Background:
Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barnes needs no introduction, but if you want to get up to speed watch Season 1, Episode 2 of Netflix’s Chef’s Table or read the reviews by the NY Times, The Telegraph, or GQ. It’s currently ranked #12 in the world and the #2 restaurant in the US, only behind Eleven Madison Park, which, spoiler alert, we believe is a mistake.
Like most top 50 restaurants, Blue Hill is an exceptionally hard reservation to score, especially on a Friday or Saturday night. The reservations open up 60 days out, and literally they were all gone in seconds. I’ve scored reservations at Noma and Osteria Francescana, so it was a little surprising to see all the times gone so fast. I think part of the problem was that they were using Reserve, probably the worst of the big reservation systems on the market. However, last week Blue Hill switched to Tock, which is in my opinion the best system out right now.
A slight aside, but there has to be a better way for these top restaurants to do reservations. For the little guys like us, it’s extremely frustrating that it’s so hard to get a reservation, especially since it seems like people literally write computer programs to score these reservations right as they come out. I’d almost like to see a lottery system in place for a few tables, where a week or two out you could put your name in the lottery, putting everyone on the same playing field.
After a few minutes of trying we ended up getting a 10 p.m. reservation. A 10 p.m. reservation is bad enough, but Blue Hill at Stone Barnes is 30 miles north of the city, and the last train from Tarrytown, the closest train station, leaves at 1:00 a.m. This meant that in order to get back to the city after dinner we had to take an Uber. We were even debating renting a car, as we didn’t know what the Uber or cab situation would be like at that hour in Tarrytown. Luckily, there were ample Ubers available, and it only cost us about $45 to get back to the city. If you have a reservation this late, Uber is definitely the way to go.
The restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns is situated on Blue Hill Farms, an 80 acre farm and learning facility. Pulling into the facility, you feel like you’re approaching a palatial country estate in a Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy novel. The restaurant is located in a castle-like building with a large courtyard. The actual dining room was formerly a cow barn! It’s quite the setting for a meal, even pulling up in the darkness. Although we wish we could have seen the farm in daylight, arriving at night only added to the mystique and charm.
We arrived two hours early, hoping we could eat a littler earlier, but we ended up spending the time in the bar area, complete with cozy chairs and a fireplace. A few drinks make the time pass quickly, and before we knew it we were at our table, which was situated against the back wall and overlooked the entire dining room. It felt like we were sitting in a theater watching a grand show take place on a culinary stage.
Eat This:
At Blue Hill you only have one option, and that’s a $258 tasting menu, including a mandatory 20% “administrative fee.” Tipping is not expected or allowed. Now that they are using Tock, the $258 is paid at booking, so you’re just in for the ride and whatever drinks you order (wines or cocktails by the glass, or you could do the $168 wine pairing) as soon as your table is booked. Each month has a theme based on what’s happening on the farm during that month. We dined in March, and our theme was “charcoal.”
The menu always consists of between 20 and 40 dishes. Many of them small, some of them big. Of all the top tasting menus we’ve done, we left this one the most full.
The food here is meant to showcase the farm, local ingredients, and pure cooking. Barber is most famous for his work with scientists and breeders to produce better tasting, more sustainable products. On the night we went they were highlighting the Badger beet, which was a collaboration with a scientist at Wisconsin (hence the name Badger) to make a beet taste less earthy. If you’ve seen the Chef’s Table episode, you know that Barber is famous for his butternut squash that he bred with vegetable breeder Michael Mazourek.
Blue Hill isn’t trying to do molecular gastronomy, like a lot of the other top restaurants in the world. Their cooking techniques are not high tech (a chef told me they almost never use a sous vide), and you’re tasting the ingredients in their pure form. This is not to downplay the cooking or the wow-factor of the dishes, because they were some of the coolest dishes we’ve ever had. The creativity of Blue Hill’s cooking is second to none.
What really surprised us is that not only is the menu each day different, each table in the restaurant got different dishes depending upon the availability of ingredients. The table next to us got a potato ceviche which we never got, and we got a squash burrata which only a few tables got. Normally, if a restaurant of this caliber changes the menu daily, everyone at the restaurant gets that set menu that day. It is extremely difficult to produce such a varied menu by table. Not only do the chefs need to be spot on with everything, but the front of the house has to be synchronized and in-tune with what’s coming out, so they can be sure they’re delivering the proper meal to the proper table. It is so easy to screw this up, and the ingenuity and creativity that everyone on the team has to have to execute each seating is something we have never seen.
