Stanton-Davis Homestead Dinners at the Farm, Stonington.
The dead of January (and believe me, this January in particular) and we’re talking about Dinners at the Farm? Sounds pretty good to me.
Organizers of these quintessential depth of summer affairs – gourmet, all Connecticut product, mega-multi-course dinners cooked outdoors on…well…a farm – are getting a head start for their fourth season. And that means a deal for you if you can possibly consider putting down your snow shovel and hot tea for a minute so you can wrap your head around planning for August. Yeah — August.
Buy your DATF tickets before May 1 and they’re a bargain $100 a head. After May 1, it’s back to the $150 price.
Thai Squid Salad, Dinners at the Farm, 2009.
Remember that gets you more courses of food than you can count – let alone eat, cocktails, wine, and the satisfaction that some of the money goes to a good cause.
A little different format this year. There will be 12 dinners – Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings on four consecutive weekends all in August this year, not spread through the summer. And instead of four different farm locations with three dinners each, there will be only two locations with six dinners each. They are Barberry Hill Farm in Madison Aug. 5-6 and 12-14 and White Gate Farm in East Lyme Aug. 19-21 and 26-28. There will be only two beneficiaries – still to be named – instead of four and that means each receives $6,000 instead of $3,000.
Seafood Tartare, Dinners at the Farm, 2009.
For the uninitiated, Dinners at the Farm was the brainchild of Jonathan Rapp of River Tavern in Chester and Drew McLachlan of Feast Gourmet Market in Deep River. The plan, which has more or less stayed the same, involves creating a feast for as many as a couple of hundred people using whatever is available locally. And part of the proceeds goes to a food-related cause.
White Gate Farm, Dinners at the Farm, 2009.
The format has molted a bit, and Thomas Peterlik, Yale’s culinary director, has joined the core team. But fear not, the fire truck is still in business. Most of the cooking is done on the back of a 1955 vintage bright red fire truck that has been outfitted with a flatbed that holds a full kitchen.
It may not be an event affordable for the masses, but the dinners have become wildly popular in their first three years of existence, speaking very clearly to the star power of the local food movement even in a state like Connecticut, which many people just consider a huge suburb stuck between New York and Boston.
We already know it’s pretty remarkable what’s coming out of the Connecticut earth. It’s pretty remarkable too, what can come out of the back of an old fire truck.
Check out the DATF website for more info – and gift certificates, also new this year.