Around the world, both restaurateurs and their patrons are increasingly interested in knowing where their food comes from, leading to a veritable bumper crop of farm-to-table restaurants. And some places—pioneers in the industry—do this type of dining so well that they’re worth traveling for. Here are 26 of the best farm-to-table restaurants in the world, which have incorporated innovative concepts, championed sustainable farming and gained cult followings for their exceptionally fresh, and not to mention delicious, dining concepts and cuisines.
Contact Indagare for assistance planning a customized trip, including a meal at one of the best farm-to-table restaurants in the world.
Three Sisters at Blackberry Mountain, Walland, Tennessee
The flagship restaurant of this wellness-, adventure- and culinary-focused retreat, the Three Sisters offers a full immersion into the Blackberry Mountain experience. The menu is sourced from locally grown and foraged ingredients, and the beer comes straight from the Blackberry Farm Brewery. Whether you are enjoying a breakfast of the daily griddle cake and the seasonal coconut chia pudding or relishing a three-course dinner featuring the likes of thyme-basted guinea hen and Snake River Wagyu beef, your meal will be complemented by views of the region from your perch on the mountain ridge. And while some tables are available to non-guests, the best way to ensure a reservation is to stay at Blackberry Mountain.
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ARK, Copenhagen
Sustainability is the lifeblood of this Danish restaurant, aptly named for “a vessel that preserves life,” it explains. ARK charted its own course in vegan fine dining and earned a Michelin Green Star this year. Almost all produce for its plant-based seasonal tasting menu comes from within two hours of the property, much of it delivered by bike from local partners or from ARK’s own organic mushroom farm, Funga Farm. No detail is overlooked, from their zero-waste craft cocktails made from repurposed wine and coffee grounds to the restaurant’s décor, which features seaweed lamps and wooden chairs produced from sustainable forests.
Restaurant St. Hubertus at Rosa Alpina, San Cassiano, Italy
Founded by Dolomites native and renowned Italian chef Norbert Niederkofler, Hotel Rosa Alpina’s three Michelin-starred restaurant, St. Hubertus is the birthplace of Niederkofler’s “Cook the Mountain” philosophy. The idea encompasses sustainable practices, stresses the importance of relationships between land and culture, and pushes a no-waste approach to cooking. The dining room’s natural wood walls and fireplace embody the property’s vision of alpine elegance and create the perfect environment for guests to enjoy the freshest Alpine delicacies.
de Kas, Amsterdam
On the outskirts of Amsterdam, de Kas is housed in a soaring glass conservatory and is perhaps the most special fine-dining destination in the city. For dinner, the menu is prix fixe only, consisting of five surprise courses that change regularly. The chef champions local ingredients, either plucked from the adjoining hothouse–where diners can see the produce for their meals growing–or trucked from nearby farms. There’s nothing rustic or simple, however, about the presentation and the flavors; a recent appetizer consisted of small portions of three dishes: a light scallop-and-grapefruit salad drizzled with lobster vinaigrette, chicory wrapped in tender Ibèrico ham and two types of Arat potatoes served with a gooey soft-boiled egg and chopped walnuts.
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Open Farm Community, Singapore
Connection is key at Open Farm Community, which has built relationships with growers, herders, biologists and food fanatics across Singapore and southeast Asia. They are committed not only to providing fresh ingredients and limiting waste but to prioritizing ethics by using lesser-known grapes from vineyards that forsake the use of pesticides. Guests have the option of either a “feast” featuring the chef’s favorites or choosing a “meal” designed for sharing amongst family and friends. Standout dishes include Kin Yan mushroom ravioli with Eryngii bacon and potato crumble and the 450G bone-in Borrowdale Farms pork tomahawk.
Garzón, Uruguay
It may seem strange to find a gourmet restaurant run by a celebrity chef at the end of a dirt road in Uruguayan farm country, but Francis Mallmann has never been conventional. Mallmann earned his reputation as Argentina’s best chef in Buenos Aires, where he runs the highly lauded Patagonia Sur. In Garzón, an inland town 30 minutes by car from José Ignacio, Mallmann might as well be called the mayor. He owns much of the surrounding land and a small inn, but his restaurant is what draws elite visitors and foodies from all over South America. His creative concoctions, like the legendary wood-grilled meats and fish, may compare in complexity to those of international culinary wizards such as Heston Blumenthal and Thomas Keller, and given that even lunch at Garzón costs about $100 per person, they should.
