• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

The bar at the Red Rooster (left) and Skunk Hollow Tavern (right).   (Photo: Left: Courtesy of the Red Rooster. Right: Courtesy of Skunk Hollow Tavern)

The Red Rooster at the Woodstock Inn opened last September, with a design by Blue Hill at Stone Barns’s architect, Peter Guzy, and a dining concept by Blue Ribbon Group. The menu emphasizes the area’s syrup supply with dishes like Northern fried chicken with maple syrup and maple-walnut-and-banana bread pudding.

Carpenter & Main, in Norwich, is Vermont’s answer to the French Laundry. Chef-owner Bruce MacLeod worked stints at Masa’s in San Francisco and Peninsula Grill in South Carolina, and oversees an entirely house-made menu. From the more casual pub menu, try the grass-fed Vermont beef burger with béarnaise sauce on an English muffin.

Listen to old-timey country and blues music every Friday night at Skunk Hollow Tavern. Eat by candlelight in a colonial-style dining room upstairs (the building dates from the late eighteenth century) or dance and drink in the English-style pub downstairs.

Published on Apr 9, 2009 as a web exclusive.