Snuff Mill Restaurant, opened in July 2021, was a small place tucked into a large U-shaped shopping center.  They advertised themselves as “farm-to-table” and they did reference where each of the meats were locally sourced.  Butchering was done on-site and a counter at the entrance did have items for sale.   Many other ingredients are also locally sourced.  The small tables were closely packed and had paper on top of the cloth.  Along one wall were raised tables with bench seating and there were about 4 seats at the counter in front of the bar where people also ate.  Even on a Wed. night they were doing a brisk business and when you make the reservation you are told you have the table for no more than 2 hours.   Faint music was in the background and art was on the walls.  Service was good, friendly and fairly quick.  There were a number of specials in addition to the menu.  We had a wonderful meal and I would easily recommend going there but check their website to see who becomes the next driving culinary voice.  Chef/partner Robert Lhulier parted with co-owner Bill Irvin and left the place the day after we were there.

Set-Up

 

Food

While we made our decisions we tried a couple of cocktails.  One a nicely made Negroni and the other a special that day – a very Dirty martini made with truffle-infused vodka and finished with bleu cheese and truffle stuffed olives.  It was very cloudy with the olive stuffing also mixing into the drink.  It was too salty, as dirty martinis are, for my tastes and the truffle flavor was non-existent but the olives were good.

 

We started with East Coast raw oysters which are specially priced on Wed. at $2 each.  There were 3 different kinds from Prince Edward Island, of which we got 4 of each – Fortune, Sweet Island Kiss, and Sweet Sensation.  They were all excellent.  With them was red cocktail sauce, a mignonette, lemon wedge and oyster crackers – sorry no photo but both sauces were tasty.

 

The Artichokes alla Giudia were two fried whole small artichokes with caper aioli, frisée and fresh lemon.  The tops of the artichoke were more fried than the bottoms and the caper sauce turned pink from the addition of paprika.  The sauce was a bit salty and I preferred to eat them plain.  Pretty good.

 

Labelle Patriomoine Heritage chicken breast was a pan-roasted organic chicken breast on top of crisp maitake mushrooms, fine herb and truffle sauce vin blanc with an heirloom carrot.  The chicken was cooked about a minute too long which made parts of it a bit dry but overall it was very good.  The wonderful sauce saved any marginally cooked bits as it was delicious.  The mushrooms were excellent and plentiful.  The carrots had a beautiful color and were also tasty.

 

A special that day was a 16 oz. grilled Langenfelder Farms pork porterhouse with Smokey spice, cipolini onions, wild ramps, braised Swiss chard and strawberry relish.  It was huge with the chard mostly underneath.  The onions were under one side and nicely browned while also cooked perfectly.  They kept the chop fairly rare and very juicy.  It was a very tasty plate.

 

We split an order of Roasted Tarragon Fingerling potatoes.  Nicely sliced and browned these were tasty but no essence of tarragon was detected.  It was an order enough for a table of 4.

 

For dessert, we split a Sticky Toffee Pudding topped with Million Dollar bacon and butterscotch-milk chocolate sauce.  They even had dessert specials but this sounded best to us.  It was moist and topped with a ton of whipped cream and strips of smokey bacon.  The bacon added salt to the sweetness of the cake for a tasty combination.  Again it was plenty for 2 to split.