Take advantage of summer by trading vinyl diner booths and checkerboard floors for picnic tables and blossoming fruit plants to experience breakfast fresh from the farm on a weekend morning at one of these unique alfresco venues.
Clark Farms At Bushy Hill Orchard
This is the first season of weekend breakfasts at the Granby orchard, which began in May after co-owner Becky Clark decided the farm’s kitchen — normally used to bake fruit pies and fry apple cider doughnuts — could be used for so much more. When she reached out online looking for a breakfast cook, Hazen Sturtevant responded immediately.
“I’d known Becky for years, using her family’s products in restaurants,” says Sturtevant, who worked as the chef and general manager at the Cracker Barrel Pub in Tariffville. Together, they worked on a menu and announced the news through social media, word of mouth and more than 4,000 postcards mailed to homes in Granby and parts of Simsbury.
“Opening weekend was phenomenal; it was a lot busier than we expected,” Sturtevant says. “We got a first-week glimpse of what could be. Every weekend since that, we keep saying, ‘That was the best weekend so far.'”
Breakfast is served Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The menu rotates according to ingredient availability but regularly features variations on quiche, pancakes, waffles, omelets, eggs Benedict and egg sandwiches. Menu items are seasonal, using fresh produce either grown on-site or by a network of nearby farms. “Whatever we can’t produce ourselves, we’re going to outsource through other local farmers that we’ve worked with before,” says Sturtevant.
Service is casual; customers order at the counter and dine outdoors at picnic tables on the farm’s spacious deck. Though the menu is limited, that hasn’t stopped the kitchen from experimenting with dishes like fowl Benedict (poached duck eggs and maple duck breast); mascarpone-stuffed French toast with strawberries from Easy Pickin’s Orchard in Enfield; and a red velvet waffle made with cider and topped with maple whipped cream. Entrees range from $5 to $13.
“When we started this whole venture, my idea was, you’re not coming to a restaurant, you’re coming to a farm that can serve you breakfast where the main ingredients come from what we produce,” Clark says. “It’s kind of like going to Grandma’s. I went out purposely to thrift stores and found plates that did not match. I wanted it to look like you’re coming to the farm.”
>>Clark Farms at Bushy Hill Orchard is at 29 Bushy Hill Road in Granby. 860-653-4022, bushyhill.com.
Lyman Orchards
If you have a huge appetite, Middlefield’s Lyman Orchards has you covered. New to its weekend breakfast menu is the heavyweight Full Bushel, a mound of hash browns grilled with onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, ham, chopped bacon and sausage, tossed with scrambled eggs and stuffed with Lyman’s apple pie cheddar.
“I got a couple of looks from my team when I put it on the menu, like, ‘Are you serious?'” says Lynn Deffendall, general manager of Lyman’s Apple Barrel market. “I have to tell you, we’ve sold quite a bit of it.”
Breakfast on the Deck is a long-standing tradition at the central Connecticut destination, which features pick-your-own crops, championship golf courses and seasonal corn and sunflower mazes.
“We go basically from Memorial Day to Labor Day,” says marketing director Tim Burt. “It’s really a kickoff to our pick-your-own season.” Guests are seated at picnic tables on a deck shaded by a willow tree, overlooking the property’s picturesque pond.
The breakfast menu features a variety of omelets, a quiche of the week, eggs any way with cheese and hash browns, breakfast sandwiches on hard rolls or croissants and Belgian waffles, pancakes and French toast with farm-fresh fruit and whipped cream. Crepes are new to the menu this year, along with Jamaican Gourmet-brand coffee. Entrees are $2.99 to $9.99.
There’s a concerted effort to use local ingredients in each recipe, Deffendall said. “Everything that’s offered on our menu, we first try to go local if it’s not an item that we actually grow or raise ourselves. We try to make this as relevant to Lyman and the locality as possible.”
Burt said the morning breakfast, served on weekends from 8 to 11 a.m., is particularly popular with families coming to pick fruits in season. As strawberry availability draws to a close, guests will look ahead to blueberries, raspberries, peaches, pears and apples.
“It’s a really nice venue for families to come out together and sit down and relax in a nice, quiet atmosphere,” he says. “Come out in the morning, have breakfast and then go right to the orchard and pick.”
>>Lyman Orchards is at 32 Reeds Gap Road in Middlefield. 860-349-1793, lymanorchards.com.
Rose’s Berry Farm
The morning meal at Rose’s Berry Farm in Glastonbury, offered Sundays from mid-June to mid-October, is called Breakfast with a View for good reasons. From a 100-foot-long covered deck, “you’re looking right over the apple orchard, out toward the blueberry fields,” says marketing manager Mark Sanderson. “In the fall it’s just spectacular, it’s crazy-beautiful when the colors start changing. It’s just a really nice view.”
Diners have flocked to the farm for breakfast for more than 25 years, Sanderson says. Rose’s keeps the menu simple, highlighting its fresh fruit in toppings for pancakes, waffles and French toast. Occasionally, they’ll offer yogurt parfaits with granola or smoothies, Sanderson said, and while the menu doesn’t feature made-to-order egg dishes, fresh-baked quiches are popular, with meat and veggie fillings. “Main event” entrees are $4 to $6.
While the setting is casual, tables are serviced by wait staff. Breakfast, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., is first-come, first-served with no reservations.
Guests often visit for breakfast in the morning and then go straight to the fields to pick what’s in season, Sanderson said, with strawberries giving way to blueberries, raspberries and blackberries as the summer continues. During apple season, Rose’s hosts a fall festival with pumpkin picking and hay rides. The farm also plays host to a series of pop-up dinners this year with chef Billy Grant, owner of Grant’s, Bricco Trattoria and Restaurant Bricco in West Hartford and Glastonbury.
>>Rose’s Berry Farm is at 295 Matson Hill Road in South Glastonbury. 860-633-7467.
