The other weekend, we drove 45 minutes north of the city to Pocantico Hills, New York for a 10pm reservation at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. For those who are familiar with Blue Hill at Stone Barns, you know how ambitious this is in the context of this meal. For those who are less familiar with the establishment, it is renowned for its elegant culinary experience made up of both simple and innovative dishes that highlight the goodness of the Hudson Valley region. There are no menus; instead, guests sit down and prepare for a 12 course meal featuring grazing-, rooting-, and pecking-centric dishes. And over the years, it has become a bit of a New-Yorker’s-bucket-list-thing to do (over and over and over again).

The meal and ambiance were incredibly memorable but the view itself went unnoticed since our reservation was so late. It was pitch black when we arrived and the lights leading to the restaurant only revealed a few feet ahead of us at a time. So we went back the next morning to grab breakfast and explore. While Blue Hill is the restaurant at Stone Barns, Stone Barns itself operates as a nonprofit farm, an education center, and the source for many of the ingredients used by the restaurant — from the lightly seasoned baby root vegetables that made up our first course to the Blue Hill pork with rutabaga, parsnip and fighter spinach that we were served later on. It is the whole farm-to-table works.

We took a self-guided tour seeing everything from greenhouse vegetation to turkeys to chickens and pigs. The contrast of stacked brick and wood paneling on the old barn structures was a sight waiting to make the rounds on Pinterest. It was a very cool rustic contrast and I made sure to make a design note of it all.

I sure do love the city. But there’s nothing like city folk’s version of country.