Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Blue Hill at Stone Barns has been on our hit list for over 4 years now. Every year, my partner attempted to book the reservation online, but they would always be unsuccessful. This year, I decided to take a shot at it, and I scored a June 19th, Thursday, reservation for 5 PM. This restaurant has 2 Michelin Stars, and it is located near Tarrytown in Westchester County. It’s possible to do a train ride up from the city and take an uber, but we opted to make a weekend trip out of it.

Chef Dan Barber’s style can be described as improvisational, whimsical, and elegant. He and the workers advocate heavily for sustainable farming and food practices.

From the website,

In spring of 2004, Blue Hill at Stone Barns opened within the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York. The Barbers helped create the philosophical and practical framework for Stone Barns Center, a working four-season farm and educational center just 30 miles north of New York City, and continue to help guide it in its mission to create a consciousness about the effect of everyday food choices.

Sourcing from the surrounding fields and pasture, as well as other local farms, Blue Hill at Stone Barns highlights the abundance of the Hudson Valley. There are no menus at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Instead, guests are offered a multi-taste feast featuring the best offerings from the field and market.

Ambiance & Service

If you have dinner reservations for the restaurant, you simply drive into the farm, and you will arrive at a very small parking booth. They will take your keys, ask for your reservation, and park your car for you.

The interior of the restaurant was located in the former barn of Blue Hills Farm. It has high ceiling with those barn crossbeams, and it reminded me a bit of a wedding-type venue. The decor felt like a modern, countryside flair. The seats were very comfortable, though if you sit next to a rowdy group, it can get a little noisy. For most experiences, I would imagine it being fairly reasonable for noise level.

The service here was very good, mostly. My partner is an incredibly slow eater, and they would clean up plates very quickly. Perhaps it’s to accelerate the service. When we were brought into the kitchen, they took away all of our wine glasses, and they did not ask if they should bring it back to us. As I reflect, I was fine with it because I got my sips in, but if you were someone that wanted to take your time, it didn’t feel like that sometimes.

Some Yelpers described this as bougie, but it is an exquisite restaurant in the Hudson Valley, so you’re going to get some of that. Regardless of that feeling, the service was very good and respectable. The timing of all the dishes hit its marks as the night went ahead, and they definitely paced everyone right.

Food

The total cost per person for tasting was $448. The wine progression was $198, and the non-alcoholic progression was $138. They automatically charge a 22% administrative fee as well as tax via Tock.

Do note that the non-alcoholic beverages were made entirely in-house.

We opted into the farm tour that lasts about an hour. We arrived a few minutes early, and they offered us water and this Strawberry Spritz. This had strawberry, some fresh elderflower, and spritz in it. It was bubbly, very crisp, and refreshing.

As we toured around, they shared with us their general philosophy on how they approach food and keep things as clean as possible. Here, they served us slices of Beef Sausage, which had pieces of barley in it. The sausage was pretty tasty since they smoked it and grilled it. It was not fattening, and felt like a “healthy” sausage.

The Chalmers Vermentino, Victoria, Australia 2021 was a grape variety coming from Italy. This was very aromatic with solid stone fruit flavors and went down very smooth.

The Buckwheat & Sea Salt leans into concentrating into the sugars sensations of buckwheat. I remember this had a very nutty and earthy flavor to it, and the sea salt gave it a little savory sensation. It was quite good for the first course, the variety of different vegetable courses.

The Summer Vegetables and Sassafras Yogurt came with a medley of raw, edible vegetables that you can swipe the sassafras yogurt as a dip. As you can imagine, each of the vegetables was very crispy and fresh. Comically, the decoration was caught me off-guard because I thought that the vegetables were laying on top of some fake animal feces, but then I later realized it’s to symbolize the earth dirt.

The Flower Delivery came with a bundle of fennel. I’ve never had fennel raw and whole like this. The stalks reminded me a bit of celery, presenting a slightly sweet and fresh flavor. The fronds had various potencies of flavors. The ones that look like moss had a dark, licorice like flavor. The ones that were more separated had a slightly fresh, anise like flavor.

