Misery Loves Company

Came for a late brunch, was very impressed. I’m not a fan of quiche normally, but it was incredibly smooth and flavorful. Also got the vonnegut sandwich, which was phenomenal. Highly recommended

Excellent breakfast prepared with a lot of attention to detail and executed perfectly. The tater tots were incredible, wow. Well priced for the quality. We will be back!

Misery Loves Co. is like falling in love with a call girl, you’d go to her every night if you could, but you don’t have enough money.

I stopped in for Misery Love’s happy hour (3−5pm, Tuesday-​Saturday) for the $ 1 oysters, which were wonderful, and a beautifully-​crafted cocktail (I tried the «They Don’t Call it the ‘Burlington River,’» and my husband had the «Winooski Sour,» both of which were excellent.). The atmosphere is appealing, clean, inviting, and romantic without pretension. I look forward to returning for dinner one night, and will certainly be back for the happy hour!

Came here for lunch and enjoyed it immensely! The staff was extremely attentive and friendly. They don’t have an extensive menu, so it makes choices easy. I shared steak tartar with my lunch partner and had the really good grilled cheese sandwich with a salad for my side. Their house made vinegrette dressing is fantastic!
The ambiance is hip and close-​knit. They have all walks of life coming in to grab a bite; clearly a testament to their popularity as an eatery.
In my check was a very well designed postcard in vintage design, announcing a cocktail party. Tickets were $ 55 each for three drink tickets and finger foods. If I would have been in town I would have definitely attended!
I will be back for sure!

Excellent food, but little portions therefore too expensive for me. It was also too long of a wait. It’s $$$ instead of $$

Loved the mushrooms on toast! Very savory and delicious.

I was really happy with my visit. A friend of mine (who loves in Burlington) recommended I stop here friends while visiting Vermont.
I ordered The Vonnegut– Pork belly & fried egg sandwich which was wonderful. The flavors were wonderful especially if you like Pork belly. I split that and The Rough Francis buffalo chicken sandwich. The chicken sandwich was a little difficult to eat I think partly because of the heavy amount of sauce. However, it was really tasty. Both really well done sandwiches.
Our waitress was helpful and pleasant. Nice and relaxed & attentive.
I also ordered a homemade soda– lemon Rosemary. It wasn’t too sweet. The flavor was present but not over powering. It was so refreshing it got me thinking if its worth it to buy a soda maker to try it out at home. I am not a soda drinker, regular soda makes my teeth feel sugar coated, but this was light and refreshing.
I will come back & recommend this to others.

What makes two short blocks on Main Street in Winooski such a fertile place for good and funky restaurants? I don’t know the answer, in my opinion if you are after unique food this area beats the Church and College street area that has a collection of restaurant.
We wanted to try Misery because as you know I am fan of Localvore coupons and I had a $ 20 coupon, merchants this is the best way to get people who go to the same handful of restaurants all the time to try some new ones. Anyway I never used that coupon since with the tip we spend over a $ 100!
Here’s the rest of the story, we got there a few minutes before 5 and were reading the hours of service on the door when a very nice man opened the door and said come on in have a drink we will be serving soon, he told us to sit at the bar because the dinning room was not ready. Again a very nice young man served us a Zero Gravity beer and one from Lost Nation… my husband had the latter. We looked at the nibbles menu, rather limited, but my husband the oyster fan ordered raw oysrers and I ordered pâté. The oysters were tiny but some people like them small… the pâté was superb, enough that next time I will
have that for my meal and not share it with my husband!
Before I go too much further I will warn you that bread is precious in this place? They make their own and it is very good, but it costs you… with the pâté came 3 triangles of perfectly grilled and buttered bread… not enough for the amount of pâté… the barkeep realized our dilama and asked if we would like more and had the kitchen staff bring us some more. On the bill it said no charge for additional bread, they were being nice to us. Finally around 5:30 or so we could go to the dinning room because before that the staff was being familiarized with what was on the menu that changes every day.
A word of advice if you order the meal for two you get an excellent choice of some of their small plates and a delicious meat, chicken or fish course. We had the pot au feu it was excellent, for sides we had stewed pumpkin kind of spicy with pumpkin seeds and small boiled potatoes in olive oil, the meat had a few well cooked carrots and turnip with. The au jus came in a attractive white pitcher, in another plate were 2 pieces of grilled bread with what to me tasted like lard but our wait person told us it was marrow… when was the last time you had marrow in a restaurant?
The precious bread is one of the side dishes, bread butter and a few bread and butter pickles, rather expensive… I judge a restaurant by the quality of their bread, excellent but perhaps next time I won’t order the bread… since we have wonderful bakeries in this area, the Red Hen is every bit as good if not better.
The service is great, everyone is truly nice, the open kitchen with smiling eager chefs is fun to watch.

