More dinners from JUNE 20th.

Starting June 20th we will add two more dinner services on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
We won't be serving lunch anymore.
Our new hours will be:  Wednesday-Sunday     5:30-9:00pm


Little background to this change : ever since we reopened on December 30th-2011 after the flood, our dinner business has been growing. We would like to further explore this opportunity and bring more interesting ingredients and dishes to our customers.  Our dinner menu changes weekly and we are only just starting...

Thank you for visiting us...

inside MINT

Budapest, Castle district, in May all the leaves were out....luscious...

night in Budapest-Buda side, Liberty (Szabadsag) bridge. The weather was so beautiful we could walk all night in the city...

Afternoon...enjoying the outdoors city style in Szentendre, Hungary.

Brand new BEAUTIFUL spacious terminal 2 in Budapest. It is so new I think many hungarians haven't seen it yet..

Night lights in Buda from a cafe.

Iliyan and a little gardening in parents's village garden in Bulgaria. It was time to plant the seedlings...

It was a major surprise when we showed up at our niece's 4th birthday and party...

Gellert square - Buda side - Budapest

Downtown Budapest, Pest side - Vaci street

I was just very beautiful walking around in May. We haven't been able to go there in the spring for a long time...

From the Gellert mountain (or hill, we call it a mountain although you can get on top in 30 minutes...) overlooking the city and the Szabadsag bridge.

To the left is another bridge-Erzsebet. Budapest is divided by the Danube into Buda and Pest. There are 8 bridges.

Outdoor pool at night at the the Gellert bathhouse.

 Year round produce and meet market building to the left.

We had such a good time walking around, taking pictures and visiting with friend and family. In May the city is even more vibrant. Everyone is starting to come out and feel the warmth, sitting around in cafes and restaurant. At 11 pm you still feel like it's daytime.

We are back

We are open! We will post some beautiful pictures soon!! See you here...

Vacation-Clean up

MINT will be on vacation for 2+ weeks from April 15th. Open back up on Cinco de Mayo - May 5th. Happy Spring!

Details...every day

Our little story again

http://www.wcax.com/story/16963077/when-flood-insurance-doesnt-cover-flood-damage

Seven days article

On the day Tropical Storm Irene hit Vermont — August 28, 2011. A neighbor popped his head in to tell owners Savitri Bhagavati and Iliyan Deskov that “there might be a problem” with the nearby river....http://www.7dvt.com/2012mint-waitsfield-irene-flood

Valley Reporter letter 01/12/2012

People of Vermont: Thank you!

State of Vermont: Thank you!
Our saga with re-opening MINT restaurant in Waitsfield has now come to a new stage. After all the ups and downs, can we’s or can we not’s, how’s and when’s, with the help of a lot of private people and help from the state of Vermont, we re-opened the restaurant on Friday, December 30, 2011.
A flood insurance claim denial letter from FEMA via national flood insurance processing center also arrived, dated December 19. We are very saddened by the way our insurance has been handled. Denial of coverage based on location should have happened when we took out a policy. Every entity we are, insurance-wise, involved with seems to have and hold on to their own truth and this yields no resolution. No one to blame, no one to take responsibility for misleading us with a worthless insurance policy.
We didn’t hide it from Denis, Ricker and Brown, our insurance broker, that we were insuring contents of a restaurant when we took out a flood insurance policy . Yet we are getting the impression that no one gets it. All we hear is talk about a “building policy.” In the flood, we lost all restaurant equipment, electronics, furnishings, food, inventory—stuff that restaurants have.
It was no secret that we weren’t insuring a furnace or walls, floors or electric cables, which are part of building insurance, not content insurance. Yet, these are the only items insurance covers in our specific location. So, nothing we, as a restaurant, lost is covered? No!
At the same time the renewal for flood insurance also arrived. Wouldn’t you be puzzled? We thought that selling ethereal products were the business of New Age bookstores.
Now that the restaurant is open we have to focus our minds and mind our own business which is the business of cooking the healthy food at MINT restaurant. That’s what we love to do.
Open for lunch: Wednesday through Sunday, 11:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. Open for dinner: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Thank you, everybody! We don’t know all your names, but we’ll personally thank you when we see you.

Savitri Deskov, MINT
Waitsfield

MINT is OPEN now! No thanks to insurance companies>

MINT is OPEN now! No thanks to insurance companies.

For the 3^rd time we put our business together. Starting in 2008 with the TEA STORE next door to our current location. Then we opened MINT in 2009 November here.

Then the flood came in 2011 August….

Now 4 months later we are back again. Better than ever. 

Thank you for all your support and hard work. We thank everyone and we thank ourselves. I thank my husband Iliyan for being so positive all throughout the emotional battles. I couldn't do it without him.

Savitri

No thanks to insurance companies but thanks to the State and people of Vermont!

Valley Reporter editorial 12/1/2011

Compounding the tragedy

Written by LAL

Dec 01, 2011 at 12:00 AM

The owners of MINT Restaurant in Waitsfield received word this week that their insurance company, Union Mutual Fire Insurance Company, had denied their flood insurance claim. Prior to Hurricane Irene’s floodwaters, MINT was on the ground floor of the Waitsfield Hotel building in the Bridge Street Marketplace. The furnishings were severely damaged by the flooding and the building was structurally damaged. The owners of the restaurant spent the three months after the flood helping clean the space, cooking and serving lunch from the basement of the Waitsfield United Church of Christ and working their way through bureaucratic red tape. To be told now that their claim was denied because their business was located in a basement is wrong and immoral. Keep in mind that the owners of the business specifically bought flood insurance for their restaurant. Last May when spring runoff raised the level of the Mad River, they upped their coverage to be on the safe side. When Irene struck they were devastated that the restaurant they had painstakingly built had been devastated but took comfort from the fact that they were well insured. They’ve been waiting to get back to their space for three months and could be back in there in three to four weeks had their claim not been denied. Here’s what’s wrong with the denial from their insurance company. First, the company took their premiums and then let them raise their “flood insurance” coverage without ever notifying them of their status as basement dwellers unqualified for a flood insurance claim. That’s insurance fraud at a minimum. If the insurance company took their money for flood insurance and would now disqualify them, their premiums need to be refunded with interest. Second, it’s arguable whether that space is in a basement. It’s on the ground level as is the Artisans’ Gallery. To enter or leave their restaurant, one walked in from the ground, not down some stairs. Waitsfield’s zoning defines a basement as any area of a building that has the lesser of three sides or 60 percent of its walls below grade. The building that housed MINT did not meet those criteria. This denial is a flagrant attempt by an insurance company to deny a claim based on a loophole that is absurd on its face and nothing more than an attempted sleight of hand.

http://www.valleyreporter.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4421&Itemid=39