Dinner at Blue Hill Stone Barn

For my birthday, Christopher took me to Blue Hill Stone Barn for a special treat. May spent two nights with her Auntie Barb and Grandma (and Grandma Pat, Uncle Mike, Josh, and Nathan) on the beach in Rhode Island.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Blue Hill, it's a hyper-local organic restaurant in NYC, famous among those of us who think about these things. When the Obamas went there on date night a few months ago, it became famous to everyone else, too, and I knew I'd never get reservations if I didn't act FAST.

When I say hyper-local, I mean it. There's a farm -- Stone Barn -- in Tarrytown, NY, where most of the food is grown and then shipped by train each morning to the restaurant. There isn't a menu, per se, but you agree to a Farmer's Feast and the chef takes what's best from that day's harvest. Blue Hill Stone Barn is the restaurant at the farm, which means that the food often travels no more than a few yards from dirt to kitchen to plate.

(Stone Barn is located on the old Rockefeller estate, so it's huge and lovely.)

Anyway, we arrived very early and took some time to walk around the farm. The vegetable fields were a particular highlight, including the vineyard -- rows of sprawling vines with clouds of butterflies and bees moving in the late-afternoon sunlight. We also enjoyed looking at the flocks of chickens pecking around the fields and the sheepdog wagging through the flock.

We had very early reservations and were the youngest folks in the dining room for at least two hours. (I guess other young parents don't get down to Tarrytown all that often.)

The waiter asked if we had any restrictions or strong dislikes and I admitted to "no alcohol" and Christopher asked for no tree nuts. He wrote those down and then started with questions: Were we okay with soft boiled eggs? Gamy meats like duck or goat? Raw fish? Organ meats? We said we were happy to put ourselves in the chef's hands and then the parade of courses started.

First: Two shot glasses of "homemade V8" -- really a smooth gazpacho. It was just two mouthfuls so we didn't have a chance to really examine the flavors but clearly they were putting more than just tomatoes and garlic and cucumber in there.

Second: Tomato tartlette. Imagine a flatbread cracker the size and shape of a Triscut, with a smidgen of goat cheese, and nine tiny currant tomatoes sliced in half and arranged in a grid.

Third: This is the signature Blue Hill dish, as far as I can tell. A block of wood -- about 12 inches by 4 by 4 -- arrived on the table with a sinuous line of tiny little steel spikes. Impaled on the spikes were, as the waiter said, "Vegetables from the farm." A ground cherry, two cherry tomatoes, some pale micro greens, and something that was... crunchy and water and minty and lettuce-y and just fantastic! I asked the waiter and he said it was "ficoides glaciale", a succulent that is famous in France. I made him spell it and texted the name to my phone so I wouldn't forget. (I've bought seeds online. Wish me luck!)

About this time, the bread arrives. Soft inside, crunchy outside, made with potatoes and onions. The butter and ricotta came from the chef's grandmother's farm. Alongside was a tiny dish of tomato salt. It was amazing and I may attempt to replicate it soon, though maybe with something other than tomatoes.

Fourth: A 1 inch cube of potato frittata, made of layers of differently coloured potatoes.

Fifth: A raw medallion of local bonito. (You know bonito as the fish from which the stock in miso soup is made. I had no idea they grew locally.) It was served with a dollop of paddlefish caviar and a sliver of tomato.

Yes, there are a lot of tomatoes. It's August in the Northeast. That's what you eat in August. Tomatoes.

Sixth: Grilled watermelon with grilled pancetta and warmed tomatoes, served with a tomato cloud. What the hell is a tomato cloud? As far as I could suss out, it's a froth of tomato water (if you juice a tomato and let it sit, the red will settle out and you'll be left with a clear liquid that tastes like tomatoes smell. That's tomato water.) Since the water has no protein to speak of, it evaporates almost instantly into a puddle, so the cloud is very ephemeral. But it's really very like eating the scent of tomatoes. And I really can't explain just how fantastic the watermelon (hot!) tastes with the parchment-crisp pancetta. I would have been happy if the waiter had just kept bringing me plates of that all night. But if so, I would have missed out on....

Seventh: Three lozenges of warm trout served with a sliver of cured, smoked pig's snout. Don't knock it until you've tried it, it was the best thing I ate all night. There was some complicated sauce with grainy mustard I think. The waiter said, "Chef suggests one bite each." It melted in your mouth.

Eighth: A soft-boiled egg that had been laid that morning, served over black trumpet mushrooms and tomatoes. The egg turned liquid when punctured with a spoon and made a luscious sauce for the mushrooms. I ate it up with a spoon.

At this point, they took the bread away. I didn't quite kick the waiter in the shins and wrestle him for it, but it was close.

Ninth: Summer chicken served with a melange of beans. This was the largest amount of food we got all night and frankly, it was my least favorite. It was great, don't get me wrong, the best chicken I've had in a long time, with a powerfully flavorful sauce that included micro-diced zucchini. Even the beans were good -- haricort verts and lima beans that tasted green and summery. But it was, in the end, a chunk of white chicken breast and there's only so much even the best chef can do with that. There were almonds on mine and none on Christopher's.

Tenth: Lamb three ways with a succotash. I have no idea what he's done to have lambs that small this late in the season, but I approve. I've heard of meat described as "buttery" before but never actually experienced it until Thursday night. We had a tiny chop, a medallion of what I suspect was tenderloin (tiny!), and a cube of lamb fatback that should become the U.S. national dish. The succotash was like summer sunshine distilled into a spoonful

At this point, the waiter asked if we wanted a cheese course before dessert. We should have said no, but it was all so damned good. We each got two wedges of cheese -- a "Menuet" from Dancing Cow Farm and something else. The Menuet was excellent, served with a tiny portion of honeycomb from the farm's hives. The other was good (I don't remember the name or farm) but very strong, and served with a cherry preserve. I just don't like cherries, so I left that on the plate -- the only thing I left on the plate all night.

We ordered a pot of chamomile-lavender tea from the tisane garden out back and sipped a little until they brought the three different dessert courses!

Eleventh: Cantaloupe soup with gooseberries and frozen sweetened sheep's milk yogurt. The yogurt was Christopher's favorite of the night and I stole one of his gooseberries in exchange for a smidgen of it.

Twelfth: The main dessert course was nectarines and wild blueberries served with sweet corn ice cream. You're thinking "corn ice cream?" and I'm here to tell you, brothers and sisters, that it was frigging fantastic! Christopher said, looking at my dreamy face, "You're planning a whole menu around this, aren't you?" and I was! I had never really thought about how creamy and sweet corn is -- sweet corn, anyway -- and how perfectly it matched ice cream. It was just a revelation. This was the servers' one misstep -- they served Christopher his with almond dust on top, just like mine. So I got to eat the bit that he had to scrape off. Lucky me!

Finally, a trio of polenta macaroons with the last of the strawberries. Even though I'm not a fan of strawberries, their tartness matched the grainy sweetness of the macaroons nicely.

Three and a half hours later, we strolled out into the warm summer night, quite happy. A lovely birthday dinner.