GROTON — At Gibbet Hill Grill, dinner comes to the table with a freshness unrivaled at most restaurants. That’s because chef Tom Fosnot doesn’t just have a vegetable garden at his disposal. He’s got a whole farm.
About 50 yards from the kitchen door, Fosnot can pluck little green mizuna leaves, red-veined sorrel, aromatic mint, and cilantro and toss them in an Asian-style salad. When pickers deliver a crate of fresh-from-the-ground cucumbers, the chef can whip up a soothing cucumber gazpacho. And as tomatoes ripen, he slices them for a salad paired with a chunky grilled corn and green pepper vinaigrette.
Fosnot, 37, who most recently led the kitchen at Rocca in Boston’s South End, and also cooked at Blu, Rialto, and Clio, joined Gibbet Hill Grill as executive chef in early spring. The opportunity to work in this idyllic, rural setting meshed with his cooking style, and his life (he and his wife, Ruth-Anne Adams, also a chef, have three children under the age of 5). “It was a unique opportunity to do the kind of simple farm-influenced cuisine I was interested in,’’ he says.
Gibbet Hill Grill, which opened in 2004, is part of about 500 acres that were purchased by Groton natives Steven and Nancy Webber four years earlier for the primary purpose of protecting the land from residential development. Today, most of the property is designated as conservation land. The Webbers’ two sons, Josh, 40, and Jed, 38, and daughter Kate, 35, returned to the town they were raised in to build the restaurant and adjacent event venue, the Barn at Gibbet Hill. (Their company, the Webber Restaurant Group, also owns Scarlet Oak Tavern in Hingham and Fireside Catering of Burlington.)
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Photo by Wendy Maeda, The Boston Globe