In July 2016, I spent one last day scrubbing down the tiger-lily-orange kitchen walls of my recently closed Montpelier business, Salt Café, and locked the door behind me. Since 2010, when I left my full-time job at Seven Days to open a restaurant, I’d spent nearly every day there, making flourless chocolate cake, rolling out sheets of herbed pasta or washing the dishes when a dishwasher called in sick. When times were tight, which was sometimes for months, I even spent my nights on a bedroll stretched out beneath the dining room tables, dreaming to the burble of chicken stock simmering on the stove.

Salt was located at 207 Barre Street, just steps from Hunger Mountain Co-op, and until three weeks ago, I hadn’t set foot in the building since that summer day eight years ago. What lured me back? One peek at the menu of Ondis, a new restaurant that opened in December after long-lived Kismet — which began in that space, moved downtown for a few years and then returned — closed its doors.

Ondis is co-owned by bartender couple Emma Sanford and Christopher Leighton. (He also owns Après cocktail lounge in Stowe, in partnership with Mirror Mirror owner Lindsay Chisholm.) They hired culinary school grad and longtime area chef Max Vogel to run the kitchen. Together, the trio serves up a playful, creative seasonal menu with exceptionally crafted drinks that put fresh twists on the classics. The restaurant vibe is cool and urban, with neutral tones on the walls and concrete and metal accents in the décor. There are just 20 indoor seats, but the opening of a seasonal patio will double the capacity.

click to enlarge

• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Christopher Leighton and Emma Sanford of Ondis

“Something I really enjoy about our space being so small,” Leighton said, “is that it feels like something you’d find in a city, in some way … It’s a space where people can translocate.”

On a Thursday evening in late March, entering Ondis from the quiet, chilly residential street and emerging into a sleek, metropolitan restaurant, filled with customers shooting oysters and clinking glasses of wine, did feel something like walking into a wardrobe and landing in Narnia. After taking a seat near a collection of cookbooks and some potted plants, a friend and I pored over the winter menu, which has since changed for spring.

At the next table, Sofia and Michael Philbrick — coincidentally, customers of mine at Salt and now fervid Ondis regulars — insisted that we order the truffle fries ($16). We obeyed, ordering those along with much of the rest of the menu. The fries were labor-intensive and stunning, made by stacking layer after translucent layer of potato, cutting out rectangular slices, and frying them until golden and crisp. They were served with a sunny hemisphere of truffle aioli and topped with a blizzard of shredded cheese and chives.

The Philbricks come to Ondis for the “intimate atmosphere” and excellent service, Sofia said. “I really appreciate the time [Leighton] takes to explain the wine and the dishes,” she noted. She added that she never feels like she’s being rushed, even when all the tables are full.

Other pros for the Philbricks include the interesting selection of sauces that accompany the raw oysters, the price-to-quality ratio and the fact that the menu is well designed for people who want to share dishes with their companions.

Given the parade of plates at our table, I was grateful indeed to be splitting with a friend. In addition to the fries, my favorites included Moroccan spiced carrots, blistered but still bright, sprinkled with powdered pistachio and mounded with a tangle of microgreens ($12); plump shrimp perched on a cake of grits, accompanied by seared corn kernels ($17); and pillowy steamed buns stuffed with Korean-style pickles and battered-and-fried oyster mushrooms ($15).

On the new menu, there is still a steamed bun ($20), but now it’s filled with lobster salad and microgreens, drizzled with yuzu-flavored Japanese mayo. A mezze appetizer, featuring a selection of dips and dippables, has been transmuted into an entrée with the addition of lamb kebabs and homemade flatbread ($40).

click to enlarge

• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Sea scallops with pancetta, beech mushrooms, bok choy and cognac-miso beurre blanc

There are completely fresh items, too: pork belly with ramp cream and apple-fennel slaw ($12); chicken congee with crispy chicken skin and chile oil ($20); and sea scallops with pancetta, beech mushrooms, bok choy and cognac-miso beurre blanc ($18).

At the moment, the food list is happily heavy on seafood thanks to deliveries from Wood Mountain Fish, and the owners are continuing to build relationships with Montpelier-area farmers and artisans. “We want to work with smaller producers who are doing stuff off the beaten path,” Leighton explained. In the past, he’s purchased seaberries and tiny northern kiwis from East Hill Tree Farm in Plainfield to use in cocktails.

On the current drink list — which bridges the liminal space between blizzards, mud and the first tender moments of spring — there are still what Sanford refers to as “spirit-forward” drinks that feel warming in chilly weather and hint at sunnier times to come. Think vodka with celery shrub and fresh pineapple ($13) and tequila milk punch flavored with tulsi, rose and lime ($14).

click to enlarge

• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Tequila milk punch

The one truly classic drink on the menu is a gin and tonic ($10) in honor of Sanford’s late mother, for whom the restaurant is named. Sanford, who grew up in nearby Marshfield, learned to love food and drink, and sharing them with community, from her family.

“My parents always cooked, and their friends were always over having dinner parties,” she recalled. “Dining was this special thing of getting everyone together. It held importance to me, and when we were naming [the restaurant], that spoke to us.”

Leighton and Sanford live in Plainfield, and both previously tended bar in Montpelier at Barr Hill. When they learned that Kismet was closing, they began dreaming of opening a business there, close to home.

“We went back and forth on what we wanted the space to be,” Sanford recalled. “Chris and I are both bar people, but there’s a commercial kitchen, so it seemed kind of silly not to do food.”

But the couple couldn’t find a chef who seemed like a good fit and were resigned to serving only drinks and snacks. Then, just before the opening, Vogel — a New England Culinary Institute grad who was running the kitchen at the Reservoir in Waterbury — showed up for an interview.

“Max has been entirely in charge of the food program, and we’re really appreciative to have him,” Leighton said. “We give him the space to be creative, and the business runs with him, because of him. He’s super talented.”

With three visionaries packed into a sardine can of a kitchen, how does the menu-planning process work? First, Vogel “will lay out his brainchild,” Leighton said. “We’ll collectively look at it and make decisions about what we think will work and what might not work.”

If a dish excites the trio but would be hard to source for an entire season, it might become a special. “We do a seasonal menu that will be the skeleton for three months,” Leighton noted, “but something will change nearly every day.”

Although the drinks are intended to complement the food, Sanford explained, they are not necessarily created with specific pairings in mind. “It’s more based on seasonality,” she said. The use of fresh, local ingredients in both the food and the cocktails — including herbs and specialty items grown by the owners in their garden — creates a harmony that makes the complex beverages and intricate dishes taste great together.

click to enlarge

• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Blueberry and white chocolate ice cream sandwich

With all the buzz around their business, managing a small number of seats could be a tricky task. So Sanford and Leighton eschew reservations and instead use a wait list for in-person and online table requests. Locals can drop onto the list digitally, from the comfort of their living rooms. After receiving a text that a table is available, they have 15 minutes to scoot over to Ondis and claim it.

I caught Knayte Lander, co-owner of Buch Spieler Records, on the way to band practice prior to dinner at Ondis. Lander is impressed by the restaurant’s execution. “Their cocktail is, like, ‘vodka cocktail,’ and then it comes out, and it’s simple in its presentation yet completely unmakeable by [me],” he said. “They’re not showboating … They’re just really well trained at what they’re doing.”

Leighton summed up the philosophy that he and Sanford share: “We take the extra time and do the simple things really well. It makes all the difference.”

Diners seem to appreciate the effort. “The town is struggling to recover from a flood,” Lander said, referring to last July’s catastrophic rainfall. “Montpelier is having a rough day, but for a whole year. My aunt used to say that in times of distress, frivolity is important. Ondis isn’t frivolous, but it’s helping people feel OK right now.”

Lander echoed Leighton’s observation about Ondis having a different feel from its immediate environs, and from Montpelier in general. “Ondis is giving this otherworldly vibe,” he mused. “It seems equal parts European and incredibly urban, with attention to detail plus a very nice, comfortable atmosphere. It’s not your home. You’re transported.”

For a moment in time, the Ondis space actually was my home, and I’d worried that it would be painful to be back. Because the space was lovely and the food was exciting and the company was friendly, it wasn’t.