• Courtesy
• Outer Spice Café

The longtime home of Maple Valley Café in Plainfield is buzzing once again. On December 7, Outer Spice Café opened with breakfast and lunch at 8195 Route 2.

A restaurant since the 1920s, the building was both a café and a gift shop during its time as Maple Valley, from the 1980s to 2018. Dan Dolan purchased the space in November 2019 and spent the past three-plus years renovating it.

Outer Spice serves an all-day menu of "large-portion comfort food," Dolan said, which includes egg sandwiches, waffles, housemade lox, soups, sandwiches, grilled tofu plates, coffee, beer and wine. Most ingredients are organic and locally sourced, and three bakers whip up everything from pignoli cookies to coffee cake to gluten-free treats.

"You can get soup in the morning if you want, or a hamburger," Dolan said. "But so far, it's a lot of omelettes. We did the math, and I've cooked 6,700 eggs in less than two months."

In a matter of weeks, the café will start dinner service with dishes such as pho, pulled-pork sandwiches, housemade pasta and to-go items to draw in commuters from Route 2, said Dolan, who has worked in restaurants since the 1980s, including briefly at Maple Valley in the 1990s.

Having his own place was a long-standing dream. His wife, Rebecca Armell, shares a restaurant background and is "the brains behind all the numbers that are actually running the space," he said. Friend Max Miller is Dolan's sous chef.

The renovation features expanded seating throughout and bright skies painted on several walls.

"There's not a lot of blue sky in Vermont, but there is at the Outer Spice Café," Dolan said with a laugh.