Top Ten #48

1.  Endless Boogie, Long Island (No Quarter)

2.  Dead Man (1995), dir. Jarmusch

3.  S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon

4.  baked baby back ribs, AEB-style

5.  Amour (2012), dir. Haneke



6.  Yo La Tengo, Fade (Matador) + Yo La Tengo, Corona Theatre, Mtl, QC, Feb 11, 2013



7.  Lareau Farm Inn + American Flatbread, Waitsfield, VT

8.  Thai beef curry & Thai steamed fish à la Pok Pok + coconut rice



9.  Mocky, Graveyard Novelas EP + Mocky "Make You Rich" video (featuring Hilary Gay & Pegasus Warning)

10.  homemade congee (TY Danny Bowien!)

aj

Extra! Extra!!

fig. a: pie by Parker Pie

We've waxed poetic about the joys of pizza in Vermont on more than one occasion, but if you pick up today's Montreal Gazette, you'll find a new, more comprehensive article on Green Mountain pizza, featuring three of our very favorite establishments:

fig. b: al fresco, American Flatbread

fig. c: decor, American Flatbread

American Flatbread (of course), Parker Pie Co., and Pizza on Earth.

fig. d: pizza by Pizza on Earth

• If you prefer the ease and convenience of the online edition, you can find that version of the article (alas, with fewer photographs) here.

aj

...Creameries and Model Farms and Co-ops and Pizzas

fig. a: Shelburne Creamery Building

Shelburne, VT

This was one of the first, uh, sights we came across when we entered Shelburne, VT: the former Shelburne Creamery (you could tell by the enormous letters on the side of the building that spelled "Shelburne Creamery"). We were on the lookout for Shelburne Farms because we wanted to buy some of their cheese, and although it looked a little quiet, a little lonely, a little uncanny--almost like some lost corner of Prague

fig. b: street scene, Prague

--we actually thought this might be the very place where Shelburne Farms made their acclaimed line of cheddars. We were wrong. Yes, this odd-looking building had played home to the Shelburne Creamery, but now it was just another one of those office buildings where you often find doctors' suites. Not 200 feet further down the Route 7, however, we found a general store, one that stocked Shelburne Farms' cheese among their selection of fine Vermont cheeses. We asked a question or two, got some directions, and minutes later we were winding our way west towards Lake Champlain. About a mile along the Harbor Road we came across the Shelburne Farms store at the junction of Harbor and Bay, but this wasn't just any cheese store. Sure, they had their own cob-smoked bacon and hams, baked goods, souvenirs, even antiques,

fig. c: True Vermonter sugaring bucket

along with a selection of their fine cheeses. More importantly, though, the store is housed inside the gatehouse of a sprawling estate, a 1,400-acre parcel of land that was designed, landscaped, and built according to the vision of architect Robert H. Robertson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted for Dr. William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb back in the late 19th century, and that once encompassed 3,800 acres. The idea was to create a model agricultural estate, one that raised dairy cows, sheeps, and Hackney horses, as well as pigs, poultry, and gaming pheasants, one that was clearly meant to simulate an English country estate. The estate has been run as a non-profit organization since 1972, and in addition to its creamery, Shelburne Farms includes an inn (in the former Seward/Webb mansion),

fig. d: The Inn at Shelburne Farms, off-season

a working farm (which called to mind one of the farms featured in Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale),

fig. e: the Farm Barn, Shelburne Farms

and lush grounds and stunning views (both formal and not)

fig. f: the view from the inn, off-season

that are very much open to the public.

It didn't take much convincing to go for a walk, especially given Shelburne Farms almost English sense of picturesque, with tree-lined lanes, broad meadows, and rolling, densely forested hills. Plus, it was at least 60º F that day. We'd come prepared for some wintertime tramping, but the only snow we saw the whole weekend was of the artificially created kind, on some abandoned ski slopes up above Middlebury. In fact, about 25 feet after Michelle deciphered these signs

fig. g: Pyongyang 9412 mi.

and we got our first glimpse of the inn off in the distance, we came across a caterpillar. A live one. In Vermont. In January.

