Date night! The Chef and the Farmer restaurant is less than a mile from the campground so we had no reservations about leaving the kids at home while Steph and I went on a date! We DID, however, have reservations at the restaurant for 8:30. We showed up a little early and found a local to snap a picture of us by the sign.
The restaurant is the subject of a PBS show called A Chefs Life. In short, a couple from the upscale food business in New York City open an upscale, farm to table restaurant in Kinston, NC. Chef Vivian is originally from Kinston so she has roots here that she digs into while inviting the audience along for the ride. She’ll recall some hamhock and collard green casserole that Mrs. So-in-so made for every church potluck and so she’ll go visit Mrs. So-in-so in her home and learn how to make the dish. Then she’ll put her own spin on it and serve it up at $30 a plate. She has also cultivated a relationship with the farmers and ranchers in the area and visits them to see where her food is coming from. Its a relaxing show to watch…it might be a modern Bob Ross for me. And I’m no foodie by any stretch but I do like yummy and interesting food and we are less than a mile away from the restaurant so, let’s go!!
As we walked in Steph and I recognized several of the staff from the show and the interior felt very familiar including paintings by the chef’s husband, Ben. Because the menu changes with the seasons the menu was not familiar. Everything looked good even though we had no clue what some of it was. We asked our waitress if there were any specials and in her rich southern accent she said “everything on the menu is special”. Steph got a glass of wine and we narrowed our appetizer choice down to one of either grits (we’ve never had them before, let alone $13 grits!) or Tom Thumb. Then our waitress recommended the fried rabbit boudin that had pickled pigs feet in it…what??!! She insisted it was really good and encouraged us to get all 3. Well, we settled on two:
Fried Rabbit Boudin, baby lima beans, mustard, spring vegetables
Tom Thumb, Sea Island red peas, pickle relish
The boudin was like a crab cake. It was definitely different, interesting and very good. Tom Thumb is an old school sausage and it too was very tasty. Since we got two appetizers we decided on sharing a palate cleanser:
“Park Day Pilsner” Fried Aspagus, lemon, horseradish aioli, lemon balm
Oh my word….this was amazing. The big ol’ fat asparagus were soooo tender and they, along with lemon pieces, were fried in a tempura type batter. Absolutely incredible (but I’m a sucker for asparagus). For our main dish we ordered:
Smoked Beef Short Rib, asparagus, beef tallow hashbrown, spring onion vinaigrette
Slow Roasted pork chop, charred cabbage, smoked potato salad, celery seed aioli
These were extremely satisfying. When all was said and done our bellies were full and our wallet empty. So we surrendered and went home. It was such a nice evening just being able to sit together and talk without interruption. We talked about the trip so far, made some plans for what is coming up and talked about the kids.