Heady Spotting in Burlington, Vermont

what the insides of a vermont themed treasure chest might look like

A friend taught me an excellent word recently: schnapsidee. It’s German (clearly), and means “booze idea”—so, one of those plans you make when you have had a few pints. They always seem fun until the next morning, when suddenly they seem to require A LOT of energy. The key to turning schnapsidees into reality (and in turn into great stories) is someone who will hold you to your word. And so, on the coldest weekend of this or any recent year, a plan hatched over Grimms at Proletariat in the East Village became a drive from New York City to Burlington, Vermont in search of the elusive Heady Topper.

Heady is one of those beers that inspire a sort of mania. Its deliciousness is storied, and it’s not distributed outside of a 25-mile radius from where it's brewed in Waterbury. Plus, the brewery is closed to the public, and retailers limit the number of cans you can buy (sometimes it’s as low as one four pack). Stores all over Burlington still sell out of their weekly delivery within hours, so you have to know who is getting Heady and when so you’re ready to pounce. Um, or walk in calmly like a normal person.

Our first morning in Burlington, it was negative ten degrees. If you have never been in negative ten degree weather, I am jealous of you and you will probably live longer than me. Negative ten degrees makes your ears feel like brittle glass. Jared’s beard frosted over immediately. Really, the only good thing about weather like that is you can drink all the beer and eat all the cheese you want, and tell yourself it’s protection against the cold. We had a ridiculously delicious brunch at the Penny Cluse around 11am, where we ordered two Heady Toppers. “Each?” our waitress asked, because she was a reasonable and excellent waitress. But no, two Heady Toppers to split between the four of us, because we had a big day of Beer Field Trips planned. (When this blog takes off and makes me very famous and wealthy, I think I will start a travel company called Beer Field Trips. Let me know if you’re ready to invest.)

cute husband at Winooski Beverage Warehouse, not so into photos

Our first stop was Winooski Beverage Warehouse, where I felt a sort of glee that I usually only experience during very large tap numbers in Broadway musicals, or in Parisian bakeries. Shopping for esoteric beers is my very favorite kind of shopping (although recently I have been really into buying rugs, and now we have so many rugs we have started hanging them on our walls.) I was dancing through the aisles of the Winooski Beverage Warehouse, but fortunately no one could really tell because I was wearing so many layers.

Then it was time to make one of the most important and remote American beer pilgrimages one can make: to the hallowed Hill Farmstead brewery in Greensboro Bend, Vermont. Greensboro Bend is an hour and a half from Burlington, which is to say, it’s out there. It started to snow as we drove, and we entertained the idea that the brewery might actually be closed due to weather. Don’t ask me why we didn’t use our Power of The Internet and Phone Communication to determine if that was actually the case; our brains and the world wide web were both frozen.

Hill Farmstead tasting flight

We should never have doubted the cross section of hardened Vermonters and serious beer freaks, because Hill Farmstead was packed. It’s a concrete warehouse in the middle of the field that is supposed to be gorgeous in the summer, but in the winter just seems like a long way to walk through howling, cutting winds. Inside, you take a number to wait your turn for growler fills; the next number was close to 700. They were currently serving number 430. There were so many people in this place that the windows were open to cool things off, even though that handy Snapchat filter that puts the temperature on your photos told me it was currently -16.

After an increasingly snowy and dark drive back to Burlington, we called an Uber because we all live in the future and went to dinner at The Farmhouse Tap & Grill, which is an excellent establishment that used to be a McDonalds and now has one of the craziest beer lists you could ever hope to stumble across. There is also a hidden log cabin themed bar called The Parlor in the basement where you can play darts. Don’t all leave for Burlington at once!!

Then the next day was Valentine’s Day, so we bought twenty five Vermont cheeses and ate them all. It was the best Valentine’s Day ever.

a small representation of our cheese haul

eureka!

Our drive home on Monday did take us eight hours, but on our way out of town we hit every shop on the Monday Heady Spotter distribution list, until we found our mecca at Shelburne Meat Market, where each couple bought a case (!). As I rationed them carefully for the next two months, I was pretty schnapsidee-lighted. (Gonna go give myself a real good talking to about that pun, bye!)

A Magical Guinness along the Wild Atlantic Way

pinch me.

The legend is true: Guinness is better in Ireland. It’s mild and sweet and low in alcohol, and all the places you can get it are just so picturesque and cozy, and let’s be honest: it feels badass to call it “The Black Stuff.” In two weeks of driving clockwise around Ireland in a tiny red car that squeaked when you turned the steering wheel to the right, we stopped at a lot of pubs and drank a lot of Guinness. But one magical pub two miles from nowhere in the far western wilds was so wonderful I nearly called movers in NYC and told them to just pack up our apartment and ship it to County Kerry.

