What's In Season
Daylight savings time marks the beginning of the coastal fall season. The soundfront sunsets become more spectacular than ever and the Canadian geese arrive to set the perfect picture for our guests as they arrive off the Waterfront Shops boardwalk and make their visit to the Blue Point.
The local Rosebay oysters have arrived and the oyster stew is back on the menu - served with smoked bacon, herbs and our buttermilk biscuits. Carolina Beauregard sweet potatoes, gently cured to perfection, as well as acorn & butternut squash becaome staples for soups, roasts, chips and pies. Honey crisp, granny smith and fuji apples find their way into salads, cobblers and butters. Apple cider from Grandy Farm Market is pressed twice during the fall and provides us with juice for cocktails, sauces, jelly, marinades and our pork chop brine. We are perfecting our sauerkraut recipe for sausage and sandwich accompaniments. You will see cauliflower roasted, pickled, pureed and fried. Brussel sprouts will be roasted with duck or bacon fat, leaves separated and sautéed or fried and tossed with vinegar sauce.
Fall and winter is the time we dedicate to slow foods - braises of short ribs, lamb shanks, pork roasts and shoulders. We confit duck legs, garlic, shallots and lemons. We have discovered the technique of sous vide is best suited to the root vegetables of the season such as turnips, salsify, parsnips, apples and celery root. Our smoker continues to get a work out with bacon, pork butts for bbq, tasso and Dave's delicious beef brisket. We also smoke white cheddar for grits for our seared scallop appetizer with bacon-onion jam.
Finally, in the sweets department we highlight apples in our cobbler with cinnamon ice cream, golden pineapple in sticky toffee pudding with vanilla bean ice cream as well as sorbets of pomegranate and apple cider.
We work hard as a team to stay excited about our productas and sources during our soft season. We have enjoyed our involvement with the southern foodways alliance and continue to meet new artisans whom we hope to introduce to our guests. This year we have met Craig Rodgers of Border Springs Farms in Virginia - a sheppard who raises lamb as an impassioned second career. To say he is dedicated to his craft is an understatement. Another new artisan hails from the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Tom Gallivan of Shooting Point Oyster Co. raises bay oysters and little neck clams. Tom and his family are extremely dedicated to sustaining the delicate ecosystem that is the Chesapeake Bay. On the cheese front, we have Sweetgrass Dairy and Holly Grove Farms. Swetgrass Dairy's Thomasville Tomme has become a staple on our house salad at dinner. The Georgia based dairy farm is second generation run by Jessica and Jeremy Little. Find out more about their cheeses at sweetgrassdairy.com. We also like Holly Grove Farms in Mt. Olive, NC. The 65 acre farm, run by Debbie Craig and her children, is home to 1000 dairy goats. They produce a line of goat cheeses that includes jalepeno, chive sweet thyme blue. We like to cream their plain chevre and add herbs to it then serve it with beets, apples and almonds as a dinner salad.
Since our remodel in 2006 we have been proud to serve coffee from Lexington Coffee Roasters in Lexington, VA. Our blend, developed from fair trade certified coffee, has aromas of chocolate and caramel, a rotund body, a bold flavor of wine and chocolate and a creamy chocolate finish. The coffee is roasted to order before shipping to us the next day. Freshness and flavor doesn't get much better than that! lexingtoncoffee.com
