This essay was originally published in December 2022. Listen to the whole thing or scroll to the bottom for a really great update about Penny Cluse!

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Earlier this fall, two of my favorites eateries, The Grit in Athens, Georgia, and Penny Cluse in Burlington, Vermont both announced that they would be closing their doors for good—the former in October, and the latter sometime in December. Together, they had been in business a combined sixty years. Located in two of my former hometowns, I was planning to write about them anyway. But I didn’t know, though, that I would be writing in memoriam, and that with their loss, a little bit of home—my home—dies with them.

Important links:

Penny Cluse website

Penny Cluse Instagram

The Grit Instagram

Flagpole (GA) article: Over 30 Years of Serving Up Community

Garden and Gun article: When The Grit is Gone

Seven Days (VT) article: Notable Devotees Give Thanks for Penny Cluse

Avid Bookshop (you can buy The Grit cookbook and other merch here)

Reflection questions:

* Back to my opening question: What is a restaurant that has felt, in some way, like “home” to you, and why? What was it about the food, the people, the ambiance?

* Have you eaten at The Grit or Penny Cluse? What did you order? What memories do you have of your time at either of these places?

* Do you have a story of a restaurant you once called home that is now gone? Do you try to keep it alive in some way?

The Grit was located in present day Clarke County, Georgia, on the land of the Tsalaguwetiyi (Cherokee, East), S’atsoyaha (Yuchi), and Mvskoke (Muscogee/Creek) nations.

Penny Cluse was located in present day Chittenden County, Vermont, on the land of the Wabanaki and N’dakina (Abenaki) nations.

Image: My birthday dinner, August 2019. Photo by David Ellsworth-Keller.

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