The Oregon Giant Peas came with 2 pieces and were seasoned. I want to say that this didn’t appear to me be giant compared to some of the Chinese snow peas that I’ve had in the past. Flavor wise, it’s very similar, and texture wise, it’s very crispy.

The Spinach Lettuce and Phytoplankton came with shears on the side. The spinach lettuce was bound together, and they asked us to use the shears to cut the leaves and dip it into the dip in the oyster shell. The really cool part about this dip is that it tasted like oysters, but it wasn’t oysters. It was actually phytoplankton, which is marine algae. This was deceptively very delicious.

The Squash that wants to be an Avocado came with avocado squash guacamole in a hollowed out squash. The pit in the middle was an actual avocado pit. This tasted earthy to me.

The Tondo Squash and Waste-fed Speck tasted like a summer squash. The waste-fed speck on top gave it a nice salty, savory flavor.

The Rebellion Corn Fritos came with corn chips in the bag. The corn chips had a corkscrew like shape and had a similar crunch to your normal Fritos bag. This one tasted a bit healthier.

The Fruit Thinning Olives consisted of immature fruits that were pickled. Some of the fruits included Cornelian cherries, peaches, and apples. The pickling wasn’t as prominent as I was expecting. Overall, it tasted like raw, unripe little fruits bathed in olive oil.

The Waste-Fed Pork Lonza and Saucisson Sec was delectable. The waste-fed pork lonza was super savory with mild pork flavors. The saucisson sec-style salami was by far one of my favorite dry-cured sausage charcuteries that I’ve had. It had a chewy texture, and it had a wonderful meaty and fatty texture to it such that it was so flavorful.

The Flax Seed and Pork Liver was pretty straight forward. The pork liver was from Stone Barns, and it was pretty good.

The Chrysanthemum Flowers was a bit confusing when it first came. Is the whole thing edible? No, it’s just the yellow flower tips. They were fried with a particular tempura-like batter. They have a mild, floral, and peppery taste to it.

The Chufa Milk was made from chufa nuts. It’s a plant species in the sedge family, and it’s used a lot in Eastern countries as snack food or a milk beverage. This one particularly had a smooth, sweet, and very nutty flavor.

The Fritz Haag ‘Juffer’ Riesling Spatlese came from Mosel, Germany 2023. This was amazing and had a nice range of melon, apple, peach, and flower flavors.

The Strawberry & Its Tops was absolutely delicious. They cut the tops and soak it in strawberry juice. It appeared to accentuate further the strawberry flavors

The Buckwheat Family had a rhubarb frost on top of noodles and a rhubarb, strawberry-like, dressing. This was served cold, and really complemented the summer humidity that we were experiencing the entire day. I thought this was very good.

The Weingut Knoll, Loibner Gelber Muskateller, Federspiel came from Wachau, Austria 2023. This was definitely dry and acidic with hints of tree fruit and floral notes. Compared to the Riesling, this went down less smooth and less rounded. It definitely had bolder flavors.

The Green Tea & Local Rice was made from Northeast grass and cut from rice from Vermont. The flavor of this was much more mild than Japanese style green tea. My partner didn’t like it, but I thought it was a very tempered, cold type of earthy tea that probably was a bit on the blander side.

The Celtuce, Yoghurt and Pine Nuts was not very memorable for me. I just remember it was basically lettuce with some yogurt and nuts.

The Tetra Squash and Montauk Squid (right) was very aromatic. The squash had a straight forward squash texture, and they cut up the squid into very tiny pieces. The squid was cooked perfectly

The Squash Stem Penne Cacio e Pepe (left) was a very interesting play at typical cacio e pepe pasta. I am not sure how they took the stem and cut it to make it like pasta, but the texture was very crispy like a vegetable. They cover it with cheese and pepper, and it reminded me of eating celery stalks with parmesan sprinkled on top.

