Burdick lure works in New Hampshire, too

The ambience at Burdick's changes from day to night, casual to formal.

WALPOLE, N.H. - Mention "Burdick" to many Bostonians, and they can almost smell the rich aroma of chocolate suffusing Burdick's small, perpetually-packed Chocolate Shop & Cafe on Brattle Street in Cambridge.

But a journey to Walpole, a two-hour, 90-mile-drive from Cambridge, will bring Burdick fans to the mother ship. L.A. Burdick Handmade Chocolates fills the long, white clapboard Post Office Block at the village's center. From this facility, owner Larry Burdick runs his direct mail and Web business.

The chocolate shop on the premises alone is worth the drive, but the adjoining cafe draws regular patrons from a wide radius on both sides of the Connecticut River.

"Plenty of people drive here from Boston for dinner," says co-owner Paula Burdick.

With its warm yellow walls, soft lighting, and artfully placed mirrors and paintings, this is as close to a Paris brasserie as you can get in New Hampshire. Visitors can order from the same, modestly-priced menu all day, but around 5 p.m. the ambience shifts. White tablecloths appear and the cafe morphs into a more formal restaurant.

My husband and I rediscovered Burdick's one damp day on the way home from southern Vermont, just across the river. We settled into a window table and studied the brasserie menu, which ranged from a Gruyère omelette with pommes frites and organic greens to a Provençal beef stew.

We feasted on a superb pea soup and a charcuterie plate with roasted red peppers, oil-cured olives, and Romano cheese. The breads were fresh and our Darjeeling tea arrived in a generous pot. From the pastries menu we chose a Burdick: layers of almond wafers and rum ganache, topped with white chocolate and pistachio.

Burdick tells how the business came to Walpole. In the 1980s, her husband, Larry, a New York chocolatier, had driven up Interstate 91 from Brooklyn, looking for a good place to raise his family and grow his business. He tried to buy a building across the river in Bellows Falls, but rents in the Vermont mill town were then higher than in this classic New England village with its fine churches and white clapboard mansions.

Burdick rented a small Main Street store, turning it into a chocolate factory with a storefront cafe and space for filling mail orders. The business showed steady growth, then ballooned after 1996 when Consumer Reports rated L.A. Burdick's chocolates the best in the nation.

"It went from me answering the phones to just grabbing 20 people off the street to help me," Burdick recalls.

Along with filmmaker Ken Burns, probably the town's most famous resident, Burdick bought the Post Office Block and in 2001 the newest incarnation of the cafe opened.

Walpole has had other claims to fame. In the 19th century, the town was a popular summer resort with several large hotels, and Louisa May Alcott and Emily Dickinson were among the visitors.

The big hotels have since gone away, and residents long ago voted to reroute the state highway down and away from the hilltop village, but the town still offers shops selling quality gifts and crafts. You can also pick your own apples and find several appealing places to stay.

Increasingly, however, hungry out-of-towners make their way here just for Burdick's.

Christina Tree can be reached at ctree@traveltree.net.