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Dinner Reviews
Washington Times Newspaper
Corinna Lothar - September 6, 2007
The view from the glassed-in dining (conservatory) is magnificent: the Point of Rocks Bridge and the Potomac River separating Maryland and Virginia in the distance, often bathed in a soft blue haze beyond the rise of the Catoctin Mountains. Weaving grasses and wildflowers fall to a line of trees hiding the old B&O Railroad tracks just across the Potomac in Maryland.
Dining at Patowmack Farm is not a country experience, however. White tablecloths and napkins, candles and flowers dress the tables. Service is formal, sometimes slow. Diners are greeted and seated by Beverly Morton Billand, the owner of the restaurant and the farm, which makes her guests welcome.
Nor is the menu country; it changes monthly and consists of a five-course $79 prix fixe meal with two choices per course. The cooking is sophisticated and very much citified. The restaurant is open only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday for dinner and on Saturday and Sunday for (brunch). On Thursday and Friday, diners have the option of ordering a la carte from the five-course menu; on Saturdays, only the complete menu is available.
The kitchen is under the direction of Executive Chef Christian Evans, a self-taught chef originally from Vermont. He knows his trade; his cooking is inventive and well executed...
Breads are baked in-house; ...they come to the table hot, fragrant and irresistible.
We began a late-summer dinner with a delightful amuse bouche from the chef: half of a caramelized little fig with creamy goat cheese. The first course was soup – one cold, the other hot. Gazpacho was a lovely lend of heirloom tomatoes with a touch of garlic and basil oil. Milder than the usual gazpacho, it had no bite of onion and pepper, only the taste of local ripe summer tomatoes. Real tomatoes.
...Patowmack Farm is a fine, ambitious restaurant.
...A meal at Patowmack Farm is a relaxed, pleasant and lovely experience, well worth a trip into Loudon County.
Northern Virginia Magazine
August 2006
25 Best Restaurants
A Breath of Fresh Air
Patowmack Farm's farm–to–table concept is much more than a gimmick. It's a mantra.
…In the distance, the Potomac rolls past a moonlit bridge while amorous crickets flood the night with music.
The unique "Dinner in the Garden" service–offered Thursday through Saturday–provides a five–course banquet tied to the farm's harvest, as well as a seven-course tasting menu designed by chef Christian Evans.
Rated Excellent to Outstanding in all areas: food, ambience and service.
The Washington Post Magazine
Tom Sietsema - May 15, 2005
…the multi–course menus incorporate lettuces from her garden and eggs from the 100 or so chickens that roost nearby. Chef Christian Evans…designs his menu around the season… Wherever possible, the farm is used as a pantry.
No two visits to Patowmack Farm are alike, since the food changes every week. Thursdays (and Fridays) the diners get to choose from …five and seven-course tasting menus; Saturday nights, the game plan is five courses, only one of which involves making a decision (there are three entrée options). On Sunday, brunch is served.
Chances are, you'll start off on a high note. One cool spring night commenced with a "soup and sandwich," translated here as a creamy elixir of duck broth and onions with an island of crisp, goat-cheese-slathered toast floating in its center. But the opener could just as well be bouillabaisse "Patowmack Style": teaming bites of cod and halibut with tomato, fresh ginger and lemon grass.
A salad is apt to follow. It might be hearty: rosy slices of lamb, scattered with capers and resting on baby greens. Or it could be light: slices of brilliant yellow beets topped with peppery arugula and lemon-honey vinaigrette. Both are pretty and flavorful.
The third course gets more luxurious.
Loosen your belt; there's more food to follow. Maybe grilled hanger steak flanked with vegetable–stuffed brown rice crepes and lapped with a truffle–fragrant butter sauce. Or salmon coated in sesame seeds and partnered with Asian–style summer rolls. Roast Cornish game hen is herby and moist, and it's positioned on luscious creamy leeks.
The scenery is so enchanting, the sounds are so lulling – Hear the geese in the background? The train?
