On a summer night in Custer, a long picnic table sits below a willow tree. Place settings sparkle in dappled sunlight, and the chatter of strangers-turned-dining-partners echoes amid clinking wine glasses and neighing horses.
Here at Widnor Farms, dinner courses are served family-style: heaping plates of new carrots, tureens of gravy, overflowing platters laden with chicken. Wine glasses are emptied, then filled again. It’s tranquil, idyllic, almost Tolkienesque.
Widnor offers diners something uncommon: a true farm-to-table experience, bountiful and generous. Its commitment to showcasing the freshest and best of our region, combined with limited seating, makes for a spectacular evening. With only a handful of dates per summer — July 20 and 27 being the next two — I was eager to attend one myself.
Arriving, I parked my truck and strolled up a gravel road, past a farm stand, pens of turkeys and young pigs. The dinner table is just steps from the farmhouse. Seating is also unassigned, putting you shoulder to shoulder with other diners (and offering a chance to meet new friends).
The menu, printed off for each place setting, was incredibly enticing — although every dinner is different. Dishes change with the availability of ingredients and the whims of Brianna Widen, Widnor Farms proprietor, and Josh van Hine, chef for both these events and La Conner’s Oyster and Thistle.
Starters were delivered by staff and Widen’s children, Levi, Gracie and Dean. Lamb lollipops and grilled peaches were served before we even reached the first real course. The lamb was grilled fresh and heaped with a carrot top pesto. The peaches were plump and sweet, playing off a topping of chevre and prosciutto.
We’re then served a spectacular heirloom tomato and burrata salad, topped with bitter greens and a raspberry balsamic. For someone who grew up eating cheap Roma tomatoes, I very nearly shed a tear at the dish’s depth of flavor. The decadent burrata was especially enjoyable spread across a slice of herbed bread, served in baskets along the table. Heaping bowls of pearled couscous with a mirepoix and vinaigrette evoked a classic cookout standard side: macaroni salad. It’s comforting without being rote or repetitive.
The penultimate dish of the evening was a show-stopper: A whole pig, deboned, filled with chorizo and bread, then roasted over an open flame. This dish doesn’t just look impressive; it tastes impressive too, perhaps a nod at cochinillo (Spanish suckling pig). A bit larger, perhaps, but with no less gravity and care. This particular pig was butchered two days before the dinner, right there on the farm.
The pork was succulent, moist, and cooked to perfection, with the skin crisp and rich. A drizzle of brown gravy, soaked up by the bread and coating the chorizo, added even more complexity.
Even as dish after complex dish made its way across my plate, I never felt like the dinner’s purpose was to be aristocratic or pretentious. Rather, this meal was meant to highlight the ingredients’ incredible quality — and by extension, the care, dedication and planning put into them. No hothouse tomatoes or woody chicken, commodity-grade olive oil or Sysco refrigerated trucks here. None of the ingredients came from farther than about 40 miles.
The sun setting over the fields brought me to my adolescence, spent romping around in parts of the county much like this.
There was no bill to settle up, no push to buy another dessert, a digestif or espresso. Instead, a portion of wild berry tiramisu was placed in front of me (and the rest of it in a bowl to the side if I wanted seconds). The slow winding down of the dinner too felt like a comfortable backyard barbecue, with everyone scraping off their plates or simply settling into satisfied silence.
What Widnor has captured isn’t lightning in a bottle, so much as intent on a plate. It promises and delivers a superb dinner, beautiful venue and the freshest, most local ingredients. It can be easy to be caught up in the hype of food trends — truffle oil and foams, anyone? — as a show of culture or wealth, but there’s also beauty in the basics.
Our region is truly bountiful — and an opportunity to revel in this bounty, surrounded by whispering willow boughs and the chatter of new friends, is one I can undoubtedly recommend.
To learn more about Widnor Farms or book a farm-to-table dinner, visit shopwidnorfarms.com. Each dinner seat costs $175.
Mark Saleeb is a frequent enjoyer of food. Find him at instagram.com/eats.often.
