The newest restaurant in the Farmers Restaurant Group is an homage to founding father Thomas Jefferson and his estate, Monticello. Beginning Wednesday, Founding Farmers Reston will be open seven days a week serving breakfast, lunch, dinner and brunch in Reston Station.
“We love the founding fathers and founding mothers aspect of the country and thinking about their connections to agriculture and then looking forward to the future,” says Owner Dan Simons.
The team did extensive research about Jefferson and visited Monticello in order to inform the design and menus. “We kind of pull it through our filter of what is a modern farmhouse,” Simons adds.
“When you go to Monticello, there’s the gardens and the landscaping that’s really striking,” he says. They’ve recreated these natural features in a variety of ways, including a laser-cut white steel forest, a huge mural of the surrounding landscape and a wall of flowers of all shapes and sizes. The private dining room is called the potting shed, a nod to Jefferson’s love of gardening.
Jefferson’s affinity for collecting is also on display, with mastodon fossil wallpaper in the men’s room and a five-foot sculpture of his favorite mockingbird.
“Jefferson’s total obsessions with books is represented,” Simons says about a section of elevated seating where the walls look like a library.
“What you won’t see are the stereotypical columns of Monticello or the exact architecture. For me those are sort of iconic, played-out accents,” he says. “We tried to dig a little deeper and then bring it to life. Some of the specific fabric color choices were inspired by some of the paint and the carpets and the material that you see inside the home.”
The extensive menu by Executive Chef Joe Goetze has plenty of Jeffersonian influences as well, starting with the larger-than-usual selection of scratch-made pastas. “Jefferson was a total pasta aficionado. He gets credit for the American invention of mac and cheese.”
Another unique aspect of the menu is the section titled Dan’s Comfort Foods, featuring grain and protein bowls, simply prepared meats and vegetarian entrees like meatloaf made with Impossible Burger. “I think we’re known for a lot of menu items that people traditionally think of as comfort foods,” Simons says. “Some people get comfort from fried chicken and mac and cheese, and some people get comfort from a farro grain bowl with cashew butter and a piece of grilled fish.”
Simons and his team also wanted to honor the unsung heroes of the estate: the slaves. “I think it’s really important historically to not participate in any of the white-washing of history, so I’m not holding Jefferson up as some perfect figure. I’m just saying he’s relevant and historical,” Simons explains. “The people who should really get the credit at Monticello, for the food in the kitchen and the work on the space, were the human beings who were enslaved there.”
James Hemings was Jefferson’s chef. “If you cook for a president today, you’re a celebrity chef. Right? It’s one of the top culinary jobs, probably in the world,” Simons says. “Yet back then, you could do it as an enslaved person—do this backbreaking work, get no credit.” As such, they commissioned custom portraits of James and Sally Hemings, which are featured prominently in the dining room.
The beverage program spotlights the restaurant group’s distillery, Founding Spirits. “The whole cocktail menu is built around featuring our vodka, our gin, our whiskey, our amaro,” Simons says. The beer and wine offerings also lean local and sustainable.
Beverage Director Jon Arroyo considered Jefferson’s palette in creating the drink called How Jefferson Would Have Liked It, with rye whiskey, amaro, lemon and brandied cherry. “I think he and I could have had a cocktail together,” Simons supposes. “He loved the different flavors and the complex ingredients.”
As with all the restaurants in the Farmers group, the Reston location is both LEED and Green Restaurant Certified, meaning everything from building design to operations is done with sustainability in mind. “This is part of walking our talk when we say we care about the community and we care about the environment and the planet,” Simons says.
While Founding Farmers Reston shares a philosophy and many other similarities with its sister restaurants, the 13,000-square-foot location will be one of a kind. “It’s not going to look like any of the other restaurants,” Simons says. // Founding Famers Reston: 1904 Reston Metro Plaza Drive, Reston
