#coveredbridgerestaurant

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Covered Bridge Restaurant - Woodstock, Vermont

Founder and chef at Lincoln Inn really know how to deliver a romantic vacation, for a weekend or longer at Woodstock. Visit https://lincolninn.com/

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A Worldly Dining Experience at Woodstock's Lincoln Inn

The following story requires a disclaimer: The dishes described therein will probably never exist again. I ate them and they are gone. Chef Jevgenija Saromova has since moved on to new creations. And that's one of the reasons to love the remade Lincoln Inn & Restaurant at the Covered Bridge in Woodstock. An artist in heart and temperament, Saromova says she would be bored if she didn't overhaul her menu every single day.

Alas for those diners who will never enjoy, as I did, the pile of pulled-duck confit and fork-tender smoked breast served with an artfully layered press of paper-thin apple and celeriac. Nor will they experience an earthy cake of lentils and barley that whisper of Saromova's Latvian origin, contrasted with a sweet plate full of blackberries and a wreath of shaved plum.

But future diners at the Lincoln Inn have a consolation: They'll get to eat whatever strikes Saromova's fancy next.

Saromova arrived in Vermont from England this past September 11. Sixteen days later, she and innkeeper Mara Mehlman opened the restaurant at the Lincoln Inn, formerly home to Mangowood Restaurant. Their concept is new to Vermont: "In England, it's called a 'restaurant with rooms,'" explains Mehlman. "They're award-winning boutique places with Michelin-starred restaurants. People go to stay there for the food."

Saromova is well versed in that English restaurant model: She has been sous-chef at the Michelin-starred Yorke Arms in Yorkshire, which bills itself as "one of the UK's leading Restaurant with Rooms." Her first executive chef position brought her to another restaurant on the same model — No. 5 Restaurant at North Yorkshire's Grassington House Hotel — which she left to join Mehlman in Woodstock.

Before landing in the UK, Saromova cooked in her native Latvia, as well as in Italy and southern France. Her dinners have a classic French bent both in technique and formality. At the Lincoln Inn, meals are five-course prix-fixes, a relative bargain at $55. There is only one seating, at 7 p.m.

Though the restaurant can seat 63 people, Saromova insisted that she serve no more than 26 each night, to guarantee the perfection of every plate. "I want everybody getting their plates together. Maybe even talking with other people about the experience they're getting," the chef elucidates. While diners get cozy, Saromova chooses to work alone in the inn's large kitchen.

Guests can heighten their camaraderie with a predinner stop in the inn's front tavern, styled to look like a spot where the Green Mountain Boys would have been comfortable throwing back a few. By contrast, the gilded dining room would probably just have made the Allen boys uncomfortable.

Ethan and Ira might have been nonplussed by the amuse-bouche served at the dinner I attended, too. Instead of the single bite one might expect, each diner received a piece of pressed terrine striped with slices of tomato, red beet and fresh basil, accompanied by a barely sweet scoop of basil ice cream. It was a taste of summer that paired strangely with the snowy view outside, but was no less refreshing for that.

The amuse-bouche was a deviation from Saromova's usual pattern of using only the freshest seasonal ingredients. She does everything from scratch, including taking apart whole squashes instead of buying the precut pieces her supplier suggests. Two different petite dinner rolls emerge from her oven each night, served with melty, homemade compound butters. The night I dined at the inn, chive butter made the warm rolls — one wheat, one white — taste like steak frites.

In England, Saromova recalls, "Somebody would knock on the door of the kitchen and bring me pheasant or rabbit that's still warm." It's been a challenge to find game suppliers in the Upper Valley, but Saromova has established relationships with local meat farmers so she can meet and inspect their animals before slaughter.

Saromova is still debating whether she'll raise her own chickens for the restaurant, but she has definite plans to build a greenhouse and start plants there when the snow melts. In addition to basic herbs and greens, the chef envisions stocking her garden with unusual veggies. "I don't like the big [American] cucumbers," she complains. "They're not tasteful. The cucumbers from Russia, from Latvia, they're small and just full of taste."

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