The dining room at Juniper Bar and Restaurant in Burlington is about as bespoke as one would expect from a woodsy Vermont establishment. Ferns top tables carved at a nearby tree farm, while granite slabs hewn from a local quarry tile the walls. Even the floorboards come from a reclaimed New England barn.
Then there’s the food. As staff scramble to serve plates of pastured lamb lasagna and birch-syrup-drizzled pistachio hummus, executive chef Doug Paine watches quietly, a calm island in a hectic sea, to ensure that each morsel of porchetta and dab of aioli meets his standard of “fresh and local.”