Hamburger America (56 page)

The burger also includes a Utah curiosity called fry sauce. For those unfamiliar with the fast-food habits of Utahans, fry sauce is basically ketchup and mayo mixed together. Mike told me, “We make our own fry sauce in house, made of seven ingredients, most of them secret.” The sauce is mainly used as a dip for fries.

The Katsanevases have been approached more than once with offers to franchise but have resisted. Fear that the quality of their product would decline was not their only reason. “We make a comfortable living and we’re happy with the way things are,” Mike told me. “We have worked very hard for everything we have. Besides, this couldn’t be a franchise; everything is made to order!”

3 EAST MAIN ST
|
WILMINGTON, VT 05363
802-464-7284 |
WWW.DOTSOFVERMONT.COM
SUN–THU 5:30 AM–8 PM |
FRI–SAT 5
:30 AM–9 PM
CLOSED MONDAY

 

 

D
ot’s is hard to miss as you roll into the picturesque downstate Vermont town of Wilmington. Just look for the only neon sign in town, thanks to a local ordinance that has banned neon signage on businesses. Fortunately, the neon sign over the door at Dot’s has been grandfathered in.

Dot’s is not a burger joint. It’s a classic New England diner that serves comfort food favorites like pancakes, chili, and sandwiches but also happens to serve one of the best burgers in Vermont. Locals and tourists alike frequent Dot’s, which sees healthy crowds year round. Nearby Mt. Snow attracts thousands of skiers and snowboarders on winter weekends, many of them looking for burgers.

The name of the restaurant goes back half a century but the actual building dates to 1832, making it the oldest structure in town. For its first 70 years, the building was a post office and in 1900, became a general store. In 1930, the store became a restaurant and had many names over the next few decades. In 1952, a man named Dude Sparrow bought the restaurant for his wife, Dot. When the Sparrows sold the diner to John Reagan in 1980 the name stayed.

The burger at Dot’s starts as a hand-formed patty of fresh ground 80/20 Angus chuck. A mayo lid is used for portioning and the 5-ounce patty is cooked to temperature over a flame grill with lava rocks. It’s served on a toasted, seeded white bun and nothing else but potato chips and a dill pickle spear. “They come plain,” Mitch explained, “but we do not shy away from special requests.” Cheese selection is American, Swiss, pepper jack, and Vermont cheddar and the usual condiments are available, including lettuce, tomato, and sliced red onion.

The burger at Dot’s is best chased by a chocolate malt. Make sure to try the tasty fries, hand-cut daily. I asked waitress of 30 years Shirlee what drink would go best with this juicy burger. She responded with a straight face, “A beer.” She’s right, and Dot’s does have a selection of beer and wine, but I was there at 10:30am and had just finished my coffee.

The restaurant has been updated recently and the clean décor has a sort of cozy country feel with wood tables and chairs, pale blue floor tiles, and fireplace that no longer functions. Dot’s is not large and the counter can only seat nine at swivel stools. There are tables with room for about forty people but try to snag the single booth at the front, in a nook out of the way.

Even though John and Patty Reagan have owned and run Dot’s for over 30 years people still walk in and ask, “Where is Dot?” The friendly staff gets a kick out of the question and reply by jokingly pointing to longtime manager Mitch Soskin saying, “There’s Dot!” “We get asked that at least three times a day,” counterperson Cindy told me. Cindy is one of the most upbeat waitresses I’ve ever met and for good reason. Years ago she escaped corporate America and an executive job in Hartford, Connecticut to serve coffee to regulars at Dot’s. “And I’m happier than ever! This is it!” she shouted down the counter.

 

 

“A
lot of people come here thinking it’s that great rock-and-roll town in New York,” manager Norm Corbin told me, and added with his New England accent and a smile, “Well, it’s nawt.” This Woodstock is deep in the mountains of Vermont complete with covered bridges and gentle streams. Downtown is a destination with tour buses dumping happy shoppers onto the quaint main drag all summer long and well into foliage season. White Cottage is not here, though. Head a mile west out of town and you’ll find a 54-year-old snack bar that has not changed much since its opening day in 1957. “Look at this picture, that says it all,” Norm pointed out. Sure enough, a large, faded black-and-white photo taken in the early 1960s hangs in the counter window. With the exception of the period cars in the photo the White Cottage looks virtually unchanged a half century later. “We’ve put up a few layers of paint, that’s it,” Norm says.

