Herb's Restaurant and Country Store is Quintessentially Yankee Country

Herb Plotnick was six when he left the Bronx. He and his family came to Montville, the country for these New Yorkers, and became farmers.

Seventy-six years later, Herb welcomes a reporter into his homey country store and tells his story. We're visiting Herb's Restaurant and Country Store today!

“We rented Doctor Dero’s farm and then (years later) bought a farm,” Herb said as he sat with his apron tied and his pride betrayed by his smile. “We delivered eggs from door to door from Preston City to Madison. We had four or five trucks on the road. And then we opened a deli where the McDonalds is now.  Then we bought this property and started the restaurant in 1974 and then in the 80s I started the country store.”

A family business, his son Jeffrey, wife Frances, daughter Ellen and grandson David all work in the restaurant and store.

The business being Herb’s Country Store and Restaurant.

Inside the store it is the quintessential country store with ice cold, glass bottle filled with raw milk (with cream on top!) from Baldwin Brook Farm, fresh produce and eggs from area farms. Preserves and sauces, candles and notions, objects de country art, dried flowers and Indian corn, candies and jams.

And outside, a roadside farm stand featuring native corn. And in keeping with the season, mums in every color, plus plump pumpkins and every variety of gourd.

Herb said business is “good but it could be better.”

“In this economy it’s not good for anyone.”

But a reporter simply couldn’t leave without buying a Yankee Candle (Macintosh apple), milk (in glass, which evokes so many memories of childhood) and eggs – extra large just off the farm.

Visit Herb!