The Long Table

When Heidi and Jim Peyton opened a bistro underneath the post office in Bradford, VT in April 1993, the place had six tables, plus another two seats at the bar. For ambience, Heidi Peyton stuck candles in wine bottles and pinned red fabric over the recessed fluorescent lighting, while music from cassette tapes filled the small space.

“It was a tiny little hole in the wall, and the rent was cheap. Jim knew how to cook, and I knew how to serve,” said Heidi Gardner Peyton, who was pregnant with their first child at the time. “We were young. It was a lot of heart, and a little stupidity.” 

In the kitchen were an electric stove, two sauté pans, and a pizza oven. Dishes, glasses, linens, and cutlery were gathered “wherever we could find them,” Heidi said; some were heirlooms brought in by guests. Pastas were scratch-made, burgers ground in house; Jim Peyton, the chef and a New England Culinary Institute grad, fused French technique with global touches for dishes such as lobster-feta salad, steak frites, and Vietnamese bouillabaisse. The dishes were written on a chalkboard, which Heidi would recite to each table in her deep, distinctive voice. “Initially it was a craze,” said Heidi, who gave birth to to their daughter nine weeks later. “I not only read it, I performed it." 

This April, the Peytons will notch their 33rd year, an extraordinary feat in an industry where the average lifespan of a restaurant is about six years—and where national and global crises can periodically remake the industry. Sitting recently in the sun-splashed back dining room of Peyton Place—which migrated across the river in 2002 to a 250-year-old house in Orford, NH—Heidi mused about their staying power. “Staying small has been key,” she said.

Jim Peyton first met Heidi Gardner in Montpelier in 1990, through a mutual friend. Jim, who had graduated from NECI, was working at The Common Man in Warren but also pursued stints and internships in kitchens across the country, including New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and New York (with chef Gray Kunz). Just before returning to Vermont, they lived in St. Croix, where the couple managed a French restaurant, Le St Tropez—he as executive chef, she as the front-of-house manager.

They stayed in the basement space  for nine years, their flock of regulars swelling. At some point—now with two children in tow—they rented the 1773 Mann House in Orford. Buying the place was out of reach, they thought, until they hatched a fundraising effort, the Peyton Place Dining Club: Diners could invest $1,000 for $1,200 worth of coupons, spendable in $50 increments. “We sent out 100 letters to customers, and we got 98 back,” said Heidi. The influx of cash enabled the couple to purchase the house, once an 1800s tavern; they lived upstairs and moved their restaurant downstairs. They closed on the place in the fall of 2001, and didn’t open there until January, 2002. 

Six years later, in 2008, the global financial crisis again upended fine dining. Standing tables disappeared, as did holiday bookings. “Before 2009, we were doing 60 people a night and I had four people in the kitchen,” said Jim. “Now, we’re lucky to have three.” 

In 2020, when Covid once again battered hospitality and many restaurants were forced to pivot to dinners to-go, Peyton Place followed suit: Burgers, wood-fired pizzas, fish and chips—but also stalwarts such as the kitchen’s signature dumplings, filled with subtly sweet duck chorizo and glossed with a cilantro yogurt sauce. “They travel well,” noted Jim.

What they didn’t anticipate during the pandemic were the envelopes of cash handed over by regulars. For many, Peyton Place had become the place not only to linger over dinner, but to mark life’s milestones: Happy occasions such as proposals and weddings, but more somber ones as well. “People have left checks made out to Peyton Place for their funeral celebrations,” said Heidi. “We have been blessed through such loyalty. We see people in sadness, in illness and death, just as they’ve seen us in good times and bad.” 

Long gone is the red fabric over recessed lighting, but Peyton Place hasn’t lost its enveloping vibe. Its two flickering dining rooms are hung with local artwork for sale and set with tables salvaged from the beautifully repurposed inn doors; dishes still arrive on a medley of crockery. Culinary eclecticism still rules: Supple, broiled New England oysters can segue to the fragrant bouillabaisse, loaded with shrimp and flaky white fish, the house chorizo dumplings, lasagne bolognese, or (depending on the week) sesame-beef mandu. There’s still vanilla-scented crème brûlée, along with rotating desserts such as a delicate pear tart on a recent February evening. The food remains mostly seasonal, organic, and “as local as can be,” said Heidi, who with Jim swears off industrial food suppliers in favors of local farms.

Just as they’ve grown older themselves, the Peytons have watched regulars enter new stages of life and their children grow into adulthood, sometimes working alongside them in the kitchen or front of house. “You should see my son cut onions,” said Sheila Conley of Orford, whose two children worked at the restaurant in their teens. 

Conley appreciates the timeless vibe of the restaurant, especially on the stone patio during the summer. “If you’re going to grab a quick bite, don’t go,” she quipped. “It’s not hurried. That’s the beautiful part about eating at Peyton Place—it’s truly an experience.” 

Walter Swift, who was a Bradford regular, makes the drive from his home in Lyme several times a month to dine there. “[Heidi] used to tell you the specials in a voice that just would knock your socks off,” he recalls. “It’s still the best food in the Upper Valley.” 

Heidi long ago gave up reciting the chalkboard menu but is still a regal presence in the dining room, running dishes, checking on tables, and wielding bottles from the light-strewn service bar in the old tavern room to mix drinks such as brisk, generous margaritas, or serve local beer or a pour of a small-production wine.

While both Jim and Heidi call it a rich life, even in the years they don’t make a profit, the couple—both in the 60s—keep on keeping on and are busy developing a Peyton Place food brand, possibly with their house relish as an inaugural product. 

And for now, they keep showing up. “That door opens at 4:30 [p.m.], and you are ready, no ifs, ands, or buts,” Heidi said. “You show up and do the work. This is our pulse, our life, our breath. It comes before anything else.” 

Even after the last diner leaves and the front door is locked, the work goes on.  “Sometimes, I’m up until 2 a.m. butchering,” said Jim. 

“He doesn’t sleep,” quips Heidi.

Corin Hirsch has covered the food and drinks world for Seven Days and Newsday, and contributes to The Guardian, Wine Enthusiast and other publications. She can also be found tending bar at the Woodstock Inn.