Where's the best place to learn how to cook? In a kitchen. How to serve customers? In a restaurant.
We prepare our students for professional advancement in a dynamic world by putting them right to work in our restaurants. Why spend all your time staring at a blackboard when you could be cooking?
At NECI on Main, La Brioche Bakery & Café, the National Life Cafeteria, and the Dewey Café at Vermont College of Fine Arts, students create classic and modern cuisine under the guidance of our award-winning Chef-Instructors, using the finest Vermont ingredients.
118 Main Street
Montpelier, Vermont 05602
Light fare 3:30 - 5:30 pm
Dinner 5:30 - 9:00 pm
Closed Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday
At NECI on Main, our classic and modern cuisine is the product of a beautiful collaboration between students and our award-winning Chef-Instructors. For over 30 years we have been teaching students to make connections with farmers, between the landscape and our food, and between seasons and culinary traditions. Sometimes we include food items that express a particular sense of place from outside of Vermont, or culinary traditions from other cultures, and use those items or experiences to enhance the foods grown here. The menu at NECI on Main reflects the very best that Vermont’s farmers and America’s next generation of young chefs offer.
Monday - Friday: 7:00 am – 3:30 pm
Saturday: 9:00 am – 2pm
Closed Sunday
La Brioche Bakery & Café is located in the heart of Montpelier. Baking and Pastry students begin their days at 5:30 a.m. making freshly baked pastries, wedding cakes, lunches, soups, and bread. This European-style bakery and café offers freshly baked artisan breads and our weekday lunch features fresh sandwiches, soups, and salads. While we are known for our pastries, sandwiches, and breads, we also make delicious cakes to celebrate weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and other special occasions.
1 West Street
Montpelier, VT 05602
This classic college dining hall serves Vermont College of Fine Arts students, NECI students, and the public. In this large kitchen you will learn production—how to work with ranges, a clamshell broiler, deep fryers, a salamander, griddle, a combi-oven steamer, food warmer, bain marie wells, work counters, steam kettles, tilt skillet, reach-in refrigerators, meat slicer, convection ovens, refrigeration prep counter, and other production and instructional equipment. You’ll learn how to handle special requests, how to create contemporary cuisine, and how to respond to feedback from customers.
NECI's meat fabrication kitchen is also located at Vermont College of Fine Arts. This Vermont State Inspected production facility is where you will learn the fine arts of grinding, mixing, and sausage-stuffing with our state-of-the-art equipment—a cryovac machine, a digital label-printing scale, hot and cold smoke cabinets, and a cook and hold oven.
The best view in Vermont! This well-appointed, newly renovated corporate cafeteria, located in the headquarters of the state’s largest employer, serves breakfast and lunch to 800–1200 employees of National Life and the State of Vermont. This is your chance to learn exactly what the corporate dining world is like! Corporate Cooking Theory and Baking 101 are taught here. You will also gain hands-on experience with walk-in and reach-in refrigeration, steam jacketed kettles, tilting skillet, combi-steamers, convection ovens, deck ovens, ranges, fryolators, broiler, mixers, slicers, hot lines, and salad bars, as well as catering events.
NECI is proud to offer the NECI Dining Program to National Life staff! The program gives members a 10% discount on all food and non-alcoholic beverages at NECI on Main and La Brioche.
Please click here to register your National Life Rewards Card!
For complete terms and conditions, please see the NECI Rewards Program Terms and Conditions Page.
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118 Main Street
Montpelier, Vermont 05602