The Gini ‘Contrada Salvarenza’ Vecchie Vigne came from Soave, Italy 2021. Similar to the last white wine, this one was also full of tree fruit notes with earthy minerality. The only difference is this went down smoother partly from less acidity and had slightly less punchy flavors.

The Chamomile & Its Stems was a little darker than normal chamomile tea. It’s quite herbaceous and had much more bolder flavors due to the steeping of the stems. It also was served cold.

The Striped Bass and Northeast Shellfish came with Montauk sea bass and Montauk shellfish. The sea bass was a decent sized chunk, and the shellfish had a nice chewy texture and tasted fresh. The green broth reminded me of a pea sprout-like broth, so you can imagine this had a lot of sprout flavors.

The Rest of your Asparagus looked like some sushi, but I remember it tasting like a mushy rice with some shellfish flavors in it.

After this course, they came to our table and asked us to follow them into the kitchen. I was pleasantly surprised that they set up dining tables facing the kitchen and watching all the chefs perform in real time. Some of these cooks were insane working at very fast speeds and frantically making things. I was thinking to myself there’s no way they can be this energetic every night. Regardless, the chemistry demonstrated with all the chefs was pretty amazing, and my first thought was how it compared to other cooking shows that had professional line chefs. In the kitchen, we also saw Chef Dan Barber calling orders to the chefs.

This was the Kitchen Tasting.

The Hanabi ‘Summer’ Edelweiss Pilsner came from Napa Valley, California 2024. This was a pretty straight forward pilsner for me. I’m not much of a beer person, though I can drink it. I felt this was very familiar.

The Blueberry Verjus & Black Currant Wood was a very flavorful, bubbly, fruity forward cold drink. I really liked the currant mixed with blueberry flavors.

They brought a small block of camembert charred cheese and cut 2 slices in front of us.

The Camembert Charred Cheese was a 3 month milk cheese was reminiscent of brie. It’s savory, mild, and also had some of that charred flavor.

The Badger Fleet Beet Pastrami and Rye was a play on a reuben sandwich but vegetarian style. Behind the plate was a badger fleet beet cut in half. They took the beet and treated it as the pastrami replacement. I was expecting it to be a pastrami-like experience, but really it just reminded me of eating a delicate crispy vegetable sandwich. The beef did not have an earthy flavor and was mildly sweet. The mustard and pickles was fun and a good complement to this.

While we were eating the fleet beet pastrami, they were examining a smoked whole pig’s head in front of us. The head was encased in bread made in-house, and one of the cooks had to chisel through the encasement to extract the pig’s head. The head meat would be part of a course for later.

After this course, they took us back to the dining room.

The energy between the kitchen and the dining room was night and day, and I have to say it was a very cool experience to have them incorporate the kitchen visit into the tasting experience.

The Bedrock Vineyards ‘Ode to Lulu’ Rose came from Sonoma, California 2024. This was a Rose made from mostly Mourvedre, Syrah, and Grenache. It was definitely a light wine, though I am not a fan of Rose in general. My partner enjoyed this a lot, so I had a few sips and gave the rest to them.

The Rose & Raspberry came with juice of the raspberries and its leaves along with roses. This was very floral.

The Overwintered Onions, Spruce Tip and Grass-fed Beef Skirt was interesting. The spruce tips were charred, and they skewered the grass-fed beef skirt with it. The onions were very caramelized, and the sauce was pretty straight forward. THe beef skirt had a nice flavor to it, and it was chewy. It reminded me of eating yakitori chicken hearts in a way.

The Dominio del Aguila ‘Picaro del Aguila’ Vinas Viejas came from Ribera del Duero, Spain 2022. This was juicy with some heat, round tannins, and minerality in it.

The Donko Mushroom & Spruce Tip was a tea with subtle mushroom flavor and spruce tips. It was surprisingly pretty good.