…Morton Billand and company slip thoughtful details into every meal. The menus at each table, for instance, bear the name of the reservation holder. The background music falls easy on the ears.
…And special requests ("One of the guests is a vegetarian") are honored without hesitation.
Less than 50 miles from downtown Washington, Patowmack has all that – and location, location, location – to recommend it.
Washington Post
Walter Nicholls - August 2, 2000; Page F07
This is a very different dining experience. Where else in the area do members of a farming family plant, nurture, harvest, cook and then serve a five–course dinner, the bounty from their fields, berries from the briar patch, right in their own front yard?
The view is spectacular. Birds soar over the tree tops. All is peaceful. Then, a train lets out a long, low whistle from somewhere in the distance, deep in the forest below.
Work up an appetite with a half-mile stroll on the farm's nature trail to peaceful Catoctin Creek. After dinner, carry a wine glass up behind the chicken yard to the hilltop with Maryland to one side, the sun setting behind the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia under foot. The house should be full for Dinner in the Garden with 45 guests.
Our Dinner in the Garden began with an appetizer–a light puff of pastry piped with an elephant garlic cream with bits of pimento, black olives, shallots and Parmesan cheese. Next came a salad of mixed greens, edible flowers and roasted walnuts dressed with a tangy mustard vinaigrette. Perfect.
Cornish hens were expertly roasted, the skin crisp, the meat moist and flavored with a hint of rosemary. Alongside was plain and simple brown rice and a terrific, tart rhubarb chutney. Of course there was zucchini, the fast-growing vegetable only a farmer could love. The Billands dressed it up with plenty of Gruyere cheese.
Washington Post Magazine
June 9, 2002
For a unique dining experience, Patowmack Farm "Dinner in the Garden" offers an elegant setting with the breathtaking Potomac River views and exquisitely prepared gourmet fare. "Dinner in the Garden" cooking features the farm owners' organic produce, herbs and spices fresh from the fields. The owners plant, nurture, harvest and prepare the food for dinner so the menus reflect the growing seasons. Main course offerings may include spring lamb, fish or chicken.
"Dinner in the Garden," is truly an experience to savor.
The Frederick News-Post
Karen Gardner - October 16, 2002 Food Section
At Patowmack Farm, fresh means picked that afternoon.
For the patrons of Dinner in the Garden, the farm's bi–weekly restaurant, that means the lettuce for their salads, the Swiss chard for the main dish and the cucumbers for the soup were picked only hours before their meal.
Patowmack Farm offers an elegant, five–course meal served in a tent on the 40–acre property bordering the Potomac River. Dinner in the Garden, as it's called, happens on Friday and Saturday evenings, every other weekend, through November.
The menus change each weekend the restaurant is open, reflecting what is in season and what chef Jack Batten does with the ingredients available.
Patowmack Farm was named the 1999 Agribusiness of the Year and the 2000 Small Business of the Year by the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce.
Main dishes may feature halibut in a horseradish crust served with chard, roasted eggplant and spinach fettuccine, grilled tenderloin steak with gorgonzola mashed potatoes and eggplant red pepper ragout, and oregano chicken with tomato compote, garlic lemon potatoes and garden fresh beans.
Desserts range from almond cake with blackberries and home made cinnamon vanilla ice cream Gateau ala Maison with a Patowmack raspberry sauce, and flourless chocolate torte with raspberry sauce and blackberries.
Menus are on a single sheet of paper and personalized with the name of the party. If there's a birthday a happy birthday wish is included on the menu. Those are just some of the personal touches at Patowmack Farm.
"We tell people to come early so they can wander about, so they can see the farm and walk on the trail," Ms. Billand said.
The five-course dinner lasts about two hours. "We don't rush anyone," Ms. Billand said. …Diners feast on china with crystal and silver, linen tablecloths and cloth napkins. Tables are lit with candles and soft lighting is provided.
Washingtonian Magazine - Best Bites
Helene Hollander Lepkowski - May 2003
Want a fresh taste in an intimate country setting? Dinner in the Garden at Loudoun County's Patowmack Farm begins its fifth season of serving imaginative organic cuisine made with its own produce.