What we had on this night no one else will have again, although there are some staples that seem to stay on the menu, like the liver and chocolate and, of course, the Barber wheat bread. So, even though on your visit you’ll get a different menu, rest assured that you, dear readers, were there with us, especially since we’re always eating for more than two (more like two dozen, if we’re being honest).
Drink:
Before you are led into the dining room you are brought to the bar, which includes a fireplace and fully stocked bar. The cocktail menu is presented as a map, where each part of the farm is made into a drink with ingredients from that part of the farm. How fun is that?! They also make most of their glassware from ground bones from late Blue Hill animals, so nothing goes to waste.
They had three non-alcoholic cocktails, and I tried all three. My favorite was the Silos, which had corn, quinoa, clove, and cinnamon. It tasted earthy, and carried the sweetness of the corn, the spiciness of the cinnamon, and the crunch of the quinoa flakes. Such a complex and unique cocktail. Yvonne had pink champagne, and two cocktails, the Apiary and the Vegetable Field. The apiary was brought out in jar lined with bees wax which you poured yourself into a glass. The flavor I think best could be described as drinking a potion from the woods. The Vegetable Field was her favorite, with a rich fattiness from the tallow and the siren song of her go-to spirit, mezcal.
Once seated at the table, you are offered a wine pairing for $168 or you can do a la cart wine or cocktails. We elected for the a la cart option, as who can have a full wine pairing at our age at 10:00 p.m.?
Atmosphere:
The attire says coats and tied preferred, absolutely no shorts. To me, that says you need to wear a lime green cashmere sweater from Uniqlo, which is about as dressy as I get, unless it’s a funeral. I was the only guest on the property without a tie. At first this scared me, as I thought that the experience was going to be stuffy and too serious, but the meal couldn’t have felt less stuffy. The setting was magnificent, but you could tell that the place had a real sense of humor and playfulness - not only with the activities and games we played with the servers, but also the plating and presentation of the dishes. It’s what we hoped the experience at Osteria Francescana would be like – fancy yet friendly. When you go to a top restaurant, you want to have an experience you remember for a lifetime. You don’t want to feel like you’re visiting a museum of food. Blue Hill pulled off the perfect experience.
Farm Hospitality:
The service here, as one would expect, is top notch. When you are waiting to be sat in the lounge, one of the heads of service comes and asks you how you are doing and gets to know you for a few minutes. What they glean from you - why you are there, where you are from, etc - is communicated to the rest of the team who continue the conservation throughout the night. There is a frenetic energy to the service, very similar to Noma, where there is constant activity throughout the dining room. The servers sometimes line up with your dish, then notice it’s not quite the right time, and will circle the room like bees until it’s the perfect moment to drop off the next dish. They also would answer any question you had and not seem pissed off that you were asking it. There was no snobbiness or no snootiness - everyone seemed genuinely happy to be working at Blue Hill and supportive of the mission.
Case in point: normally at the end, they print out a menu for you to take home. Their printer was down, so we asked if they could email us one. Not only did they email us one the next day they were open, but they also overnighted us a printed menu on their letterhead. That’s going above and beyond.
Frankie’s Notes:
Having dinner at 10 p.m. is insane and we’re still tired; I hope when I die my bones are ground up and made into Blue Hill bone china; We feel we made a lot of best friends in the servers at Blue Hill, and we hope the feeling is mutual; Bears, Badger beets, and Battlestar Galactica; When we get our palatial estate, our first pet will be a pheasant named Neville; Wearing a sweater to Blue Hill is definitely rich man/poor man scenario.
Rating: 5 out of 5 with 3 Michigan Pugs
Blue Hill is the best meal we’ve had in the US and nowhere else even comes close (we’re looking at you, Eleven Madison Park). The attention to detail, the creativity, setting, and overall experience are second to none (Okay, we still have Noma slightly ahead, but this was the first place we’ve been that gave it a run for its money). It’s tough to get to, but worth the visit. If you ever have the chance to dine at Blue Hill, it’s a can’t miss opportunity.