Hiša Franko, Slovenia
World’s Best Female Chef (2017) Ana Roš is at the helm of this destination restaurant in Slovenia’s emerald Soča Valley. Her seasonal eleven-course tasting menu may feature dishes such as pasta filled with apricots, tortilla with alpine mole, rowan berry oil, preserved beets and roasted lamb. Community is a core principle of Hiša Franko: Ana’s husband Valter ages his own traditional “Tolminc” cheese and curates the restaurant’s collection of rare, vintage Slovenian wines. Seafood comes from from Ana’s favorite local fishermen, and all produce is sourced from the restaurant’s garden and nearby farms. The team includes a forager who picks mushrooms and herbs daily, as well as an herbalist whose homemade teas are matched to your mood and the time of day. Plus, with 10 guest rooms on property, you have the option of casting away concerns of time and transportation, allowing you to relax with the best of what Hiša Franko has to offer.
Related: Travel to Slovenia with Indagare Insider Journeys
Field Kitchen at Flora’s Farms, Cabo San Lucas
This 10-acre, family-owned farm in the shadow of the Sierra de la Laguna Mountains grows organic vegetables and fruits and has expanded since its original days as a produce stand. The Field Kitchen restaurant serves daily baked bread, salads fresh from the garden and meats sourced from the owner’s nearby 150-acre ranch. Seating is at large picnic tables under an open-air structure with canvas awnings. Menus change depending on the season, but there are always wood-fired pizzas, and lunch may include ash roasted beet carpaccio and a smoked chicken salad. Sunday brunch is particularly popular with families, who may explore the farm grounds before or after their meals (tours should be booked in advance).
Leo, Bogotá, Colombia
Dining at Leo means embarking on a journey through the rich biodiversity and gastronomic cultures of Colombia. This fine-dining farm-to-table restaurant has been rapidly climbing the World’s Best lists (jumping 51 spots between 2019 and 2021) and was founded by Latin America’s Best Female Chef (2017) Leonor Espinosa. What makes Leo so special is its commitment to Colombian producers and traditions, evident through every course of its tasting menus. As guests dine in the contemporary La Sala de Leo, they will find the origin of each ingredient from the meticulously sourced menu (dubbed the CYCLOBIOME) plotted on a map of Columbia. Meanwhile, in La Salla de Laura, sommelier Laura Hernández offers a selection of wines and cocktails born out of her passion for distillation.
Marle at Heckfield Place, Hampshire, U.K.
An integral part of England’s Heckfield Place hotel is its culinary program, overseen by celebrity chef Skye Gyngell. Marle, which is open to outside guests, incorporates fruits and vegetables grown at the countryside hotel’s on-property farm into all its dishes. Breakfast starts with cinnamon-cardamom buns and lemon raspberry polenta muffins, lunch might include tagliatelle with rabbit, swiss chard and dried chili and dinner is best enjoyed with dishes straight out of the open fire.
One White Street, New York City
A fateful meeting in France was responsible for the creation of the homey and elegant One White Street, which hit the New York restaurant circuit in August 2021 in the form of a cozy townhouse in Tribeca with a 1980s rock soundtrack and noticeably friendly service. Most of the ingredients used at One White Street are sourced from its farm in upstate New York. An à la carte experience is available on a walk-in basis on the first floor, with dishes like roasted turbot in a lemon beurre blanc (plus a goat cheesecake with a white balsamic reduction, fig and bee pollen for dessert), while a six-course chef’s tasting menu is on offer by reservation upstairs, where you may enjoy the likes of BBQ monkfish and chocolate mille-feuille. Keep a lookout for Dion, the resident French Bulldog and Chief of Staff, who can sometimes be found lounging under your table when he’s not directing traffic in the kitchen.
Related: The Best New Restaurants in NYC to Try this Fall 2021
Twins Garden, Moscow
Born out of a belief in the marriage of science and nature through food, Twins Garden is wholly a sustainable fine-dining experience that begins in the main hall with an open kitchen and ends with digestifs on the second level with panoramic views of Moscow. Identical twins Ivan and Sergey Berezutskiy have created a restaurant with nearly zero waste: 70 percent of the ingredients used in their menus are sourced from their very own farm, and at the end of each meal, many of the leftovers are sent back to feed the animals. Their “Rediscover Russia” menu reflects the twins’ desire to reinvent Russian cuisine using the best of products sourced from the country, while the “Vegetables” menu emulates the life cycle of the produce from beginning to end and is even served with vegetable wines, hand-crafted from carrots, parsnips, mushrooms and more.