Guests this spring might dine on baby lettuces with radishes in an herb vinaigrette, spinach soup with Madeira cream, smoked duck with gingered rhubarb, or miso-marinated salmon with citrus and shiitake mushrooms. For dessert, there might be fruit ricotta mousse with rhubarb or a lemon-lime cheesecake made with fresh farm eggs. Whatever Patowmack Farm doesn't produce comes from local farms and other organic and sustainable food sources.
Baltimore Sun
Sunday, Aug. 24, 2003
Dinner with a view of the Potomac by Beth O'Leary
A Virginia farm serves five–course meals high on a hill.
Rain falls as I gaze down at the Potomac River from the front stoop of (the) farmhouse in Loudoun County, in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.
I donvt mind getting a little wet for this view: Lush, tree-covered hills frame the bridge spanning the river between Virginia and Maryland.
Near the farmhouse, I spot neat rows of broccoli, spinach, lettuce, peas, peppers, cilantro and basil. I wonder which of those ingredients will find their way into my dinner tonight.
Before dinner, we stroll around the property. An earthy smell permeates the air. Chickens peck at the ground outside a weathered gray barn housing the Billands' small farm store. Inside, shelves hold Patowmack Farm's own organic products – jars of raspberry and blackberry jam; dried dill, oregano, and rosemary; bottles of basil, garlic and pepper vinegars – plus organic pasta, chocolate and pumpkin seeds from other suppliers.
Next to the building, beans, beets and cucumbers not yet ready for picking grow in a rectangular plot, their leafy, green stalks shooting up from the dirt.
We walk under a wooden arbor flanked by two torches into the dining tent's wide entryway. candles flicker on each table… Menus personalized for each party detail the dinner's five courses.
Beverly examines the gardens and develop a plan based on what's ripe for the picking. Meat and fish come from other organic producers.
We begin with an appetizer of crunchy toasts covered with velvety lentils and smoky pieces of duck… then it's on to creamy broccoli. As we move on to a salad of mixed spring greens topped with tangy orange, purple and yellow pansies and marigolds, we spot Beverly visiting each table… We can't decide which tastes better, the halibut Vera Cruz topped with chunky, fresh–from–the–garden salsa or the tender pieces of chicken wrapped around tart goat's milk cheese and serve with thick homemade pesto.
During the dessert course – a rich blueberry–glazed puff of buttery mascarpone cream – it's Chef Batten's turn to work the room. He enthusiastically tells diners about the new facility, expected to be complete next year, (which) should offer better views of the river… It will also allow the farm to serve dinner every weekend as well as add Sunday brunch.
As we finish our dessert, the rain finally stops. We hurry outside to take a final look at the Potomac. We're joined by Batten and another couple, who tell the chef that they'll be back again.
Reluctantly, we call it a night and return to our city apartment. We don't want to get too used to all this open space.
"Thank you for the lovely evening. My husband and I were very impressed and will definitely be returning. My husband was a bit skeptical about dining on a farm outdoors, but was talking about it the next day. I dreamt about the olive tart. See you next season."
~ Laura and Steve
"Thank you for your generous hospitality. Dining at your farm is an experience we will never forget. We plan on returning many times next season. Wish we had known about you sooner."
~ George and Beth
"We came to celebrate a very special birthday and you certainly made our celebration memorable. Thank you for the warm welcome and excellent personal service. We felt we were part of your family. The dinner was excellent, every course left us waiting for the next surprise. The gift you gave and the remembrance on the individualized menus was a touch of class. We will definitely be returning and will tell our friends about you."
~ Tim and Lauren
"We have been dining at Patowmack Farm for over five years and we look forward to it every year. There is nowhere else in the Washington D.C. area where you can find such a phenomenal dining experience. The food, the service and the ambience are all first rate and the combination makes it a truly wonderful dining experience."
~ John and Kathleen Nixon
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