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The dining experience at the Floyd winery is based on David Morrisette’s approach to hiring chefs: “Attitude first, clean food next.”
When David Morrisette was a young man, he worked a summer job waiting tables at a resort restaurant. It was a short lived gig (lasting all of one shift) that had him swearing off restaurants for good. Isn’t it ironic, then, that he now owns one of the Blue Ridge Parkway’s most admired dining experiences?
Morrisette’s family, hailing from Greensboro, North Carolina, began purchasing land in Floyd in the 1950s at $50 an acre. Over time, they accumulated a large tract which they used as a family retreat. Besides retreating, Morrisette’s parents liked exploring new ventures—in particular, turning the fruit of the land into drinks for conviviality. When Morrisette was 10, his parents started making moonshine. Then they decided to make wine. They planted two acres of grapes and blasted a cave, creating a dirt floor cellar. Morrisette laughs as he recollects his unconventional childhood.
“My dad was eccentric,” he says with an air of admission, but with admiration, too.
By the time Morrisette graduated high school, his parents were committed to the idea of a winery. Morrisette had been considering a career in landscape architecture, but opted to join the family business. He earned a degree in grape growing and wine making from Mississippi State, then came home and ripped out every vine his parents had planted. He replanted Niagara grapes—a native American variety that renders a sweet wine much beloved in the South. Morrisette says it was their Sweet Mountain Laurel wine made from the Niagara grape that carried the winery through those early years.
When Morrisette’s family first opened the winery (licensed in 1978) Floyd was barely a dot on the map.
“Floyd wasn’t a cool town when we first opened,” says Morrisette. “There was one B&B and one diner. People’d come here and ask, ‘Where’s there to eat around here?’”
It was the Morrisette’s inability to provide a good answer that led them to open a restaurant—of sorts. They started as a drive-thru diner offering grilled cheese sandwiches and vegetable soup. Morrisette points to different parts of the current restaurant (that began as the original winery, restaurant and Morrisette’s home) describing how diners would order at one window and pick-up at the next.
“We started doing this in ’88,” he says. “And it just crazily grew from there.”
I’d say. Chateau Morrisette is now a fully orbed, farm-to-table, fine-dining experience. They hire chefs on a rotational system, bringing in new chef blood every one to three years. In this way, Chateau offers guests different cooking styles while maintaining its commitment to the farm-to-table experience. Morrisette says chefs seem to like it, too.
When hiring a new chef, Morrisette looks for attitude first, and clean food next.
“I don’t like food drowned in heavy sauces,” he explains. “Let the food speak for itself.” As part of the interview process, chef candidates cook a five-course meal using whatever is in the kitchen. Morrisette says he’s never interested in how fast a chef can turn out a dish; he cares only how well he or she turns out a dish. Just as Morrisette will never rush guests through a meal (they plan for two-hour dining experiences, but guests often stay hours longer), he never wants his chefs to rush through food preparation, either.
As for what’s in the kitchen, imagine the essence of Floyd: native, homemade, unpretentious, pure. Chateau Morrisette either grows or co-ops regionally for all its produce, meats and grains. It cooks its own stocks, salsas and jellies from scratch. Just as in the old kitchens of French peasant homes, a pot is always boiling on the back burner of the Chateau Morrisette stove. It produces its own cheeses and yogurts using cream from goats raised on Morrisette’s personal property. The Chateau even grinds its own grain for the flour used in its pastries and breads.
Here is where Chateau Morrisette speaks to me; speaks to my soul. I enjoy many types of cuisine and restaurant experiences. But it is the pure, local earthiness of farm-to-table I love most. At Chateau, this experience finds its apex. It is a place gorgeous in views, delicious in tastes and generous in spirit. When my husband and I dined at Chateau Morrisette, we started with a small plate of the Charcuterie and Cheese. The cheeses were a fine mix of creamy and smooth, to assertive and sharp; coupled with the tantalizing saltiness of cured meats. But it was the Morrisette Farms Wine Jelly that had me in rapture; a perfect sweet tartness, harmonizing the plate’s distinctive flavors. This small plate acted the way a first course should: awakening my taste buds and exciting my senses for what is to come.
For our main course, I enjoyed the Lamb Shank paired with Chateau’s Archival wine. My husband dined on Shrimp and Grits paired with Our Blue Dog. Both dishes presented and tasted true to Morrisette’s vision: simply prepared dishes, giving emphasis to the food’s natural offerings. It is food that reflects the open-handed nature of the land and its people; inviting and rewarding your careful attention. It begs of you: Slow down. Notice the textures. Savor each flavor. Taste this land’s bounty in every part of your palate. Be connected to this local terra firma.
Like a glass of fine red wine, it is an experience, and a gift.
Chateau Morrisette operates on a seasonal schedule. Visit: www.thedogs.com/Chateau-Morrisette-Restaurant for current restaurant hours and menu.
thedogs.com; 540-593-DOGS (3647)
287 Winery Road SW, Floyd
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