Exploring Brattleboro's Eateries

As Route 9 winds west out of town, it passes through a gracious Victorian neighborhood. A sign outside the sprawling gray house at 814 Western Avenue reads "C X Silver Gallery." Below that: "Dim Sum."

Inside, Adam and Cai Xi (pronounced "tsai-shee") Silver, a quirky pair of empty nesters, serve serious Sichuan dim sum in their downstairs art gallery. It's available daily by reservation only, except during monthly Sunday buffets.

Cai Xi is a native of Chongqing, China, where she met Adam 30-odd years ago. Her cooking is perhaps the best, most authentic Sichuan-style Chinese food available anywhere in Vermont.

It's a feast worth lingering over, so go early and bring an appetite and as many friends as you can find. With all but a few dishes priced at $5 to $15 and portioned for a crowd, you'll need help if you want to try more than a few. And you choose your dishes when you reserve your table, so there's no backtracking once the food starts coming.

Maybe you'll begin with a steaming bowl of glassy yam noodles in delicate chicken broth, floating with crisp julienned veggies, chicken and tofu. It could be the antidote to a too-cold, not-quite-spring day.

Or perhaps you'll try a tangle of dan dan noodles studded with mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns. (Silver can make everything on a spectrum of spice to accommodate tamer palates.) The dish also features crunchy whole peanuts and cashews, scallions, herbs, dried cranberries, and ribboned raw carrots that add enough sweetness to soothe the burn.

Then, maybe a bamboo basket of Cai Xi's xiao long bao dumplings. The paper-thin porky pouches are divine and excellent warm-ups for the fillets of fish that came next, smothered in scorching red chile sauce with peanuts and green onions.

All the while, the Silvers are wonderful hosts — happy to discuss the food, their history, their adopted hometown or the art on the walls. Show any interest, and Adam will usher you upstairs for a journey through his wife's work. It's a stunning collection of paintings, drawings and textiles that spans a life lived between cultures on two continents.

The experience is a feast for many senses — and if you go early enough, you'll have time to grab a nightcap back in town.

— H.P.E.