Every year for my birthday I like to choose a special restaurant to dine at. The last few years I have had some magical culinary adventures, and this year was no exception. Blue Hill at Stone Barns is a magical place. Many people who dine at this restaurant 45 minutes outside of NYC, fall in love with the place. In fact, it's a perfect place to have a wedding! I had dined at the Blue Hill in the West Village, and have dreamt of one day dining on the farm. And dreams come true my friends.

I made a 3pm reservation on a Sunday afternoon, which is smart, so we could take a mini tour of the Blue Hill Farm. This is where a lot of the produce and meat we would be dining on come from, and I highly recommend you check it out at some point in your life.

The room at Stone Barns is exquisite and stunning. The fact that you are actually eating on a farm is pretty cool too. The service is top notch. Of course, my main concern when dining is the food. The presentation of each dish is wonderful. We ordered the 12-course tasting for $208. Which actually is not a bad bang for your buck, if you account for all the amuses, etc. The cocktails were delicious too. (I enjoyed the bottle of wine I ordered which cost me $175, but when I googled the bottle when I got home, I saw it would have cost me $40-$50 retail. I know this is common practice at restaurants, these huge mark-ups, but as someone who rarely orders bottles of wine, I thought it was a rip-off. What do I know.)

As each course was presented to us, my dining companion and myself smiled with glee. There was a great playfulness to the food here. A tad whimsical, definitely earthy, but it was quite obvious that chef Dan Barber and his team were all about the ingredients, and letting them speak for themselves.

Many times I will have bites at restaurants and have culinary orgasms. There was not one dish at Blue Hill that blew me away and was orgasmic. But, as an overall dining experience, it is truly a magical place. I recommend you taking a trip one day, tour the farm, and grab a bite. You can even sit at the bar, grab a glass of wine, and watch the fresh country air blow by, as the chickens chirp, the pigs oink, and the grass grows.

Yes, you are actually dining inside a barn. Stunning.

Cocktails. The one on the right is called the "Peanut Butter Flip". It's like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in cocktail form. Awesome!

A beautiful presentation of vegetables picked from their greenhouse.

The "Beetfurter" with carrot ketchup. Ingenious and Senstaional.

Butternut Squash Whoopie Pie. More ingenuity and awesomeness.

Earned my green thumb by picking at and eating this plant. Fun!

Egg, Squid Ink, Celery Root, etc. Work of art.

Burnt Toast Ice Cream? Apple? Yes, please.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns

630 Bedford Road

Pocantico Hills, NY 10591

914-366-9600