The Dogwood Restaurant was in the Main House at Blackberry Farm.  On the 4200 acres are livestock, crops, fishing area and on and on.  It’s always fun to see the animals grazing but the crops were pretty dormant yet.  The cooler temperatures moved all of the people indoors for eating today vs. yesterday.  The staff seemed to work in pairs and everybody is happy and pleasant.  They seemed to be willing to customize a fair amount on your order which was nice but overall the larger portions at the Dogwood are less exciting flavor experiences.  If you had to choose where to have dinner, this would be the place for less adventurous people and all the children, as persons under 10 are not allowed in The Barn.

Set-Up

 

Breakfast

 

Chef’s Selection that day was poached farm eggs on Carolina Gold rice with wilted greens and roasted chicken broth.  It was soupier than I expected and had predominant flavors of pickling.  The eggs were cooked more than I preferred so that the yolk didn’t run into the broth adding richness nor thickness.  I liked the variation of the concept though.

 

A side of Nueske’s Bacon was 2 slices of nicely cooked fairly crispy bacon.  It had some smokiness and good flavor.  They plated it with the Cinnamon roll with buttermilk cream cheese icing which was doughy with lots of icing.  A nice amount of cinnamon was incorporated for a fairly good end result.  The toast was less toasty but still with good flavor.

 

The Omelet was filled with potatoes and grilled onions and Brebis cheese then topped with tomato gravy.  Served with whole wheat toast we added some Benton’s Country Ham to the plate.  The omelet was a fluffy thick egg wrap that was nicely stuffed with ingredients.  The ham was too thickly sliced and almost inedible it was so tough.  Once again the toast had good texture and flavor.

 

Lunch

 

Saturday they offer a barbecue plate.  It included J&S BBQ ribs and a smoked brisket slider with sides of mustard bourbon baked beans and sweet and spicy slaw.  This was barbecue that John Tanner’s BBQ blog would not feature as the meat had little smoke flavor and depended on the sweet sauce to give it barbecue flavor.  The slider was the tastier of the two options.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen brisket sliced as thin as this but it worked to keep it tender and bite-able.  The super fresh bun was very nice too.  The slaw was okay and not overdressed but the beans were my favorite of the 2 sides.

 

For dessert we tried the Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream with crushed Graham crackers on the advice of our waiter.  The ice cream was a bit icy and the strawberries so frozen they had little flavor but the graham cracker pieces were delicious.  I would have preferred a plate of them as dessert.