I’ll never forget my seafood and grits at Misery Loves Company. It was the most delectable, desirable, delicious plate I’ve ever had. I doubt I’ll get back to Vermont anytime soon, but my dreams about this dish won’t subside soon.
Oh yea — eat at the bar if you want to go casual. Cute bartender, nice staff, great coffee and it’s fun to watch the chef and cooks behind you if you get bored.

The Rough Francis was fantastic. The atmosphere here is cozy and very New England. The service was incredibly pleasant. I suspect that you’ll never know exactly what you’re ordering — I gather the menu changes on the reg — but you should never doubt it will be delicious. That’s the word on the street anyway! And I’m inclined to believe it based even on my single experience. Really a highlight of my time in BTV.

If I love this place, does that make me a miserable person?
I was extremely charmed by this establishment in oh so many ways. The name is catchy. The décor of Shaker farmhouse rustic very much fit into the charming town the restaurant resides in. The service was personable, helpful and down to earth. And the food, oh the food…
Firstly, I love it when a plate arrives and it is one sexy looking dish. Call me shallow all you want, but looks do matter. And the fish dinner entrée here photographed better than almost any plate I’ve snapped in the last year. The coloration of the deep green sauce contrasted with the firm white fish and iridescent charred skin was a photographer’s wet dream. And even better all the flavors were spot on; each element on the dish was distinct and clear yet melded with the other flavors. These flavors were best friends, it was clear why they were all hanging out on a plate together, having a grand old party that continued in my mouth.
Yes, I just said «party in my mouth». I am not ashamed.
Without further ado, here’s a rundown of what I had. I ate here for dinner, and while the atmosphere is casual, the plating and quality of the food is very fine dining calibre. Don’t let the lack of pretention fool you-​these are some serious chefs that mean buisness. The menu changes frequently and is all scrumptious, so don’t sweat it if the dishes I ordered are no longer around:
Bread, Butter and Fat ($ 8)-Normally I pitch a juvenile little fit if a restaurant makes me pay for bread. I slam my fists on the table and become a Unilocaling little Unilocaler. It’s like Custer’s Last Stand with carbs. But this one I liked, and it was so ample and fresh with fantastic farmhouse rolled butter, that I almost forgave them the 8 dollars. Almost.
Chilled Asparagus Soup with smoked trout roe and buttermilk ($ 9)-It tasted «green» in a very good way. Spring in a bowl. There was tang from the buttermilk, salty pop from the roe, and, well, «asparagus-​ness» from the «asparagus». There’s not really many mouthwatering descriptors for asparagus. They’re tiny little bitter Martian trees.
Spring Salad-​ramp romesco, morels, savory milk jam ($ 10)-WOW. What a beautiful dish. I love how the menu coyly under promised with the description here. This looked like the most delicious garden exploded across a plate for my gustatory delight.
Lubina with ramps, sunflower, tender shoots ($ 15)-Otherwise known as European seabass, for you not so fancy people. This, as said above, was in the top five most beautiful dishes I’ve seen this year. The photo really speaks for itself. This is the type of dish that long after our time together I will still keep pictures and love letters from it in a scrapbook, to occasionally go back to and sigh over. It was one for the ages.
MLC Cultured Buttermilk Soda; MLC Cucumber Celery Soda (both $ 4)-They make their own sodas here! And they’re incredibly unique and fun! Thanks for making this mostly non-​drinker feel like less of a party pooper. I loved both flavors I tried, with a very slight edge to the cucumber celery flavor because it was so very refreshing and zingy and light.

