The concept of eating local may not have started in Chattanooga, but the Tennessee resort city practices it with particular passion. There are more than 1,500 farms within a hundred-mile radius of Chattanooga, and they go a long way towards supplying the succulent, sustainable fare first-rate chefs put on your plate.
Here are some places that make it a point to buy fresh local produce, dairy product and meats:
212 Market Restaurant is laid-back and luscious. Chef Susan Moses helps craft seasonal and daily menus whose ingredients hale from local farms. She’s a member of Slow Food and has been a guest chef at the James Beard House in New York. Bread is basic to most any good meal, and the bread you’ll eat here is baked on site. Vino? 212 Market has won Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence each year for more than a decade.
St. John’s Restaurant boasts three-time James Beard award nominee Daniel Lindley as its chef, a man who believes in sourcing locally. Case-in-point main course: Cloudfest Farm’s Pork Shoulder. He takes sausage, Crabtree Farm’s Kohirabi Purée, Swiss chard, smoked onion relish and makes it all work wondrously well together.
Easy Bistro & Bar is but a block away from the town’s prime attraction, the Tennessee Aquarium. The eatery is located in what was the world’s first Coca-Cola bottling plant. Order up a Coke if you will, but don’t dis the wine list. It’s a nice mix of traditional and trendy vintages, served up by a bar staff that wasn’t born yesterday. The food isn’t fussy, but it is fine – and relentlessly reliant on select of local producers. There’s a raw bar here, what with the Gulf of Mexico being a relatively quick trip away. This is the perfect place to end a day of taking in what this surprising southern city has to offer.
(Image: Space Ritual)
