Dining Out: Winding Through the Woods to Queen Bee’s Snack Bar in Monkton

The roads I take to get to Queen Bee’s Snack Bar in Monkton are mostly dirt. One, Piney Woods Road, is so twisty and thick with trees that snack bar owner Kim Jewell’s 7-year-old adopted daughter, Akara, calls it “the haunted forest.”

“She doesn’t mind it during the day, because we see all kinds of animals,” Jewell said. “But she doesn’t want to go through it at night.”

Day or night, I take comfort in knowing that Jewell’s seasonal snack bar is on the other side of those woods. It’s been a regular stop of mine for the past two years, usually after a dip in Bristol Falls.

This month, before the summer rush, the Seven Days food team is heading out to revisit some of our favorite outdoor dining spots in Vermont. Opened in 2015, Queen Bee’s is already surprisingly busy for the season, especially given its dirt road location. Customers come from as far as Charlotte and Chittenden — some multiple times a week — for Jewell’s hand-cut fries and Queen Bee Burgers topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles and mayo.

The traditional snack shack menu offers the usual suspects: Michigan dogs, veggie burgers, chicken tenders, fried clams, onion rings, chili-cheese fries and creemees. The menu grows each year, Jewell said. Her 2023 additions include fried cauliflower and zucchini spears, which “are flying out of here like there’s no tomorrow,” she said with a laugh.

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• Caleb Kenna
• Queen Bee’s Snack Bar

My order changes every time I get in line under Queen Bee’s bee-decorated pavilion. Sometimes it’s a cheeseburger, sometimes a corn dog. I’ve even had a salad, which felt wrong for the setting but was fresh and full of crunchy toppings. A small Beehive ($3), the stand’s candy-and-creemee-filled take on a Dairy Queen Blizzard, is my only constant.

On my first stop this year, in early May, I found a new favorite: a perfectly grilled sweet sausage with peppers and onions ($7) and a side of sweet potato fries ($4.50) dipped in Melba sauce, a sweet raspberry concoction created by French chef Auguste Escoffier.

Popularly served in upstate New York with mozzarella sticks, the Melba sauce is new to Queen Bee’s this year. Like many menu items, it started as a customer request. “It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it if you get a happy customer,” Jewell said.

During Queen Bee’s first season, the staff was just Jewell and one of her daughters working out of an 8-by-8-foot red-and-white trailer, which they quickly outgrew. Jewell saved up tips to purchase the current setup, a black 10-by-24-foot trailer, and draws funds from the same source each season to add new features, including an air-conditioned ice cream room, the sturdy pavilion and play equipment to occupy hungry kids.

“I never thought it would be this popular,” Jewell said. “Not out on a dirt road.”

Queen Bee is also Jewell’s nickname, which she earned advocating for the 22 foster kids for whom she and her husband have cared over the years. Running Queen Bee’s, which shares the driveway with the couple’s home, allows Jewell to be available for those kids at all times. They often work alongside her; right now, the stand is completely staffed by family.

“Akara was in a backpack on my back when she was a baby,” Jewell said. “Now she’s making ice cream.”