New Cocktail at Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Posted by: Liz Johnson - Posted in Blue Hill at Stone Barns, cocktails, Dan Barber, Restaurants on May 05, 2008

I got the first taste of a new cocktail at Blue Hill at Stone Barns the other night. It’s not even on the menu yet.

It’s made with celery juice and apple juice and topped with Johnny Jump Ups and leaves of lovage. I don’t know the name of it yet, but when I find out, I’ll let you know. It’s delicious: very well balanced and quite refreshing. After the jump, bar snacks Stone Barns-style, with the first fiddleheads of the season.

I stopped by last week because it was the fourth anniversary of the opening of Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture. I was with some friends who work there, so chef Dan Barber sent out some snacks. We had “radishes on a fence,” and shots of the celery-apple juice (sans alcohol). Only at Blue Hill do you ask for some bar snacks and get radishes.

They were pure, with just a hint of salt.

I’ve waxed rhapsodic about the beet burger before. Now I present the asparagus burger:

It’s served with a spread of aparagus marmalade (the tomato and beet bugers come with creme fraiche but this one does not). The bun is an olive oil financier with sesame seed.

It makes me smile.

Sorry for the poor quality on this photo, but the light was waning. (A photographer friend of mine likes to call me “Available Light Johnson.”) It’s Rainbeau Ridge goat cheese (my favorite) on a farro cracker with fiddlehead ferns (first of the season) and Johnny Jump Ups.

It had a delightful lemony flavor along with the fresh taste of the cheese and the crunch of the ferns.

Pork in all its greatness. This is “face bacon,” which is made from everything but the guanciale.

The kitchen makes a terrine and cook it, then slices it very thin and then bake it. I was in heaven.

Iceberg with radish with light vinaigrette:

Like a really good salad, but on a stick.

Carrot with dill and housemade yogurt with soybeans in the bottom:

Refreshing and a little sweet.

Lamb from one of the first of the season, born in February:

This was from the leg of the lamb. You knew you were eating lamb, but wasn’t overly gamy. And so tender.

Dessert was also on a stick: Skewer S’mores, where homemade marshmallows are stuffed with a baked sweet potato puree and then bruleed. You’d swear you were eating the best toasted marshmallows ever, but with something you couldn’t quite place.