When Paula Fernandes and Adrian Abate were putting the finishing touches on Two Bistro & Café in May, they had little sense of Quechee’s appetite for eating chimichurri, chorizo sausage and chocolate all in one place.
But on a Tuesday night in July, when many restaurant dining rooms would be sleepy at best, all 26 or so seats were filled — a pattern that has recurred night after night.
“We’ve had a lot of repeat customers, which is what I’d hoped for,” said Fernandes, who was juggling roles as owner, host and server as she dashed to check on a four-top. A colleague followed her carrying a plate of chicken Milanese, garlic wafting in its wake.
Fernandes is a native Brazilian who has run My Brigadeiro, a pâtisserie in nearby Hanover, N.H., for 12 years. She launched Two Bistro & Café with Abate, her Argentinean-born partner. Their concept was to mash up their two culinary backgrounds: the grilled meats of Argentina and the more complex, often seafood-based dishes of Brazil, backed by a supporting cast of pastries, chocolates and desserts.
They set up shop in the former digs of Chef Brad’s CrazySide, an eclectic culinary compound on Route 4 where burgers, tacos and other food truck vittles were sometimes served inside a pastel-hued school bus. Chef Brad Pirkey closed his food truck in 2025, but the bus remains parked on a hill behind the restaurant, its colors beginning to fade. The main building now holds a bakery and a cozy dining room, with a more elegant and modern vibe.
Abate and Fernandes — who met in their teens when Abate was studying food chemistry in Brazil and reconnected decades later — leased the place last June and spent close to a year revamping it. They kept the dining room’s rustic beams but added their own flourishes, such as bold black-and-white swirls along one wall and a chandelier made of hundreds of tiny glass teardrops.
By day, the dining room is a cozy breakfast-to-lunch café with a front counter that turns out lattes, cappuccinos, and scores of croissants, éclairs, and other sweet and savory pastries ($6 to $19), including the Brazilian cheese bread pão de queijo ($3.75) and flaky Napoleons piled with ricotta cheese, a baked egg and prosciutto ($13). Empanadas ($10 for two) are of the Argentinean persuasion, with braided shells and gently seasoned ground beef or spinach-and-mozzarella fillings. The bakery case also contains chocolate truffles from My Brigadeiro.
From lunch onward, the meat-fueled ethos of Argentinean asado and Brazilian churrasco culture comes to the fore. The X-tudo burger ($24) is loaded with smoky Calabresa sausage, bacon, ham, cheddar and a fried egg on house-baked brioche. Abate pounds chicken breast thin for peppery Argentinean-style chicken Milanese ($23). Patrons carry in their own wine bottles (the restaurant is BYOB, with a $10 corkage fee per person) to wash down heartier plates such as simply grilled picanha steak topped with caramelized onions ($28) and grilled swordfish glossed with butter ($38). Rice, yucca fries and salads serve as sides, along with nutty, toasted Brazilian farofa ($5) and Tropeiro beans topped with a fried egg ($9), a glorious, wildly salted and filling mash of pinto beans, bacon, crumbled sausage and fried onions.
Though the owners originally aimed to debut a separate dinner menu, Fernandes said the challenge of finding front-of-house staff forced them to put those plans on hold. Instead, the establishment evokes the CrazySide spirit by parking a food truck out front with a street-food menu. In the garden there, the more formal lunch and dinner dishes take new forms. That chicken Milanese, for example, is layered onto brioche with melted cheddar and a smear of chimichurri sauce ($22) for a two-fisted affair that’s both decadent and messy.
By the time you leave, sated on pastry and fingers glossed with chimichurri, the name makes sense: two owners, two cuisines, two kitchens (inside and outside), and nothing lost in the division. ➆
An earlier version of this story appeared in Daybreak, a newsletter serving the Upper Valley.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Pastry Days, Gaucho Nights | In Quechee, Two Bistro & Café melds the flavors of two South American countries”