After visiting Kevin's, we thought our quest a very short one, indeed. Kevin's, as I have noted before, was our first stop and we thought it so superior, of such high quality, that we questioned whether we could ever find another tavern to surpass it. (The loyal follower of this blog will have noted by now that we did indeed find another eatery that even surpassed Kevin's.)
Appended below, you will find our ratings. Kevin's achieved a very respectable 104.5 score, with both our burgers showing a high-caliber juiciness, taste and size (we gave Kevin's a nine on the size meter--it would have achieved a perfect ten but since this was our first stop on the quest we thought it best to give some room for a perfectibility that we in fact never saw surpassed). This reviewer has remarked that Kevin's locale is the same as in the famous short story by Shirley Jackson (who lived in North Bennington), The Lottery, which he assumes the reader is familiar with. Hopes, at any rate. The full story is found below the ratings queue below.
| Juiciness | 10 | |
| Size Matters | 9 | |
| Sides | 9 | |
| Price | 9 | |
| Char-ability | 8 | |
| Meat Type | 8 | |
| Hand-ability | 9 | |
| As Ordered* | 10 | |
| Server Issues | 9 | |
| Taste | 9.5 | |
| Ambiance** | 8 | |
| Parking Lot*** | 6 | |
| 104.5 |
The Lottery @Kevin’s in No. Bennington, VT
The evening of April 27th was clear and moonlit, with the fresh coolness of a full-spring day; the flowers
were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. That is, they would be if it were but a month from now. Today’s blooms were still dozing in this half-frozen Vermont landscape. The villagers had been gathering for some time now around the village square, large piles of what appeared to be stones had been built up into little mountains by the boys nearby Kevins, a small pub and restaurant right on the main street.
Companion and I had set out for this establishment on hearing of its excellent fare and thinking we might settle for a burger and fries --as they had an excellent reputation for same-- we worked our way in through the crowd which seemed to have its epicenter on the eatery. The people seemed quite pleasant and asked if we were here especially for the lottery. “No, not at all. Just the burgers.” They laughed and let us know that some others had beaten us to it. A man, introduced to us as Old Man Warner, shook his head sadly, muttering only that things twernt what they used to be.
A few boys ran through, jostling as they went, and the bar keep, a Mr Dickie Delacroix, yelled after them to behave as better befits a sacred holiday such as it was--”and put those down!” He yelled, as the boys were seen stuffing their pockets from the corner pile.
It looked like we had a long wait, but two gentlemen--Steve Adams and Mr Graves--rose suddenly from their seats proffering to us their roosting place. “You new to town? Not for the Lottery?” Mr Graves wanted to know. Companion said that the only lottery he was after was to pick the best burger in the tri-state area. This received a smirk from Mr Adams, and a guffaw from Mr Graves, who moved on over to the mountain in the corner, which grew ever higher as we sat waiting for the table to be cleared and our order--already on our minds-- taken.
We didn’t have to wait overlong, as our waitress, a middle-aged woman with rosy cheeks, came and settled the area and began to orate on the specials for the evening. “Tut, tut,” companion let fly, “we have decided on the order; indeed we had decided weeks ago!” And with that we summarized our plan for discovering the greatest example of a burger anywhere (within the tri-state area, that is) . “Well, if my name ain’t Tessie Hutchinson! Hey, Dickie! These gents are here to review your burgers!”
After that we were transformed into minor celebrities. Numerous folk rose to greet us and shake our hands. Mr Summers, Bobby Martin, and Henry Jones, and his brother Bobby, all came up and made us feel quite at home. “Here for the Lottery?” they all seemed to want to know. “ “Just the burgers,” companion let on. And another laugh. Old Man Warner, who appeared to be as old as the ramshackle black antique box sitting on the bar, again could be heard to mutter, “Pack of crazy fools--I hear up north they be thinking of giving up the lottery. Ain’t what it used to be, sure to tell.”
Kevin’s was a small establishment, divided into a pub on the north side and an eatery on the south. We had seated ourselves in the area of liquid refreshments as they had several closely arranged tables there for pub fare. All total, restaurant, pub and kitchen, were not as long as a stone’s throw from end to end.
But as companion and myself have often found out, closeness within an eating house often brings surprisingly positive results in terms of flavorful concoctions as well as seasoned friendships. Here we had been bombarded with handshakes and hello’s and how-are-you’s. The place was a welcoming one, and the people seemed a gregarious and affectionate sort.
Tessie soon brought out our burgers, large whelps of meat, heaped high as boulders! And lying next to them heaved a bed of fries that seemed more numerous than the gravel on the drive outside. Companion and I reached for the catsup at the same time and as we did so simultaneously squirted such a fountain of tomato-y goodness that it splattered all over and down our plates to the fries below. Ah, goodness!
The burger fit the reputation of the place, a rock-solid emblem of flavorful character that mirrored the villagers in their own standing in the town as men and women ranking high in station, honor, and rectitude.
After we smoothed down our hair and faces, now a bit tussled with burger-juice and catsup, looking as if we had been in a fight from dawn to dusk, we finished our meal in near silence, enjoying every bite, hardly pausing to comment on its savory goodness. And just as Tessie had delivered to us our bill, Mr Summers, in front of the bar, raised himself high on a three-legged stool and picking up the old black box, paused to show it to everyone’s satisfaction.
“Now, you know what this day means. Guess we better get started, get this over with, so's we can go
back to work. Anybody ain't here?" No one said anything, so he began the process, pulling slips--they appeared to be duplicate bills of fare from the day’s business--and read the names off methodically, one by one.
"Allen." Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham."
He moved on through the alphabet until he came to the middle, as he paused rather dramatically. He turned the slip over showing a dark grease spot. “I can’t read this name,” he shouted. Tessie came over and read it to him, then turning in our direction, she then whispered into his ear.
Mr Summers stepped down off the stool and walked over to our table. “What is your name, sir?” he inquired, rather ceremoniously I thought for we had been introduced not long before. “All right, fellows.” Then he again lifted the bill high over everyone’s heads in order for them to better inspect the ticket.
“Who’s got it? Who is it?” we could hear people whispering throughout the crowd. “Is it Tessie? Did Bobby Martin get it?”
“All right, folks,” Mr Summers said. “Let’s finish quickly. Night’s almost here.”
The villagers made for the pile that had grown so high in the corner. After a bit, companion and I were in the center of a circle of townsfolk holding those stone-like objects. If we hadn’t been weighed down by the recent meal we might have high-tailed it out of there for such was the look of terror on the faces of those surrounding us.
But what we had taken as terror was in fact a look of some grudging resentment toward us, for we had apparently stumbled on a windfall of an entire year’s worth of burger and fries--or at least I had, for companion hadn’t paid a tuppence on the bill and so wasn’t even in the drawing. But the look of jealousy quickly gave way to acceptance as the townsfolk gnawed on the “stones” (which were in fact chocolate chip cookies as tender and moist as any I have ever sampled--do I need to openly declare the thoughts that had recently run through my brain?) with a wave of delicious satisfaction coming over each and every one of them--myself included as I raced to pocket a dozen or more.
You could have knocked me down with a feather.
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