I feel bad not leaving a better review, but the food at Misery disappointed me. I came with a friend with a localvore deal and absolutely love the ambiance of this place! It’s casual, comfortable, and clean. There is outdoor and indoor seating. Be sure to get there earlier if you want to snag an outdoor seat. They were filled when my friend and I went around noon. My friend and I were able to sit next to the window where we enjoyed the view of bustling downtown Winooski.
We both opted for the Rough Francis, which included hot sauce, but it wasn’t spicy at all. I’m one who’s usually sensitive to spices so this really disappointed me. I think that killed the whole sandwich for me so be warned that it really isn’t spicy! It is packed full of flavor so I enjoyed that, but I disappointed because I thought I couldn’t go wrong with any food at Misery. Maybe it was the sauce, but the fried chicken inside the Rough Francis had no crunch, was not crisp and was a little too soft for my liking. I didn’t hate it, but I won’t ever order the Rough Francis again.
The service also left something to be desired. It seemed like the waitstaff didn’t really communicate so we were asked twice what we wanted to order and another wait staff asked us for your check than the one who we gave orders to. I don’t know why we had two people wait on us instead of one and I still didn’t know who our server was at the end. They were busy so I do understand. Overall, I would maybe come back for the ambiance. Maybe I went on an off-​day, but consistency is important to me so I hope that this review will help Misery improve.

We had high hopes for MLC due to the stellar reviews, but came away underwhelmed from our dinner experience… and underfed. We started off with two cocktails, which were inventive and enjoyable, but priced a bit high @ $ 11 each. Before dropping huge outlays of cash on the «Dinner for Two» offerings we opted to try a few appetizers to test the waters. The beef tartare and black cod crudo were tasty enough to swallow, but the preparation, presentation and portion size left much to be desired. We decided a main course would be more of the same, so we called it quits after the apps and went home to make a more robust meal.
Albeit, we would still like to sample the brunch and lunch choices soon to see if either are a better value than the overpriced dinner menu. It’s pretty hard to screw up breakfast foods.
A definite plus was the service, absolutely no complaints there.

This place might be expensive for dinner, but the lunch is reasonably-​priced and delicious.
My boyfriend and I stopped here for a quick bite during our post-​graduation mini-​vacation. We sat down, the service was prompt, and we took a lovely seat by the window.
Honestly, our fried chicken sandwich was a little bland, but the dirty fries… YUM. Hell yes, I would come back to this place just for these! They are fries topped with gravy, herbs, and different meats. Really, you can’t go wrong with this dish!

Tried the beef tartare and it was amazing! The apple & Honey cake with cheddar ice cream was genius! cheers to the chefs and bartender

The food at Misery Loves Company was solidly good. We came for dinner and had the «Supper for Two» with fried chicken. The supper came with bread+butter, a pickle plate, greens, and 2 sides of our choosing. For sides we went with malted beets and radishes with butter We also ordered the corn pudding because I’m a sucker for things like that.
The bread+butter was pretty good, not the best bread I’ve ever had, and the butter was «cheesy» tasting because it’s cultured butter. The greens were great, but pickles were just alright (too sweet!). The corn pudding had an interesting mix of flavors/​textures and was balanced with sweet and salty. Our fried chicken serving was massive. I even joked that they accidentally gave us double what they were supposed to, but I guess that’s just how much they serve! The chicken was seasoned well and was pretty moist (except the white meat was less juicy than it could have been). I liked the radishes and beets, but they weren’t the star of the show.
Misery Loves Company serves both inventive food and solid classics. If this were in my neighborhood it would be a «once in a while» sort of place because I just can’t eat that much butter in my daily life. Lol.

Great little restaurant… Pretty much everything is homemade… from the bread to the soups, salads, etc.
We got a table outside and the service was prompt and friendly. They run several specials like beer, specialty sandwiches, etc. We all had sandwiches or burgers and they were all great. A bit salty for my tasty, but overall still very good.
I saw diners with pets sitting outside, and the waitstaff would bring a little bowl of water to the pooch… very nice touch…

This place is awesome and not for the faint at heart. I don’t think I could this as my regular lunch place, but it’s a great treat every once and a while.
I ordered The Vonnegut — pork belly, american cheese, and fried egg on a housemade bun. The egg yolk was running out of the sandwich — messy, but delicious.
I’ve had their Virgin Mary in the past, and it’s delicious even without the alcohol. I considered ordering one for take out, but thought it might look odd to be drinking a Virgin Mary at my office desk. LOL
If you haven’t been to Misery Loves Company, indulge yourself and go!

Living close by, this restaurant has become a go to for special occasions and treating myself to some good local cooking. The service has always been outstanding; they are very knowledgeable about the food and the cooking process.
Although there is outside seating, I prefer to sit inside where you can see them making the food in their open kitchen and escaping the Winooski circle (where people don’t understand rotaries and beeping is a common occurrence).
It can be expensive sharing plates, but the quality makes the price reasonable. One of the most cost effective meals can be the Meat & Three which ranges from $ 32-​$ 39 and can easily feed 2 – 3 people.
I recommend the fried chicken & sides which change depending on the season and what’s growing nearby!