there, we noticed that a rather lot of people were in the area, all headed for a local food festival, Eat X NE, focusing on local farm-to-food options (as well as their partner event, BrewHaHa, a modest beer festival focusing on local beers). We decided to check it out, and were very pleasantly surprised: the fairly lousy weather had finally broken giving some nice, clear weather, and we got to sample a handful of new beers, and check out some of Burlington’s food trucks.
One of our better finds was a modest little trailer called Lazy Farmer. Lazy Farmer’s approach to the food truck world is quite straightforward: they obtain quality produce and meats from local producers, like pork from Snug Valley, and chicken from the well-known Misty Knoll farms. They then serve up a pleasant array of sandwiches, wraps, and salads that really feature these ingredients, ranging from a BLT, to Vietnamese-style wraps and bahn mi sandwiches, to hoisin-basted chicken sandwiches. It was quite a flavorful set of options, but I was immediately drawn to their top item, the “Epic BLT”.
When it comes down to it, the “Epic BLT” isn’t actually a “BLT”: the normal bacon in the sandwich was replaced with a thick, rich slab of pork belly in place of the usual bacon. But terminology aside, this was a most excellent sandwich: instead of being smoking and nitrate-laden like bacon, the softer notes of the pork belly really allowed the sandwich to focus on the pork flavor, with some nice interlaced layers of pork and fat. Add in a perfect amount of crisping from being grilled, and it was the perfect foundation for a sandwich. Add in some really crisp green bibb lettuce, some nice thick layers of perfectly ripe tomato, some pleasantly smooth homemade mayo, and a nice roll, and the resulting sandwich was awesome enough that I can agree that it was indeed “epic”.
Overall, Lazy Farmer has a nice thing going on: they have a simple menu, taking seasonal produce and meats and using them to build a variety of sandwiches and salads. And the concept is working: my “Epic BLT” was a particularly pleasing example of everything a good sandwich should be: nice veggies, crisp pork belly, and great bread. If you are looking for food trucks in the Burlington area, Lazy Farmer is a great place to start.
I can second that vote for the Epic BLT. The only problem with it is that you can’t eat just one. The Lazy Farmer also has delicious gluten free buns for a dollar extra.