Rodney Dunn and Severine Demanet, partners in business and in life, planted the seed for their new restaurant 10 years ago.
Photography by Adam Gibson, courtesy of the Agrarian Kitchen.
Opened this summer, the new destination restaurant is set inside a circa 1925 former mental asylum, though the original stamped tin ceilings and tall sash windows are all that remain from the era.
The main dining room seats 60, many at a long communal table that runs parallel to the bar.
The floors are polished concrete and the dining tables are custom with local wood tops and steel joints.
Sash-style windows are also original. The black ceramic pendants above each table are by Lee Farrell, a ceramicist who also happens to be the Agrarian Kitchen’s head gardener.
On the bar wall, pink and amber liquors offer a warm glow.
Glassware is stored on wood shelves with steel backing.
A shop off the main dining room stocks kitchen tools, wines, and garden gear, plus more ceramics by Farrell.
Also stocked in the shop are cookbooks by chef Rodney Dunn, including The Agrarian Kitchen.
An entire kitchen on the property is dedicated to preserving foods.
Dunn and Demanet added a custom, steel-fronted wood-burning fireplace to the restaurant for coziness.
A private dining room off the main space has original brick walls and wood floors.
A warm glow during dinner service.
The Agrarian team had original bricks to spare during the remodel, so craftsman Dennis Benson converted them into a wood-burning oven inside.
The store and eatery are located in a building that was once part of Willow Court, a mental hospital that opened in 1827 and closed in 2000.