Lash Resort

From the Food Vault Dept.: Speaking of Vermont, as was the case with the last two posts, here’s a journey back some 17 years to revisit the piece I wrote about The Whip Bar & Grill, a restaurant at Stowe, Vermont’s Green Mountain Inn. It’s still in business, although no longer serving lunch. Keep in mind the menu and, especially, prices have changed since I wrote this piece. But don’t let it affect your appetite.

                                                                                          

DRIVE UP STOWE’S MOUNT MANSFIELD (or, if you have a constitution more rugged than mine, bicycle or walk) and, when you near the peak, clamber in and around the paths and boulders that constitute Smuggler’s Notch. Imagine the forbidden cattle being herded over that mountaintop, cattle from Canada, forbidden because conflict with Canada-friendly Britain was a defining feature of early 19th-century politics.

And agriculture was a defining Stowe industry, and politics be damned: cranky Vermonters needed their animal trade.

Mt. Mansfield dominates the town: it’s the highest peak in the state, and has given rise to the tourism upon which the area now thrives. Hikers, campers and, especially, skiers show up when it’s warm or cold; foliage draws tourists in fall.

Lodges humble and swanky flank the road to the mountain, but in the center of the charming village of Stowe sits the Green Mountain Inn, one of the first structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with an 1833-vintage building at its heart. Other buildings have been added over the years, and the complex now offers tasteful accommodations ranging from a single queen bed to a two-bedroom, multi-story townhouse – over 100 rooms in all.

Latchis Past and Present

USUALLY WHEN A KID RUNS OFF with the family money, it’s for a nefarious purpose. We expect the kid to come to no good, to crawl back, if he’s lucky, and beg forgiveness. This was not the fate of Peter Latchis. His father, Demetrius, emigrated from Greece to New Hampshire at the start of the last century, operating a pushcart from which to sell produce. He grew his enterprise and did well enough to amass a tantalizing amount of cash. His son suggested that the family invest in the up-and-coming film industry. Dad refused, so Peter took it on his own initiative to help himself to some of that money and build a movie theater, opening it as the country (and the movie business) entered the no-holds-barred 1920s.

The theater was enough of a success to inspire the family – Peter had six brothers – to build more, eventually running a chain of 20 of them throughout New England, along with hotels and restaurants. And movies were a good business: Despite the Wall Street crash of 1929, the family remained financially unscathed.

In 1938, the Latchis brothers opened a grand memorial to their late father in Brattleboro, Vermont. It was what they termed “A Town within a Town All under One Roof,” including a hotel, restaurant, ballroom, and a lavish 700-plus-seat theater. The first movie shown there was the Sonja Henie comedy “My Lucky Star,” but the theater was designed to host live entertainment as well; among the performers were the Trapp Family (pre-”Sound of Music”), pianist Rudolf Serkin, all the big-name big bands, singers from the Metropolitan Opera, and, more recently, Don McLean, Roger McGuinn, Al Di Meola, the Brattleboro Concert Choir, the Windham Philharmonic, Paula Poundstone, and even operas by Wagner.