• Rachel Stearns
• Beer flight, from left: Three Stoned Birds, Red Jay Way, Sadie Marie and For the Love of Dog

If the lawn around Bent Hill Brewery in Braintree is bereft of the fuzzy yellow flowers we're seeing everywhere else right now, look for them on the menu. Fresh off their annual mud season break, 34-year-old brewery owner Michael Czok and his five-person team are welcoming neighbors and tourists alike back to this idyllic hillside in the White River Valley. Currently, that means picking the flowers as fast as they can for use in a fan-favorite fried snack: dandelion fritters.

"As much as we hope to pick enough [to last] until the fall, sometimes we get burned out," Czok said, explaining that after picking, they must then pluck all the petals from each flower for use in the fritters.

The first sunny evening after a week of raw temps and rain in early May was the perfect time to check out the scene at Bent Hill — or so I thought. The Seven Days food team is hitting the road before the summer rush, revisiting some of our favorite outdoor dining spots around Vermont. I beat the crowds, but I beat the dandelion fritters, too, by just a couple of days. It was one of a few dishes that hadn't yet made it onto the summer menu — which, by the way, is entirely meatless.

• Rachel Stearns
• Cauliflower tacos and oyster mushroom po'boy with a beer flight

I can't pass up a locally foraged delicacy, and had the fritters been on offer, my dinner decision would have been even harder to make. As it was, I assigned my husband my second-choice entrée before I realized that wasn't exactly polite. We ended up sharing both. Was he mad about splitting three overstuffed maple-Buffalo cauliflower tacos ($16) and an oyster mushroom po'boy ($16) that fully required two hands to hold? I promise you he was not. I also let him pick the appetizer — crispy-on-the-outside, fluffy-on-the-inside grit sticks with herb-flecked marinara for dipping ($8) — and we shared a couple of flights to maximize the beers we could try ($2 per pour).

As we sipped a quartet of fruit-forward beers perfect for summer — as well as a more classic array comprising a Kölsch, a pale ale, a maple red ale and a farmhouse saison — I admired the scenery through the wood frame of the taproom's sizable deck: an expansive, verdant yard; tree-covered hillsides just starting to pop with color; and a mountain peak in the distance.

• Rachel Stearns
• Michael Czok speaking with a customer at Bent Hill Brewery

Inside the taproom, at a window facing the same gorgeous view, a small group seemed unaffected by the landscape — to these diners, it was a familiar sight. Two of the three were a current and a former teacher from Braintree Elementary, a school just down the hill.

"The whole staff loves it here," said Janni Jacobs, 64, who teaches fourth, fifth and sixth graders. "It doesn't matter if I run into parents here. It's a community place." Once upon a time, one of her students was a fifth grader named Michael Czok.

While the teachers joked that they certainly weren't the ones who taught Czok how to brew beer, I soaked in the good vibes. Turns out, Bent Hill feels homey because it is: Czok grew up in the house on the property where he now lives, so when he's welcoming people to the brewery, he's sharing his actual home.

"There's something about Braintree that's just so serene and peaceful," he said. "I wanted people to come and enjoy the space that I live in. They don't really get this kind of experience anyplace else."