{"id":1468,"date":"2016-04-20T23:25:27","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T23:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/?p=1468"},"modified":"2016-04-29T10:51:33","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T10:51:33","slug":"chef-and-the-farmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/2016\/04\/20\/chef-and-the-farmer\/","title":{"rendered":"Chef and the Farmer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Date night! \u00a0The <a href=\"http:\/\/chefandthefarmer.com\/\">Chef and the Farmer<\/a> 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! \u00a0We DID, however, have reservations at the restaurant for 8:30. \u00a0We showed up a little early and found a local to snap a picture of us by the sign.<br \/>\n<a title=\"Date night\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/136797225@N05\/26626962195\/in\/album-72157665220195504\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1689\/26626962195_f62a123680_n.jpg\" alt=\"Date night\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" \/><\/a><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The restaurant is the subject of a PBS show called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/food\/shows\/a-chefs-life\/\">A Chefs Life<\/a>. In short, a couple from the upscale food business in New York City open an upscale, farm to table restaurant in Kinston, NC. \u00a0Chef Vivian is originally from Kinston so she has roots here that she digs into while inviting the audience along for the ride. \u00a0She&#8217;ll recall some hamhock and collard green casserole that Mrs. So-in-so made for every church potluck and so she&#8217;ll go visit Mrs. So-in-so in her home and learn how to make the dish. \u00a0Then she&#8217;ll put her own spin on it and serve it up at $30 a plate. \u00a0She has also cultivated a relationship with the farmers and ranchers in the area and visits them to see where her food is coming from. \u00a0Its a relaxing show to watch&#8230;it might be a modern Bob Ross for me. \u00a0And I&#8217;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&#8217;s go!!<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s husband, Ben. Because\u00a0the menu changes with the seasons the menu was not familiar. \u00a0Everything looked good even though we had no clue what some of it was. \u00a0We asked our waitress if there were any specials and in her rich southern accent she said &#8220;everything on the menu is special&#8221;. \u00a0Steph got a glass of wine and we narrowed our appetizer choice down to one of either grits (we&#8217;ve never had them before, let alone $13 grits!) or Tom Thumb. \u00a0Then our waitress recommended the fried rabbit boudin that had pickled pigs feet in it&#8230;what??!! \u00a0She insisted it was really good and encouraged us to get all 3. \u00a0Well, we settled on two:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Fried Rabbit Boudin, baby lima beans, mustard, spring vegetables<\/p>\n<p>Tom Thumb, Sea Island red peas, pickle relish<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Boudin\">boudin\u00a0<\/a>was like a crab cake. \u00a0It was definitely different, interesting and very good. \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ourdailybrine.com\/tom-thumb-sausage\/\">Tom Thumb<\/a> is an old school sausage and it too was very tasty. \u00a0Since we got two appetizers we decided on sharing a palate cleanser:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cPark Day Pilsner\u201d Fried Aspagus, lemon, horseradish aioli, lemon balm<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh my word&#8230;.this was amazing. \u00a0The big ol&#8217; fat asparagus were soooo tender and they, along with lemon pieces, were fried in a tempura type batter. \u00a0Absolutely incredible (but I&#8217;m a sucker for asparagus). \u00a0For our main dish we ordered:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Smoked\u00a0Beef Short Rib, asparagus, beef tallow hashbrown, spring onion vinaigrette<\/p>\n<p>Slow Roasted pork chop, charred cabbage, smoked potato salad, celery seed aioli<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These were extremely satisfying. \u00a0When all was said and done our bellies were full and our wallet empty. \u00a0So we surrendered and went home. \u00a0It was such a nice evening just being able to sit together and talk without interruption. \u00a0We talked about the trip so far, made some plans for what is coming up and talked about the kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Date night! \u00a0The 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! \u00a0We DID, however, have reservations at the restaurant for 8:30. \u00a0We showed up a little early and found a local [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[41,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1468"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1486,"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions\/1486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}