The next day we came back to Shelburne Farms. We'd decided to put off our cheese shopping there until it was just about time to head north of the border again, but mostly we just wanted to go back and have another walk. Especially given the balmy weather. This time around we stayed out of the hills and headed for Lake Champlain and the inn instead, hoping to come across Shelburne Farms' dairy farm. Sure enough, about 1/4 mile from the inn we found their herd of Swiss Browns lunching.

fig. h: Swiss Miss

About an hour later, after we'd toured the inn, taken in the lake, and gingerly sidestepped a skunk, we went back to the Shelburne Farms store, picked up a couple of blocks of cheddar, some bacon, and our sugaring bucket and hit the road.

Shelburne Farms, 1611 Harbor Rd. Shelburne, VT, (802) 985-8686

Ferrisburgh, VT

In all honesty, we really can't tell you much about Ferrisburgh except that it's no more than 30 minutes south of Shelburne, and if you drive down that way along the 7 you absolutely, positively will not be able to miss Dakin Farm unless you've got the mother of all head colds or something. The smell of all that cob-smoked goodness--hams, bacon, and the like--is almost enough to make you veer off the road. If you do find yourself overpowered, as we did, try to manage a controlled veer into the Dakin Farm parking lot. Yeah, it's a bit kitsch--not quite Cracker Barrel Old Country Store-style, but heading in that direction--but, as mentioned earlier, it's worth it for their honest-to-goodness cob-smoked bacon and odds-and-ends alone.

Dakin Farm, 5797 Route 7, Ferrisburgh, VT, 1-800-993-2546

Vergennes, VT

Saturday, no more than a half an hour south of Shelburne, we came across signs for Vergennes. Michelle had decided we had to check it out even before we caught a glimpse of it because she liked the sound of the name or something, but then we spied the town center off in the distance,

fig. i: Vergennes, VT, as seen from Route 7 (more or less)

remarked upon how much it reminded us of the way Canterbury had appeared from the Pilgrim's Way in A Canterbury Tale, and knew then and there that we had to take a closer look. Up close, it didn't look as much like 1940s Canterbury as we might have liked, but it was still pretty charming. We came across the town library/museum and we were in the process of admiring it from the outside when we noticed they were having a book sale and used that as an excuse to take a closer look.

fig. j: artifact, Vergennes Museum

And right next to where we'd parked our car, we discovered a fine little chocolate shop, Daily Chocolate. Started up by a couple of chocolatiers from New Mexico a few years ago, Daily Chocolate serves up really rather adventurous (and rather delicious) chocolates, like pistachio-green chile bark (sounds crazy, I know, but it works), featuring their own complex blends of some of the finest American and European chocolates (like Scharffen Berger).

Daily Chocolate, 7 Green St., Vergennes, VT, (802) 877-0087.

Middlebury, VT

We'd heard all kinds of promising things about Middlebury, but, truth be told, we went there primarily to see if we couldn't score some Animal Farm butter (the pride and joy of Orwell, VT) at the Middlebury Co-op because Michelle had heard that they received some deliveries of this highly prized handmade butter (the only handmade butter in Vermont and Thomas Keller's preferred brand) from time to time. We struck out on Animal Farm butter, but we found some other nice things at the co-op, like some Macoun apples and some organic beers, and we fared pretty well at a used book and record store in the Frog Hollow area of Middlebury next to Otter Creek Falls. We had a feeling Middlebury would be a great town for used books and we were dead right. That was where Michelle picked up Noel Perrin's First Person Rural and Second Person Rural, along with 5 or 6 other naturalist classics--the kinds of things she covets. It was late afternoon by the time we finished tooling around Middlebury and we could have just made our way to American Flatbread's Marble Works branch, but we had our hearts set on going to the Waitsfield original, so we got back in the car and began our ascent of the Green Mountains.

Middlebury Co-op, 1 Washington St., Middlebury, VT, (802) 388-7276

Waitsfield, VT

When we got to Lareau Farm maybe an hour and a half later we were glad we'd made the trek. American Flatbread in Middlebury would have been nice, I'm sure, but there's something about that location in the Mad River Valley that we've found particularly relaxing every time we've been to the Waitsfield restaurant over the last few years. We got a great table just off to the side of the pizza-making station, which probably isn't the #1 table in the house, but was a seating we really enjoyed because we got a behind-the-scenes peek into the workings of American Flatbread--the lively banter, the ease with which they handle rushes, the way they try out a prospective pizza-baker. And even though our pizza got demystified somewhat because we saw it (and many others like it) get assembled before our eyes, that half-and-half New Vermont Sausage & Misty Knoll chicken/chipotle-maple BBQ sauce/collard greens/red onions/sweet corn/Grafton Village smoked cheddar deluxe edition tasted just as great as ever.