“Everything is made in house, the sauces, the coleslaw, everything,” the second half of the managerial team, Scott Noble, told me. All of the dairy used at White Cottage is from local farms and the beef for the burgers comes from Vermont cows. A local meatpacker in Burlington supplies the snack bar with fresh 6-ounce Angus chuck patties. The burgers are cooked on a flame grill and served on toasted, classic, white squishy buns. The bacon cheeseburger is the favorite at White Cottage and the standard call is to order one with “the works”: lettuce, tomato, diced onion, pickle, mayo, mustard, and ketchup. This
is an amazingly juicy burger so don’t let it sit around. Within minutes the juices will disintegrate the bun. I asked for one medium and it was cooked to temperature perfectly.

To order at White Cottage, step up to one of the windows. Pick up your burgers when your name is called over the loudspeaker. There’s a tendency to go back to the window where you paid, but the pickup window is actually around the corner to the right. There’s plenty of seating on the porch and out by the river that runs behind White Cottage.

Burgers aren’t the only thing on the menu and you’d be a fool to walk away from White Cottage without a side of deep-fried clam bellies. In fact, even though the onion rings are amazing, order a side of these clams with your burger. Norm and Scott get the clams from Ipswich, Massachusetts and have a legion of fans. “Some people come from Ipswich to have the Ipswich clams here,” Norm told me. Ipswich is two-and-a-half hours away. They’re that good.

White Cottage is a seasonal snack bar and locals look forward to the opening every year. “Come spring, they are so excited to see us open,” Norm told me and says that he’s constantly harangued about opening day, which is usually the Friday before Memorial Day. “People are jonesing for clams and burgers.” The busiest time of the year, though, is around Fourth of July when the tourists show up in force. The locals know better and avoid the snack bar when it gets crazy. “They stay away on weekends. They’re smart,” Norm explained.

Ice cream is king at White Cottage and in the peak of the summer the place is overrun by families looking for one of the snack bar’s thirty-three flavors and soft serve. Ice cream is scooped behind a large picture window and kids can watch the action by climbing a two-step platform. Scott explained, “Parents were always lifting the kids up to watch us scoop so I made the steps from some scrap wood.” How thoughtful is that?

White Cottage closes for the season the Monday of Columbus Day during the first week of October. Peak foliage has happened at that point and I imagine it starts to get pretty quiet in that part of Vermont. “It’s also not winterized—there’s no heat here,” Scott explained. But the nice thing about a seasonal place like White Cottage is that you can’t always have it. You’ll have to wait, and what could be better than the expectation of good things to come?

 

 

“I
hope you plan on having a Cheesy Western” were the first words out of Matt Bullington’s mouth after I had introduced myself. I was thrown, because I thought I had come to the Texas Tavern for a straightforward hamburger, possibly a thin patty on a white bun. What Matt was selling me was actually the most popular burger at his over-75-year-old hamburger stand.

The “Cheesy Western” is a glorious combination of fried egg, thin hamburger patty, cheese, pickle, onion, and relish on a soft white bun. “We sell hundreds of Cheesys a day, especially to the late-night crowd,” Matt told me. How late? “We’re open all night.” In fact, the only time the Texas Tavern closes is for part of Christmas Eve and day.

Matt is the great-grandson of Nick Bullington, the man who opened the tiny hamburger stand in 1930. “My great-grandfather saw Roanoke as a boomtown and decided to build his restaurant here.” In the 1920s Roanoke had a vibrant locomotive construction industry. Nick, an advance man for the Ringling Brothers Circus, had collected recipes from his extensive travels around the United States. He had observed the best ways to make hamburgers (no doubt gleaning what he could from the success of White Castle at the time), had adopted a mustard-based relish from a circus recipe, and
most importantly had borrowed a chili recipe from a hotel in Texas.

Curiously, the chili and burgers are sold separately as they have been for over seven decades. A chili burger is absent from the menu, though Matt said “A few people order them, but not many.” The chili is so popular at the restaurant that it can be taken away by the gallon if necessary. That may be because the chili is more soup than condiment.

The grill area is just inside the front window, which was typical of burger joints of the era. The cook’s station is a testament to efficient food prep. A hot dog steam box sits in front of a deep canister of chili. Next to that is the impossibly small 12-by-18-inch griddle. To the right of the griddle are two small burners for frying eggs and a box containing burger buns, relish, pickles, and onions. The entire complement of ingredients and cooking apparatus to prepare everything on the menu occupies a mere six square feet—absolutely amazing.