The pretty farmhouse on the grounds of The Henry A. Wallace Country Life Center in Orient, Iowa
We had a lovely meal in a beautiful setting last night at The Gathering Table, a restaurant inside a white barn (built in 2003 to replicate the original) on the 40-acre farm where Henry A. Wallace, the former U.S. Vice President (1941-45) and founder of the seed corn company Pioneer Hi-Bred, among other things, was born in 1888. The food was prepared with vegetables and fruit grown in The Wallace Country Life Center’s garden and nearby, and the chicken and lamb was also locally sourced. The bread, peach ice cream, strawberry sorbet, crystallized ginger cookies, chocolate almond truffle were all made at the restaurant which is overseen by an Iowa native and well-trained chef Katie Routh. There were four of us and we dined on Bridgewater Farm Roasted Chicken, Cory Family Farm Lamb Meatballs, Early Morning Harvest Polenta Cake, Stuffed Kohlrabi and a Spring Vegetable Platter.
The dinners are available only Thursdays and Fridays – but there is a Tuesday July 31 event that sounds fun, a Quilt show displayed in the Center’s gardens and light summer meal. Thursdays are tapas night. In the restored white clapboard farm house is a gift shop and market with surprisingly good local crafts and produce. You can also wander around seven themed flower gardens, orchard and produce gardens, restored prairie and pod, and a 3/4 mile walking path with five sculptures. sculpture. Well worth a visit and we’ll be back!
The Gathering Barn where we ate – didn’t feel like a barn inside but charming still.
TakeBetsywithyou 