Those of you out there who still aren't all that familiar with American Flatbread might not be aware of this, but their restaurant is generally only open two days per week. The reason being, they spend the greater part of the rest of the week making parcooked pizzas so that they can freeze them and sell them in health food stores and other grocery stores across a wide swath of the Eastern United States. This time around in Vermont we finally wised up and picked up a couple of American Flatbread's frozen pies at the Onion River Co-op in Burlington to bring back to Montreal with us. We figured, "Why not bring those tastes back home with us?" Sure enough, the experience wasn't nearly as magical as it is when you get a pizza fresh out of that gorgeous earthen oven in Waitsfield (few things are), but you sure couldn't tell it was a frozen pizza either, and it was damn good.

American Flatbread, 46 Lareau Rd., Waitsfield, VT, (802) 496-8856

Onion River Co-op/City Market, 82 South Winooski Ave., Burlington, VT, (802) 863-3659

That's kind of the way we feel about Vermont. We love to spend time there ("Love it!," as Michelle has been known to blurt out), but we're pretty fond of bringing back souvenirs, too.

aj

The Land of Milk and Honey and Bacon and Cheese and...

1. Shelburne Farms maple-cured, cob-smoked bacon
2. Dakin Farm maple-cured, cob-smoked bacon
3. Shelburne Farms honey
4. Flag Hill Farm Cyder
5. Amish butter
6. Ayinger Ur-Weisse Dünkel Weizen
7. Stratford Organic Creamery whole milk
8. Celebrator Doppelbock
9. Dakin Farm cob-smoked bacon odds and ends
10. Dakin Farm Maine blueberries, packed in water
11. Shelburne Farms smoked cheddar
12. Dakin Farm yellow-eye beans
13. Lazy Lady Farm "O My Heart"
14. Orb Weaver cave-aged farmhouse cheese
15. Orb Weaver Vermont farmhouse cheese
16. Bee Haven Honey Farm pure Vermont honey
17. Dakin Farm buckwheat pancake mix
18. Vermont Common Cheddar Crackers
19. King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour
20. Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen blue cheese
21. Gore Dawn Zola blue cheese
22. Jasper Hill Constant Bliss cheese
23. Black Gilliflower apples, a.k.a. Sheep's Nose apples
24. Stevens Lady apples
25. Cabot Creamery salted butter

Yep, you guessed it. We just made another one of our famous cross-border shopping expeditions to Vermont. Actually, we went down on a weekend getaway, to get out of the city, go for walks, and have another nice meal at American Flatbread, but one thing led to another. "...An endless banquet" is digital proof that we've found Montreal to be nothing if not rich (in at least two senses of the word) when it comes to its food culture, but there's something about our friends to the south and the landscape they call home that never fails to impress us. And somehow this admiration of ours has a way of turning into a lot of little food expenditures. The reason for this has something to do with our weakness for dairy. Good dairy, that is. And what, exactly, is so special about Vermont's dairy? Well, that has something to do with the kind of pasture land you find in Vermont, with the fact that Vermonters, to a degree that's almost unheard of these days, continue to hold on to their farms, and with the fact that the number of people who keep cows in Vermont (even just one) is so much higher than the average. Noel Perrin said so much back in 1978 in First Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer, his account of small-time farming, and life among small-time farmers, in Vermont, and this situation has continued to hold until now. In fact, in Perrin's mind these factors helped explain why Vermont was better looking than its neighbor to the east, New Hampshire.

QUESTION: Why is Vermont more beautiful than New Hampshire? ANSWER: Because of Vermont farmers. Remove the farmers, and within ten years New Hampshire would surge ahead.

This is a serious argument. If you just consider natural endowment, the two states are both fortunate, but New Hampshire is more fortunate. It has taller mountains, it has a seacoast, it even owns the whole northern reach of the Connecticut River, except a little strip of mud on the Vermont side.

But New Hampshire's farmers mostly quit one to two generations ago and started running motels or selling real estate. The result is that most of New Hampshire is now scrub woods without views. Dotted, of course, with motels and real estate offices.

A lot of Vermont farmers, however, are holding on. Almost every farmer has cows, and almost every cow works night and day keeping the state beautiful. Valleys stay open and green, to contrast with the wooded hills behind them. Stone walls stay visible, because the cows eat right up to them. Hill pastures still have views, because the cows are up there meditatively chewing the brush, where no man with a tractor would dare to mow. (That's the other argument for butter besides its taste. I once figured that every pound of butter or gallon of milk someone buys means that another ten square yards of pasture is safe for another year.)