The Bread course came with 100% grass-fed butter and homemade ricotta cheese wrapped in cheese cloth. The ricotta cheese was divine in that it tasted like burrata cheese. The butter was also amazing too. The bread as expected was very good.

Waste-fed Eggs and Spring Peas 100% Whole Wheat English Muffins

The First of the Summer Fruits and Vegetables came with a cherry, some vegetable reduction sauces, and a pork reduction sauce. The sauces were super rich.

With the sauce plate, we were to add the Waste-Fed Pork pair of slices onto our plate, and use that to coat the pork. The pork was phenomenal. It was very soft and full of flavor, and even though it looks pinkish, it’s actually sous vide and thoroughly cooked. On top of some of the pieces is a little stick of chicharron (fried pork fat).

The Panther Soybean Tortilla, Peanuts and Pig Head came with a little small citrus wedge. This resembled like a pork head cheese taco. The herbs on top reminded me a bit of cilantro. The pig head tasted very meaty and lean. It was very good, and I’d for sure eat another one.

The Spruce Tip and Strawberry was basically a palette cleanser. The spruce tip reminded me of the smell of Christmas trees.

The Patrick Bottex ‘La Cueille’ Bugey-Cerdon came from Savoie, France NV. This was a sweet sparkling wine to end the evening.

The Eight-Row Flint Corn Tea was served hot. This reminded me of an evening tea to cap the night. It was subtly sweet, and it definitely had some

The Raspberry and Yogurt tasted very clean and fresh.

The Whole Wheat Brioche, Cherries and their Pits did not come with actual cherry pits. The ice cream was infused with the pits, and it has an almond-like taste to it. This whole dessert was quite delectable. The brioche was warm and soaked up all the cherry flavors and nutty ice cream into it. It was like eating a cherry cobbler with finesse.

The Rhubarb Strips came with a pair sitting on top of straw. The rhubarb strips were similar to firm jellies and were very concentrated with rhubarb flavors. If you’re a fan of rhubarb sweets, this was going to satisfy well.

These two Redeemer Wheat Waffles were made from wheat grown in two different soils. One of the wheats was grown in a richer soil and more fertile environment than the other. One of them smelled more cinnamon to the nose, and the other was more plain. We think the wheat grown in a richer soil help produce that cinnamon smell. We were told there was actually no cinnamon seasoning added to the dish.

For take home, they gave us a loaf of bread. The bread after 3 days was very much edible after toasting.

Overall Impression

We arrived at the farm at 5:00 PM, and we left at 10:30 PM. This was a full on 5.5 hour experience of food and experience. The entire experience was very memorable and enjoyable for us albeit the oddity with them cleaning our drinks very quickly when they weren’t finished. The wine pairing was very good, and the non-alcoholic pairing was even more phenomenal. Above all else, the whole package of this restaurant experience was well worth it, and we highly recommend this restaurant to anyone that wants to make a trip out of it. We felt the food tasted better than even some of the Michelin 3-star restaurants in the city.

Yelp Jabs

i enjoyed the food, but definitely wasn’t blown away as i am with, say, le bernadin, jean georges, gabriel kreuther, etc.

The restaurants that this Elitist compared to are all French-based. I don’t think it’s really a fair comparison since they have a bias already. For a farm to table New American restaurant, this did a fantastic job in my opinion for what it was set to do. If you’re craving for more French cuisine, then of course this one will not meet those expectations.

I was filled with what seemed like 40 different kinds of vegetables and I was craving meat.

My partner was feeling the same where they were craving meat. Fortunately we did get some meat towards the end, but it probably wasn’t as abundant as desired. I was fine with this since I did eat a whole ton of vegetables. Once the meat courses came, I gave a lot of it to my partner, and they felt uncomfortable the next day, probably due to not expecting the vegetables to be filling if you ate them all.

Revisions

1. Jun 19, 2025 - Initial revision.