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Brown Dog Bistro
150 main Street, Newport, 334-1791 Newport’s newest restaurant, Brown Dog Bistro, doesn’t shout its presence to the street. Passersby may glimpse tables through its floor-to-ceiling windows, but the place’s location inside the new Northeast Kingdom Tasting Center makes it hard to know it’s there unless, well, you know it’s there. Evoking the nursery rhyme, the capacious Tasting Center houses a baker, a butcher and a cider maker, plus a smattering of local veggies and maple products. Brown Dog Bistro occupies one corner of this bazaar, behind a shoulder-high wall over which shoppers can peek into its shabby-chic interior and contemplate taking a seat at the L-shaped concrete bar or center banquette. A hulking antique breakfront cordons the dining room off from the open kitchen. Brown Dog Bistro’s co-owner, Steve Breault, also owns Newport Natural Market & Café down the street, and his restaurant reflects his ethos while drawing on the fresh-food sources in the hall. Local cheeses, meats and produce pepper the menu, and the drinks menu — beer and wine only — is predominantly locavore. I kicked off a meal with a bitter, juicy aperitif featuring Orleans Bitter from Eden Ice Cider, located in the Tasting Center’s basement: a healthy glug of rosy-pink spirit with a splash of soda and an orange wedge. Since Newport is 15 minutes from the Canadian border, the Francophile menu is tinged with Québécois elements. It’s arranged so you can fit apps, charcuterie,
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Brown Dog’s most delicious dishes: sautéed calamari in a briny, ice-ciderspiked sauce, with golden raisins and slivered scallions offering alternating hits of sweet and sharp. I wiped every last bit from the plate. The bistro has nine sandwiches on the menu, including the popular grilled-cheese-and-kimchi sandwich from Newport Natural Market. Equally delicious is the pork-belly sandwich, a mound of succulent, smoky, ciderglazed pork belly served on a roll with vinegary tarragon coleslaw. We worried the sandwich’s sliced apples would render it too sweet, but to no purpose — chef Bill Small found the appropriate balance of flavors and textures. Slightly less endearing was my roasted rabbit leg: It was served over more delicious mashed potatoes but was slathered in a peppery cider sauce that couldn’t hide the slightly dry meat. Brown Dog has its minor challenges: The space offers low visibility, and though it fills with golden light in the late afternoon, at night the incandescent lights cast a cold glow. Flies buzz over the low wall to land on shoulders, breadbaskets and glasses — a problem that might be solved with a firmer separation between the bistro and the market. Yet these are minor annoyances in a place that serves up some of the most imaginative and filling food in the Kingdom. — c . h . Duck confit rillettes
salads, sandwiches and “Plats Principaux” into a leisurely Gallic feast. A meal can be as simple as a snack of excellent, silky duck-confit rillettes with fig jam, or you can go whole hog with multiple courses of saucy, satisfying food. All the fare has a hearty, peasant feel, from a bowl of savory, mustard-tinged corned-beef-and-cabbage soup to a citrusy brown-rice salad chunked up with cashews and black beans. Cherry-glazed short ribs may be categorized as a “small plate,” but they’re actually a Herculean trio of midnight-dark short ribs in peppery gravy, served over mashed potatoes as creamy as a liquid cloud. The ribs’ moody flavors contrast with those of one of
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