Sure, Vermont is suffering from sprawl and free-market economics these days in a way that it wasn't 30 years ago, but not nearly to the extent that most every other corner of North America is. And some things may have even improved over the last three decades, like the farmstead cheese scene. And the strength of the farmstead cheese scene has everything to do with the fact that Vermont has so many cows, and especially so many cows raised on small farms. And there is something to be said about Perrin's argument. I mean, as much as we love mountains and forest and that kind of thing, there's something to be said for pasture land and the views it affords. So maybe it all does boil down to this: four legs good.

You'll notice that we brought back a lot of Vermont dairy: organic milk, artisanal butter, and lots of farmstead cheese. We've hardly worked our way through our treasure trove of cheeses yet, but so far standouts include Lazy Lady's O My Heart, which is as creamy and as delicate as they get, and Orb Weaver Farm's cave-aged cheese, which has a wonderful caramel side to it. And let's not forget those Vermont Common Cheddar Crackers, made with real Grafton Village cheddar. Who needs Smartfood when you've got something as classic and as versatile as your Vermont Common Cheddar Cracker. Plus, who can argue with 175 years of experience? So cheese and cheese-based products were a hit.

But the other major discovery was Vermont bacon. Now, as much as I like bacon, I'm certainly not an all-out bacon fetishist, not the kind of person who left vegetarianism behind for bacon, not someone who'll take bacon any way they can get it. I've got some standards. Luckily, it's easy to get very good, high-quality bacon around these parts. Even our two local grocery stores--Sa & Fils and P.A.--have truly excellent bacon available behind their counters--throw in some of the city's premium boucheries/charcuteries, like La Maison du Roti or La Boucherie du Marché, or the city's amazing Eastern European charcuteries, like Charcuterie Hongroise or Slovenia, and you're laughing. But, believe me, you've never had anything like the bacon we found down in Vermont. Cob-smoked (as in corn cob-smoked), maple-cured bacon. Thick-cut, succulent, smoked and cured beyond perfection. I still can't get over it. We bought a couple of packs for our own personal, breakfast-time consumption--one pack of Shelburne Farms, one pack of Dakin Farm--and then we bought a couple of 1-lb. packages of Dakin Farm cob-smoked "odds and ends" just to cook with. We're talkin' heaven.

The next best discovery was beans, real New England baking beans, yellow-eyes and soldier beans. 2006 harvest. I know. You're thinking to yourself, "Beans?" You wouldn't believe what a difference it makes. They cooked to perfection in a fraction of the time the last batch I made did, and instead of being a characterless vehicle for the baked beans' other ingredients, they had a real flavor of their own, and cooking them created a rich pot liquor, just like it's supposed to. I can tell you one thing: I'll never use supermarket-bought navy beans ever again. That's it. It's over. Why would I ever go back? Together with a 1/4-pound of those Dakin Farm "odds and ends," I made the best damn batch of beans I've ever made. Seriously. Forget about "world-class." These were otherworldly.

Then there's the honey. Fantastic stuff, and at a fraction of what honey costs here in Quebec. I've still never quite understood the Great Price Hike of 2002 (or was it 2003?), the one that jacked up the price of honey by at least 60-80%. Whatever the cause, it doesn't seem to have affected Vermont's beekeepers.

And if that wasn't enough, we found apples, too. Somewhat rare stuff. Stevens Lady Apples, a tiny, perfectly colored, perfectly formed, slightly flattish variety, that, it's said, was kept tucked away in ladies' bosoms for safe-keeping until needed as a breath freshener. And Black Gilliflowers, a.k.a. Sheep's Nose apples, a cooking variety prized for its slightly spicy flavor.

Some people go on a trip and buy t-shirts and snoglobes and keychains, and that's cool. Other people go on a trip and buy milk and honey and bacon and cheese and beans and apples, and that's cool too. Trust me.

aj

[You can find out all about Shelburne Farms and Dakin Farm, etc. via the miracle of the Internet, and you can even order some of this stuff online, but wouldn't you rather go for a nice drive?]

