W
hat began in 2012 as a one-off, on-farm event at Carriage House Farm in Miami Township with Please chef Ryan Santos has quickly blossomed into a three-season-long series of farm-to-table dining experiences featuring the region’s best-known chefs.
These intimate multi-course meals — only 13 guests are “invited” to each dinner — are the culmination of a conversation Richard Stewart had with another farmer a decade ago.
“I was bouncing ideas off a farmer in Vermont who owned a place called Half Pint Farm,” says Stewart, who is Carriage House’s farm manager. “We were talking crops and management, and he had mentioned that he had just done a dinner where 40 or 50 people came and sat at a long table with a white tablecloth and had dinner. Turns out this was one of the first years (open-air feast) Outstanding in the Field was touring the country and they were a host farm. I wanted that in some way.”
Stewart began constructing a small outdoor kitchen site with a wood-fired oven on his family’s Ohio Century Farm (a farm recognized as being continuously owned by a single family for 100 years or more). It was during this time that he met Santos.
“Together we did the first on-farm dinner on a very chilly day in November 2012,” Stewart says. “It was a wonderful experience, and all the guests left having thoroughly enjoyed themselves.”
The following year, Santos cooked up two dozen or so dinners spanning May to November. But in 2014, Santos reduced the number as he started preparing to open his own brick-and-mortar restaurant in Over-the-Rhine (Please will be open on Clay Street later this year).
Last year, Stewart took over booking the dinners, organizing dates and becoming responsible for centerpieces, dishes, silverware, napkins and the like. He wanted each of the experiences to be different and to focus specifically on the seasonality of the ingredients and the style of each guest chef.
This year’s schedule features 18 chef-driven dinners and themes like Spring Wild Forage, Women in the Farming and Culinary World, and the Snout to Tale Haymaker Social. Stewart chooses the chefs based on their relationship to his farm.
“The chefs that present on the farm are, with rare exception, customers of the farm,” he says. “In a sense, it is a form of labeling them as chefs who source local, they cook local, and they come to the local farm. It makes a small yet diverse audience aware of the farm’s location as well. “This year alone we will have no less than 16 different chefs, and we are very proud to say that they are the movers and shakers of the region’s culinary and food scene.”
For chefs, it’s a dream gig. It’s a chance to get out of the comfort zone of their kitchens and cook everything over an open fire, with access to farm produce and foraged food they might not otherwise have access to. Plus it’s a chance to work with chefs they probably only see on their days off.
“Personally, it’s a reconnection with both our products and our guests,” says chef Dana Adkins of Stone Creek Dining Company, who is pairing up with chef Jason Louda of Meatball Kitchen for three dinners on the farm this season. “From mild foraging to ingredient-planning and the themed dinners, the level of connection to the experience has been paramount for me. We also get to do things we may or may not do in our restaurants, because guests coming out to the farm for such an experience come open to something they haven’t seen yet or put together before. Jason and I use it to push ourselves and the guests.”
In addition to the outdoor space, Stewart recently built a barn on the farm, which will serve as another spot for dinners as well as a commissary for both locations. He’s currently working on sketches for a new outdoor grill and oven area, which will include a space for a whole-animal roast.
“We envision two nights, where one night is a continuation of the existing dinner series partnered with a specific chef who uses the location as a seasonal annex to their existing business,” Stewart says. “The second night would be a very casual evening of pizzas and tapas, where the community comes by and hangs out on the farm, where the dinners are not booked and everyone sort of just knows to swing over to Carriage House Farm and enjoy the view of the sun setting across grapevines and fruit trees, where guests hang out with farmers and their families.”
The on-farm dinner at Carriage House is in full swing. These are the dinners that are still on the schedule this season:
June 11 : Chef Ryan Santos, Please
June 12 : Chef Julie Francis, Nectar Restaurant
June 26 : Chef Ryan Santos, Please
July 10 : Chefs Dana Adkins, Stone Creek Dining Company, and Jason Louda, Meatball Kitchen
July 24 : Chef Stephen Williams, Bouquet Restaurant & Wine Bar
Aug. 28 : The Haymaker Social: A 75-Mile Dinner
Sept. 10 : Chef Derek dos Anjos, The Anchor-OTR
Oct. 1 : Chef Jared Bennett, Metropole
Oct. 9 : Chefs Dana Adkins, Stone Creek Dining Company, and Jason Louda, Meatball Kitchen
Oct. 16 : Chef Jackson Rouse, The Rookwood
Oct. 30 : Chef Stephen Williams, Bouquet Restaurant & Wine Bar
Nov. 6 : Chef Mike Florea, Maribelle’s eat + drink
CARRIAGE HOUSE FARM is located at 10251 Miamiview Road in Miami Township. Learn more about the ON-FARM DINNER SERIES at carriagehousefarmllc.com.
This article appears in Jun 1-8, 2016.