Burdick's brings fabulous French food to small New England town
— -- The scene: Besides well-known Paris, Texas, there are nearly two dozen states with cities or towns named after Paris. New Hampshire is not one of them. Nonetheless, the tiny and rural town of Walpole is home to one of the most unique and notable Parisian-style bistros in the nation. It sits right next to a Parisian-style gourmet chocolatier, which in turn sits right next to a post office, real estate salesroom and general store. I have had the pleasure of visiting some very unexpected restaurants in very unexpected places around the United Sates, and The Restaurant at Burdick Chocolate, better known simply as Burdick's, is among the most surprising.
You may already be familiar with L. A. Burdick Chocolate. In 1984 Larry Burdick began making fine European-style chocolates, including truffles, bonbons, his signature chocolate mice, and a range of rich, hot-chocolate powders for high-end restaurants in New York City. This grew into a thriving mail-order business, and after running out of room he moved his production to Walpole, a small town in southwestern New Hampshire, just off central New England's main North/South road, I-91. Few passing motorists know it is there - but they should. Today Burdick's has retail stores with small attached cafes in New York City, Boston and Cambridge, Mass., but only the Walpole headquarters has a full-service restaurant.
These two businesses sit in an otherwise unremarkable row of storefronts in "downtown" Walpole, the quaint New England equivalent of a strip mall. You enter through the chocolate shop, very tempting to the eye, then into the restaurant, which has a long marble counter down one side, festooned with pastry cases that are filled with tortes and macaroons, coffee machines and oversized mugs. The list of daily cheeses is written in chalk on a piece of rough slate on the bar, and tables are set simply but elegantly with white tablecloths and straightforward plates and glassware, close to one another for an intimate café atmosphere that would be equally at home in Paris or Vienna. This is no coincidence, since Burdick lived in France and Switzerland for years before returning to the U.S. in the 1980s. Famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, a Walpole resident, is an investor in the restaurant and said to eat here regularly when he is home.
Reason to visit: Traditional bistro fare, especially beef stew, pâtés, charcuterie and salads.
The food: Burdick's has different menus for lunch and dinner, a bistro menu that runs between the two, and a brunch menu for Sundays. They all differ slightly but are mostly similar, especially when it comes to the restaurant's strength: traditional bistro dishes like steak frites, roast chicken, beef stew and steamed mussels. I've been a few times and had several of these standards, and they have never disappointed.
I was recently choosing between the beef stew and some other entrees, and the waitress recommended the stew, saying it was a house specialty. This is a dish I have had all over France, and the version at Burdick's was as good as any I have ever eaten. The meat was so rich and flavorful I suspected it was made from short ribs, a decadent cut with a distinctive taste. It was, and the chef explained that the little country store a few doors down sells the meats Burdick's uses in its kitchen. When I looked, they were all sourced from local Vermont and New Hampshire farms, mostly natural and grass fed. The short ribs in my $19 stew would probably fetch $25 a pound in a big-city gourmet store. The stew was thick and rich, the gravy more like a glaze than a broth, and it did not have the usual fillers of potato and carrot chunks, but rather was topped with whipped potatoes, and featured roasted tomatoes, French green beans and ultra-soft, slow-roasted whole garlic cloves, plus the unusual addition of olives. It was utterly sophisticated and delicious.
I also had another Burdick's signature, the trio of house-made pâtés, served with pickled vegetables and coarse Dijon-style mustard made from scratch. Again, it was like being transported to the best of such platters in France. Appetizers include a variety of charcuterie and cheese plates, raw oysters, and of course, cheese-topped French onion soup. The warm goat-cheese salad was fantastic, with breaded croquettes of warm goat cheese artfully composed on a bed of layered watercress and endive with walnuts finished in honey. You really can't go wrong here.
Main courses range from the heavy, like the stew and roast chicken to lighter fare such as quiche Lorraine, salmon and an herb-and-gruyere omelet, along with several choices of meal-sized salads including a very traditional Lyonnais, with bacon lardons, frisée and optional add-ons of poached duck's eggs or duck confit. As elaborate as some of the dishes sound, the setting is casual and comfortable, and this completes a very honest rendition of what a bistro dining experience should be. Even the rich butter tastes European.
Surprisingly, I found the one weakness to be the desserts, given that Burdick's is built on them. The pastries were merely okay, not as delicious as they looked, and likewise for the beautiful and artistic chocolates. They have an entire menu of hot chocolates, nine of them, elaborately sourced from single cacao plantations in places like Uruguay, Guatemala and Bolivia, but none were as good as the average but never disappointing ultra-rich hot chocolates you can get in any café in France or Italy. Interestingly, all coffee and chocolate drinks are offered with a choice of whole, skim, 2%, soy or almost milk, and I'd guess Burdick's is the only restaurant in New Hampshire that can make such a claim.
The bottom line is that Burdick's consistently delivers very good food and service with Parisian flair in the least likely of places. If I lived in New York, Chicago or San Francisco and Burdick's was in my neighborhood, I'd probably eat here once a week, and that is about the highest compliment I can pay a place.
Pilgrimage-worthy?: If you are driving through New England along the New Hampshire and Vermont border it is well worth planning your trip around a stop here.
Rating: Yum! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)
Price: $$ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)
Details: 47 Main Street, Walpole; 603-756-9058; burdickchocolate.com/restaurant.aspx
Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a BBQ contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail at travel@usatoday.com.