Last month, we were looking for a good place to go to celebrate Carol’s birthday, and realized we hadn’t been to one of our area favorites for a while: Windsor Station in Windsor, VT. As you might suspect from the name, Windsor Station is in the former railroad station, and it’s one of the area’s best fine-dining options.
For some background, the current rail tracks in southern Vermont along the Connecticut river are run by New England Central Railroad (NECR), which was the successor organization after the Central Vermont Railway (then part of CN) broke up. This sign is a remnant from the Central Vermont Railway days. Shortly after Central Vermont Railway passenger service stopped (with the re-introduction of Amtrak’s Montrealer/Vermonter, there’s now one daily passenger train in each directoion), the main depot building converted into a restaurant and freight depot, and it’s been operating as a restaurant in one form or another since 1976. When we moved here, this was the “Windsor Station Pub”, a serviceable-but-not-remarkable pub, but in 2012 that restaurant closed, and after extensive renovation, local restaurateurs Stacy and Jon Capurso sold their well-liked place Stella’s in Hartland (now the Hartland Diner) bought the place, and embarked on an impressive renovation, reopening as the current Windsor Station.
Throughout the restaurant, they’ve decorated the place with what’s best-described as “relics of the golden age of passenger rail travel”, with suitcases, old train schedules, photos, and early 20th century decor. You get more than a little feeling that you’re sitting in a dining car while eating here. As far as menu, Windsor Station focuses on a combination of pub food (since half of the recent is a the beer and cocktail bar) and a varied American menu featuring house-made pasta, steaks, and entrees like grilled steaks. The bar is pleasant as well: they maintain a good list of cocktails, and as is almost obligatory in Vermont, having a list of 10 rotating beer taps, all featuring local craft beers.
We decided to start out on an Italian note, getting the arancini. I always enjoy a good arancini, especially since doing these right takes a bit of skill: you need to get the interior rice ball nicely flavored without over- or undercooking it, while simultaneously getting the exterior to just the right level of crispiness. Windsor Station did these flawlessly, and served them up with a nicely-seasons tomato-vodka marinara. A great little appetizer.
Next up was a pair of salads. A lot of places these days seem to have appetizer salads as a bit of an afterthought, but Windsor Station still puts a lot of thought into composing some good salads: we both had the Station Master Salad, with fresh baby lettuce, dried cranberries, crumbled blue cheese, walnuts, and maple cracked-peppercorn vinaigrette. This was a nice combination of sweet and savory notes, with the blue cheese adding the occasional bite of sharpness.
For my main course, I went for the spaghetti and meatballs. while nominally a fairly plain dish, I had remembered on a previous visit that Windsor Station makes their own pasta in-house, and does a really good job at it (the bucatini of a previous trip is one of the best pasta dishes I’ve had ever). For my spaghetti and meatballs, everything here is spot on: house-made, perfectly al dente spaghetti with just the right amount of tooth, and just the right amount of salt. Combine that with a really rich, concentrated, but not overly salty marinara. And some really nicely spiced and lightly seared meatballs, and this was about as good as “spaghetti and meatballs” gets.
Carol, meanwhile, went for the Chicken Parmesan. This was the same excellent house-made spaghetti and marinara as the meatball dish, but topped with a very nicely done breaded chicken cutlet and topped with cheese. One of the better breaded chicken breasts in the area, this had a nicely cooked and tender interior, a nice crumb to the breading, and was crisped to perfection. Combining this with the marinara and cheese made for a particular good Parmesan.
Finally, for dessert, we had loved the sound of their daily special pistachio cake with chocolate ganache… but our relatively late seating meant that the table before us has finished off the last serving. Instead, we got the French Silk Pie, which was a very well-executed version of the classic: a good, rich chocolate pudding filling, a nice cracker crust, and a good real whipped cream topping.
I can definitely see why Windsor Station remains popular (on a Saturday night, the place was packed: reservations are highly recommended). The food is excellent (and the pasta is the second-best I’ve had in Vermont, just slightly behind Trattoria Delia, which I still need to revisit), the service friendly, and the prices still pretty reasonable in these times of extreme inflationary pressure. If Windsor was just a tiche closer to my house, we’d probably come a lot more often.
