At the heart of its appeal is the grand ambition to become the quintessentially self-sustainable restaurant, shrinking the delay between field and plate to minutes, not days, by drawing from the bounty of organic produce and pasture-fed livestock that reside on the property for up to 80 percent of the menu.
Tiny fingerling potatoes, listed under the menu category "dug and picked today," are so fresh they pop in the mouth like grapes. Batonnets of heirloom carrots, pulled from the ground just 50 feet away from the kitchen then glazed in their own juice, taste like sticks of earthy sugar. All those sheep, turkeys and chickens grazing across the meadows that flank the bucolic drive to the Stone Barn's towering Norman silos are not for show. They're for dinner.
"This is an agricultural system and an experiment in eating and dining," says the restaurant's chef and co-owner, Dan Barber, who also owns the Blue Hill restaurant in Lower Manhattan. "I'm very involved in the farming."
"Suddenly, you start checking the weather reports. I've planned my menus for two weeks around these green beans that are thin as pins and ready this week. But we may get a freeze tonight . . . ," he says with trepidation.
The Stone Barns "experiment" - opened last year in part as a homage to Rockefeller's late wife, Peggy, an avid cattle breeder and philanthropist who helped found the American Farmland Trust - touches on the familiar themes of organic, seasonal, and local cooking that are already well-ensconced in mainstream restaurants. But Rockefeller's $35 million investment has allowed it to push the boundaries of the socially conscious meal far beyond the usual farm-market menu, with the resources of an 80-acre property that would be the envy of any chef.
