I want to address a review that came through via Google. I don’t usually do this as I know we can’t please everyone. What a gift that would be. Everyone’s tastes are different. Sylvan Table has a certain mission when it comes to feeding our guests. We are always very conscious of our effect on the environment. We embrace the slow food movement. Sylvan Table is a proud participant of The Pledge (see our website for more information). We serve food that is mostly local, seasonal, and always sustainable. It MUST always be sustainable. There is a method to our approach that goes far deeper than what is perceived. To make a menu that really captures the essence of local, sustainable, and seasonal faire for such a large restaurant while not overwhelming the stations of the kitchen, is not an easy task. No complaints here. It’s part of what we love doing. Of course, the harvest months are incredible. But the colder, non-producing months are extremely challenging. However, we will not succumb to the conventional ease of creating dishes with any produce you can find at the supermarket just so we can serve food we think our guests want to see on our menu. Think about the journey of an avocado; What does their carbon footprint look like? “Avocados have a high carbon footprint at around 1.9 lbs of CO2e per pound of avocados. The main reason for this is transportation emissions, since most avocados consumed in the United States are imported. Deforestation, waste management, and water consumption are also major factors." I get it, I love avocados too, but it's something to think about.
During the cold months, what excites us is serving food to our guests from our larder which was picked at its peak and sharing our flavorful winter greens currently growing on our farm and from our farm partners. When the seasonal produce starts happening, we are all about it! The variety is epic. The challenge then becomes, how do we get it all on the menu? How do you pick and choose?...
We choose by keeping to our mission and carefully selecting our farm partners. We know where our vegetables come from and who watched over them while they are growing. We know the farmers that tend to the animals that will eventually be on your plates, are incredibly knowledgeable and nurturing giving these animals their best lives until the very end. I feel very comfortable serving all of this to my friends and family. I have no idea of the journey of a strawberry in January or a tomato in February. So, I won’t serve it to you. But wait till spring and late summer!!!
One of the comments that hit home was that we have dead flowers on the table. Haha!! Here is the story behind the “dried up dead” flowers. First, all flowers, once cut, cease to live. With our mission to always be sustainable in mind, we try to buy flowers only once a year. We buy roses right before Christmas so that we can dry them and put them on our beautiful “live” Christmas tree decorated with dried roses, baby’s breath, and dried fruit. If you haven’t seen it, it’s gorgeous. Then after the season is over, we recycle those dried, and might I add romantically beautiful, roses in vases on our tables with little tea lights. The dried roses stay on our tables until the first blooms of spring. We have thousands of flowers planted throughout our property. We use those fresh cut flowers until the fall when they become sparse. At that time, it’s gourd season. That’s when you will find little gourds and pumpkins decorating our tables. And yet there is still one more rotation because those cute little gourds start to soften and need to be discarded. We then throw all the rotting pumpkins and gourds around the perimeter of our property encouraging them to self-propagate. The hope is that we will begin to find reseeded gourd plants around our land that will creep out past our fence line and serve as a meal for other animals and birds as well. It helps to keep the critters well fed so they don’t need to cross over onto our farm to make a delicious meal out of our crops. And finally, after the fall décor is happily decomposing and seeping back into the earth on our farm, you will find fresh cut evergreens on our tables. I cut the greens myself from trees in my yard and neighborhood. Then they are removed and composted to make room for the dried roses. That is the life cycle of the table décor at Sylvan Table. Still thoughtful of the environment and thoroughly planned out just like our dishes.
So, as I said, I’m realistic in the belief that you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time. We are not cheap… we are conscious and responsible. Of all the things said in that Google review, the part that was more cringey than the rest were the insults handed out not knowing the thought that was put into creating this beautiful space, mission, dishes, and overall aesthetic and the reasons why we do what we do. I encourage the author to read our mission statement on our website. Please come back in and we will show you around. I’m sorry you didn’t like what you were served but I think we could change your mind if you were open to it.