We went to Lauragh because I wanted to stay in this gypsywagon. I found it on Airbnb and my heart skipped a beat and so we drove hours out of our way along craggy, winding roads to this thin finger of land that extends into the Atlantic. We sandwiched our trip to the wagon between visiting a cheese farm in Durrus and taking a boat out to Skellig Michael (where I couldn’t understand a word our boat captain said except when he physically got up and put me in front of the steering wheel and seemed to think none of the other 18 passengers would mind that suddenly it was me guiding them full speed ahead over choppy, rainy seas towards a rock outcropping twelve miles from shore.)

BUT FIRST! A Guinness.

the road to lauragh

We were early to Lauragh, despite driving at half speed because every turn of the road revealed another family of sheep lounging within inches of our bumper. And here’s a thing to know about Lauragh, Country Kerry: there’s not much going on. There are the Derreen Gardens, where we stopped in the parking lot and both pretended we were excited, and then at the same time admitted we actually were ambivalent about paying 7€ to see exotic plants (don’t hold it against me!) TripAdvisor lists three restaurants in Lauragh and the surrounds. Google Maps told me we were feet from a pub, but upon further investigation, we learned it had been converted into a private residence. Finally, we drove up to the gypsy wagon, three hours early, wearing our most apologetic expressions.

Our ruddy young Irish host was politely surprised to see us. He was also wearing Crocs. That’s just a detail I think is relevant.

gleeful in front of our lodging for the night

the ridiculously cute interior of our wagon

He told us there was a great pub called Helen's not too far ("Well, it's called Teddy O'Sullivan but really it's Helen's," he helpfully explained), which made me feel relieved and dubious at the same time, since we had just spent an hour driving from one end of Lauragh to the other, finding nothing but a sandwich place called Pedals and Boots and several roads that dead ended into private farms. He directed us past Derreen Gardens, where I had sworn the road ended in some sort of green thicket, and our little red car suddenly burst onto the Wild Atlantic Way, which I think is just the most deeply romantic name there ever was for a road.

self explanatory, i assume

We wound around the coast for a mile or so until we arrived at a red and white pub that said "Teddy O’Sullivan" on the wall, but "Helen Moriarty" above the door. It stood alone at a curve in the road. Across the way, along the waterfront, there were five wooden picnic tables and a dock for fishing boats. This is mussel country, so we ordered two Guinness and a bowl of tiny, sweet mussels, and we cracked into our selection of Durrus cheeses that we’d bought earlier in the day. We were giddily alone in a secret section of the planet until a fisherman and his young son came by with their mussel nets, father passing tradition along to son. I was very sure as we sat there that this perfect place was only there for this afternoon, for this happy hour, for this sunset, for this pint of Guinness. And then maybe just one more.

Mini Pub Crawl through Venice’s Cannaregio

Cannaregio by day is proof that summer in
Venice doesn't have to be packed with tourists!

Venice gets this bad rap for their food, which is confusing to me. Am I the only person who wants to turn and run, shrieking, from any place that puts a fat, greasy laminated menu bearing the flag of a different nation on each page on a little stand in front of their restaurants when instead you can make a dinner (or lunch) of fierce 1€ snacks and 1.50€ mini glasses of wine? “A MEAL MADE OF DELICIOUS SNACKS?!” you may exclaim with excitement, and I will just sit here nodding and wearing a smug smile.

*sigh*

If you google “Venice Pub Crawl,” you will come up with all sorts of lists of bacari, these tiny little places where you stand at a counter and eat cheese or fish or meat or veggies on toast. Most of them serve wine and/or spritzes, at which, let’s be real, I do not thumb my nose. But on my most recent trip, my husband and I stumbled on a couple of awesome beer bars that are within easy walking distance of each other in Cannaregio, and had a magical, delicious pub crawl for less than the cost of a bowl of bad spaghetti in the tourist hub of town.

Al Timon

But before we get to beer, an old school Venetian wine joint. Al Timon is a restaurant that apparently serves a huge steak, if you’re into that sort of thing. I am a vegetarian and there were no tables for dinner, so we shouted our order for two spritzes to the bartender and ordered a plate of assorted cicchetti. I speak zero Italian, but cicchetti is great for that, as it’s usually displayed in a glass case like you might see at a bakery. Excellent for pointing and nodding. We took our plates outside to the flat boat anchored in the canal as a sort of floating patio. It was packed with hip young Venetians and the burrata was excellent. Also, I looked up reviews on Yelp, and everyone loves Al Timon except for this character named Bob B. Bob reports, “Avoid. This is mostly a loud, local hangout. Lots of general drunkenness.” To me that sounds like the highest recommendation you can give to a bar. I may have to organize a tour of Bob B.’s other one star Yelp reviews.

