One of my dinner dates was so excited to try Spaghet Red Sauce Joint that she arrived 10 minutes ahead of our appointed meeting time at the Williston restaurant, which opened in Finney Crossing in mid-January. Hovering between the host station and the merch display, Seven Days art director Diane Sullivan gleefully divulged that she was sporting her “stretchy pants.”
Though she had not yet visited this particular eatery, Diane is a devotee of what she described as “hot cheese” restaurants — aka those serving Italian American comfort food in heaping, gooey cheese-drenched portions.
An expert knows the only sensible approach when eating at such establishments is to wear a forgiving waistband.
I had enlisted Diane and another colleague, production manager John James, to help me taste test Spaghet after learning of their fondness for “hot cheese” destinations, such as Papa Frank’s in Winooski and the South Burlington outpost of Olive Garden.
Server Anna Benedetto holding chicken Parm with spaghetti (left) and penne Genovese with warm garlic bread Credit: Daria Bishop
That 950-location chain has set national expectations for crowd-pleasing Italian American fare with its huge portions and “never-ending” breadsticks and salad or soup, which accompany every entrée or can be ordered for $12.99. Diane said she and her late husband, Seven Days photographer Matthew Thorsen, used to install themselves at the Olive Garden bar with a bottle of Chianti “and see how many bowls of salad we could get.”
Spaghet’s affordable, family-friendly menu and polished branding struck me as a local play for the Olive Garden customer, complete with a similar $10-and-under kids’ pasta roster, comparable entrée price points, and twinsie Italian-style doughnuts served warm with sauces for dessert. The big question: How would the new spot measure up for a pair of Olive Garden regulars?
First course first: Spaghet notably lacks all-you-can-eat breadsticks and salad or soup.
“We can’t afford to do that,” owner Jed Davis said with a rueful chuckle.
Spaghet is the ninth and newest eatery in the prolific Chittenden County restaurateur’s portfolio. Davis, 50, is owner and managing partner of two Vermont restaurant groups. His Farmhouse Group runs two Farmhouse Tap & Grill locations in Burlington and Williston, Burlington’s El Cortijo Taqueria and Pascolo Ristorante, and South Burlington’s Guild Tavern. Davis’ newer group, Awesome Times, is responsible for Spaghet and three locations of fast casual Bliss Bee in Williston and South Burlington.
Davis swears that Spaghet is not gunning for Olive Garden — where, he said, he’s eaten only once. By contrast, he said his appreciation for old-school red-sauce joints goes way back to a family fave in New York State, where his parents went on one of their first dates in junior high.
“There’s a little nostalgia,” Davis said. “It always lingered in my head, and it’s just food that I love … very accessible, good food.”
Davis envisioned the 60-seat Spaghet as “super casual” with “reasonably priced” comfort-food favorites — in contrast to Pascolo, his intimate Church Street restaurant, where all pasta is handmade on-site.
Clockwise from top left: Baked ziti, white wine, chicken Parm with spaghetti, warm garlic bread, red wine, spaghetti with meatballs, antipasto plate and penne Genovese (center) Credit: Daria Bishop
Spaghet’s menu of classics includes a simple Italian salad ($6/$9), baked ziti ($14), and chicken, eggplant ricotta or meatball Parm plates with a side of spaghetti or broccoli ($18). It also offers a roster of hot sandwiches and panini, from any of the Parms ($12) to a deluxe panini ($14) essentially loaded with an antipasto plate of meats, cheese and veggies.
Spaghet currently serves only dinner but will roll out lunch in the spring, Davis said. All dishes, he added, have been tested extensively for takeout, in which Spaghet is doing a brisk business in addition to dine-in.
In fact, the restaurant was so busy on a recent Thursday night that, despite my close attention to the online wait list — another thing Spaghet shares with Olive Garden — it went from no wait to an estimated 30 minutes right before I hopped in the car at 6:15. In the end, excited Diane in her stretchy pants had to wait 45 minutes for a table — not including the 10 minutes she added by arriving early.
