In Okemo Valley, Food and Craft Share the Same Table
It’s been said that, when it comes to really enjoying food, “the first bite is with your eyes.” Whether from ancient Roman gourmet, Apicius, or from some later epicurean, no matter: It still holds that what we see on a plate can stir anticipation for what we’ll taste. It’s also about where food comes from, how it’s prepared, the intentions of the preparer, the degree to which its origins are healthy and wholesome— and the ambiance and economy of it all. Okemo Valley Magazine visited five different regional eateries to get an inside look at the people steering the vision, the food they serve, and how it’s crafted. In each we found resource-fulness, a commitment to source locally, and a unique, yet community-conscious approach.
At Blue Duck Deli, Chef Craig Kovalsky and his partner/fiancée, Bex Prasse, have created a one-of-a-kind space with simple white furniture where creamy countertops give a splash of marble-ish elegance, although they were crafted by the couple from epoxy veined with gold Rustoleum.
Prasse and Kovalsky are all about DIY: from post-flood repairs to the handsome aesthetic of Blue Duck’s interior, Kovalsky uses skills gleaned from his father and watches YouTube videos with Prasse to figure it all out— foundations to roofs, patios to kitchens.
In May 2022, when they moved in, the plan was a wholesome deli, thus the name, but July ’23’s flood damage necessitated a pivot. In January 2025, they introduced a five-course chef’s tasting experience on Fridays and Saturdays and, eventually, a Sunday brunch.
This summer, Blue Duck opened a riverside patio behind their early 19th-century building with “farm-to-table, outdoor grilling by the river,” Kovalsky explains, “and some fun beverages.”
A sea captain by training, Prasse worked on ships for a dozen years and there she met Kovalsky who had attended Manhattan’s French Culinary Institute. Once they fell in love and sought to settle, it’s in Ludlow they landed. “We loved the town’s charm,” says Prasse who, like her partner, had snowboarded in Vermont as a youngster.
Cheffing for 10 years on private super-yachts worldwide, Kovalsky cooked “for the top one-percenters in the world. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced.”
It’s there he developed a knack for catering to specific tastes and needs. “I take the same concept of what I did on the super-yachts and put it into a restaurant.” For the prix fixe chef’s tasting experience, for instance, he reaches out to every guest who has reserved to learn their preferences before crafting the evening’s menu.
Summer fare at Blue Duck is more casual, but equally thoughtful, unique, and fresh. Waste is kept to a bare minimum “and everything is made in-house.
“We try to locally source everything we possibly can,” Kovalsky explains. “Even our black beans. Our beef, chicken, pork, everything. We have great relationships with some amazing small family farms that are growing sustainably, using regenerative agricultural practices. We make sure everything is pure food, so you’re eating pure product, no fillers.”
For Kovalsky, creating a dish is all about “textures, color, and obviously flavor. I’ll make a potato look like a mushroom. You eat it and you think you’re about to eat a mushroom, but it’s not a mushroom. That’s what you see; then you smell and go from there.”
Six miles north of Ludlow on Route 100 in Plymouth, Echo Lake Inn stands tall, one of Vermont’s oldest inns.
Open all four seasons, the antique building has an unpretentious air, a place where one can peacefully lollygag in the common space up front.
It’s there that Chef Jim Allen talks about his work at Echo Lake.
Allen was smitten by culinary early on and has since learned under several fine chefs. With a landscaping business on the side, he had mowed the lawn at Echo Lake for 27 years before taking charge in the kitchen. “I’d always wanted to work here,” he recalls. When the chance arose, he started making changes that would broaden the restaurant’s appeal, including “a bunch of menus” from children’s to special occasion prix fixe— and even a midweek “locals” menu.
“We try to do everything as locally as possible, but you can’t get everything all seasons. We use local chickens, sometimes local pigs. We grind our own burgers and craft the vegetarian mushroom cashew burger; most everything we do is made in-house,” including muffins, pastries, naan, even crackers—all baked by his pastry chef wife, Bonnie.
Allen’s craft doesn’t stop at the kitchen door. An accomplished carpenter, he renovated the bar with natural wood, more shelving, and a wine cooler. And more improvements are in the works.
Christian Mayo steps out from the kitchen into the warmly lit, casual-aired dining room to talk about his work at Homestyle Restaurant in Ludlow.
Mayo, originally from Warren, Vermont, was first a sous chef at this popular eatery before taking charge five years ago.
Known for offering shared plates, craft cocktails, and scratch cooking, Homestyle seats roughly 75 diners between downstairs spaces where it’s a “community-eating kind of situation,” says Mayo, and private dining rooms upstairs. In these warmer months, capacity expands at five patio tables.
Mayo shares a little about Homestyle food: “We make this roasted maple cabbage wedge with a maple gastrique, Singleton’s bacon, and Bayley Hazen blue cheese from Jasper. We’re kind of famous for the crispy potato smashers—just a red potato from northeast Vermont; we boil them, then smash and fry them. Then we toss them in this nice chimichurri aioli, with pickled fennel and fried halloumi cheese, a hard Middle Eastern–style cheese that crisps up nicely when you fry it.”