Glorious Return: American Flatbread

By last weekend we really were in need of a little getaway, so we got in touch with Kazi and decided to do a daytrip down to Vermont in search of fresh air, New England scenery, artisanal cheese, and a pizza or two. Our route was plotted out based largely around a number of Northern Vermont creameries—Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Cabot Creamery in Cabot, and the Vermont Butter and Cheese Co. in Websterville—but the real goal of our little escapade was to get ourselves in close proximity to Waitsfield by around 4:30 in the afternoon so that we could sign ourselves up for a table at American Flatbread. We didn’t quite make it to Websterville—we ran out of time—but we made our two other stops on our creamery tour easily (more on this here), and we had no problem doing what it took to make our rendezvous in Waitsfield. All three of us had been to American Flatbread before and it’s safe to say that we’d all had memorable experiences there. We had plenty of incentive to guide us.

Michelle and I had been to American Flatbread about two and a half years earlier. It was July of the summer of 2003 and we’d set out on a much more "adventurous" daytrip than last weekend's, one that began in Saratoga Springs, NY with a trip to the Saratoga Race Course to play the ponies. Several hours later, after a near-miss on a 44 to 1 longshot (!), lunching at the cantina that catered to the Mexican migrant workers that tend to the thoroughbreds, and a lovely drive up Hwy 4 along the Hudson and then into Vermont, we found our way to American Flatbread on the grounds of the Lareau Farm in the Mad River Valley. It was probably about 6:30 by the time we got to American Flatbread that evening, and we were familiar with the lore that surrounded their pizzas--which is why we'd been trying to make it there "early"--but we definitely weren’t prepared for the carnival we found when we got there. We’d taken Hwy 4 all the way to Hwy 100, and the drive got more and more sleepy and more and more photogenic the further we headed north along the 100. But when we made that sharp turn into the dirt driveway that leads down from the 100 to the Lareau Farm we suddenly found more cars than we’d seen since we passed Rutland an hour or two earlier. The parking lot was packed and there was quite the crowd gathered on the porch of the big old refashioned farmhouse, hanging out around a big wood fire in the firepit, traipsing across the meadow behind the farmhouse, and dining in the outdoor seating area. Michelle made her way into the restaurant to add our name to the list and when she came back she announced that there was a three to three and a half hour wait for a table. I said, “Excuse me?” Neither of us had ever heard of such a wait, so we balked for about 30 seconds or so, but then we decided, hey, we came all this way, and it really is a beautiful evening out (because it was, it was the perfect summer evening, warm and humid, with clear skies above and a gorgeous sunset in the works), and we don’t have any other place to go to, and, after all, American Flatbread is located in a town called Waitsfield, so what the hell. We ordered a couple of beers from the bar inside, brought them out to the porch, fetched a couple of books and the New York Times crossword from the car, and settled in to our surroundings. Before we knew it, a couple of hours had passed by, and by that time the sun was setting, the stars started to appear, and the fireflies were joining them over by the meadow. We were absolutely, perfectly relaxed by the time our name got called (a little earlier than expected, as it turned out), and we moved to our outdoor table and had one of the most memorable meals of the last few years. The food was great, no question about it, but this was one of those meals that was more about the all-around experience than just the food. It had to do with the weather, and the scenery, and the farmhouse, and the kids running across the meadow, and the conversation around the firepit, and the stars, and the fireflies, and the locally and organically grown ingredients used by the kitchen, and the sense of community that filled the air.

This year we talked and talked about going back, especially on another warm summer night, but, sadly, our glorious return to American Flatbread never really materialized. They’re only open for dining two nights out of the week—Friday and Saturday—and, between the two of us, we were working both of those days all summer long. Suffice to say, we were overdue for a visit by the time last weekend rolled along.

This time around there was definitely no warm, humid weather, there sure weren't any fireflies, and things at Lareau Farm were quite a bit more subdued than they had been in 2003. We showed up right at 4:30, right at the time that the staff at American Flatbread starts taking names for the evening’s dining, and we had no problem getting ourselves put near the top of that list. We hadn't really eaten since we filled up at Cosmos early in the morning, so we opted to be seated at the first available seating time, 5:30. With an hour to relax, we decided to do a little tramping across the meadow and through the snow. Night was coming on quickly and things were getting pretty dark, but one of the hosts was kind enough to lend us a headlamp (he even went out to his truck to grab it for us!), so off we went.



