Honey flows freely from the heart of Eastern Mediterranean cuisine. It’s revered as much for its nuanced sweetness as it is for cultural indications such as happiness and health, vitality and divinity. It’s fitting, then, that Honey Road — one of Vermont’s first major restaurant openings in 2017 — is setting up in a small state with some 2,000 beekeepers and 11,000 hives.

The restaurant aims to open in downtown Burlington by late winter or early spring (the exact location will be revealed once permits are secured). The story of Honey Road starts with the powerful partnership of two restaurant stalwarts: chef Cara Chigazola-Tobin, former chef de cuisine of Boston’s James Beard Award-winning restaurant Oleana, and Allison Gibson, the operations director and drink expert behind Vermont’s Hen of the Wood and Doc Ponds, and former dining room manager at Shelburne Farms Inn.