Visiting Mast Farm Inn
BY DIANE DANIEL • PHOTO BY WESSEL KOK

We first spotted chef Danielle Deschamps when she was running from the organic garden across the street back toward the kitchen at Mast Farm Inn, tightly clutching something.When she opened her hand toward my husband and I, she revealed a mix of purple and white beans that would be on our plate, seasoned and cooked to crunchy perfection, within an hour.

The extended Deschamps family bought the venerable inn in rural Valle Crucis, 15 minutes west of Boone, in 2006. The 19th-century mountain homestead was open to overnight guests and diners in the early 1900s for several decades. In 1984, it was restored and reopened as the Mast Farm Inn.

The tiny restaurant, housed in one room of the main inn and renamed Simplicity, has, over the years, gone from serving down-home meals family style to fine dining and, since 2007, to offering one four-course prix-fixe meal nightly, with a focus on local and regional products.

It was patriarch Henri Deschamps’ idea to bring the family together to operate a business. His wife, Marie-Henriette (she’s given in to Americans calling her Marie), runs the kitchen along with daughter Danielle, while the couple’s older daughter, Sandra Deschamps Siano, oversees the inn with her husband, Gaetano Siano.

The family is of French, Italian and American heritage, and, most recently, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where Henri was a publishing and printing executive. But the Deschamps weren’t strangers to these parts. They’d vacationed since 1996 in Little Switzerland along the Blue Ridge Parkway, which perhaps is why they run Mast Farm with a down-to-earth charm befitting the area’s mountain culture.

“When we came here we were first looking at property to develop, maybe for something educational,” Gaetano said. “But agents kept showing us B&Bs.We thought, ‘we can do this.’We bought a bunch of books, like ‘B&Bs for Dummies.’ Marie, famous for her Sunday meals, had a reputation of being an outstanding cook. “Everyone knew, if Choupette’s cooking, everybody’s there,” Sandra said, referring to her mother’s nickname.

“Cooking in Haiti was always with fresh foods. That’s what everybody ate.” From her southern Italian parents, Marie learned classic dishes, and is especially known for her gnocchi. In Haiti, she was influenced by Caribbean and French cuisine.

“A lot of people are skeptical about the set menu at first,” Sandra said. “But it really caught on with locals.We also have people book lodging just because they want to eat here all weekend.”

The lodging consists of the main farmhouse, built in 1880, which holds seven rooms with private baths. One of seven cottages, a tworoom 1810 cabin, the farmstead’s first dwelling, is billed as the oldest inhabitable log cabin in North Carolina.

An hour after checking in, we arrived at Simplicity. Three nightly seatings of 12 people keep the dining room uncrowded. Tables are topped with heavy china bearing the Mast Farm seal and keepsake menus with quotes from AliceWaters.

Mother and daughter plan the dishes, all the way back to the 200 varieties of vegetables grown in the raised beds. Our starter—a sweet and mildly spiced black bean soup with dumplings. “It’s a cross with what I learned from the Caribbean,” she told us later. “It has chili, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, red pepper flakes, with Italian sausage, and
was cooked with a ham hock for three hours.”What followed was the unqualified best Caesar salad I’ve been served.

The green beans from the garden appeared during the main course, next to an intensely flavorful pecan-encrusted trout from a nearby trout farm and wild rice with Caribbean-influenced herbs including cayenne and herbs de Provence.

Customers also have pushed the chefs for lessons, prompting them to start the Mast Farm School of Cooking, a Sunday-to-Wednesday seasonal cooking course. The one tradition that has fallen by the wayside is the weekly family meal. “No, I don’t do the Sunday meal anymore,” Marie said. “I do Sunday naps.”eP

Mast Farm Inn and Simplicity restaurant
2543 Broadstone Road, Banner Elk, North Carolina 28604
www.mastfarminn.com , 828-963-5857, Toll-free: 888-963-5857

Durham resident Diane Daniel writes for the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and News & Observer. Her guidebook Farm Fresh North Carolina is due out in 2011 from University of North Carolina Press. Contact her at www.bydianedaniel.com .