Noma, Copenhagen
Given that it’s run by legendary chef René Redzepi, who has worked at such Michelin-starred establishments as El Bulli and the French Laundry, it is no surprise that in 2021 Noma snagged first place in the World’ Best 50 Restaurants list with its innovative farm-to-table Scandinavian cuisine. After reopening in a new space in 2018, the ultra-famous restaurant’s revamped menu divides the year into three seasons, serving fresh ingredients at their peak in different ways. The Seafood Season menu runs from winter to spring, the Vegetable Season from summer to early fall, and the Game & Forest Season from early fall to the end of the year. Most ingredients showcased in these menus are sourced from local farmsteads, grown on site or foraged from nearby estates—although some hail from the furthest Nordic reaches, including Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
Related: How To Make a Reservation and What to Eat at Noma 2.0, Copenhagen, Denmark
Babel, South Africa
The restaurant at Babylonstoren helped put the South Africa Winelands on the culinary map when it opened in 2010. The massive property, with a working farm and acres of gardens, embodies farm-to-table cuisine at its best, with the restaurant itself housed in an old cow shed that effortlessly combines Cape Dutch architecture with contemporary floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The dishes are imaginative and exquisite (some, like the red salad of beets, strawberries and tomatoes are almost too pretty to eat), and the institution’s purity is evident when, between courses, diners are encouraged to walk through the gardens where almost all of the ingredients are grown.
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Coelette, Jackson Hole
Inside Jackson Hole’s cozy Coe Cabin, Coelette is the latest venture from Persephone owners Kevin and Ali Cohane. The casual but polished restaurant’s playful design nods to both the area’s natural surroundings (a sculpted snow owl on the wall) and pedigree (a statue of Zeus—Persephone’s father—in the dining room). But the food is the real reason this spot has garnered so much buzz in such a short time since its opening in August 2021. The menu at Coelette is at once traditional and inventive, evoking the best of mountain cuisine with staples like sturgeon and duck complemented with wild chanterelles, and almost all ingredients are sourced locally through strong relationships between the owners and local farmers and producers.
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Boragó, Santiago, Chile
Boragó showcases Chef Rodolfo Guzmán’s and his collaborative team’s deep knowledge of Chilean seasonality, and a desire to experiment with unique products (think edible flowers and algae and fruit that is available only a few weeks every year). With water sourced from the Patagonian rain and vegetables from Boragó’s farm, plus a network of 200 collectors and producers in Chile, every dish at Borago is not just a team effort, but a country-wide effort. In 2018 they were the first restaurant to claim Latin America’s Sustainable Restaurant Award, and this year landed 27th on the World’s 50 Best list, and fifth in Latin America.
Hortelão at São Lourenço do Barrocal, Portugal
This al fresco restaurant at Portugal’s countryside São Lourenço do Barrocal hotel and winery offers one of the most organic and authentic farm to table experiences. Open for dinners only from mid-spring to early fall, guests dine on sleek picnic tables beneath twinkling lights, surrounded by the sweet scents of the organic kitchen garden and the savory smell of meat and vegetables wafting from the grill. That grill is key, as it is responsible for most of the menu, which changes nightly and seasonally but may feature dishes like homemade flatbread, grilled fish from the nearby Alqueva lake and lots of fresh salads with accents like pomegranate seeds and herbs.
Pujol, Mexico City
A Season Two appearance on Chef’s Table helped Mexico City’s Pujol become one of the most famous farm-to-table restaurants in the world. Everything here, down to the locally made wooden furniture, embodies Mexico’s unique tradition of honoring its heritage while continuing to innovate. Chef Enrique Olvera’s team sources ingredients from farms in Oaxaca and Xochimilco for the seven-course tasting menus, which feature dishes that showcase centuries-old techniques and historic flavors in fresh new ways. Favorites include the ever-evolving “Mole Madre,” served with tortillas, and butternut nicoatole—a traditional dessert made of maize and sugar—with elderberry and sake. On warmer evenings, we love eating on the terrazzo-floor patio.
Related: Top Tables Mexico City
Meo Modo, Tuscany
Located in the main villa at Borgo Santo Pietro, Meo Modo has gained world-wide acclaim (and a Michelin star) for its creative farm-to-table dining concept. The menu features fresh, high-quality produce grown on the restaurant’s organic farm and seafood from the morning’s catch. (And on the tables, decorative flowers come from the rustic-chic hotel’s gardens). Meo Modo closes for the winter season and will reopen in May 2022.
Petersham Nurseries, Richmond, England
For Londoners and in-the-know visitors, nearby Richmond’s Petersham Nurseries is a summer weekend highlight. The historic, impossibly picturesque garden and Michelin-starred farm-to-table restaurant are well worth the trip west for some bucolic country air and seasonal, Italian-inspired fare. During the day, the café is a great place to spot London fashion designers and artists (Matthew Williamson and Jerry Hall are regular visitors) politely digging into tea and sandwiches. But summer isn’t the only time to enjoy this fairytale setting: November and December feature winter feast menus, with dishes such as roast duck and festive cocktails like spiced orange and cinnamon Bellinis, along with wreath-making classes and the opportunity to gift shop while wandering the gardens.
