Farm Spirit Winter 2019

Farm Spirit recently moved into a larger space that offers table dining now and double the capacity for guests, more seatings in terms of different times, and with a larger kitchen that boasts new capabilities like fire (literally they only used hot plates before to work cooking magic). When they finally opened their new space on 1403 SE Belmont St I quickly snapped up seats for F and I for our visit to check it out. Here’s a look at the Farm Spirit Winter 2019 menu during our meal in January.

As always, to dine at Farm Spirit you purchase reservations and prepay ahead of time. You will not know the menu until you arrive and are shown to your seat, but expect it to be 100% vegan and what Chef Aaron Adams calls “Cascadian Cuisine” which uses modernist techniques with everything plant based he can find within 100 miles. He also focuses on as little waste as possible, using every part of the plant he can. Even some of the plates are sourced locally from local makers.

Since they source mostly locally depending on availability and season expect dishes to change. Because it is winter, a lot of the techniques used for the food involved dehydration and rehydration to remove and add textures and flavors.

Snacks

You start with a series of small bites, or snacks, all meant to be eaten with your hand. As Chef Aaron likes to say, this is fancy food but not a fine dining restaurant.

• Popcorn with sauerkraut powder
• Walnut bread with rosemary salt buttery spread
  
• Seeded cracker with smoked beet, cultured filbert, chervil
  
• Kohlrabi sliced super thing and add herb-onion cream, fried abalone mushroom
  
• Carrot jerky with herb puree
  
• Winter roll with borage butter and yummy sauce using 2 year miso
  

Larger Plates

Next, we move into some of the larger plates that are more course-like. I opted for the Housemade Temperanc Flight – I love the creativity and want to support enjoying non-alcoholic pairings with food.

For this set, the pairing started with a pour of Apple Juice with Bay As the silverware appeared and we admired the silverware rest, Chef Aaron shared more of many fun stories both personal and about Farm Spirit. This one was about he and his wife sit in bed looking at Etsy giggling over and purchasing this flatware rest and there are many more whimsical ware that have been collected.

This first dish is Potato with preserved local lemon citrus, onion cream, fermented seed mustard and mustard greens, potato chips, tangerine sage

Next was a take on Beet tartare with Chewy beets, pickled shiso, grapes turned into raisins, mache, fennel, popped wild rice

Brussels roasted and kraut with pinot noir vinegar, squash puree with hazelnut oil and winter cress, black garlic, pepitas. My favorite part of this was the squash puree, though it did set me off on a brussels sprout kick for a few days where I ate 2 pounds of roasted brussels at home. Meanwhile, the next beverage on the temperance pairing menu appeared, a Marionberry Elderflower Kefir

Nixtamalized barley turned into tortilla, sofrito of tomatoes from last summer and sweet peppers and onions into a super tasty baby barley taco. I should mention this now, but I would always pick the counter seats vs the privacy of a table because I always enjoy the narration and back and forth with other diners and Chef Aaron. It’s amazing the ability to chat and hold a conversation while putting together delicate presentations and remembering all the layers of food that need to go in – and he does it through the whole dinner!

I forget exactly if it was the previous course or this upcoming course that I got one of my favorite drinks of the night – Turmeric Ginger Beer.

Mushroom duxelle dumplings with buckwheat pasta, nourishing broth, bay laurel oil I mentioned how I admire how much work dumplings are, and Chef Aaron mentioned that they take 3 hours making these dumplings for service. You can see him pouring from a kettle the broth in with the mushroom dumplings.

Next, a dish that takes advantage of new grill that Farm Spirit inherited from Langbaan and can now take advantage of with their much larger kitchen. Sous vide celeriac grilled and served with huckleberry, char sauce, creamed cabbage. Paired with Huckleberry and Wild Rice Kombucha.

Dessert

First, a little surprise from Chef Aaron before the official dessert- kiwi on ice.

Around this time we also got our final beverage, Spiced Carrot Kombucha

Malted potato with Oregon Black Truffles – this is a malted potato ice cream that has sweet and savory flavors.

Roasted apple cake with hazelnut and vanilla yogurt semifreddo, apple juice and chamomile “honey” with chrysanthemum leaf and sorrel. This dish will be in a melon cake form during summer possibly!

Marionberry chocolate bon-bons, beet rose geranium candy, cookie which here is intended to be a la mini whoopie pie

At the end of the meal, Farm Spirit gifts you with one more surprise- breakfast bread, or eat in the car bread if you wish (I’m not sure who can fit that in after all this food… it’s always breakfast for me to think back on dinner and ahem backup these photos from my phone and edit them!)

I personally think Farm Spirit is the best vegan dining in all of the US. I love all the potential of the larger space both on the kitchen side and to accommodate more people to enjoy their cuisine. I always recommend Farm Spirit as one of the top 10 restaurants to anyone looking for a unique experience in Portland, and hopefully the bigger capacity means that even if you did not plan a month ahead of time, there’s still opportunity to get a seat at their table.

I’m also super pleased Farm Spirit has even so much more to offer in the near future! Chef Aaron has built an incredible team with stellar culinary resumes and now with the new kitchen is sure to see a lot of new ideas and new dishes appear on the menus as they spend more time working together with the new kitchen toys and collaboration of many great minds.

Moreover, the old smaller space Farm Spirit used before will be turning into a more casual and also very affordable lunch spot and test kitchen for more modernist experiments sometime in the spring. Will this be the vegan equivalent of Noma and other food labs of some of the best restaurants in the world?  😀

Which of these courses most intrigues you?