We tended the hives
as they swelled with
honey. We knew
where that food
came from, down to
the square foot and
sticky tiles.
could tell you, just by flavor, where a local
apple or tomato was grown.
Oysters are a different story. The
platter I still dream about came from
King Eider’s Pub, an unassuming little
restaurant in Damariscotta, Maine.
These oysters were the best I’d ever had,
and for good reason, terroir-wise: They
were harvested not four miles away and
kept ice cold in water until the moment
I ordered them, when they were shucked
and served without delay.
“That’s the big secret about it,” says
Todd Maurer, who owns King Eider’s
Pub with his wife and three other family
members. “It’s taking that ‘eat fresh, eat
local’ to a level that you can’t get from
anywhere else.”
But even Maurer will tell you that ter-
roir is not just in the oysters themselves.
There’s a sense of community that
contributes.
“You have a relationship with these
guys,” he says of the oyster farmers. And
the customers are a part of it. One King
Eider’s regular celebrated his 85th birthday. His gift? The farmers took him out on
the water to show him the harvest.
“I always tell people the local way of
doing this is hip now,” says Maurer. “But
we’ve been doing it for years.”
As you’re sitting in one of King Eider’s
wooden booths, you’ll taste—and feel—
terroir. There’s a sense of place that
you just wouldn’t get if you were slurp-
ing them in, say, Washington, D.C., or
Philadelphia.
Or Hanover, Pa. At Sheppard Mansion,
an inn and restaurant there, chef Andy
Little takes the best of his little corner
of Pennsylvania, whether pork or potato
chips, and presents it on the plate.
“Our goal is, if you sit down at the
table at Sheppard Mansion, you’re going
to be able to travel through food and
taste the region,” says Heather Sheppard
Lunn, an owner.
Sure, that does mean farm to table.
Lunn and her family raise Scotch Highland cattle for beef, and Little and his
father work the restaurant’s garden to
reap the freshest harvest. But Sheppard
Mansion showcases regional cuisine, with
a menu that flits among twists on Pennsylvania Dutch classics such as scrapple
or shoofly pie and Little’s creative new
dishes, sometimes made with Snyder’s
of Hanover pretzels and Utz potato chips
(both of which are made in town).
“I would consider us a restaurant
that is inspired by the area,” says Little.
“We use ingredients from our farm and
local farms, but on top of that we are a
luxury restaurant, so seafood may come
from Massachusetts or Long Island. But
the inspiration for the dish is very heav-
ily rooted in the area.”
There’s a similarity, Little says,
between the kind of cooking he’s going
for and that of some of the hyperlocal
restaurants making big news in the food
world these days. For instance, for the
past couple of years, the culinary cogno-
scenti have been buzzing about Noma, a
restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark, that
is known for exploring regional Nordic
cuisine, using traditional ingredients
(such as halibut) along with others the
chefs comb the countryside to find (such
as herbs and berries). Surely that’s a ter-
roir you’ll find nowhere else.
Closer to the Food
I was quite aware of that last summer,
sitting in the formal, Victorian-style dining room at Sheppard Mansion. Little’s
sophisticated tasting menu started with a
heavenly beef tongue paired with impossibly fresh vegetables and herbs and
ended with a sugar-sweet tomato tarte
tatin. The 12-course meal was punctuated
with lots of regional surprises, including a
cheese course called cheese sticks, which
included black truffle–dusted cheese
curds and chowchow vinaigrette.
I felt the influence of the area as
strongly in Pennsylvania as I had a few
days earlier in Charlottesville, Va., at
Zinc, an industrial, modern bistro in an
old gas station. I had been drawn to Zinc
because of the old-fashioned meaning
of terroir. The posted menu promised
chicken from Polyface, the famous
