Offbeat Eats

We recently had reason to celebrate a major milestone on a Friday evening, and other obligations of mine already had me visiting Woodstock, Vermont the same day. Normally, this would have been a great opportunity to visit Oakes & Eveyln, which is my go-to for this sort of thing, but others obviously had the same idea: they were booked solid. So I decided to try another nearby spot that I’ve driven by hundreds of times in the decade since they opened, 506 Bistro, located inside On the River Inn. The name of both the restaurant and inn have subtly changed a few times over the years (for example, a few years ago the Inn was “506 On The River”, with the Bistro being “The Bistro at 506”), and I’m not really sure what the 506 stands for (it’s definitely not the address), but the place has been around long enough I decided that it was worth checking out.

A few years ago, there was a pop-up donut bakery, Farmer and the bell, that was making French-style cruller donuts in the back of the Angkor Wat Cambodian restaurant in Woodstock, VT each weekend. After getting quite a following (they’d regularly sell out after only a few hours), they first moved to doing a slightly larger bakery space in the Parker House in Quechee, VT, serving up donuts on weekends in 2022, and still selling out quickly. In 2023, as the owners were starting their family, they put the business on pause, raised capital, and leased a spot in east Woodstock where an old former gas station had been a perennial eyesore, and built their own store, opening in early October 2025. We’d been meaning to go for several weeks, but most times we were passing through Woodstock, their parking lot was completely full, and we figured we’d come another time. But during early January, we finally had a chance to stop by and check them out.

When Carol and I moved to the Upper Valley way back in 2001, the fine dining scene was substantially different; there were fewer options for fine dining, and most of the stalwarts from that era, such as Hanover’s Cafe Bon Gustaio, have long since departed the landscape. And most of the remaining places that aren’t associated with hotels have moved on as well. But one particular fine dining restaurant has managed to stay in pretty much continual operation for over fifty years, and that’s Woodstock, VT’s The Prince and the Pauper.

Right before heading out of town for a week, we met up with our friends Liz and Wesley and headed over to Oakes & Evelyn for dinner. You might be thinking, “didn’t Rich write up Oakes & Evelyn fairly recently (I did, in 2023)?”, as it’s a semi-regular fine dining destination of ours. But in this case, we weren’t doing the hour and a quarter drive up to Montpelier, but instead, driving to Woodstock. A few months ago, Oakes & Evelyn announced that they were opening a second location, taking over the restaurant operations in Woodstock’s The Jackson inn. After several months of renovation and preparation, Oakes & Eveyln finally had their opening night at their new location, and we decided to give it a try.

One of the things I love about Northern New England in the summer is that many of the small towns have all sorts of seasonal “snack bars” along the side of the road that serve up a variety of burgers, hot dogs, fries, and ice cream. And sometimes even the occasional lobster roll as well. On my very first road trip (to Long Trail Brewing in Bridgewater, VT), I stopped at one such snack bar that remains a favorite of mine, the White Cottage Snack Bar in Woodstock, VT.

One of our occasional favorites on the local dining scene is a tapas place: Candela Tapas Lounge in Hanover (you can read my review of them here), but it’s not the only place in the area doing “Pan-Latin inspired tapas”. Melaza Bistro over in Woodstock, Vermont, serves up “Caribbean tapas & entrees”, and has been a perennial item on our “places in the Upper Valley to check out” (early in its history, there was some involvement from the current owner of Candela, but the businesses are completely separate now). So when we recently had to celebrate a birthday, we decided to finally check out Melaza.

(Closed) After a day of hiking around Woodstock, we were hungry, and decided that while our usual haunts (The Village Butcher Shop being one of the main ones, or the ever-wonderful Worthy Kitchen being almost a perennial haunt of ours), we’d mix it up a bit and get some pizza. Pi Brick Oven Trattoria had opened a few years ago, and despite the schticky name, we decided to duck in and give it a try.

Well, it was just a few weeks ago that I did my review of Worthy Kitchen, but already I’ve got a good reason to do a re-review. In short, Worthy Kitchen does brunch on weekends, and I thought a quick re-review was in order. Last weekend, Carol and I were feeling a bit too lazy to make breakfast, and wanted to head over in the vague direction of Norwich, and we decided that a minor detour to check out Worthy Kitchen’s brunch menu was in order. On weekends, they open at 10am, and in addition to their normal bar, they also serve up Bloody Marys, Mimosas, and all sorts of other breakfast cocktails, and have a pretty decent brunch menu ranging from the basics (eggs), to the inventive (house-made hash), to the lunch-end of the spectrum (they still offer up their fried chicken, although with a biscuit and cream gravy).

It seems that most of the restaurant openings around here happen when I’m out of town. In this case, while we were in Belgium, Worthy Kitchen, the sister restaurant to Worthy Burger, opened up in Woodstock. While Worthy Burger had some startup issues like most any restaurant, they hid their stride and have been wildly successful (sometimes to the point of being a victim of that success, with my personally experiencing 20 minute lines just to check out, and having them stop taking orders long before closing because the kitchen was backed up. Oh well, there are worse problems a starting business can have). So I wasn’t surprised to hear a few months ago that the Worthy Burger were looking at opening new locations, and then hearing that they had a specific spot picked out in Woodstock. Located on the east side of town, Worthy Kitchen is in a slightly odd spot sharing a building with a physical therapist (who must be thrilled with the arrangement) in a restaurant location I had previously considered cursed since it’s had several failed restaurants in it in my 13 years of living in the area (remember the EastEnder or the Lemongrass Cafe? Apparently nobody did.). But basically, they’ve done up a similar concept: the interior is focused upon the bar, with an impressive list of taps, and then they’ve got a chalkboard menu (like Worthy Burger, some of the items are constant, and others rotate in and out).

(Closed) It’s been several years since I reviewed Wasp’s Diner, and since it had been quite a while since I’d even been there, I decided on a recent trip over into Vermont that it might be a good idea to check in on them and see if things are still going strong. My previous review focused on their breakfast (in particular, the rather good eggs Benedict I ended up having, with a top-notch Hollandaise sauce on it), so this time we ended up getting lunch. I opted for the grilled cheese and ham, and Carol opted for the shepherd’s pie…