Wednesday Nights at Bramble: Yes, You Should Go!
If you haven't yet been to Bramble at the Essex Experience, here’s the abridged version...
Husband-and-wife team Shawn Hyer and Chef Colleen Hunt came back to Vermont after years cooking in Napa, Sonoma, Park City, San Francisco and beyond…renovated a former retail outlet store in Essex, with a stunning custom blue wood-fired oven as the heart of their kitchen…and have been doing exceptional things with it ever since.
We love Bramble and go regularly. But before this week, we hadn’t had a chance to checkout their Wednesday night “Fried Chicken Suppers.” We went last week, and here's the verdict: go.
The weekly dinner is a fixed-price, three-course menu. You can also add an optional wine pairing with each course for $24, which is a genuinely great deal.
This week, the meal opened with a kale salad dressed in a red wine citrus vinaigrette, topped with spiced and roasted sunflower seeds, cider-plumped raisins and parmesan. We know, we know…kale salad. But this one is a reminder that properly-handled kale (it needs massaging, and not everyone bothers) is a different ingredient entirely. Bramble obviously knows what they're doing, and this one was simply excellent.
Then the chicken. The portion alone is crazy…it was legitimately enough for dinner plus two more meals at home. A few weeks back, we raved about the fried chicken at Onion City & Oyster…to be expected from a place with "chicken" in its actual name. But Bramble's is right up there among the best we’ve had: birds from the iconic Adams Farm featured an impressive amount of juicy meat, all nestled inside a deeply satisfying, buttery crunch. Best of all, a touch of hot honey that kicks things up a notch without overwhelming anyone who's spice-averse. With house-made pickles on the side, it was flat-out delicious.
Dessert was a chocolate torte finished with flaky sea salt. As someone generally unmoved by anything that isn't chocolate, this was a perfect option for me...silky and decadent. And the fact that courses arrive on those beautiful blue and white willow-pattern plates doesn't hurt the presentation, either.
A note for non-chicken people: Bramble's full menu is available on Wednesdays, too, including their wood-fired pizza…the custom-built oven is the centerpiece of the restaurant and is responsible for far more than pizza, but the pizza is outstanding and a good excuse to bring the whole family for a nice night out.
Bottom line…if you haven’t been to Bramble, make it a point to get there!
