THE ENIGMA OF MAVERICK FARMS
By Jim Leff
(Excerpted from 'Jim Leff's Chow Alert' Newsletter, from
http://www.chowhound.com)
Maverick Farms (http://maverickfarms.com) is hard to describe.
It's an organic, politically aware nonprofit small farm run by super-foodie
hipsters who bring a dot.com sensibility to their work. Remember all those
Internet upstarts back in 1998 where nobody outside - or even inside - the
company understood what the company actually did, and everything rolled forward
via sheer exuberance? That's Maverick Farms. They claim to grow things, and I
actually did see some salad greens growing plus a few chickens, but...I don't
know. I suspect Maverick Farms is more of a state of mind than an actual
farming operation. To be fair, though, I did arrive late in the season. The
badminton court may brim with soybeans and corn in the summer, who knows?
It's a beautiful big farm house on a beautiful creek in a
beautiful hollow, though, and that's all that matters, from the viewpoint of an
agritourist (their term for guests). They rent out (short or long term) some
rooms, e.g. a beautiful downstairs corner space with awesome view and veranda,
and private bathroom for just $65/night and a little monastic bedroom for a
mere $25/night - a steal in this increasingly boutiquey area. Speaking of the
area, I was strongly corrected that western North Carolina is NOT the south -
it's Appalachia. People hereabouts fought on the Union side.
[The food at Maverick Farms] is excellent and very
California-style, very much about letting the goodness of the ingredients sing
out. And the ingredients are up to the task. Those salad greens, for example,
are hallucinogenic in their intensity and persistence of flavor; coated with a
dab of oil and vinegar, they steal every meal they accompany. Portions are
modest; a typical dinner consists of a : shallow bowl of squash soup and those
psychedelic salad greens with freshly baked bread and well-chosen olive oil,
all top-drawer.
É
Other meals, you're on your own, to cook in the kitchen or chowhound
around locally. The nearest "big" town is Boone, where I liked
breakfast at Melanie's Food Fantasy (415 Blowing Rock Rd, Boone, NC;
828-263-0300), good for potato omelet sandwiches, but do not order soup) and I
hear great things about Outback Kates (831 W King St, Boone, NC; 828-264-5220),
which I didn't get to try. There's a high quality prepared foods buffet at
Earth's Bounty, the local Wild Oats/Whole Foods type health food superstore,
but it's as overpriced as usual for that ilk. Right down the (dirt) road from
Maverick Farms is Mast General Store & Annex (NC Hwy 194 South, Valle
Crucis, NC; 828-963-6511), with an awesome selection of hard-to-find regional
candies, like Sugar Daddies, Mallo Cups, and a zillion other candies I'd long
assumed dead (and a bunch written about in the terrific "Candyfreak: A
Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America," by Steve Almond,
orderable at
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1565124219/chowhoundcomA>).
Best of all are their house-made items like peanut butter malt balls and peanut
butter drops. There are a smattering of chow destinations in Foscoe, too É.
I attended one of Maverick Farm's occasional $35 farm dinners. It
could be described in two ways: 1. a way to divest the local gentry of some of
their lucre in order to support the operation, or 2. an outpouring of culinary
expressionism from experienced cooks using ingredients grown or procured with a
great deal of care and who love an excuse to blow out a serious dinner.
The menu will give you the idea:
- Cornmeal Flatbread
w/ Garlic and Parsley Confit, Olive Tapanade, and
Homemade Ricotta-Chipotle Spread
- Springhouse Farm
Fresh Salad
- Candy Roaster
Squash Soup Garnished with Spicy Cilantro Pesto
- Cider Glazed Pork
Roast w/ Homemade Pear Chutney and Root-Vegetable Puree or (for vegetarians)
Homemade Ricotta and Sage Gnocchi
- Both Entrees
Garnished with Braised Greens
- Sweet Potato Flan
w/ Sesame Tuilles
Long tables are set up in the farm house, and the aforementioned
gentry (professors at a local college, land owners, yuppie gentrifyers) get
their status buttons pushed via several courses of fancy gourmet cooking
described with a rich cavalcade of adjectives. For my part, I enjoyed some top
notch flavors as well as some (charming) near-misses. Guests bring their own
wine, and nobody shares.
These icy and infrequent dinners aside, if you're looking for a
rustic get-away at very reasonable price, and want to immerse in some very high
level rural-yet-sophisticated foods and foodways, Maverick Farm is a smart
choice. Note: I actually split wood.