Steirereck, Vienna
Expect the unexpected at this boundary-pushing restaurant in Vienna, inside a mirror-like glass and metal structure (no Hapsburg architecture here) surrounded by the greenery of the city’s Stadtpark. A garden with 120 uncommon herbs grows atop the building’s roof—only one of the many places where Steirereck sources the organic ingredients that make up its reinvented Austrian cuisine. Whether it is wild pike from Hallstatt Lake, citrus from the grounds of Schönbrunn Palace, or richly colored produce from vegetable farmers just outside Vienna (think purple carrots and white tomatoes), no detail is overlooked when crafting Steirereck’s tasting menus or à la carte options.
Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Hudson Valley, New York
Having a meal in the Hudson Valley at the bucolic Blue Hill at Stone Barns is a once-in-a-lifetime must for foodies. Located in the Pocantico Hills, the hard-to-book restaurant envisioned by Chef Daniel Barber and which earned two Michelin stars in 2020 (and is even harder to book now with limited nightly seating), has revamped its experience following its October 2021 reopening. Now, prior to dining, you can learn what goes into cultivating the mouthwatering ingredients that make Blue Hill’s food an experience all of its own with a tour through the expansive pastures and gardens and the “Innovation Lab” (during which you can sample small bites), all led by Blue Hill and Stone Barn’s experts. Both experiences end with a meal at the restaurant, featuring an extensive seasonal menu. For those interested only in that meal you have the option of booking a reservation in the afternoon or evening or a private dining room for larger groups.
Maaemo, Oslo
Maaemo is old Norse for “mother earth,” so it is only fitting that the ingredients used in its tasting menus reflect the flavors of Norway. Lingonberries, hazelnuts and potatoes are harvested or foraged from producers right outside of Oslo, and seafood such as the queen scallops and king crab hail from waters off Norway’s Arctic coast. After a relocation in March 2020, this three-Michelin-starred restaurant is the picture of artistic elegance.
Related: Top Tables Oslo
The Farm, Byron Bay, Australia
Byron Bay’s top dining destination is The Farm, a sustainable, 80-acre property with gardens, a flower shed, restaurant and pastures for pigs, horses, cows and more (plus, a playground for the youngest visitors). The main restaurant, Three Blue Ducks, is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner on weekends and incorporates ingredients from the property in dishes such as coconut chia pudding with turmeric granola and miso-glazed pumpkin with whipped tofu and radish. After dining, walk around the grounds or join one of the official Farm Tours. There are also workshops on organic gardening and beekeeping.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Byron Bay, Australia
SingleThread Farm, Sonoma
This boutique inn has won plaudits for its Japanese-influenced, three-Michelin-starred restaurant, which has drawn favorable comparisons to Napa’s French Laundry. The 11-course meal—most of it served on dinnerware custom made in Japan by family of artisans that goes back for eight generations—kicks off with an array of small bites (malted potatoes with miso grilled black cod and parsnip panna cotta with Hokkaido sea urchin, for example) artfully arranged within a tower of moss. SingleThread owners recently acquired a permanent home for their farm. The plan: expand their gardens and utilize sustainable agriculture processes to source 80 percent of their menus.
La Chassagnette, Provence
Located just outside of Arles in the Camargue, La Chassagnette offers a true farm-to-fork dining experience. It serves two seasonal menus: a “Fauna and Flora” menu, which may include such meals as vegetal ravioli of Mediterranean bluefin Tuna Kohlrabi and a more adventurous “Discovery” menu, with dishes like African eggplant, citrus, cardamom and black tea whipped cream. These menus feature a fresh juice pairing that draws on the delicious bounty harvested in the restaurant’s vegetable garden and orchard, where approximately 200 varieties of produce are organically farmed year-round.
On Our Radar: Lulu, Los Angeles (Opened November 11, 2021)
Following the 50th anniversary of Chez Panisse, which forever changed the landscape of California cooking, Alice Waters has just opened Lulu, her first new project in 40 years and her first venture in L.A. Conceived as a cultural meeting ground with a distinctive eye on sustainability, Lulu’s seasonal Mediterranean-inspired menu and décor from local artists is sure to become one of the newest hot spots in the L.A restaurant scene and a leader in the city’s farm-to-table movement.
Related: Foodie Travel Guide 2022: The 15 Best Cities for Everyone Who Loves Food
Contact Indagare for assistance planning a customized trip to one of the best farm-to-table restaurants in the world.
