August 31, 1998
By John Mariani
If anyone needed convincing that the future of fine dining in America may well be in the burbs, Thomas Henkelmann at The Homestead Inn in Greenwich, Conn., might be the clincher. Not only has the architectural integrity of this landmark 1799 farmhouse mansion been restored with classic good taste, but the contemporary French cuisine created by chef Thomas Henkelmann compares with some of the best in New York, San Francisco and Chicago. If Cary Grant were taking Katharine Hepburn out to dinner in Connecticut, this is where they'd land.
Thomas Henkelmann joins an increasing number of fine dining rooms in the suburbs that are set in landmark structures and offer not just superb cuisine and ample cellars but also the relaxed bucolic charms and spaciousness only country restaurants can provide. The Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Va., is an eminent example of long standing, but more recent entries like The French Laundry in Yountville, Calif.; the Wood-lands Inn in Summerville, S.C.; and The Ryland Inn in Whitehouse, N.J., are now among the most acclaimed restaurants in the United States.
This was most certainly not the case at The Homestead Inn from the beginning. The property began taking in guests as of 1859, but by the 1970s the rambling beauty of the land and the majesty of its Victorian additions had gotten pretty seedy. The walls were water-stained, the carpets dirty and the food no better than what one might have expected in a suburban restaurant of its day.
Then, in 1978, two Greenwich women bought the place and did a million-dollar restoration of the mansion and its 23 guest rooms. They brought back its 18th century ambience, planted new gardens and hired a professional French chef to run the kitchen. Immediately upon reopening, the inn attracted a nightly crowd straight off the commuter railroad who found the setting extremely comforting, the martinis dry and the food safely conservative. On weekends, suburbanites from Connecticut and New York's Westchester county found no shame in inviting guests from Manhattan to dine at the inn, which might well have been an inspiration for the kind of style Martha Stewart was to set in the decade ahead.
Then, last autumn, the inn was taken over by Theresa Carroll and Henkelmann, along with investors Ben Hedges, John Murphy and Tim Yates--all locals. Carroll, who once had her own casting agency, brought to the project her personnel skills and an enormous enthusiasm, completely renovating the decor with French and English antiques, softening the lighting and turning the once drab bar area into a very sophisticated lounge.
Meanwhile, German-born Henkelmann worked hard to bring the cuisine up to the level of the furnishings, and sommelier André Compeyre crafted a 400-selection wine list that immediately ranked with the best in the area, like those at Restaurant Jean-Louis, also in Greenwich, and other suburban stars over the New York state line: La Crémaillère, Maxime's, Crab-tree's Kittle House Inn and La Panetière Restaurant, where Henkelmann had been chef for five years.
Before making his mark at La Panetière, Henkelmann had been chef at Restaurant Maurice in New York's Parker Meridien Hotel, and his prior training at Auberge de l'Ill in Alsace and Aubergine in Munich gave him a solid grounding in both traditional and modern French cuisine. But, as with many chefs--especially those with 20 years in the business--Henkelmann wanted his own place.
"The Homestead Inn was known more for its location than for its food," he explains. "It was a place people went to celebrate. It was my plan to make it a serious food destination, and I knew I had to control everything, from breakfast and room service right up to the desserts." Henkelmann was banking on suburbanites becoming far more sophisticated and well-traveled than they had been a decade before, and his gamble paid off quickly. "We had a few people at the beginning who grumbled when I took the roast chicken off the menu," he says, "but we started to attract a whole new, younger clientele, and the old regulars started to come back, and now they love the food."
Henkelmann's menu has commendable range, from seafood to meats--often on the same plate--but it is also of an ideal size. With nine or 10 appetizers and about the same number of entrées on the menu each evening, guests can take advantage of the season and the market. Where once the food was conventional and old-fashioned, it is now very much an expression of Henkelmann's taste and Black Forest background, beginning with a trio of foie gras items on one plate--truffled mousse in a Port wine aspic, a terrine and fresh, seared liver with a Sherry wine vinegar sauce and green beans.
