Let’s talk about St. Albans. What made you choose that as your location, when you could have opened in Burlington or somewhere bigger?

“I don't know if I could have done this place anywhere besides St. Albans. This whole project was predicated on the support of the city of St. Albans wanting to do it. Honestly, when we started, it was not with a restaurant in mind…it was more of a cafe. It evolved kind of naturally into what it is now, but that wasn't the first idea.

“The city and the building owner came to me first. He asked if I had interest, and I’d been looking for a space, looking to change what I was currently doing. During my 13 years at the school, I'd tried to get a space on Main Street, to move away from the four walls of the school and create something a little more authentic.

“I started looking at this space in 2022. A lot of the work I had to do myself…the flooring, the framing, the painting, the tiling, building the bar. My brother came up to help me with the drop ceiling. My uncle came up to do some of the mudding and taping. My father's a carpenter, my brother's a carpenter…during summer breaks I'd go work with him. And my first “official” job was in a kitchen at 15…my brother was working up at Smugglers' Notch behind the grill, and that was my introduction to a kitchen.

“It's been great to see the evolution. It's evident the people making decisions in St. Albans want this space to be special…they work diligently on making sure the facades and the space are clean and welcoming. There's some really great shops and other things happening in St. Albans. It's certainly different than what I remember when I first moved here.

“So many small towns in Vermont just don't have a ton of people to support local businesses, though there are obviously examples of fantastic businesses that have defied the odds and become ubiquitous with the Vermont brand…where else could a place like Hill Farmstead exist? There's no easy way of getting there.

“Everyone asks, why St. Albans? It doesn't matter…if it's good, people will travel. It just has to be good. Location wasn't really that critical to me.”

Tyler Comeau and Henry Long have gone from being your students to being your business partners. How did that evolve? And are there things about being an educator that have turned out to be useful as far as running a restaurant goes?

“There are very few individuals that stayed with it. I had so many students who started down this path…there was this presumption of interest, but they wouldn't make it a career. I think a lot of people love the idea, but it just wasn't viable for a lot of individuals. There are easier ways to make money, and people's priorities change.

“So we just stayed in touch. There are a lot of connections here. I also have Brennan, one of the prep chefs during the day, who's a former student, and Tate, interning from Johnson & Wales, also a former student. Spencer, who was working front of house, went to NECI with Tyler. There's like two degrees of separation between everyone.

“There are probably some parallels you can draw between the business and the schools as far as the management of time and resources, because you have neither. But the expectation of delivery is the same.”

You've said you're not looking to reinvent the wheel so much as to do a great job with the classics. Is there a classic dish or technique that looks simple but you still don’t feel you’ve mastered?

“There's a lot of instances like that. We have two examples on the menu. You can look at the canelé for dessert…not many ingredients, but it can go incredibly wrong really fast. It boils down to technique. Same with a macaron…almond flour, powdered sugar, egg whites, not much there. But fold it too much, it's wrong. Underfold it, it's wrong. Bake it at the wrong oven temperature, it’s wrong. They don't dry out enough, it’s wrong.

“Even the gnocchi, which has been on the menu a while — we just changed it — it's potato, egg yolk, flour, salt. That's it. But if you overwork it, put too much flour in…and there’s no recipe, so every single batch that's come out of this kitchen has been different. I don't count how many potatoes go on the tray to bake off. I rice them on the table and begin the process. Everyone looks at it like, ‘Let me take that off your plate…I'll give that a go.’ And I'm still making the gnocchi here myself. It’s super difficult to be consistent, and it's one of those recipes where everyone thinks they could do it, and I'm like, ‘Nah, this isn't right.’

“I cook the food I want to eat. If I'm trying to appease someone else, it's just not going to work. Everyone who told me I was doing something the way it shouldn't be done…I did the opposite. I stay true to myself and what we're doing here, unapologetically, because if I don't, I won't be happy, and I'm here too long and for too many hours to not be happy.”

Bonus Question: There’s this thing that's been going around on social media where people are posting about things that are “worth the money.” 
What’s something, big or small, that you're happy to splurge on?

“The guys will laugh here, because I'm always looking for a great product at a good price! But one thing I don't mind splurging on that makes a big difference is probably vinegar. It's one of the cornerstones to elevating a dish…even something as simple as a vinaigrette. It just makes a difference when you use something better. Since the beginning we buy French vinegars. It’s not a big splurge, and I could go to Hannaford's and pick up something cheaper, but there's a difference in taste, whether you're finishing a sauce or something else…it has a high impact for a small amount. So that's one thing that has to be high quality for me.”