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The story below is an excerpt from our July/August 2017 issue. For the rest of this story and more like it subscribe today, log in to read our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app. Thank you!
These two restaurants are as dedicated to local-ingredient perfection in their menus as any you’ll find.
“Locavores Welcome” proclaim the T-shirts of every server at The Farmer’s Table in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The theme of eating locally starts just inside the door, behind the bar, where a tall chalkboard is completely filled with the names of regional vendors and their products.
Lettuces come from the Tyger River Smart Farm in Duncan, South Carolina. Crescent Moon Farms in Westminster supplies Grade A goat cheese. From Columbia come stone-ground grits from Allen Brothers. North Carolina’s Hickory Nut Gap Farm is the purveyor of ground pork. From just up the road in Chesnee, South Carolina, there is raw honey, collected by the folks at Horse Creek Farms.
And then there are eggs. Hens all over the state of South Carolina are contributing to the success of The Farmer’s Table, where breakfast is served all day long. Located just outside downtown Spartanburg, the restaurant opened on March 7, 2012, two months before the enterprising young owners were married. Joel and Lenora Sansbury managed to establish a new marriage and a new business at the same time.
With her culinary degree from Charleston’s Johnson & Wales University and his background in athletic training at the University of South Carolina, the couple traveled all over the United States, gathering ideas from restaurants of every possible classification before formulating their mission: “Serving delicious local foods at reasonable prices for every meal of the day.” The restaurant’s logo features a tractor and the words “local food, local fun, local life.”
On that chalkboard, five different sources for local and regional eggs are listed: Lawson Farms in Pauline, South Carolina; Silver Lake Farm in Duncan; Veritas Farms in Spartanburg; Mountain View Berry Farms in Landrum; and Moon Farms in Spartanburg. All the chickens that produce those eggs are free-range. Every egg is farm-fresh.
And why so many eggs? At The Farmer’s Table, Eggs Benedict dishes are the centerpiece of that all-day breakfast menu. There are more variations on this American brunch standard than any we’ve ever seen. Using house-made Canadian bacon, The Farmer’s Table assembles its Classic, on an English muffin with hollandaise sauce.
