A Side of Land with Your Steak, Sir?

by Hanna Raskin, Posted Jun 19th 2009 @ 5:00PM

Lonesome Valley's Canyon Kitchen. Photo courtesy of Lonesome Valley

With the competition to sell exclusive mountain lots becoming increasingly cutthroat, developers have begun using black-eyed peas and collard greens to lure prospective buyers through their gates.

Planned communities in the Southeast have long relied on free rounds of golf, celebrity appearances and swanky wine-and-cheese soirees to show off their properties. But Lonesome Valley, an 800-acre spread in Cashiers, N.C., is perhaps the first development to acknowledge the quickest way to a Southern land hunter's wallet is through his stomach: The development last month unveiled Canyon Kitchen, a weekends-only restaurant helmed by superstar chef John Fleer.

"We have 200 lots here and about 50 that we've sold," explains food and beverage manager Sallie Peterkin. "So we've invited the public. We've got reservations coming out of our ears."

The barn-like building that houses Canyon Kitchen was originally intended to serve as a rec room for property owners, but "it became nicer and nicer," Peterkin says. "We started rethinking."

Lonesome Valley's owners shelved their Ping-Pong plans, offering instead the ultimate gourmand's amenity: Fleer, the James Beard-nominated chef who pioneered upscale Appalachian cuisine during his decade-long tenure at the Inn at Blackberry Farm. Fleer has agreed to cook at Canyon Kitchen through Labor Day.

"This was an opportunity to get back in the kitchen for a limited time window," says Fleer, who's spent the last few years working as a restaurant consultant.

Diners at Canyon Kitchen are served a prix fixe menu: The lineup one recent Friday evening included heritage pork osso bucco, crispy Carolina shrimp pancakes and a bacon vinaigrette-bathed salad of local eggs and kale, grown in retrofitted mountain trout raceway tanks in the restaurant's backyard. After dinner, visitors are urged to finish their wine by an outdoor stone fireplace, just around the corner from a map of unsold lots.

"We've had some people wanting to look at property," Peterkin confirms.

Maybe it was the sweeping mountain views that hooked them. But, befitting a planned community in the South, it was probably the bacon.

Filed Under: Chefs & Restaurants, Restaurants
Tags: blackberry farm, BlackberryFarm, john fleer, JohnFleer, north carolina, NorthCarolina, southern states, summer