See The State's First Dawn...

See The State’s First Dawn...

1. The Catskills

Émigrés from the big city have transformed the dining scene in this hilly, rural part of Upstate New York, making the most of an abundance of superior local ingredients

IN DELAWARE COUNTY, EVEN breakfast is a feast. The dishes scrawled on Table on Ten’s chalkboard menu – ‘Red Egg in a Pan’, ‘Ham & Cheese’ – may sound simple, but the flavours are not: perfectly runny eggs in a rich, slow-cooked marinara; smoky prosciutto with mozzarella and home-made pesto; honey-drenched granola with delicately scented maple yoghurt.

This inviting spread is served at plain tables dressed with jars of flowers, in duckegg blue rooms with bare floors: an aesthetic that wouldn’t look out of place in one of the trendier neighbourhoods of New York City. Instead, Table on Ten occupies a rickety old farmhouse in Bloomville, a hamlet in the western Catskills. A scenic expanse of mountains and rolling fields, this unsung region is at the heart of a budding culinary movement, with new restaurants and growers championing local produce and conjuring inventive farm-to-table cuisine.

‘It’s pretty cool to have this in the middle of nowhere,’ says chef and waiter Scott Neild, a former actor who upped sticks from New York City to live in a log cabin up the road in Bovina. The Catskills have form in enticing jaded city-dwellers: Table on Ten came about after Inez Valk-Kempthorne fell for the area during weekends visiting friends. Like many recent arrivals she was inspired by the potential for a freer, more communal life on the land. Today, her restaurant serves a seasonal menu based on ingredients supplied by neighbouring farmers and growers – it changes depending on what they bring through the door.