This Michelin-recommended Ontario restaurant just launched a summer lunch series

Nestled in the rolling hills of Grey County’s agricultural patchwork, Down Home is more than your average farm-to-table restaurant—it’s a farm-table restaurant. The intimate 16-seat dining room is located inside an actual farmhouse on an actual farm.

Seasonal, hyper-local tasting menus are the name of the game here, built on permaculture farming that prizes resilient ecosystems, minimal waste and reverence for incorporating overlooked food sources, like invasive plants and off-cuts. Co-owners Joel Gray and Hannah Harradine, who live and work on the farm with their family, are pushing the culinary envelope on sustainable fine dining in the humblest way possible.

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“We moved to the farm without a shovel in our hands, and we’ve been failing forward ever since,” says Gray as he takes guests on a tour of the bountiful farm rows, gardens, chicken coop and beehives, plucking edibles for a mini handheld “garden salad” to munch along the way.

Over the past few years, Gray and Harradine have levelled up their farming knowledge and finesse to offer an experience akin to Michelin-starred Pearl Morissette. The result is that snagging a reservation at Down Home has become next to impossible.

Case in point: when they opened up August reservations on June 30, every seat sold out in five minutes. But you’re not totally out of luck: a new Saturday lunch will bring another 16 chances per week when September reservations go live on their website on July 31.

The new summer garden lunch—a $150-per-person, six-course midday tasting menu—takes place outside, on the farm’s back deck, overlooking the veggies, fruits, herbs and edible flowers that shape the seasonal dishes. It’s a highlight reel of the 10-course dinner, with optional wine pairings, signature cocktails or drinks by the glass.

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The new lunch menu features Georgian Bay whitefish crudo with charred turnips, turnip-top purée and pickled green strawberries; duck breast from local purveyor Brilliant Meadows, roasted over blackcurrant wood with fresh peas, pickled chili, shiso and blackcurrant purée; pig’s head tortellini; and a salad containing a couple of pickled invasive plants (Japanese knotweed and arrowhead sorrel).

Come September, the new farm shop will be open as well, where visitors can grab cartons of eggs (laid by the hens they just met) plus a curated selection of local products like the one-of-a-kind dishware the restaurant uses for service. And keep an eye out for Pearl the farm cat, who can be found curled up in a quiet corner for her afternoon nap.