45 minutes later we ambled up to the firepit, where once again a fire was burning, and we spent 10 minutes or so warming up. Then we went into the farmhouse and ordered three beers at the bar and waited for our name to get called. We got seated right in front of American Flatbread's massive and beautiful wood-burning oven--the perfect position to watch the action as well as to warm up some more after our walk in the woods. The oven occupies the central position in the dining room at American Flatbread--the high vaulted ceiling has the effect of making it look like a kind of altar, fittingly enough. Like everything else at American Flatbread, the oven was made from local ingredients like Vermont fieldstone and soapstone (which is particularly well-suited for evenly distributing heat), but, interestingly, the oven was modeled after the clay-domed ovens that were traditional in rural Quebec in the 18th and 19th centuries. I've come across pictures of these ovens like this one that was featured in The Art of Eating No. 69



and places like Au Pied de Cochon here in Montreal incorporate their own modern take on these ovens as part of their charm, but in my travels across Quebec I've yet to come across one as authentic as the one at American Flatbread. On their web site the folks at American Flatbread claim, "These clay domes are considered by many master bakers to make the very best bread." This indicates that there's an entire tradition of bread baking unique to Quebec that was completely extinguished during the push towards modernization. American Flatbread uses only the finest local and organic ingredients in everything that they make, but that oven alone is enough to distinguish their work from that of so many other pizza makers across North America. At the very least you need a well-seasoned oven; American Flatbread's oven is not only well-seasoned, it's also a work of art, a labor of love, and a focus for the sense of community, the commonweal, they've developed over the last couple of decades.

When it came to ordering, we were definitely happy to have Kazi along because it meant that we could order a second pizza and try out another combination or two. On our first visit to American Flatbread we'd tried a half and half New Vermont Sausage and Punctuated Equilibrium pizza and we absolutely loved it. The New Vermont Sausage pizza was especially deluxe--it featured "Hadley Gaylord's naturally raised Waitsfield pork in a nitrate-free maple-fennel sausage," mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes (dried and prepared on premises), caramelized onions, and a blend of cheeses, and that bright fennel-maple flavor was truly something else. The Punctuated Equilibrium, on the other hand, consisted of Vermont chèvre, red onions, roasted red peppers, black olives, herbs, mozzarella, and garlic--as the name suggests, perfect balance shot through with the pungency of that goat's milk cheese and the brine of the olives. We were so impressed by these two combos and we'd been craving them for so long that we decided that ordering them again was the only possible option. This time around we ordered a full New Vermont Sausage pizza along with a half and half Punctuated Equilibrium and Pepperoni and Peppers pizza. We were intrigued by the thought of having a quality pepperoni pizza (for once), one made with an "all natural nitrate-free pepperoni," and we were pretty sure that each half's Mediterranean vibe would complement the other. How right we were! Our Mediterranean Special was a great match--maybe even too good of a match--and ordering a full New Vermont Sausage was one of the best decisions I've ever been a part of. Halfway through our pizzas we found ourselves gazing over at the woman to the left of the oven with fascination and covetousness in our hearts (Who was she? A reviewer? An heiress?). She was sitting at her table solo with a bottle of red wine and not one, but two pizzas on her table. She had about 4 or 5 pieces of her pizzas, drank most of her bottle of wine, and then waltzed out of the restaurant with the loveliest assortment of leftovers you ever saw. Hmm...

Even the desserts were impressive last Saturday night. Kazi and I split the homemade apple pie with homemade vanilla ice cream and Michelle ordered a double order of mignardises, which wound up consisting of two chocolate-covered toffee candies and two chocolate-covered caramel candies. We'd had their excellent apple pie before, but we'd never had their candies and, like everything else, they were both thoughtful and delicious. We accompanied our desserts with two cups of coffee, and it was time to head off into that starry Vermont night and face up to our drive back to Montreal.

Heading down to Waitsfield, VT for pizza might seem like an awfully long way to go for pizza, but when you take into account the quality of American Flatbread's pies, the sad state of pizza affairs in Montreal, and the fact that even New Yorkers regularly make the trek up to the Mad River Valley solely for one of American Flatbread's justly famous pizzas (!), well, to our minds, it seems perfectly reasonable.

American Flatbread is located just south of Waitsfield, VT along Hwy 100. They're open for dinner on Friday and Saturday nights. Unless you show up at 4:30 and make a booking for yourself at 5:30, you should be prepared for a healthy (and potentially relaxing) wait. They're only open twice a week and their pizzas are very, very good. You do the math. Waitsfield is about a 3-hour drive from Montreal.

aj