When ordering dinner at Sage and Sparrow there are but two choices: Flora, or fauna?
That is, a choice of either a plant-based or flesh-based multiple course dinner — and the choice must be made in advance, upon booking the table. Of course, there is some tailoring to dietary requirements, but other than that, the dinner unfolds as a magical mystery tour conducted by chef RJ Cooper, newly installed as executive chef at Wheatleigh, a historic Gilded Age mansion turned luxury hotel in Lenox, in the Berkshires.
Sage and Sparrow, Wheatleigh’s signature restaurant, marks a new era for this country estate retreat’s renowned dining. Chef Cooper took the reigns this fall after the departure of longtime chef Jeffrey Thompson. Cooper began transitioning Thompson’s beloved Portico space into Sage and Sparrow, and reopened this charming place in October.
As it’s prior name suggests, the room is set in one of the spacious mansion’s porticos overlooking the garden, but with glass walls creating a sort of conservatory feel, and maximizing the entrancing rural views.
Nature is emphasized inside the dining room by voluptuous festoons of dried flowers and grasses draped from the wood paneled ceiling.
Chef in control
So with the Sage and Sparrow dinner choice made, all control is relinquished to Cooper — or more precisely, what is available from the mostly local purveyors and producers. As many as 10 to 15 dishes of tiny morsels may then be presented: no one knows what they might receive until it is on the table. We choose flora. Amongst that array there were beets with orange and tomato; salsify with buttermilk and dill; sun choke with white truffle — the real thing from Alba in Italy — shaved generously at table; barbecued whole carrots; avocado with cucumber, turnip, and porcini roll out.
There’s also creamed potato on a bed of white chocolate, a sweet thing among the savory courses, and a double take for sure. Desserts proper come later: a snap dragon, apple, and celery meringue; chocolate in four rich yummy guises, and also petit fours to finish.
The feast is a very innovative array of flavor combos, each artfully presented on such things as frozen ceramic pillows or beds of fluffy moss. (No, don’t eat the moss!)
Sommelier Michael Consolini flits between tables, clearly delighting in the wines he has found on his travels, and pairing them up with the dishes. No easy task given the ever-changing tasting menus. This is dinner as commitment and lasts for hours. And it takes a dedicated team to execute.
“This is the team that we built this year,” Cooper says. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve changed the culture. This is not a job, it’s a lifestyle and there’s a reason why we’re here. We are here to give guests a beautiful experience that’s from this community. Each dish is an expression of this community.”
Intricate culinary vision
A Detroit native, Cooper, who is a James Beard Award regional winner, opened his own restaurant, Saint Stephen in Nashville in 2019, only to become a victim of the pandemic before that venture really got started. With Saint Stephen in the rearview, besides Sage and Sparrow, Cooper oversees Hawthorne, Wheatleigh’s other dining venue, which is open breakfast through dinner, offering an a la carte menu.
Hawthorne is a stately room with a cherub engraved fire surround and arched windows revealing the same grand view as Sage and Sparrow.
Several acres of landscaped parkland, originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who, of course, created the wondrous landscape of New York’s Central Park, are framed by a mass of mature old firs, and then the mountains in the distance.
Chef Cooper’s intricate culinary vision is also on display in Hawthorne: Breakfast is a feast of pastries and jams, caramelized onion and preserved red tomato tarts, Feather Ridge Farm with Wilde goat cheese — not a typo we joke! That is cheese from Wilde farm and not wild goats — and Morning Star Farm’s Japanese sweet potatoes with black walnut miso butter.
All menus are seasonally inspired, with a hyper-local focus as Cooper also sources from the area’s High Lawn Farm, Bartlett’s Orchard, Red Shirt Farm, Sawyer Farm, and Scarecrow Farm.
Cooper will ramp up the food programming when Lenox turns busy in the spring, and add outdoor barbecues, a three-course pre-theater menu, and made-to-order picnic baskets to enjoy on the lawns of Tanglewood, nearby. Or wherever you like, really.
Ambitious platters
On Hawthorne’s dinner menu, smoked lion’s mane mushrooms with Jerusalem artichokes, and a black garlic truffle emulsion echoed S & S’s Flora menu with a veggie focus. Meats and fishes are treated with similar refinement, of course. Executing such exacting dishes is a precisely planned operation. Each ambitious platter is vastly time consuming. Offering the flora or fauna choice, says chef Cooper allows him some valuable pre-planning to meet guest’s desires.
