It is late July in the Champlain Valley, hot and humid, the air thick, not moving. Behind the diner, in the big white oak trees, the cicadas are loud. It's five in the morning. Sophie got in around four and has most of the breakfast prep finished. The rest will get done when Sarah gets in at 5:30, before the diner opens at six for the day. She had a little time to sit on the back step with her morning coffee. She thought about lucky she was to be here, in the place she loved, doing what made her most happy.
Sophie is 58, a retired high school librarian. She was born in Montpelier VT, grew up there, went to college at Vermont College, got her Masters in library science at Syracuse University and taught at Marshplain High School just east of Montpelier for twenty five years. She’d loved teaching, but she was just done. It was time for a change although she wasn’t sure what that would be. When she retired, she stayed in Montpelier for three years, then decided that she wanted to do something entirely different. The next spring, she saw an ad for an old diner just outside Vergennes. It was a somewhat run- down but classic Worcester Lunch Car, with twelve stools along two counters and eight booths.
Renovation hadn’t been easy but she had good friends to help her, experienced with both kitchens and remodeling. She envisioned a classic style that would be familiar to anyone who had grown up in the 50’s and 60’s, just an old school diner with excellent food and a friendly atmosphere. After about six months of deep cleaning, tearing out old furniture and equipment, replacing with new or found materials, she was happy with it and ready to open. She loves the way it looks, lots of polished chrome, old wood accents, aqua and peach paint, leather seats on the stools, the menu on a board above the pass at the counter.
She’d had a lot of experience cooking in restaurants in the summers and had taken some classes at the local culinary school. Friends and family said she was crazy, especially at her age, but she used her savings and some inheritance to buy the diner and a small bungalow in town. She’d always loved food and cooking, though, and had always found cooking to be a way to relax, to get centered and to feed those she loved. She believed that feeding people, bringing people together to share food, was her way to make the world a little better, a little more hospitable, a little more kind.
She hired two waitresses, Donna and Betty, and one kitchen helper, Sarah. Her good friend Ann, an extraordinarily gifted baker who had her own business in Ferrisburgh, would provide most of the baked goods. She knew she’d need more help in the summer when things got crazy, so she hired Ken to help in the kitchen in early June. He was local, living in Bristol, with plenty of experience in kitchens locally.
Sophie loves all kinds of food, but her favorites are the Vermont and New England comfort foods with which she'd grown up and the hearty Quebeçois cuisine from just across the border, heavily influenced by French ménagère cooking, farmhouse style, country style. The cross references are many, with poutine common in Vermont, and Michigans - a particular Plattsburgh and North Country version of a chili dog, popular in casse-croutes throughout Quebec. Frequent forays to the Eastern Townships, to Quebec City and especially to Montreal were strong influences.
Her kitchen is well-equipped but small, so she chooses to keep the menu limited, preferring to do fewer things very well. The diner is open six days a week, Tuesday through Sunday for breakfast and lunch, six in the morning til two in the afternoon.
