More Love for the Hudson Valley

I love the Hudson Valley, but it is never better than it is in the early Autumn. Right now the crisp air smells like apples and chestnuts, the leaves are just beginning to turn and in the markets the summer fruits and berries linger while all the delicious prunes, plums, apples and squashes are starting to show up.

But when I think about the joys of living in this part of the world one of the first things that comes to mind is Blue Hill at Stone Barns which is so much more than a restaurant. To me it is an advanced lesson in the art of eating.

I went looking for something I’d written about a meal there, and came up with this piece from about ten years ago.

Our taxi from the train station narrowly missed the chicken on the driveway; as he dropped us off at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, the driver said cheerily, “I’m going to try and hit that chicken on the way down. It would make a great dinner for my kids.” From the corner of my eye I could see him contemplating the sheep grazing in the meadow, thinking they’d be pretty tasty too.

They would be great - but reducing the experience that Dan Barber and his crew produce to mere food would be to miss the best part of the evening. This is a restaurant unlike any other I’ve ever been to.

You know all the pertinent parts: the restaurant in the former Rockefeller dairy barn raises a great deal of the food that appears on the plate. They’ve got greenhouses and fields filled with organically-grown vegetables you’ve never heard of, and their pigs forage for acorns in the woods behind the restaurant. There are cows and sheep and chickens, and the Stone Barns team is so intent on recycling that even the bones are turned into charcoal. Nothing goes to waste.

The place is as gorgeous as a movie set, with a dream-like quality that sometimes makes you pinch yourself (go look at the website). The flowers! The candles! The beauty of each plate. And the service is superb in a particularly American way; it’s friendly without being familiar.

But something else is happening here: there’s a communication between the kitchen and the customer that I’ve not seen anywhere else. There is no menu; you simply put yourself