Da Aldo

Literal inches down the canal from Al Timon is a place with no sign that is known as Da Aldo, which we had noticed earlier in the day because of its dusty window full of interesting international bottles. It doesn’t seem to open until after dark, but when the chain-smoking proprietor eventually threw open the door and walk-up window, we rifled through the several packed bottle fridges in the back and came up with a few interesting Italian offerings—a decent IPA called Benaco 70 and an imperfect saison with a great name: Violent Femme. We drank them sitting on a bridge over a canal, watching the painterly lights cast on the water and listening to the music from Al Timon (I told you they’re neighbors!)

Canals in deep summertime darkness

Il Santo Bevitore

A straight shot six minute walk from Al Aldo, Il Santo Bevitore was our great triumph, and is my fave bar in Venice. We stumbled upon it by day and then remembered how to find it again at night, an accomplishment I believe merits some sort of academic honor.

Borrowed this photo from the Il Santo Bevitore website!

Il Santo Bevitore has 20 taps, a bunch of bottles, excellent ciccetti, and a canal-side terrace with tables and umbrellas. As we sat there, a group of 20 somethings pulled up in their boat, tied it up, hopped out for a beer, and then jumped back over the wall and sped away into the night. The nights are so dark in Venice that this all looked like it had been painted on velvet. They were the coolest people I have ever seen and every fiber of my being was jealous of them. Bob B. would definitely hate Il Santo Bevitore.

Ps. There is apparently also a fancy restaurant called Il Santo Bevitore, and while it is also supposed to be good, it is definitively not what I am talking about here. Sorry, fancy restaurant.

Here's a map of the route!

Do you have beer recommendations for Venice? Am I missing anything? Let me know in the comments!

Favorite Neighborhoods: Venice’s Cannaregio

Our lovely canal in Cannaregio

Venice is perhaps my favorite city in the world to visit. It is deeply, hauntingly beautiful, it seems like there might be a slightly sinister secret down every tiny stone corridor, and the preferred way of spending a day is to wander from the standing bar where you drink your espresso through the impossible-to-navigate streets until you happen upon a standing bar where you drink white wine and eat cicchetti. Since we all know calories don’t count if you’re standing, I think of visiting Venice as a preferable alternative to dieting. Or something like that.

I had been to Venice in December, but in August my husband and I were in the region and I couldn’t resist another stopover. I was buzzing with excitement at the prospect of showing him around. (When I describe Venice to people, I use a lot of hyperbole, like: “No but actually there are MILLIONS of bridges! I never realized that every bridge in the world is in Venice!”) But as our trip approached, I kept hearing terrible things about Venice in the summer—that it smelled like sewage, that everything would be closed, that the tourists would be shoulder to shoulder down all those shadowy passages—and I was secretly worried. I wanted him to love it as much as I did because HELLO! then I would get to return! *Ahem* I mean, I wanted him to love it because he is my husband and what brings him joy brings me joy. Right?

This is what happens when I try to get one of those cute "swing your hair around" photos

You guys. Venice in the summer is just as magical as Venice in the winter. In fact, it is perhaps more magical because you want to spend time outside, along the canals, or in the little back gardens of restaurants. I mean, YES, Plaza San Marco was jammed. But run through San Marco; blast through the streets around the Rialto Bridge. You’re not here to shop at Prada (I assume.) Let a thousand other people Instagram the Bridge of Sighs. Go to Cannaregio.

Cannaregio was the home of the Venetian Ghetto until the end of the 18^th century, and it still has sizable Orthodox Jewish population. It’s also becoming super hip, but in a very laid back and romantic Venetian way, and as evening falls, there are beautiful people that are way cooler than me relaxing and drinking spritzes on all the bridges. This combo of Orthodoxy and trendiness is not as incongruous as it sounds—it worked for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and now it’s working for Venice.

Another major advantage to Cannaregio is that it’s easy to find. It’s about a ten minute walk from the train station, and after my experience of getting deeply, miserably, crying-to-waiters lost looking for our apartment in Castello on my last trip to town, I can’t tell you how much I appreciated Cannaregio’s proximity to everything.

Um, HELLO my little spritzy!

We dropped our bags and went in search of a spritz. I knew it was the moment of truth: were there going to be tourists around every corner? We ducked under a tiny passageway and crossed through some small squares, and Jared started laughing because there was no one around. Except one cat. We had canal-side cafes to ourselves, except for the Italians conversing animatedly on their boats as they sped past. I guess everyone else was at Prada.

Stay tuned in the coming days for a mini bar crawl through Cannaregio!

PS. Here is a video of a cat being scared by someone's giant pet iguana, which I took while eating fresh seafood pasta for lunch. I guess this is what they mean when they say Venice is crazy in the summer.

Are you Team Cat, Team Iguana, or Team Spritz?