Mount Pleasant's Blue Hill At Stone Barns In Running For James Beard Award

MOUNT PLEASANT, N.Y. – A fine dining spot in the Mount Pleasant hamlet of Pocantico Hills has made the short-list for one of the James Beard Foundation's top culinary honors.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a farm-to-table restaurant in Pocantico Hills, couldn't have fresher ingredients in its dishes. Much of the produce and meat is uses comes right from its own pastures and fields. It has been nominated for a James Beard Award
Photo Credit: *Blue Hill gallery*

The main dining room of Blue Hill at Stone Barns is a former dairy barn.
Photo Credit: *Tyler L., Yelp*

The late James Beard was a champion of American cuisine, a cookbook author, columnist and TV personality. His foundation celebrates, nurtures and honors chefs and other leaders in food culture.
Photo Credit: *Bill Golladay via Wikimedia Commons*

Carol Reif

03/16/2017 6:00 a.m.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a high-end farm-to-table restaurant, already has a bunch of awards under its belt, including one from JBF in 2015.

The late James Beard was a champion of American cuisine and a cookbook author. His foundation was formed in 1986 to celebrate, nurture and honor chefs and “other leaders making America's food culture more delicious, diverse, and sustainable for everyone,” its website says.

Blue Hill opened in 2004 at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a working four-season farm and educational center 30 miles north of New York City.

(For GPS and mailing purposes, its address is 360 Bedford Road, Tarrytown.)

The restaurant says its mission is to “create a consciousness about the effect of everyday food choices.”

It sources its produce and meats from the surrounding fields and pastures, as well as other local farms.

(Look out its window at the bucolic scenery and you might see tomorrow’s dinner waddling by. Think chickens, ducks and piggies.)

The intent of using such nearby ingredients is to highlight the “abundant resources of the Hudson Valley," it says.

And in keeping with that philosophy, Blue Hill doesn’t have a set menu.

Guests are instead offered the multi-taste Grazing, Pecking, Rooting menu featuring “the best offerings from the field and market.”

The nominees were unveiled Wednesday, March 15, in Los Angeles at a breakfast hosted by Susan Ungaro and Mitchell Davis, the foundation’s president and executive vice president respectively.

Blue Hills was nominated in the category covering restaurants in operation for five years or more that have demonstrated high standards of hospitality and service.

Ungaro said that nominees were picked in nearly 60 categories including Restaurant and Chef, Restaurant Design, and Media.

The chef and restaurant award winners will be announced on Monday, May 1, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

The winners of the 2017 James Beard Media Awards will be announced on Tuesday, April 25, at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers in New York City.

All JBF Award winners receive a certificate and a medallion engraved with the James Beard Foundation Awards insignia. There are no cash prizes.

Blue Hill spokeswoman Irene Hamburger said Wednesday that the restaurant preferred “not to comment” on the nomination until after the awards ceremony.

For a complete list of nominees, visit www.jamesbeard.org/awards.

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