When we caught up with Chef Angela McCrovitz earlier this week, she described her arrival at The Landgrove this way: “They actually found me at the same time I was looking for them.”
That's how a nationally followed chef from Northwest Indiana has ended up spending four and a half weeks at a 216-year-old inn in Landgrove, Vermont, just in time to help bring From the Vine to Vermont - a five-course wine pairing dinner on the calendar for May 2 - to the table.
The event has been in motion for a while. Bruce and Emily Haupt of The Landgrove have been working with Owen Roe - a Washington and Oregon winery known for structured, balance-driven wines - to bring a Vermont tasting to life, with longtime Owen Roe team member Tony O'Rourke leading the wine side of the evening.
When Angela arrived at the inn, the format expanded. Five wines poured across five courses, the food designed to sit alongside Tony's selections rather than compete with them.
“If you're going to do a wine tasting, then let's not just do a wine tasting,” Angela says of her approach. “Let's make it different. Let's make it special. Where they remember the wine, maybe based on what you're pairing with the food.”
What came together is a progression in five movements, each course titled like a chapter. The menu opens with Garden Light - peach and burrata with the Rocks of Bawn “Shafts and Furrow” white blend. Dual Expression is the second course, and the name is literal: grilled salmon with a choice of two pairings, a Rocks of Bawn Pinot Noir or the Owen Roe “Folly of Man” Pinot Gris. Same fish, two different conversations.
From there the evening moves into Bold & Structured (petite filet crostini with a Grower's Guild Cabernet), Smoked Contrast (a very Vermont plate of maple-glazed bacon, apple, cracked pepper, and gorgonzola with Owen Roe's “Ex Umbris” Syrah), and closes with Orchard Ember - a warm maple bread pudding paired with the 2018 “Parting Glass” Gewurztraminer, a late-harvest bottle from Yakima Valley's Outlook Vineyard.
Angela's career, as she puts it, “is not your typical chef history.” She has owned restaurants, including The Captain's House, a coastal spot nationally known for its lobster rolls. She has done food styling for Better Homes and Gardens. She has been written about in the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. She runs Table & Thyme, a private dining and catering outfit in Northwest Indiana. Her own bio describes her as “chef, teacher, storyteller,” in that order.
“I love to put a story on a plate,” she says. “That's just what I do.”
That instinct is already showing up in her other work at The Landgrove. A separate menu she is running this week responds to the inn's artist-in-residence program, currently hosting Alvaro Castagnet, known for bold composition. Angela has titled the courses First Expressions, Shadow and Light, Brushstroke Harmony, and Final Impressions. Next week a new artist arrives, and Angela will write a new menu to match. That is the idea: food that answers the work happening in the studio next door.
For the May 2 dinner, some of the storytelling comes from the wines themselves. Rocks of Bawn, David O'Reilly's newer family project, takes its name from a popular Irish folk song; O'Reilly has said its “Shafts and Furrow” label traces to “The Follower,” a Seamus Heaney poem about a farmer and the child who walks in his footsteps. There's plenty there for Tony to work with at the podium.
Angela's advice is simple: show up for the people as much as the food.
“The most important thing is to meet and greet - everyone you can possibly talk to,” she says. “Getting to know other people who are coming, why they're there, whether they know anything about wine. Sort of the icebreaker kind of thing before it all starts.”
From there Tony walks guests through the wines and the winery's story, course by course. Angela's plates follow. The course most likely to get talked about is the second - that grilled salmon with two possible wines, designed to show how the same dish shifts depending on what's in the glass.
“They don't have to be wine connoisseurs,” Angela says. “They don't have to know anything about it. They're there to learn. They're there to experience.”
One more thing worth saying: this is Angela's first stretch at The Landgrove, and whether it becomes a longer chapter is still being worked out between her and the inn. Translation for anyone curious what this kitchen is going to feel like over the coming months - the May 2 dinner is the fantastic early read.
From the Vine to Vermont: A Curated Pairing Experience happens Friday, May 2, 2026 at The Landgrove (132 Landgrove Rd, Landgrove, VT). Seating is limited.
Full event details on our event calendar.
Must be 21+ to consume alcohol. Please drink responsibly.
