The U.S. Senate’s Kennedy Caucus Room is an arresting place with soaring marble columns and blood-red curtains that extend almost to a ceiling carved with gilded rosettes and ornate patterns. Its history is as dramatic as its appearance: This is where the Titanic and Watergate hearings were held, and where Supreme Court justices are confirmed.... Read more

Steve Gagner pulls a tap jutting from the wall of his tasting room at 14th Star Brewing, and golden beer fills a tulip-shaped glass. “I came up with this one night while sitting on the couch watching ‘[The] Big Bang Theory,’” Gagner says earnestly.... Read more

Good thing Vermont’s GMO bill has a long shelf life. It’s been three years — and one and a half sessions — since legislation was introduced to require genetically modified organisms be labeled as such. The GMO bill passed the House last Friday by a vote of 99 to 42 — just days before the session ended. A third of Vermont’s legislators were cosponsors, signaling the bill’s broad public support.... Read more

It seems like every week in Vermont is “Craft Beer Week” — but this week actually is.

Billy Mossinghoff, co-owner and chef of Jeffersonville’s Brewster River Pub & Grill, has been busy turning out batches of beer from a brand-new half-barrel system since he got his brewing permit in April.... Read more

Warm weather has a way of hatching new restaurants and bars. No matter where you live in the state, chances are there’s a new place in your ’hood — or at least on the horizon.

Last week, the intensely anticipated Mule Bar kicked things off in Winooski, confirming Main Street as pub-crawl territory.... Read more

Just 20 minutes into our second meal at nika, the table suggested a medieval-style feast. When our server arrived with a plate of grilled octopus, the table was so full that he paused and stammered, “I’ll just put them … um ….” My friend and I stopped eating to rearrange plates and glasses — grilled escarole salad, braised artichokes, curls of prosciutto, a rosé and a cucumber-lychee-mint spritzer — and make room.... Read more

Dry-aged steak frites. Battered monkfish cheeks with chips. Chef Jean-Luc Matecat will be spinning some serious victuals when Mule Bar opens on Thursday at 38 Main Street in Winooski.... Read more

Since Seven Days reported last week on a Friday-night food-truck powwow coming to Burlington’s South End, Felix Wai — half of ArtsRiot, the event’s organizers — says he’s received “lots of calls from people starting up food trucks who asked, ‘Hey, can we park there?’”... Read more

For the three years that Chris and Heidi Townsend owned Black Cap Coffee in Stowe, they felt like the business had a split personality, they say. In front, they were running a busy café that they both loved; in the back, they were roasting coffee for a growing network of clients.... Read more

Finding Citizen Cider isn’t easy. But on a recent Friday night, dozens of people undertake the search, for the company’s weekly cider-tasting party. First they find the wooden sign in Essex’s Fort Ethan Allen that reads “Drink Cider”; then they push open a heavy wooden door at the back of the building and enter a room that feels like a speakeasy, filled with the smell of fermenting apples. People cluster around a long wooden bar, glasses of cider in hand.... Read more