On a March morning at Coon Rock Farm — 55 acres of just about everything you can grow and raise — in Hillsborough, N.C., Jamie DeMent is showing me a fallen tree that’s being milled into tabletops for the farm’s biggest project to date: Eno Restaurant and Market.
Who knew the farm-to-table loop would become so compressed or so literal? But it was only a matter of time before the farmers’ market evolved into the farmers’ restaurant.
Eno, which is scheduled to open early this summer in downtown Durham, will serve dishes made from Coon Rock’s meat, vegetables, eggs and milk (including from a cow named Eudora — as in Welty). Toward the end of the meal, diners will be handed a dessert menu and a market menu. Liked the pork chop and Russian kale? Take some home and cook them your way. As DeMent envisions it, “You’ll be able to get a little brown bag if you thought that was the greatest pork chop you’ve ever had in your life, which it will be.”
The restaurant’s market area will also sell house-made charcuterie, cheeses and prepared food. Subscribers to Coon Rock’s community-supported agriculture program, or C.S.A., can pick up their weekly allotment there, too. If all goes according to plan, Eno will be like a farm stand with a wine list.
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Photo by David La Spina for The New York Times