Food History of Burlington

Key eras

Pre-1600s: Abenaki larder

The Abenaki harvested wild rice from Lake Champlain shore wetlands, tapped sugar maples in early spring, fished for lake trout and walleye, and grew the Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash). Many of those foods are still being grown in pockets of Vermont today, including by Abenaki-led farms.

1800s: Scots-Irish settlers and French Canadian mill workers

Scots-Irish settlers brought the biscuit tradition that anchors the Vermont breakfast plate. French Canadians arrived to work the Burlington and Winooski lumber and textile mills in the 1840s-1900s, founding the Winooski 'Little Canada' that still shapes the food scene on the other side of the river.

1965-2000: Hippie generation and back-to-the-landers

The 1960s-70s back-to-the-land movement put Vermont at the front of the natural-foods, dairy and craft-cheese revolutions. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened Ben and Jerry's in a converted Burlington gas station at the corner of St. Paul and College on May 5, 1978, moving to Church and Cherry in 1982. Cabot and Shelburne Farms farmstead cheddar built reputations the same window.

1980-2020: NECI and the farm-to-table generation

The New England Culinary Institute was founded in Montpelier in 1980 by Francis Voigt and others (including John Dranow). NECI ran a flagship restaurant on Burlington's Church Street, NECI Commons, and graduated celebrity chefs Alton Brown and Gavin Kaysen. NECI closed in December 2020; its alumni still run Vermont kitchens across the Burlington area.

1988: Vermont Pub and Brewery, the start of craft beer

Greg Noonan lobbied Vermont to permit brewing-and-consumption on the same premises and opened Vermont Pub and Brewery at 144 College Street in 1988. It broke a 94-year Burlington brewery drought and sparked the craft-beer culture that runs Pine Street today.

2010s-2020s: New immigrant waves and the Old North End

Burlington has resettled Bosnian, Nepali, Bhutanese, Somali, Congolese, Syrian and Iraqi refugees since the 1990s, with the Old North End and Winooski as the main neighborhoods. The food scene reflects it: Klinger's Bread (run by Bosnian head bakers for 29 years), Pho Hong, the New Farms for New Americans project, and a growing African and South Asian counter scene.

Immigrant influences

• Abenaki: Maple syrup, johnnycakes, the Three Sisters; Abenaki-led farms still grow heritage corn and bean varieties in Vermont.
• French Canadian: Winooski's 'Little Canada' brought tourtiere, pea soup and the working-class diner tradition; Handy's Lunch on Maple Street has run since 1945 in that lineage.
• Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean: Honey Road's mezze room on Church Street (Cara Chigazola Tobin, formerly of Cambridge MA's Oleana) is the modern expression of a longer regional history of Eastern Mediterranean cooking in Burlington.
• Bosnian: Klinger's Bread (South Burlington, founded 1993) is anchored by Bosnian head bakers Darko Saric and Nick Sedic; many of the 26 weekly bread varieties draw on Bosnian sourdough technique.
• Vietnamese: Pho Hong on North Winooski Avenue anchors the recent Vietnamese wave; owners Dao Le and Lan Hong bought their building from Champlain Housing Trust in 2022 and are expanding into the adjacent unit.
• Italian: Trattoria Delia on Saint Paul Street (Thomas and Lori Delia, 1993), Pizzeria Verita's wood-fired Neapolitan pies and Pascolo Ristorante's fresh pasta keep the Italian-American tradition central downtown.

Signature innovations

• Heady Topper double IPA (The Alchemist, Stowe, 2011) sparked the entire New England hazy-IPA category.
• Vermont Pub and Brewery (1988) was the first US state-level legislative win for brewery taprooms; the model spread nationally.
• Cabot Creamery cheddar (1919) built the Vermont cheese-export reputation; Shelburne Farms and Jasper Hill extended it.
• Ben and Jerry's chunky pints (Burlington origin, 1978) re-wrote American premium ice cream and put Waterbury on the food-tourism map.