CITY GUIDES | NEW ENGLAND
The Michelin-Ready Vermont Restaurants
From Burlington to Waterbury, these are restaurants that make the case for Vermont’s first Michelin Guide.
By Eric Barton | June 26, 2026
Oakes & Evelyn
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
I grew up in New Hampshire, which meant Vermont was always right there, just across the border, looking slightly more put together.
It had better sweaters. Better cheese. Better old inns. And long before every big-city restaurant started talking about local sourcing like it had personally invented the idea, Vermont already had people making dinner from things grown down the road, pulled from the garden, gathered from the woods.
That’s still true. But the Vermont restaurant scene has also grown into something much larger than the tiny state itself, full of chefs with James Beard attention, tasting menus that could hold their own anywhere, and small dining rooms doing work that would get noticed fast if they were in New York, Boston, or Chicago.
And yet Vermont still doesn’t have a Michelin Guide, a major oversight, I’d say. So I went in search of the restaurants that should be waiting when Michelin finally arrives. Here then are the Vermont restaurants that deserve Michelin attention.
Café Monette, St. Albans
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Adam Monette had a following before Café Monette opened, partly from his years as a culinary instructor and partly from winning Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship. The St. Albans restaurant, which he runs with former students Tyler Comeau and Henry Long, works in a French register without turning dinner into a costume party: onion tarte tatin, poulet à la moutarde, mille-feuille, house breads, pastries, and Vermont ingredients where they make sense. A 2026 James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant, it’s the rare new place that already feels like it has given a city something it needed.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Canteen Creemee, Waitsfield
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Charlie Menard’s super hip order-at-the-counter spot is known for fried chicken and creemees, the extra-thick Vermont version of soft-serve. But the menu goes far deeper, with Menard’s takes on Vietnamese classics, like fried chicken banh mi, brisket noodle soup, and cháo vịt, or duck with porridge and scallions. That’s the fun of it: serious cooking hiding in the least self-serious format.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
The Crooked Ram, Manchester
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The Crooked Ram began as a bottle shop, moved through pandemic-era outdoor dining, and has become one of the most interesting restaurants in southern Vermont. Chef Tiara Adorno, a 2026 James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Northeast, cooks in an intimate, carefully designed space where the menu can move from cavatelli in caramelized onion béchamel to oysters, Vermont cheeses, beef, seafood, and whatever else the season has made worth noticing. It feels polished but not frozen in place, which is exactly the point.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Fancy’s, Burlington
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Paul Trombly built Fancy’s in Burlington’s Old North End after years cooking around town, including at Honey Road and through his Mister Foods Fancy food truck. The restaurant is mostly vegetable-centered, but not pious about it, with dishes that have included carrot “mochi,” duck breast specials, chocolate olive oil cake, and Detroit-style pizza nights. It’s the kind of place Michelin too often misses when it is looking for linen and ceremony instead of a chef with a clear point of view.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
Frankie’s, Burlington
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Jordan Ware and Cindi Kozak define Frankie’s by a description that might sound modest, “A Vermont restaurant,” but it goes a long way to explain the premise. The menu changes daily, but it leans seafood-heavy and farm-close, with littleneck clams, asparagus with blue crab and green-garlic vinaigrette, roasted oysters, seasonal creemees, and a bar that knows what it’s doing. It has the looseness of a dinner party and the ingredient discipline of people who know exactly who grew the food.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Hen of the Wood, Waterbury
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Eric Warnstedt opened Hen of the Wood in Waterbury in 2005, and the restaurant helped define what serious Vermont cooking would look like long before “local” became the national restaurant industry’s favorite word. In historic downtown, the restaurant builds dinner around the region’s farms, cheeses, meats, mushrooms, and seasons, with past menus and signatures including mushroom toast, housemade pasta, beef tartare, crudo, and Jasper Hill cheeses. It feels unmistakably Vermont: warm, woodsy, precise, and deeply tied to the place around it.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Honey Road, Burlington
