Nowness: American Arcadian

Andrea Gentl and Martin Hyers Document an Ode to the Season in the Catskills

On a recent Saturday in the rural Catskills, a coterie of American chefs, farmers and epicurean friends celebrated the local bounty with a foraged late-summer feast at Table On Ten, the 28-seater restaurant in Bloomville, New York owned by Justus and Inez Valk-Kempthorne. In today’s visceral series by husband-and-wife food and travel photographers Andrea Gentl and Martin Hyers, all the ingredients—from the chicory to flowering chocolate mint, the bee balm, duck and even the pesky “immature sunflower”—were procured from within 25 miles of the restaurant. “The dried mushrooms were from a shoeless man living in a hut in Big Indian,” says John Poiarkoff, chef of The Pines in Brooklyn, who conceived the nine-course menu, helped in the kitchen by The Pines owner and chef Camille Becerra of chic New York seafood restaurant, Navy. With Table On Ten, the Valk-Kempthornes have built a sanctuary and fellowship inspired by soil and harvest, celebrating hyper-local gastronomic camaraderie over Campari-laced cocktails and pizza from their wood-burning oven.

Text by Tarajia Morrell, founder of food blog The Lovage and contributor to Huffington Post, The Aesthete and various other publications.

Menu
Tomatoes, corn, whipped ricotta, garlic croutons, flowering chocolate mint and anise hyssop

Beet-stuffed napa cabbage, potato and yogurt puree, potato broth, wood sorrel

White pine roasted carrots, immature sunflower and white pine pistou, chicory, pine oil

Roasted and pickled cauliflower, Miranda cheese and roasted onion béchamel, jalapeño, flowering thyme

Trout, dill creme fraiche, charred leeks, dill flowers, black mustard greens

Shitake ciriole, braised rabbit, roasted garlic, bee balm

Duck breast and leg, cranberry beans, pepper and rosehip chutney, nasturtium

Ouleout ice cream, peach and beer compote, granola, honeycomb, beer caramel

Corn custard pie, pickled blueberries, poor man's pepper