Good Food and Fair Prices at Black Rabbit
By Charles Dubow
Photographs by Sabrina Eberhard

I remember when Black Rabbit opened in 2011. We were weekending in Lakeville back then, and my family and I loved it. It was the perfect casual spot to grab a seriously good burger or just have a beer and watch a game on one of their large flat-screen TVs. It didn’t take long for it to become a local favorite.

In the intervening 13 years, Black Rabbit has only become better. It still serves seriously good burgers and you can still catch a game at the bar, but chef and owner Kendra Chapman has continued to refine and expand her cooking to offer an increasingly diverse and sophisticated menu. “I just love watching cooking shows, and reading cookbooks and trendy magazines,” she says with a laugh. “When I see something that looks good I go, ‘Ooh, I should put that on the menu.’ And my customers seem to like it.”

Seeing what are Chapman’s latest creations is part of the fun of dining at Black Rabbit. She has specials every day (which she posts online); these can include such dishes as BBQ spare ribs, lamb souvlaki, or a buttered soft-shell crab sandwich.

Regular menu items are, among many others, a brick oven roast chicken, pan-seared salmon, a grilled ribeye pork chop. And, of course, the half-pound burgers, as always, come in a variety of configurations: The Everything comes with bacon, caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, and cheddar and Swiss cheese; the Buddha has sautéed mushrooms, truffle-smoked gouda, and garlic herb aioli; the Stella Spice has habanero bacon jam, pepper jack cheese, caramelized onions, and bacon. Any one of them will satisfy the biggest appetite.

Even better: They are all reasonably priced—as is everything on the menu, including the modest but decent wine list. (The cocktail and beer lists are more ambitious.)

Chapman credits much of her success to her staff—many of whom have been with her for years—and to her long ties to the area. Prior to opening Black Rabbit, she worked as general manager for 10 years up the road in Salisbury, at the White Hart Inn.

“Even though I had lots of restaurant experience, I wasn’t really a professional chef when I left the White Hart,” she says. “To learn how to cook to order, I opened the Chapman Chowdah House in Sheffield, and spent a year there to work out the kinks before opening here.”

Now she is very much a hands-on owner/chef and spends, in her estimation, 80 percent of her time in the kitchen.

“After I opened Black Rabbit, a lot of my friends and patrons came with me,” she says. “Which was so cool. And they’ve stayed.”

It also meant that she already knew many of the best local farms from which she could source her ingredients. Among what she calls her “farmer friends” are Gasperini Farm, Sharon Mountain Greens, Sky Farm, and Zinke’s Farm. Let’s hope Black Rabbit sticks around for another 13 years.

Black Rabbit, 2 Ethan Allen St., Lakeville—blackrabbitbarandgrille.com