The Dish That Makes You

George started farming because he loves to cook. I often share this story with our beloved Coq au Vin diners as I paint a picture of the origins of Sea Breeze Farm. With a deep passion for cooking—fueled by countless trips to France and Italy—George’s culinary journey took an unexpected turn. Rather than attending culinary school, he chose to start a farm. Cooking techniques can be learned in many places, but truly exceptional ingredients—the ones that impart real flavor to food—cannot.

When I tell guests at our humble Cook Street restaurant that George’s first animal on the farm was a free-ranging chicken foraging on pasture, infusing rich flavor into her eggs and, in turn, into his favorite baked goods, I love adding that the farm truly began with a chicken and an egg. Their inevitable reply is always the same: “Which one came first?”

Flavor is born long before the chick hatches and continues even after the animal is harvested. Every detail—from the beginning of life to the end—imparts depth and sapidity into the ingredient.

Flavor extends beyond that still. The very act of growing and processing these ingredients has left me hungry for more.

Food is inextricably entwined with community, traditions and the rich tapestry of beliefs woven through the seasons, the region, and the deep love and connections among people.

This understanding is part of what inspired me to raise children—a profound desire to instill food-centered traditions that enrich not only their lives but also the community around them. This desire informs everything I do, and as my children grow, my conviction in its beauty grows stronger in tandem.

Consider the dish that the country peasant once made from offal and scraps, born of necessity to feed his family and refined over generations to delight his children’s palates. Later, it was adopted and replicated by kings. What began as a dish rooted in heart and history is all too often uprooted. Throughout time, this has been the pattern: kings and haute cuisine may seek the dish and its ingredients, but what they truly crave is the heart of the thing—the life and stories it carries. Yet a mirror’s reflection may look the same, but it will never capture the soul.

Good food offers a profound connection to life itself, and this connection is what ignited my culinary and farming passions. I dare say it saved me.

A person does not make a dish. A dish makes the person. It is the land and all she offers that inspires what arrives on the plate. It is the family, with their deeply rooted love and traditions, that dictates how ingredients are combined. It is the community and its interconnectedness that brings the fire to warm the food—the same fire that then warms the hearts and souls of the people—so the cycle repeats and forges onward, ad infinitum.

So when does cooking actually begin? Does it start with placing a pan on the flame? With growing the ingredient? Or with raising the person who raises the ingredient?

I often joke with George that if he ever wrote a cookbook, the instructions for even the simplest recipe would begin: “First, hatch the chick.”

If I wrote one, the directions might read: “First, suckle your infant child.”

So what came first—the chicken or the egg?

Does the man make the food, or does the food make the man?

Do you make the dish, or does the dish make you?