Riverside Ovens Test Kitchen
Restaurant of the Year

"It is a Sunday evening in mid-June. the cafes of Cavaillon are crammed. There isn't an inch to park your car. The noise is tremendous. In the most possible of the hotels – it goes by the name of Toppin – all the rooms are taken by seven o'clock. But the little Auburge La Provencale in the rue Chabran is quite quiet and you can enjoy a good little dinner..." Elizabeth David, "The Markets of France: Cavaillon."





It is Sunday and what we found out by the menu, still brunch time as we seated outside in a gated sidewalk terrace along Church Street.  This little square area of downtown Evanston is quite hectic, parking also crowded, as it was in Cavaillon for David, and so the better to be on foot we have found in this area of town to pick and choose from what has begun to feel like twenty dining destinations all worth the while if for no better reason than to see the future of fine dining right here in the upper midwest.  That is precisely what you get at Farmhouse, a two-story masterpiece of food, decor, concept and service that stands out as a sort of culmination of all things trendy in the farm to table

revolution, including a tasteful nod to downplaying its very own self importance. In the end, a restauranteur wants a foodie to leave their place with a gravitational pull left in the back of the mind to return, for the food, for the space, for the service, not for the sake of fashion. Farmhouse achieves all of the undertones of successful fashion because underneath it all is a concept that makes sense: source all of your fresh food from a single farm and use them to create recipes that don't leap away from midwest fare but re-engage it, with an understated elegance.  For all of us who have thought of this very idea in restaurants previously – what happens if we take simple midwest cooking and turn it gourmet – well, we have finally found it and the executive chef, from small town Ohio, likely doesn't have to work hard at producing meals in this category. It is part of his upbringing.

A wonderful example was the brunch menu full of new takes on fairly popular midwest cuisine. I ordered the biscuits and gravy, with the hitch that the gravy be made from homemade, locally sourced short ribs, the dish covered by nearly poached local eggs, making a heaping portion of one of the

more savory, rich breakfast plates that I have ever had. A brief glance at the finished plate and one wouldn't necessarily hold it out as anything of a masterpiece, but once you get started you begin to taste the care of the biscuits themselves, the delicate cooking technique that leaves them still moist, flaky, and able to pull inside the white gravy above.  The dripping of the egg yolks over it all is almost too much and you are fairly convinced that you are eating dessert before the meal, but then look around the other tables at other plates and see that they are sharing the same experience.

On this visit the gravitational pull to return to the Farmhouse last somewhere around five hours.  A mere half a mile away from my hotel, the question becomes why not return here for a late dinner, check out the rotated menu and see how the farm looks by dim candles next to small vases full of pressed wildflowers?  The beer selection was the interesting beginning by two taps from the B Nektar Meadery, which produces wonderful honey based fermented and filtered ales, really a perfect sort of beverage to go along with the farmhouse concept. I ordered the duck confit, a dish of old world grains, Whiskey cherries, frisee, spicy duck and spicy backwoods mustard.  As so many of us duck lovers have come to find out over the years, duck is a very difficult and fickle piece of wild meat to cook well.  More than likely any technique of fast cooking is going to leave the duck dry, dense and, frankly (and unfortunately) wasted.  One of the reasons that I have skipped ordering duck at a variety

of past restaurants is that I just hate to see this beautiful wild bird wasted by a cooking process that doesn't work.  The confit process is by its very nature a purposefully patient technique, brining as early as a day before and then slow cooking.  By doing this, and by adding the right fats and juices (cherries here), the cook is likely able to manage the texture moment by moment, which is proper care, unlike with, say, a chicken thigh that can be handled quickly and can recuperate from a poor start on the frying pan.  The end dish was a real work of craftsmanship, where flavor and texture synchronize – the skin is crisp and seasoned, the meat flakes and is still moist. The surrounding flavors complement and add don't detract.  This, alongside a bee mead, was the best farm meal that I have ever had.  The success of the meal is experienced in circles of ambiance, from the nature of the dish and decor of the table, to the side rooms made by brand and classic farm art, to the open seating concept that allows farm goers to socialize.  Although all the outer details are well cared for, it is still the small hot plate of confit that will bring you back.

Last year's Restaurant of the Year Award went to the Driftless Glen out of Baraboo.  There, as at the Farmhouse, there is a thoughtfulness in dining creation that seems to transcend out of current fashion and to create the very epitome of it, as though examples of the ideal at all levels.  It will be very interesting to see next year's winner.