Harvest Moon Grille - Farm to Table done right (Charlotte, NC)
on a cold winter Saturday the idea of ordering a little something from room service was more appealing than braving the windblown streets. We were pleasantly surprised by a couple of pre-show appetizer plates and decided to dine at the restaurant after the meal. Attentive service...impeccable presentation and flavors...everything was excellent. Coming from Western NC were are very familiar with the "farm to table" concept and were tickled to see some of our WNC "friends" on the menu at Harvest Moon. Local sausage was flavorful without being fatty....local cheeses were subtle and well paired with pickled vegetables ... a creamy parsnip soup had just the right balance of creaminess to parsnip flavor... breakfast the next morning was equally good.
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carolinadawg
Feb 22, 2012 12:45 PM
I'm so glad you wrote this...I love HMG, but there is a loud minority on here that constantly belittles the place, most unfairly, imo.
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re: carolinadawg
Admittedly I haven't tried the restaurant itself, but I was at that Terra Vita sustainable food event in Chapel Hill last fall where they were one of the booths. I'd say of all the restaurants represented there, the dish HMG served was the most "generically" farm-to-table, if that makes sense. In other words, it didn't seem to be farm-to-table within the context of an underlying cuisine (like Watts or Saxapahaw is to southern or Panciuto to Italian or Lantern to Asian, and so on). Instead, the dish invoked a more fusiony feel without a specific identity - it was a soup with a lot of disparate ingredients mixed in (some pork, some uncooked cabbage, chick peas, maybe some cumin and a thai chili). The flavors didn't come together for me, and for the abundance of ingredients, was surprisingly bland. Obviously that's just one dish and in an outside context, but I think it echoes the complaints that some express about the place - they don't question the diligence to the ingredients that come in the back door but what is done to those ingredients in the kitchen. I think it was John T. Edge in Garden&Gun that likened it to something "straight out of the Moosewood Restaurant cookbook" and he didn't mean that as a compliment. But I can see where he's coming from - the soup tasted very "hippie".
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re: carolinadawg
lynnlato
Feb 24, 2012 10:59 AM
I've been several times and am not a fan. I don't belittle HMG, but I also don't typically recommend it. I do, however, love Grateful Growers pork products and I buy them at The Matthews Farmers Market (HMG also has a pig farm, and they sometimes raise lamb, chickens, ducks, etc).
For anyone that is interested, here is an article about HMG and Cassie & Natalie that appeared recently in Southpark mag: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012...
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