The Restaurant at Patowmack Farm
Lovettsville / Modern American / $$$$*
It’s hard to say what plays a stronger role in chef Vincent Badiee’s culinary background: Is it his years in New York City and Washington, DC, playing key roles at restaurants like Eleven Madison Park and Gravitas? Or is it his childhood, spent on a Virginia farm? At The Restaurant at Patowmack Farm, he makes a spiritual homecoming, cooking the kinds of food that have earned his restaurants Michelin stars, but using ingredients that he helps to cultivate and harvest on site.
Dinner menus run the length of nine courses, each one honed from the best bites of the season. The meal will likely start with crackers made from seeds bound together with spices into a snack so addictive that you ask your server to leave them on the table until you’ve finished them just before dessert. And that sweet finish? It’s worth saving some of your local steak or pork schnitzel for the next day in order to make room.
During blueberry season, dessert might be a lacquered purple-ish dome sealing in the flavor of white chocolate mousse and blueberry jam. Blueberry sauce is drizzled over the plate like a monochromatic Jackson Pollock, a study in the freshest fruit of the season. All of Badiee’s experience has added up to this moment and this plate.
See this: The glass conservatory feels like eating in a greenhouse strung with festive lights, but dining outside in the summertime is the best way to take in views of the Potomac below.
Eat this: Except at brunch, there’s only one choice, but the tasting menu includes hit after hit.
Service: What hospitality crisis? This large team is perpetually on its toes.
When to dine here: You and your other half have something to celebrate with a night to remember.
Feature image by Michael Butcher
This post originally appeared in our November 2021 issue’s Best Restaurants cover story. For more food reviews, subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