“It’s something I’ve always done with tasting menus in order to be prepared,” he says. But he is also aware that concerns about health, the planet, and animal abuses are causing a slight societal shift to what is called plant-based eating.
“These days we’re seeing a lot more plant based for various reasons,” he agrees. “It’s how humans originally ate. Before there were tools to kill, humans foraged. The food in the Garden of Eden was fruit.”
Indeed, many of today’s culinary practices take cues from past generations. Traditional preparations like filling the larder during the growing and harvesting months informs much of Cooper’s menu planning.
“We have a large cellar downstairs to work with,” he said. “We have potatoes and turnips and onions and things stored in a larder, like people used to do.”
Cooper’s vision is to have more produce grown on site.
“We have a small garden. We’re going to increase that garden another quarter acre next spring,” he says. “We’re also going to start growing all the flowers that go into the house on property, which I think is extremely important. I am also putting in beehives in the spring, because with all the flowers the bees will have food, and they will pollinate our crops.”
Fresh eggs are part of this self-sufficiency, too.
“We're going to have a chicken coop next year. Eventually we will be able to build a greenhouse for herbs and vegetables, to lead us into fall and winter.”
Supporting the local economy
Copper says he is not re-inventing the wheel here.
“It's a philosophy that was started 50 years ago in the middle of Little Washington, Virginia,” Cooper says of the famous culinary destination, The Inn at Little Washington. “It’s become the model. There’s Blackberry Farm, too,” he mulls of the Smoky Mountains retreat. “They are in isolated places where people want to come and have a special experience.”
That is what he hopes for Wheatleigh. Something beyond cooking. “I tell the staff, you guys are the voices, you have to do it in your own way through the craft, to show people what this community is in a very philosophical way, but a very contemporary way.”
It's also about supporting local purveyors and supporting the local economy.
“It’s gonna tell the story of what we are, where we are and what we’re about, which is important,” says Cooper, “And I’m still learning all that too."
A big part of his job is being prepared. Very well prepared. Thinking ahead is the most basic of culinary prep.
“When we were building the larder, we had to think about what it was gonna look like in January, February, March, and into April. Therefore it’s a lot of fermentations and those old practices that were done before, but twisted with a modern aspect.
“If you look at books old cookbooks from the 1800s early 1900s, there’s photographs of drawings of their cellar in a house like this,” Cooper continues. “Right now in our cellar, potatoes are curing, there’s sugar beets, there’s turnips, there’s rutabagas, which make all those hardy stews that we love in winter. But there’s also vinegar; there’s things pickling; there’s things from our canning back in the summer.”
Winter is always a stretch for a larder. Spring will start the replenishment process slowly, and put seasonal greenery on the plate.
“Spring is when the wild ramps come up ; the morals and other mushrooms are starting to hit, because we’ve gotten all the rain and the sun on the earth. Where I grew up in Detroit, at my grandmother’s house, she had raspberries growing,” he reminisces.
“I still have her raspberry vines. They bloom every year; they're probably 103 years old. As a kid, I always looked for the first raspberry to pop out in spring.”
Just then, as the late afternoon light begins to fade, a young buck struts into view. “The eight point is back,” Cooper calls out. Clearly, staff know the deer well. “We took all the pumpkins and apples and scattered them out there for the deer,” noted Cooper.
Chefs and diners are excited by plants awakening with tender green shoots, and even tender new roots, but Cooper isn’t wishing the cold months away.
“There’s plenty of stories to tell here, right now,” he continues. “I’m going to experience the winter and also imagine what it’s going to be like when we’re in the summer and then fall, and plan for that.
“We all look forward to spring,” Cooper says simply. “This tattoo,” he adds, pointing to his left arm. He pushes up his left sleeve to reveal more of his Japanese sleeve inking. “My whole left arm is about spring and the rebirth spring brings.”
Sage & Sparrow is open for dinner Thursday through Sunday; Hawthorne is open daily for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and at weekends for brunch. Wheatleigh is located on Hawthorne Road, Lenox. wheatleigh.com.
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