A Blue Hill Birthday

To celebrate my birthday this past week, S and I made the journey a week ago to Pocantico Hills in Westchester County for dinner at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. 

Stone Barns is a working farm so we arrived a couple of hours before our reservation to wander the grounds. Armed with a map (and poor choice of footwear), we strolled through the greenhouse with lettuce twice as big as my head, peeked into barns with dozens of young turkeys (which won't be so young come November!), and waved to the pigs in the pen, that barely looked up from their feed to acknowledge us. These were only trumped by the sheep grazing in the meadow at a distance. Such a peaceful sight as the sun was setting on the horizon.

 Clover Canyon New Home dress (sim, top version), Fendi Polifonia sandals (sim, sim and sim), Vintage Celine bag

 

Back in the restaurant, no menu was provided though we were given a notebook listing the produce that was in season this month. The notebook also had plenty of blank pages where details of each of the 17 (!) dishes placed in front of us were jotted down as meticulously as possible - a successful feat even as the night progressed and plenty of wine was drank. 

As we've come to expect of restaurants of this calibre, a visit to the kitchen was part of the evening. We were pleasantly surprised when the viewing area was set up so that the oft-talked about Berkshire pork course was served while we admired the going ons. (side note: La Baleine appeared to be the sodium of choice!). 

This was a fantastic experience from start to finish - and a nice change from the usual suspects in the city. I would return in a heartbeat!

Need to know:
- Reservations can be made 2 months before.
- The train from Grand Central Terminal is approximately 40 minutes. From Tarrytown, it is a quick 10-minute taxi ride to Stone Barns. There is no need to book ahead, there are plenty of cabs at the train station.
- Dinner takes about 3.5 hours. If you are coming in from NYC, the least optimal seating is the later one on a school night. For reference, we had a 9pm reservation and left the restaurant at 12.45am.
- If you don't train it back, the restaurant can arrange a car service back to NYC ( ~ $120).
- All other details for the restaurant can be found here.