Unfortunately, the small restaurant has no bar and only a tiny waiting area with a tantalizing view of plates leaving the kitchen. It would have been lovely to order a glass of wine to go with that view, but at least I got a preview of the dish I later ordered when a server heartily recommended it to us as she walked by.
It feels like Olive Garden and Papa Frank’s had a weird baby — in a good way.
DIANE SULLIVAN
When we were finally seated, in a red vinyl booth beneath a rolling glass garage door that will open onto outdoor seating in warmer weather, we quickly ordered a bottle of the mellow, fruity Trambusti Chianti ($36). My dining companions acknowledged that their bar for wine is not high. We all deemed this one pleasingly gulpable.
At Olive Garden, John said, he usually orders “whatever the cheapest red wine is” with the Tour of Italy: a thick wedge of meat lasagna, tangle of fettucine Alfredo and piece of chicken Parm. He likes the variety, he said, and that the $22.99 dish provides enough food to take home for a second meal. Diane, a vegetarian, said she’s generally happy with any combination of pasta, red sauce and cheese. “You have to try real hard to fuck that up,” she said.
To start, we ordered Spaghet versions of bread and salad, both of which were judged to be better quality than their never-ending counterparts at Olive Garden. The garlic bread ($4) consisted of two crusty, toasty, Parm-and-garlic-flecked hunks with a ramekin of marinara; it was plenty to share among the three of us. Diane dug happily into a small Caesar salad ($6), while John and I shared a large antipasto salad ($15) generously topped with two kinds of meats, provolone, pepperoncini and pickled red onion.
Diane Sullivan holding her baked ziti Credit: Melissa Pasanen
In the name of research, Diane also ordered the Buffalo cucumbers ($8), an oddly misfit dish of cuke spears drizzled with Buffalo sauce and scattered with Gorgonzola crumbles that seemed to have lost their chicken wings on the way to the table. Far more successful — and on theme — were three plump, tender and well-seasoned meatballs ($6) in a chunky marinara sauce. (Davis later told me that customers in the restaurant’s first few weeks experienced a much less delicious meatball recipe that has since been scrapped.)
Our mains arrived in all their cheesy glory — hot and not. My penne Genovese ($16) was tossed in a rich pesto cream sauce and topped with an egg-size ball of cool, cream-hearted burrata cheese. The dairy-and-carb juggernaut was lightened somewhat with a good amount of fresh spinach and basil. Despite all that green, it was unsurprisingly on the indulgent side.
Diane’s baked ziti arrived actively bubbling like a volcano in a decorative casserole dish. “Shut your mouth!” she exclaimed. “How cute is that?” Though she declared the combo of pasta, two cheeses and red sauce tasty, she barely made a dent in it, partly because of its heft and partly because it retained its tongue-blistering temp through the rest of our meal. “This is some hot cheese,” she said.
John’s tender, nicely crusted chicken Parm crowned a pile of red-sauced spaghetti with plenty left for lunch the next day. A side of mushy, barely garlicky garlic broccoli ($4) was the only real disappointment.
Our doggie bag containers stacked up, and Frank Sinatra was crooning, “You make me feel so young” by the time we got to dessert, around 8:15 p.m.
Zeppole Ferris wheel with caramel and chocolate sauces Credit: Daria Bishop
We were also almost the only customers left in the restaurant; Williston weeknights appear to bring an early crowd.
Diane surveyed the high-ceilinged restaurant with its black, white and red décor splashed with perky branding. “It has a chain-y feeling,” she said, not unappreciatively. “It feels like Olive Garden and Papa Frank’s had a weird baby — but in a good way.”
We had known what we’d order for dessert since we’d seen one of the zeppole Ferris wheels ($14) go out during our wait for a table. Ours arrived with a flourish and warm squeeze bottles of caramel and chocolate sauces. I was sure we’d need another doggie bag for some of the freshly fried, pillowy, sugared puffs, but somehow we managed to take down all 12.
“Betty Crocker,” Diane sighed contentedly, invoking the deity of baked goods. “That’s good stuff.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “On Top of Spaghetti | Restaurateur Jed Davis brings Italian American comfort food to Williston”
