Offbeat Eats

As our regular readers know, here at Offbeat Eats, every once in a while we do a “health check”, revisiting one of our favorite spots and see how things are doing. We first visited the Hartland Diner back in 2015 when they were a relatively new breakfast spot, having taking over from the previous incarnation in that location, Stella’s. In our 2015 visit, we both had a rather good experience, myself with a hash Benedict (probably one of my standard orders these days), and Carol with a similar order of a hash omelet. We both enjoyed our visit; the staff was pleasant, the food good, and the prices reasonable for the quality. With that in mind, we stopped off at the Hartland Diner on a trip down to MA to check them out again.

I’ve always enjoyed the little town of Hartland, VT. It’s a nice quiet little town, just off of I-91 and down the road from Windsor. It’s a bit funny, since it really has three village areas: Three Corners (where Route 5 and Route 12 intersect, and basically the main part of town), Four Corners (to the west, where Route 12 and Brownsville Road intersect), and North Hartland (a quiet little village nestled in between I-91 and the Connecticut River, and home of the North Hartland Dam, a rather nice little recreational area). As small Vermont towns go, Hartland is nice in that it’s actually got enough basic amenities: a gas station, two convenience stores, a library, several churches (including the host of the Famous Roast Beef Supper) and the like. And a diner, the Hartland Diner.

There are a lot of New England traditions I really enjoy this time of year. Snowshoeing. Winter Carnivals. Maple Sugaring. And community suppers. Almost every weekend in late winter, harvest, and game season, there are a wide variety of community breakfasts and dinners, sponsored by a wide variety of local organization, churches, fire departments, and clubs, all of which provide a good way to meet a good cross-section of local society, as well as have a good hearty meal. While there are many such local dinners, however, quality really can run the gamut from “cheap spaghetti dinner” up to “homemade top-notch feast”. And the Hartland Congregational Church (known locally as “The Brick Church” to distinguish it from the white painted church down the road) hosts a top-notch example of the later: the Hartland “Famous” Roast Beef Supper.