America's 10 Coolest Restaurants With a Farm Attached

Image via Complex Original

City: Pocantico Hills, N.Y.
Address: 630 Bedford Rd.
Website: bluehillfarm.com

Situated just 30 miles north of New York City, Blue Hills has been a guiding light in the locavore scene since its founding in 2004. In pursuit of creating the finest dishes with seasonal and hyper-local (read: backyard) ingredients, Blue Hill has no menus. Instead, multi-course “farmer’s feasts” are offered with complex dishes like purple potato and ricotta gnocchi with pig’s belly, zucchini, and shitake mushrooms, and Stone Barns pastured chicken with kohlrabi, butternut squash, hazelnuts, and lobster mushrooms. Named one of Food and Wine’s Top 10 Life-Changing Restaurants, it’s decidedly not cheap but it is, well, life-changing.

City: Lummi Island, Wash.
Address: 2579 W Shore Dr.
Website: willows-inn.com

The Willows Inn is perhaps the most extreme on our list. Situated near the Canadian border, a little north of Seattle on Lummi Island, this restaurant is one of the most raved about in the U.S. The scrappy, youthful chef, Blaine Wetzel, got his chops from Noma, the Danish wunderkind routinely named best in the world. He and his staff do have a farm, a quick five-minute walk up a trail from the Inn, but they tend to treat the forest and ocean around them as their real farms, foraging for everything from moss to sea grass to wild herbs and flowers. It’s not easy getting there—at the very least a ferry from Seattle is necessary—but every course, like geoduck sashimi in seaweed broth, is a unique experience representative of this one island in the Pacific Northwest and the bounty it has to offer that day.

City: Los Gatos, Calif.
Address: 320 Village Ln.
Website: manresarestaurant.com

Further down the West Coast, Manresa, in sunny Los Gatos, Calif., serves up similarly delicate and complex local food reflecting the state’s abundance of produce and fertile climate. Manresa is supplied exclusively by Love Apple Farms, just a short drive down the road. The farm and restaurant work together symbiotically to harvest and serve biodynamic produce and food. The restaurant even sends biodegradable waste back to the farm for composting. Ahh, that’s harmony.

City: Rockland, Maine
Address: 2 S Main St.
Website: primorestaurant.com

Located in sleepy Rockland, Maine, Primo serves what the head chef Melissa Kelly calls “full-circle” dining. It’s easy to understand why. They have a farm literally out back, complete with a myriad of produce including edible flowers, and further back, chickens, ducks, and pigs. Primo does their own house-cured and smoked meats and even honey. In March, Bon Appétit named Primo one of the most important restaurants in America for it’s sustainably-minded philosophy. And with dishes like local roasted halibut and Tuscan black rice with lobster and sweet cicely, that’s cool with us.

City: Austin
Address: 2113 Manor Rd.
Website: eastsidecafeaustin.com

Turning down the pace to something in the everyday-lunch-break price bracket, Eastside Cafe in Austin hopes to offer local seasonal food that is delicious and fast but not fast. With a large garden and chicken coop behind the restaurant, Eastside is a go-to for a city known for its glowing and eclectic food scene. If you find yourself in town, try the acorn squash or baked brie and apple—you won’t be disappointed.

City: Brooklyn
Address: 261 Moore St.
Website: robertaspizza.com

Roberta’s has been a staple in the New York scene for several years now. The place almost singlehandedly forced Manhattan foodies to take Brooklyn seriously. Famous for their killer pizza, they also slyly serve up some of the best new American cuisine in the city. They were one of the pioneers in the Brooklyn food scene to build and run a rooftop garden to grow organic veggies and herbs, heavily utilizing them in their food. Roberta’s recently opened their high-end sister, Blanca, next door. The waiting list at Blanca for this tasting-menu only hole-in-the-wall is months long, and the price tag on the experience is high, but the food is said to be sublime. For now, we can report Roberta’s to be totally worth the hype.

City: Yountville, Calif.
Address: 7399 St Helena Hwy.
Website: mustardsgrill.com

Mustards is named after the mustard flowers that every Spring revitalize the vineyards of the Napa Valley that this restaurant calls home. They proudly serve up what they call “deluxe truck stop classics” like Mongolian pork chop and seafood tostada. One of the secrets to Mustards’ 29 years of success is their sprawling two-acre farm located right outside the backdoor of the restaurant. Given their location, it’s no surprise that they have a killer wine selection, too.

City: Portland, Maine
Address: 10 Dana St.
Website: vignolamaine.com

Situated in the often-overlooked foodie haven of Portland, Maine, Vignola Cinque Terre serves up Italian fare with a strong focus on local, seasonal food. While not in their backyard, the farm they own and operate is just down the road in Greene, Maine. Not only do they source much of their produce from their Grand View Farm, but they host their annual Harvest Dinner there each fall. Back at the restaurant in downtown Portland, the menu showcases their farm-fresh veggies and a plethora of local seafood, with a proper Italian reverence for local, straightforward, and delicious food.

City: Woodinville, Wash.
Address: 14590 NE 145th St.
Website: theherbfarm.com

The Herbfarm brings a more traditionally sophisticated ambiance to the farm-to-table movement, once again, showcasing superior Pacific Northwest produce. Located just northeast of Seattle, The Herbfarm started as a garden by husband and wife Ron Zimmerman and Carrie Van Dyke. After converting an adjacent garage into a restaurant, they later expanded into a larger venue, a mile away. With a professional gardener full-time on staff, you can expect excellent produce year-round. Also celebrated are their highly capable wine pairings, rounding out what is already an awesome meal.

City: Berkeley, Calif.
Address: 1517 Shattuck Ave.
Website: chezpanisse.com

Chez Panisse is a legend in the Slow Food movement. Opened by Alice Waters in 1971 in San Francisco, this French-style restaurant has won countless accolades and inspired many cooks. Their dishes are without a doubt incredible, and totally embrace local, sustainable food and farming, but the farm Chez Panisse operates is not for their restaurants. Instead, it’s for Martin Luther King Junior Middle School, where students are taught how to grow, harvest, and prepare seasonal, local produce. Superior food and responsibility to the community is what the local food movement is all about, which is why Chez Panisse is a perfect way to round out our list of the 10 coolest restaurants with farms.