Among other mouthwaterers, Mayo explains, Homestyle sources Boyden Beef from northern Vermont, “just nice grass-fed beef I smoke for about half an hour just to get that nice cherry wood smoke flavor. I’ll braise that overnight and we’ll pull that; it’s nice pulled, tender meat.”
To finish, Mayo talks desserts: homemade cherry crème brûlée, among them. He gets some ice cream from Island Time in Grand Isle, but maple ice cream and citrus sorbets are made in-house.
Also making all pastas and breads and much more on site, Mayo says, “If I can’t make it, I try to locally source it,” which includes meat and poultry free of antibiotics or hormones, as well as produce, cheeses, and beverages.
For Mayo, the crowning touch is always presentation. “Like the mac and cheese—making sure it looks nicely mounded with bubbly cheese. People eat with their eyes first but it needs to taste good, too, and to that end, using good, fresh ingredients is key.”
Mark Verespy is Czech and Polish on his father’s side with an abundance of Irish on his mother’s.
Involved in the beverage and restaurant business since his teen years, Verespy came to Okemo Valley to ski then, too. Eventually he sought a place of his own and 21 years later, his Killarney Irish Pub is still going strong.
Open year-round, although closed when there are mud season projects to tackle, Killarney’s award-winning fare is comfort food, says Verespy, the pub’s chef as well as owner.
With a menu boasting homemade soups, chowders, chilies, sauces, and gravies, Verespy expounds, “Our intention is to make comfort food that’s really good.” It’s not always pretty, he admits, “but it is what it is: not glamorous, but delicious.”
The numbers that regularly fill his 135 capacity, 1799 building attest to that quality, as do the folks who return regularly saying, “We’ll be back. In my world, that’s a win,” Verespy adds.
“We make as much as we can from scratch. A lot that we use you could buy processed or premade, but we just don’t.”
Keeping costs down is essential, as is minimizing waste—using everything, for instance, from a carcass boiled into a broth to celery leaves simmered in that pot because, he adds, “I care about what we do to the planet.” Cutting his own fish and meat supports such economy.
Killarney offers several dishes featuring Irish whiskey—no surprise—which, he assures, cooks off. Chicken Jameson, for instance, and a mushroom Swiss burger with mushrooms deglazed in whiskey.
Among notable desserts he lists a seasonal berry crisp. “I pick lots of strawberries at Wellwood Orchards” for homemade shortcake.
Verespy plans around what he locally sources. When it’s lots of beets, “we’ll run beet salads and the like. We get a list from [Evensong Farm] at the beginning of the week” and create accordingly. “ Our bangers are made locally” at North County Smokehouse. “We do that as much as we can. We don’t claim to be a farm-to-table restaurant, but it’s important that our food has a story.” The coffee in the pub’s popular Irish coffee, for example, is roasted down the road at Super Roasted.
Killarney wears its Irish every Thursday night when members of Gypsy Reel, an acclaimed local Celtic band, anchor an Irish music “session.” “We’ve had over 20 musicians from around the region—and from Ireland. It’s about as authentic an Irish session as you’re going to get on this side of the Atlantic.”
Ireland prevails throughout Killarney. “Most of the stuff here has a story,” Verespy says, touring the pub’s several rooms where family tartans are hung among yellowing newspaper articles, boasts, ephemera, and art. The effect is crafted comfort.
When Leslie Stuart opened Wine & Cheese Depot in 1996, providing wines and cheeses from around the world, most of the cheese she offered was imported. Vermont was best known for cheddar then, but as the state’s cheese scene developed, she began working with new producers to bring more local cheese into the shop. Today, about 65 percent of what she sells is made in Vermont.
In 2011, Stuart hatched plans to turn the back of the shop—once her husband’s workshop—into a small wine bar. In 2013, with longtime friend Wendy Neal, an avid chef and caterer and a founding member of Okemo Mountain School, they opened Stemwinder, a restaurant focused on locally sourced food.
She’s also “a phenomenal cook,” says Stuart. She said “yes” and Stemwinder launched with wine and small plated food only; as demand grew, so did the offerings to what’s now a full-menu restaurant in a handsome two-story space with repurposed old wood trim and engaging authentic décor.
Creating a new short menu each week for the 48-person restaurant serving Thursday through Saturday nights, Neal depends a lot “on what we can get locally,” she says. “It’s a short menu because we don’t want to waste.”
On any given Stemwinder menu, one can find enticing fare such as thin crust pizza boasting house-made fig jam, local bacon, and three cheeses. Strip steaks sourced locally join with garlic mashed potatoes and roasted root vegetables— all local; a colorful seafood bowl is loaded with scallops, cod, char, chorizo, tomatoes, and crusty Orchard Hill Breadworks bread. And everything is plated on a collection of charmingly mismatched dinnerware.
In addition to the ever-changing weekly menu, Stemwinder offers intimate monthly wine tastings with food pairings. At the end of the interactive event, participants can purchase wines they tasted at Stuart’s Depot.
Happy to see many customers returning week after week, Stuart says, “I think for the most part people who are dining out know what food costs, so they’re willing to pay for a really delicious dinner they don’t have to cook themselves, knowing that Wendy is buying pork and chicken and everything else from local farms. People who care about what they consume and care about the environment,” are appreciative of Neal’s fare.
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