Fresh Baked Frizzie Rolls at back!

Fresh Baked Frizzie Rolls at back!

And just so you are not confused, we are not talking about Johnny Moseley in todays blog.

Operating a small, high quality, restaurant is a tough job. Our dinner guests reap tons of advantages. Because we buy in small quantities, everything is always fresh. Everything is cooked a la minute (ie to order). That composed dish that you see on your plate when it is presented by our servers was cooked just for you... and only you, based upon what you ordered.

On the flip side, as a small restaurant operator, we are fighting battles every day to put out a high quality product. Because we DO NOT purhase tractor trailer loads of of food each week from our suppliers, we are constantly vying for their attention to get the best product. We work with a lot of little suppliers to acquire special ingredients. Acquiring product to turn into finished meals to present to our guests is a veritable ballet that needs to be choreographed every day.

Then there is staffing. Owning a small restaurant means managing a small staff. Each staff member plays an important role. The loss of any one staff member can throw the whole rhythm of the restaurant out of wack and negatively impact product quality.

And unfortunately, that is exactly what happened just before Christmas when we lost our chef for the past 9 years and our dear friend, "Frizzy" Stephen Byrne, resulting in the restaurant at Birch Ridge being closed for 6 weeks while we regrouped.

But the restaurant is now back. Somehow Mary and I, with our core front of the house restaurant staff of Merisa and Aja, were able to keep together during the dark time. With some selective hiring, most notably our new chef, Leo Scotti, we were able to pull off a nearly impossible feat... doing a restaurant start up in Killington during the month of February.

Our dear friend, Frizzy, is sorely missed. One of his enduring legacies was his passion for making dinner rolls for the restaurant. For almost his full time working as our chef, he made dinner rolls every day to serve to our dinner guests. If you look at some of our restaurant reviews, you will see many guests comments about them. Most are very positive. Some are down right comical talking about problems getting a second (or third) serving of rolls. But "Frizzy Rolls" became synonymous with the dinner experience at Birch Ridge. So the search for a new roll to serve our guests became an urgent task these last couple of months.

We have tried a lot of rolls from many different bakers. Some have been good; some have been downright dreadfull. But nothing was right. Then we got lucky.

One of our dinner guests knew a little french baker. (And yes, the dinner rolls were that important to some of our dinner guests that they participated in the search for weeks as well!)

We contacted the baker and gave him our recipe for "Frizzy Rolls". We went through a trial run to see if they could be made to the standards created by Chef Frizzy. Working with our new baker, we tweeked it a little. This week, the first batch to be served to dinner guests arrived.

Nothing, of course, will be exactly the same as what was made by Frizzy. But the new rolls we are proud to serve, in his honor, are a big step to declaring that the restaurant at the Birch Ridge Inn is truely back!

To all of our great guests and friends, thank you for the support and love you have shown all of us these last few weeks as we worked to re-open the restaurant at the Birch Ridge Inn. It really makes a difference.

Let it snow!