The Local Flavor

Author: Emily Thompson

Eat Good Food lifts the spirits of any student who has grown tired of the dining hall lunches found here on campus. True to its name, Eat Good Food provides a plethora of delights with its "localvore," or the use of only local products. Though already well known for its dinner and bar scene, the lunch service deserves as much attention, if not more.

Eat Good Food is not the kind of restaurant one would expect to find in downtown Middlebury, or anywhere in Vermont. Its bronze ceilings, rainbow Plexiglas and mod lighting fixtures evoke the feeling that you are no longer in rural Vermont but rather in some far away land, like TriBeCa. Quite unlike TriBeCa, getting a table is practically guaranteed, even at the height of the lunch hour. What is also guaranteed is actual good food.

The majority of the menu is paninos, the singular form of panini. The top of the physical menu features an enthusiastic definition. The enthusiasm doesn't stop at the top. Every time you lift up a page on the clipboard-styled menu, descriptions of grilled pita and Gorgonzola cheese jump out at you. Though the dishes are simply different variations of paninos and pita sandwiches, the presentation and the taste are exquisite.

The smoked turkey and Swiss cheese panino had a twist of Dijon and was grilled until it was golden and moist. The tuna salad pita sandwich overflowed with tuna and local greens. Though the pita was a little stale, the flavor of everything else quickly overwhelmed any frustrated taste buds. The "localvore" approach truly added to the flavor of every dish. The fresh tomatoes made an ordinary Greek salad pita unforgettable. The savory homemade potato chips, somewhat reminiscent of Kettle chips, were mouthwatering.

The soda fizzes may have been the best part of the entire meal. Even if you are health conscious and do not drink soda, you must try Eat Good Food's fruit-flavored delights. They range in flavor from raspberry-lime to orange-cream fizz, but the true winner is peach-cranberry, with a sweet-then-tangy twist in every sip.

Unfortunately, Eat Good Food, or just our waitress, has yet to figure out a way to serve dessert to the table. The dessert menu does not exist - you must go to the front counter in order to choose and pay. Annoying as the dessert ordering may be, the Heaven on Earth bars are actually little slivers of heaven on earth.

The price for all this delicious food exceeds most college students' everyday budgets. On average, a panino is about seven dollars. The chips, the substitute for free bread, cost four dollars, and the dreamy drinks cost one dollar and seventy-five cents. These prices fall in line with the restaurant's trendy atmosphere, but not with the atmosphere of a college town. That said, a splurge on delicious food is acceptable every once in a while, and there is nowhere better in town to eat good food for lunch.