The Fearrington House Restaurant: Back to top-drawer

A couple of decades ago, the Fearrington House Restaurant out near Pittsboro was one of the few places in the Triangle where you could get a top-drawer meal in a lovely setting with great service.  Over the intervening years, though, the rest of the area's restaurant scene improved dramatically, while the Fearrington House stagnated and later worsened.  A few years ago, a group of us gave it another try.  The food was good but not great, and the service was embarrassing.  I felt no need to go back.

What changed my mind is that for some time now I've been hearing a lot of good things about the place and the work of Executive Chef Colin Bedford, enough good things that recently a group of us gave the restaurant another try.  We opted for the tasting menu and placed ourselves at the mercy of the chef.

I'm very happy to report that the result was a superb meal, a top-drawer dinner with excellent service that in my opinion puts the Fearrington House Restaurant firmly in the top handful of restaurants in the area. 

Our server had worked at The Mint when that now-defunct restaurant was great, and he had been good then.  He's better now, and he and his team took excellent care of our large party. 

Every dish we tasted featured a delicious combination of ingredients.  No dish was simple, but none was overly fussy, and all the flavors combined wonderfully. 

For my taste, the star of the evening was the risotto. 

Click on the image to see a larger version.

A warm and wonderful mixture that featured chanterelle mushrooms and Carolina Moon cheese, this delicious dish also included bits of eggplant, fennel, green olive, and green beans--all topped by a "snow" of foie gras that the servers added at the last minute. 

Fearrington is a lovely place in the middle of nowhere, so it's quite a long drive for me.  I now accept, though, that I'll have to make the drive every season to try the new menu. 

I highly recommend the Fearrington House Restaurant.

A visit with some folk art

A group of us headed into the country today to catch the eleventh Fearrington Folk Art Show. We ate brunch first at the Granary restaurant, where the food is always reliably good if never stellar.  After the show, we browsed the lovely McIntyre's Books.  Both of those experiences were laid-back fun with friends.

The show itself was far more of a mixed bag. 

On the one hand, I applaud many things about it.  I'm interested in folk and outsider art.  I like that it doesn't charge a booth fee or take a percentage of the sales of the participants; most artists, much less folks artists, are barely getting by.  The regional focus is a reasonable choice.  I enjoyed wandering the aisles and checking out the many strange ways these people approach their art. 

That said, I'm not at all sure I'll be returning next year, because the show's quality just isn't where I'd like it to be.  I certainly found the work of most of the artists to be at least interesting, but too many were either weak or simply didn't belong there (a completely standard potter comes to mind).  I wish the show would search more broadly for new talent and also make room for some significant percentage of first-time artists each year.  (They definitely ought to recruit Jain to show her odder pieces there; they would both fit right in and stand out for their quality.)

Despite my misgivings, if you haven't been before, you should definitely check out the show at least once.  At five bucks a person, it's a bargain, and at least a few of the odd pieces are bound to play with your head--in a good way. 

Another signing Thursday: come on down!

Tomorrow night (well, it's tomorrow to me), I'll be reading and signing at a lovely if somewhat isolated bookstore, McIntyre's Fine Books. This bookstore, which is part of the lovely Fearrington development, hosted a reading of mine last year, and they've been nice enough to invite me again this year.

McIntyre's is also the only bookstore to publicly summarize my work as "mystery science fiction," as you can see here. That blend is how I view the Jon and Lobo novels, so it's nice to see someone else talk about them that way.

If you're in the area and willing to make the drive out to Fearrington, please come by the signing. A bunch of us are likely to go out to dinner afterward, place TBD, so if you hang out near me after the reading you'll be welcome to join us.

Lately, wild bugs have seized my brain during readings and caused me to do strange things. Last night, for example, I revealed the first line of Overthrowing Heaven. I have no clue right now what I might do at McIntyre's; I guess I'll find out tomorrow!