As a matter of fact, Henkel-mann cannot resist putting Hudson Valley foie gras everywhere on his menu, including in a delicious roast breast of pigeon with caramelized apples and daikon, diced butternut squash and a pine-raisin-caper vinaigrette. The fatted liver goes splendidly with poached loin of venison in a consommé perfumed with green Chartreuse and a little crunch of sea salt. He even pairs foie gras with sea scallops in puff pastry, which works remarkably well.
You'll find the most modern touches in dishes like tuna tartare in a potato basket with mango, avocado, lentils and a curry vinaigrette, and there are all the flavors of Provence in his lusty brandade of fresh cod set on croutons with a tomato-and-black olive vinaigrette. He is constantly trying to balance salty, sweet and sour flavors in his food, which gives it all wonderful zestiness and complexity. At the same time, there seems a tendency in the kitchen to underseason food, which would be only a minor flaw if salt and pepper shakers were placed on the table. Inexplicably, they are not.
For entrées, there is a fine Atlantic sea bass with lightly creamed artichoke chips, mushroom jus and diced tomatoes. Breast of Muscovy duck comes with potatoes stuffed with leeks and mushrooms, and given a sweetly acidic edge with wild cranberries. Grenadin of veal, a delicately flavored meat, takes wonderfully to lobster risotto and a Port wine sauce with parmigiano chips on the side. Not quite so delectable is a fricassee of Maine lobster whose resting place atop insipid tricolored fettuccine seems out of character here.
You may well want to opt for a cheese course, for Henkelmann offers an array of five or six each night, along with very good homemade walnut bread. But do not skip dessert--items like baked peaches with a marzipan center and warm vanilla bread pudding with apricot filling, apricot sauce and yogurt-lime sorbet are first-rate. Henkelmann, who admits to a sweet tooth, had been a pastry chef at Aubergine and oversees this department too.
Sommelier Compeyre, formerly of La Panetière and Trois Jean Restaurant in Manhattan, inherited a strong cellar of well-cared-for, older vintages of classified Bordeaux to which he is constantly adding new vintages. Although he finds that many customers show a decided preference for California wines--and they can get miniverticals of sought-after Cabernets such as Dominus and Rubicon--French wines rule his list.
Many of the big Bordeaux go to Fortune 500 execs celebrating million-dollar deals at day's end. There are certainly enough bottles to go around: The list holds six vintages of Château Lafite Rothschild (the 1990 is $480), seven of Château Mouton-Rothschild (the '85 is $540) and three of Château Pétrus (the '83 is $780).
Burgundy is also well-represented by top producers; the list features three different 1995 Puligny-Montrachet wines from Etienne Sauzet. And the sommelier is especially happy when a guest allows him to choose a discovery from a less well-known area, like Château Montus '95 ($48), a red wine from Madiran. "It's very original," he exults. "Those are the wines I am happiest to find and to tell my customers about."
Though the restaurant's affluent clientele doesn't seem to complain much, wine prices are high here--three and a half times the retail price. There are very few bottles of any kind under $40 and fewer French wines under $50; $105 for Château Gloria 1990 represents an outrageous markup for this popular cru bourgeois.
Perhaps no one balks because the total experience of dining in a historic landmark, looking out over green lawns from a table on the veranda, has become as remarkable for its food as for its natural setting. The Homestead Inn offers a lesson in such pleasures, and it's worth a drive, if not a journey, to dine so well in such a pretty place.
John Mariani is the author of the recently published Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink (Broadway Books).
Thomas Henkelmann at The Homestead Inn
420 Field Point Road, Greenwich, Conn. Telephone (203) 869-7500 Open Breakfast, daily; lunch, Monday to Friday, Sunday; dinner, nightly Cost Entrées: breakfast, $10-$16; lunch, $19-$23.50; dinner, $27-$34 Credit cards Visa, MasterCard, American Express
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