Ore Hill in Kent Offers Elevated Dining That Changes With The Micro Seasons

Somewhere between the main course and dessert round during a recent tasting at Ore Hill the palette cleansers arrive in the form of a sorbet. The secret ingredient in the dish is Habanada peppers a selectively bred variant of the better-known habanero peppers that Executive Chef Ryan Carbone explains retain the flavors of a habanero without the spice. So you get all these green vegetal notes and it feels like it’s about to get spicy but the heat never comes, Carbone says. 

The sensation, which Carbone describes perfectly, is one of a kind and exactly the kind of flavor that makes dining at Ore Hill such a treat. The ultra-select, ultra-high-end fine dining experience offers a multicourse immersion in local ingredients and chef-driven cuisine and the kind of big-city tasting menu rarely found in Connecticut. This is accompanied by high-end cocktails and a natural wine-driven wine list that doesn’t shy away from bringing some intriguing and intentional funk. 

The Country Oasis Restaurant in the semi-remote but incredibly charming town of Kent is the sister restaurant to Swyft and shares a kitchen with that restaurant. Swyft opened in 2017 and quickly earned praise from food writers in and beyond Connecticut for its casual farm-driven menu. Highlights include sourdough Napoletano-style pizza and grass-fed burgers from cattle raised at Rock Cobble Farm, the South Kent farm which provides many of the restaurant’s ingredients and is owned by the same team. 

Since the day Swyft opened, Ore Hill was planned but it took longer to come together than anticipated and Swyft underwent a number of changes in the meantime. During the early days of the pandemic, Swyft’s founding chef, Joel Viehland, left and the restaurant's owner, philanthropist, Anne Bass, died. But Bass left instructions for Swyft, Rock Cobble Farm and ultimately Ore Hill to carry on. And carry on the establishments certainly have. 

Tyler Anderson, one of Connecticut’s best-known and most celebrated chefs, was soon hired as culinary director. Anderson, who owns Millwright’s Restaurant in Simsbury, hired Carbone this summer to serve as executive chef. Carbone is a Cheshire native but after culinary school, he cut his teeth working at Michelin-star restaurants in Chicago. More recently he spent several years working in New York City, including a stint at Jupiter, a restaurant in Rockefeller Center celebrated for its housemade pasta. 

The chance to oversee the kitchens at both Swyft and Ore Hill was what really appealed to Carbone about the gig. “It was getting to use both sides of my brain, in how the food is executed,” he says. At Swyft he gets to work on dishes that are nostalgic and familiar but executed to perfection. “We just put on a bowl of roasted Brussels sprouts with a brown butter vinaigrette, and some toasted nori, and I think that's really fun and approachable, and just like an easy sell to the guests at Swyft. But then, getting to exercise that other half where I could do the scalloped Cruda with the gooseberry and shiso.” 

Anderson says he was impressed with Carbone’s culinary background as well as his understanding and excitement around mentoring cooks and staff — a necessary skill in a more sparsely populated area of Connecticut. 

“You have to make your own Michelin star cooks in Connecticut,” Anderson says. “It's different being a chef in New York, you have a different pool of talent to choose from than we do. I'm not saying there aren't good cooks, there certainly are. But there just aren't a lot of Michelin-star restaurants around here to train those cooks.”

Carbone’s talents can be seen in dishes such as ribeye with foraged mushroom and a honeynut squash, made with koginut squash, frisee greens, brown butter and squash seed oil. Both were fantastic and the squash dish demonstrated just how beautiful cooking with fresh vegetables can be. 

The scallop dish mentioned above is one of many seafood dishes that Carbone has started featuring since taking the helm in the kitchen at Ore Hill. “I love cooking seafood,” he says. “Trying new things with fish that I haven't seen before, or seeing things other chefs are doing that are really pushing the boundaries and trying to replicate that.” 

Examples of this during my meal include scallop crudo gooseberry, red shisho topped with kohlrabi, basil oil — one of the best and most innovative scallop dishes I’ve ever had. Another seafood standout is the Beausoleil Oyster topped with garlic scape kimchi. 

But it’s the kind of restaurant that isn’t so much about the individual dishes but rather the whole experience and how each dish provides a new window into seasonal ingredients and what the chef chooses to do with them.  These dishes are complemented by an equally impressive beverage program. The cocktails are designed by head bartender Maddie Schneider and are bursting with creativity and flavor — they stand out in an era when creative cocktails are a given at most restaurants. Each cocktail is identified simply by Roman numerals. The first called I. is made with Mine Hill Rye, a Connecticut spirit, that is infused here with bone morrow and then mixed with mushroom vermouth, white cocoa liqueur and thyme to create a wonderfully savory cocktail. The II. is a gin drink with shiso tea and nutmeg liqueur that is served hot and is that rare heated cocktail that is actually as good as it sounds. 

The wines and pairings recommended by Sommelier/Beverage Director James Hopkins are amazing. Hopkins is a natural wine enthusiast, as am I, and I’ll be seeking out bottles such as Inconnu 2020 Rose and Kitchen Sink, a cider from Rose Hill Farm. 

All these meals are served in an elegant minimalist-decorated dining room that is adjacent to the Swyft dining room. Ore Hill isn’t a big space and is only designed to serve a couple of parties a night and that’s part of what makes it so special. “Because the volume is lower, it allows the team here to use smaller volumes of products,” Anderson says.”So if our farm has Yuzu or Buddha's hand, or one of these weird little citruses that they grow in a greenhouse for us, they might not necessarily have enough for us to use it at Swyft but we can use it at Ore Hill.” 

The fermented gooseberry juice that topped the scallops, was made from a small supply of local gooseberry that was lightly fermented than juiced and was only available at the restaurant for a couple of weeks before the supply ran out.

This is part of the beauty of a restaurant like Ore Hill, which is different from other restaurants Anderson works at. “At Millwrights we do pretty high volume,” Anderson says. “So we change the menu seasonally.” At Ore Hill Carbone and the team can explore micro seasons, incorporating ingredients such as kohlrabi which are only available fresh for a short time.  “Really letting the farms dictate what's done here is one of the best parts about it,” Anderson says. 

Ore Hill 3 Maple St, Kent

www.orehillandswyft.com

@ore.hill