A Single Pebble — Restaurant in Burlington

Worth the splurge for Chinese!

Called to do a reservation right at the time I thought about it... I lucked out and was able to secure a table for two. Please try to make a reservation well ahead of time... I just got lucky.

Opted for the tasting menu. $50/person, which I think is worth the experience.

Started with the chilled hot and sour pork and tomatoes. Very fresh produce... tomatoes added a bit of sweetness and the pork was very flavorful. Cold dish.

Next was the Chinese BBQ plate. Didn't care for the tri-colored egg cake (made of regular and preserved duck eggs, which impart a slight hint of ammonia if you've ever had them) but it was visually interesting. Did not even see the shrimp in the salad, but the local pickle vegetables were VERY nice.

Chef's dumplings were not bad. Chicken and shrimp dumplings, two of each. Not fantastic, but not bad.

Mala Sichuan mung bean noodle flavors were great... but the noodles were thick and did NOT hold onto the sauce or anything else, so it was mostly "plain." But again, the FLAVOR of the sauce was great.

Asparagus fries, for as simplistic as they sound, were amazing. Perfect amount of crunch with the tempura and a bit of asparagus flavor. I am NOT an asparagus guy but I loved these.

Coconut PEI mussels were very good, but not the best I've had. These had a slightly-sweet coconut hint to them. Very small mussels as well. The broth was nice. I've had better though, compared to beer-broth PEI mussels.

Cantonese pineapple BBQ pork was all right too. Loved the sauce and vegetables... nice balance. The meat was VERY fatty though... I felt like I was eating the discards from the pig. (The tempura added a very nice welcome light crunch, though!)

Sichuan water fish was actually rather disappointing. It was just salty and hot. You couldn't really taste anything other than the heat from the red chili broth, which was seasoned with scallions, bean sprouts, and cilantro. I actually was fine with letting Ryan take this away... and I HATE wasting food.

Three cup chicken was great. (It's called that because it's literally made with a cup of soy, a cup of sesame oil, and a cup of wine. You're welcome.) This was actually pretty yummy.

They brought some white rice out but in the MIDDLE of the tasting. Weird timing, and it wasn't even worth it... the rice was rather mushy.

The dessert was most disappointing. On the menu it just says "seasonal;" upon asking, Ryan said it was slices of local cantaloupe. Which... feels like they cheaped out on the dessert, but it's local fruit and it should be good, right? Wrong. I felt like eating Walmart cantaloupe: just a melon of disappointment with a HINT of a hint of sweetness. Very bland.

Ended the meal with gunpowder and chrysanthemum tea and gunpowder tea, which came in very fancy tea pots. Loved the design. Tea was fine.

Atmosphere is a bit dim but not bad. Ryan was very friendly and attentive for the first 3/4s of our time there, but I'm sure he got busy.

All in all, definitely worth the stop. Despite my notes (very subjective AND situational), I still recommend the chef tasting menu. There is a vegetarian...

The food at Single Pebble is excellent! Let’s get that out of the way. I’ve been going to this restaurant since literally the first night it opened in 2002 — 23 years ago — back when it was under much warmer, more gracious ownership. I’ve always appreciated the quality of the cooking and have been happy to pay a premium for it. But a recent experience with takeout made it clear that something essential has changed — and not for the better.

I placed a large takeout order — about $270 worth of food (including a nonnegotiable 10% takeout gratuity) — to feed a group. Two large entrées, several smaller ones (garlic broccoli, lo mein, etc.), and appetizers. Six full meals’ worth. What I received: one single quart of plain white rice.

When I asked if I could have more, the maître d’ looked flustered and walked toward the kitchen — but not before saying something like “we usually charge for extra rice,” in an overly formal tone, as if she were doing me a favor by not enforcing the charge. I wasn’t rude, but I did say — honestly — that as a customer, I didn’t really want to hear that. It just didn’t feel good in that moment. I wasn’t asking for much — just a reasonable amount of rice to accompany a very sizable order.

I clarified that I’d need 3–4 quarts of rice — still modest, considering the quantity of food. That’s when the tone shifted.

The owner came out and told me, bluntly: “We give unlimited rice if you dine in, but for takeout, we charge $3 per box.” Apparently scooping rice into a cardboard container for takeout is somehow more costly than serving it at a table with full service, dishes, and cleanup. In the end, I paid $9 for three extra boxes of plain white rice — just to round out the meal.

When I said the policy felt petty and unwelcoming — especially given the size of the order — the owner told me I was “entitled.” That’s a strong word to throw at someone who’s already spent $270 for food, gratuity included, and is asking for maybe 50¢ worth of rice per person.

At one point, she even said, “I’ll just take it all off your bill,” which I momentarily (and naively) took to mean she was going to comp the food to smooth things over. What she actually meant was: you can get a full refund and walk out with nothing. A hard line — not a gesture of goodwill. I stood there wondering what I was supposed to do with five hungry people and no food, over what amounted to a reasonable request for rice.

The irony is rich: dine in and the rice flows freely. Take it to go, and suddenly it’s being rationed like a controlled substance.

Again — the food is truly excellent. But if you're going to charge fine dining prices, you need to bring fine dining warmth and grace. Nothing sours a beautiful meal faster than being made to feel like you’re negotiating for a scoop of starch. I didn’t walk in entitled. I walked in hungry, generous, and expecting the kind of welcome this place was once known for. I walked out with the food — and a story about white rice I’ll probably be telling longer than I’ll remember the...

I grew up in the Seattle area in Washington, and have quite a varied palette and have dined extensively in the numerous Asian restaurants in that city. In Vermont, the dining scene is quite a bit different so I've learned to lower my expectations a bit, but I was seriously surprised by how underwhelmed I was here, especially for the price. I have rarely had a bill so large, with such a disappointing meal. We received the tasting menu, which we've heard a lot of good things about, but honestly everything was a bit bland and underwhelming (Everything came out quickly and the servers were wonderful). On the dishes, everything had something missing in flavor it was all very one dimensional. For the price I was expecting delicate, tender delicious meat and vegetables in sauces that blew my mind, but instead I was just reminded of how good the Asian restaurants are in the Seattle area, and at less than 1/2 the price. For this meal, The sweetness of the carrots were overwhelmed by the sesame seed sauce, not complemented, the cilantro on top, was a tiny garnish, but should have been mixed throughout as the cilantro did complement and made the whole dish come together, but there was so little cilantro, many of my party couldn't experience a bite with all the flavors. The wrap, was very awkward to eat, as it was just folded over long ways, on itself but not like a spring roll, so the items would fall out on the ends, and it kind of just tasted like shrimp in a siracha cocktails sauce, I could have made that at home? Even the plain white rice which I usually love and get extra of at Asian restaurants, was bland, there just wasn't much fragrance or flavor (I didn't get the hint of jasmine fragrance) and it wasn't sticky, so I'm not sure what kind of rice or cooking method was used? The hot dishes, some were pretty good, but still seemed to miss some depth of flavor, either it was lacking in sweet, sour, salty, or just not enough umami. For the price I was expecting quite an amazing experience but just got something so so and the food didn't transport...