Vermont Magazine - March/April 2004
The Table Is Set:
The Kitchen Table Bistro in Richmond offers a creative dinner
menu complemented by scrumptious desserts.
by Melissa Pasanen
In 1996, Steve and Lara Atkins were living in a tiny apartment in California while they worked double shifts in some of Napa Valley's finest restaurants and bakeries. On the rare occasions they were home at the same time and could bear to think about eating, Lara says, "We ate off an ottoman we bought at an estate sale."
"We were too poor to have a table," explains Steve.
The couple, who met at Vermont's New England Culinary Institute (NECI) in Montpelier, spent six years absorbing the food-and-wine culture of northern California before returning to Steve's home state to open the Kitchen Table Bistro in Richmond last February. Although they now have tables to spare, their time together is not much more plentiful than it was out West.
From six in the morning when pastry chef Lara wakes up to start baking golden toasted hazelnut butter cakes and other delicious morsels for her standout desserts, to past nine many evenings when dinner chef Steve fires the last plate of perfectly seared jumbo scallops with roasted beets and crisp polenta, the couple not only share all the responsibilities for their new restaurant, but they also juggle the care of their two-year-old son, Gabe. This is made somewhat easier by the fact that they live above their restaurant, but life is still crazy. On a late-summer Wednesday that marked the restaurant's six-month anniversary, they were too busy even for a celebratory toast. "We did say hello to each other, though," says Lara, grinning.
The 200-year-old distinctively patterned brick building which they make their home and business was formerly a pub called Checkers. The building looks pretty much the same today as it did in the Checkers days as you zoom past on Interstate 89, but the interior now has a completely different flavor.
Molly Stevens, a Williston-based food writer and former NECI Instructor, admits to initially missing the post-ski hangout she and her husband had frequented over the years. "I mean, (Checkers was) where we used to play darts and hang out by the bar," she says. The bar is still in the back corner room, but the dartboard is nowhere to be seen and the walls of the four dining rooms are now a cool mossy gray-green hung with beautiful black-and-white Vermont landscapes by local photographer Jeff Clark.
When Stevens first went to the new restaurant, she didn't realize that two of her former students were behind the mouth-watering grilled wild king salmon with cloud-light whipped potatoes and the succulent duck breast with bacon-braised chard. "I'm really impressed with what they've done," she says. "The food is great and that casual elegance that everyone talks about -- they're really doing it. I'd go in there in my blue jeans and I'd also take my mother-in-law. They make everyone feel comfortable.
The food definitely qualifies as fine dining, but Lara and Steve Atkins work hard to put guests at ease. They have a rule that no dish description should take more than one line on the menu, or require a glossary to interpret. "It's American comfort food -- nothing pretentious, with relatively simple presentation," says Steve. "Food's for eating. It's beautiful because of its practical, functional value."
Their philosophy is clear from the moment a server plunks down Waterbury's Red Hen Baking Company crusty bread slices, which have no vessel so crumbs won't scatter all over the white tablecloth. "We don't want people to worry about crumbs, and it takes more unnecessary stuff out of the way," Steve explains.
The single-page menu has three straightforward sections: small plates, large plates, and sweet plates. The daily vegetarian offering is described simply as "the veg plate," which rather undersells Steve's interesting creations. The menu changes seasonally and, like most of Vermont's good chefs, Atkins believes strongly in supporting local farmers, and regional bounty inspires him.
The restaurant's summer and early fall menus were enlivened by a forager who appeared periodically with treasures like a giant puffball mushroom, which Steve transformed into a crispy vegetarian strudel layered with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and an opal basil sauce. Another day brought 40 pounds of tiny wild pears, which Lara poached in wine with cinnamon and citrus and served with a fudgie bittersweet chocolate mousse drizzled with caramel and topped with salted pistachios.
Although you'd have to dine at the Kitchen Table at least weekly to each of these one-of-a-kind dishes, there will always be more where they came from. If you missed the summer small plate of crisp, cornmeal-crusted oysters served with a marinated salad of local cucumber, corn, and onion and just-right spicy sauce, you can look forward to the late-fall version of the duck leg confit appetizer, which Steve may pair with peppery arugula and caramelized apples or fresh figs. The wild king salmon is another crowd-pleaser.
"It's nice to see a chef with the guts to cook good salmon rare," a dining companion said to me between bites of translucent orange-pink fish in a buttery lemon sauce. The classic Angus rib-eye steak with fries and grilled red onions has already developed many fans who will be relieved to hear that it will never leave the menu.
Desserts and wine are Lara's domain. Early in her culinary career, she was sure she wanted to be a winery chef, which was what first led the couple out to California. Lara worked for a period in the tasting room at Clos Pegase in Calistoga before realizing that she preferred her hours spent baking in the original brick ovens of Saint Helena's Model Bakery. By the end of their California sojourn, Lara has risen to become pastry chef at La Toque -- a highly regarded Napa restaurant where Steve was sous-chef -- but she kept her interest in wine along with personal connections to many California vineyards.
The Kitchen Table wine list is almost exclusively Californian, with a few bottles from Oregon and French champagne. Along with familiar standards like Frog's Leap cabernet sauvignon and Saintsbury Pinot Noir, they offer wines from small, well respected winemakers such as Robert Biale and David Coffaro. At a recent dinner, our table followed the servers recommendation to try Coffaro's Dry Creek zinfandel, whose jammy black fruit was a smooth and silky complement to salmon and scallops, as well as grilled pork and lamb.
Lara also makes good use of wine in her desserts, from the Viognier-poached pears to the dried sour cherries soaked in zinfandel syrup and folded into vanilla ice cream. A long list of homemade ice creams is a house signature. The cherry ice cream is served with molten chocolate cake -- a combination that elicited a groan of delight at our table. Lemon verbena ice cream costarred with an ethereal lemon cream tart sprinkled with local blueberries, and Vermont honey ice cream crowned a fluted hazelnut butter cake marooned in a purple-pink fig sauce.
Ironically, Lara doesn't eat dessert and if Steve craves something sweet late night he has to come downstairs and forage in the restaurant kitchen for an orphaned slice of cream cheese pound cake, a scoop of black currant ice cream, or a spoonful of caramel sauce. He's most likely to eat it standing up, but if he needs a table, there are now plenty from which to choose.