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Honey Road gave Burlington a restaurant that felt both celebratory and deeply useful: eastern Mediterranean mezze on Church Street, built for ordering too much and not regretting much of it. Chef and co-owner Cara Tobin has been a repeated James Beard finalist and semifinalist, and the menu’s center of gravity has long been dips, spreads, vegetables, grilled meats, pastries, and the kind of shareable dishes. It is bright, busy, and generous, the kind of place where you’ll immediately want to be a repeat customer.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
May Day, Burlington
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May Day opened in Burlington’s Old North End as the kind of neighborhood restaurant that wanted good food without making the neighborhood feel priced out of it. Chef Sloan Miller took over the kitchen this year, keeping the seasonal, natural-wine, craft-cocktail identity intact. The patty melt is special here (and also 10 bucks on Sundays!). And so is the larger idea: a restaurant can be loose, affordable, and still very good.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
Oakes & Evelyn, Montpelier and Woodstock
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Chef-owner Justin Dain’s menu pulls New England ingredients into dishes that borrow freely from Japanese, Italian, and American cooking. At both the Woodstock and Montpelier locations, dinner might include crispy mushroom bao buns with 1000 Stone Farm mushrooms, maple sriracha and candied bacon deviled eggs, tuna crudo, torched hamachi crudo, or tinned fish with house accompaniments. It’s a Montpelier restaurant with real range: polished enough for a proper night out, but still built around dishes people actually want to eat.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Ondis, Montpelier
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Ondis is co-owned by Emma Sanford and Christopher Leighton, the bartenders behind Après in Stowe, with chef Max Vogel running the kitchen. A New England Culinary Institute grad who previously ran the kitchen at the Reservoir in Waterbury, Vogel’s menu has included truffle fries built from stacked potato, Moroccan spiced carrots with pistachio, shrimp and grits, lobster buns with yuzu mayo, sea scallops with pancetta and cognac-miso beurre blanc, and crab dishes that nod to his Maryland roots. It’s a cocktail bar that became a serious restaurant, enough so that Vogel earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2026.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Saap, Randolph
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Chef-owner Nisachon “Rung” Morgan already won the 2022 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast, so it seems natural that the Michelin Guide would also recognize her talents. Morgan’s menu travels from northern Thai to Isaan cooking, with dishes such as som tum, larb, grilled meats, pad thai sai khai, and fried whole red snapper. It’s the kind of family-style food that makes heat, funk, acid, and sweetness show up. It is one of Vermont’s great arguments that fine dining doesn’t need a high price tag.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
SoLo Farm & Table, South Londonderry
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SoLo has the pedigree Michelin tends to notice: chef Wesley Genovart came through kitchens including Degustation, while co-owner Chloe Genovart worked at Per Se, and the restaurant has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation. The food is grounded in southern Vermont farms, whole-animal cooking, housemade pasta, preservation, bread, butter, and a former inn and farmhouse that make the whole thing feel lived in rather than staged. It is Vermont farm-to-table with the résumé to back it up.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Starry Night Café, Ferrisburgh
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Chef Robert Smith III runs Starry Night from an old cider press, which strikes me as the perfect setting for a restaurant that similarly takes fresh things and combines time and talent to do real alchemy. There’s gardens outside, a deep wine list inside, and a menu shaped by fire, pasta, and Vermont produce. The kitchen pulls from Italian and California influences without sanding off the Vermont setting, with coal-roasted oysters and veg and a picanha steak for two with polenta. It’s the kind of restaurant that feels exactly what you hoped from Vermont restaurants: cozy, friendly, and serving food that seems important.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Twin Farms, Barnard
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At the Barnard retreat, chefs Nathan Rich and Sylvain Courbet oversee a multi-course tasting menu built around seasonal ingredients, reserve-wine pairings, and the sort of choreographed dining experience that defines multi-starred Michelin dining. It is expensive, secluded, and fully committed to the idea that this one dinner is the entire reason for the vacation.
What it deserves: Two Michelin Stars
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