Food Road Trip: Sheppard Mansion

A couple weekends back I got the hell out of farm-to-table-obsessed Brooklyn to actually visit a farm. Then a table, where the chef cooked a multi-course tasting menu using beef from the farm (Scotch Highland cattle to be exact). Also featured in the meal: seasonal produce yanked from the earth at a nearby "culinary garden" — where the chef, a C.I.A. graduate, grows German butterball potatoes, baby bubba okra, Fordhook lima beans and over a ton of tomatoes. The meal was beautifully composed with great attention to the products.

I was not at Blue Hill at Stone Barns or the Inn at Little Washington, but staying the night at Sheppard Mansion in sleepy Hanover, Pennsylvania — which sits almost four hours outside NYC. It's near Gettysburg and, somewhat ironically, the Utz Potato Chip Factory.

I was invited down by the owners to hang out on the farm and find out all about chef Andrew Little's "New Pennsylvania Dutch" cooking — which features original, highly refined takes on hardy, mildy weird regional favorites like schnitz und knepp and scrapple. Here are some photos: