A recent trip up to visit with friends in Burlington, Vermont had us again looking to try new options for breakfast as we drove along Interstate 89. While we really liked our last visit to Wit & Grit, we had another spot in Randolph that’s been on our hit list since they opened: Wee Bird Bagel Cafe.
This little cafe on the NE side of Randolph Vermont has been one of those spots that seems to perennially be experiencing changeover; just in the last 10 years, this spot has been Three Bean Café, Café Salud, Green Light Café, and the Huggable Mug, all variants on a basic cafe theme. But while none of them really had much tenure in the spot, Wee Bird, opened by Chelsie Brown of nearby Bent Hill Brewery (one of our area favorites), started a major renovation of the building and now runs the Wee Bird Bagel Cafe, featuring bagels, breakfast sandwiches, and other light bakery fare.
Wee Bird has a nice interior, where they actually removed half of upstairs to convert the space into a tall, open-air main dining room and a seating loft upstairs. And they’ve got a very nice selection of coffee drinks, so I ordered up a cold brew to enjoy while we waited for our breakfast sandwiches.
I’ll make an admission here: as a fan of both classic New York and Montreal bagel styles, I’m generally a bit skeptical when I get recommendations on bagel places, since an unfortunate majority of the “bagels” around the area which are really just “circular bread” and lack the texture and chewiness of a proper bagel. But I’ll put that to rest: Wee Bird makes proper boiled-then-baked bagels. And in addition to the simple classics, they’ve got a nice daily selection of specialty bagels as well. To be completely honest, they aren’t quite my favorites in the area (I’ll give a slight advantage to two Burlington spots, Meyer’s and Feldman’s, or the excellent NY-style bagels of The Bagel Studio in North Hartland, VT), but also don’t get me wrong; theses are still good bagels, and while they won’t be a go-to for buying my own bagels, they make an outstanding breakfast sandwich.
And this is indeed a good breakfast sandwich: the bagel itself was a nice rosemary-salt bagel, still crisp and fresh without any moisture absorption of the salt. On that they have a nicely soft-cooked farm fresh egg, topped with cheese (they’ve got a half dozen options here, I went for pepper jack), and I opted for sausage as well. Notably, Wee Bird is 100% vegetarian, so the sausage here is a veggie sausage patty. But it was carefully selected by the owner, and I think the result here was rather good.
Overall, I really did like Wee Bird. Definitely one of the better breakfast sandwiches of the area, and definitely a top vegetarian sandwich. It’ll continue to be one of my go-to places when traveling I-89, especially if I’m looking for a quick bite.
