Form & Function

Exploring the design concepts of our borough’s best kitchens and dining spaces. This Month: Ground Provisions

The husband-and-wife ownership team of Kate Jacoby and Rich Landau are talented chefs known for creating tasty and memorable plant-based dishes, and they've brought their latest concept to the outskirts of West Chester. Their restaurant in Philly, Vedge, has consistent rave reviewers, they're authors of four cookbooks, and they’re constantly raising the bar for creative and fresh plates with vegetables as the star of the show. Because they are proud natives of Philadelphia, and fell in love with their home in Chester County, they were excited to open a space in Dilworthtown that prioritized preserving history and embodied their love and admiration for our local landscape.

Ground Provisions is split into a restaurant and a market. The latter takes inspiration from Kate and Rich’s fondness for farmers’ markets. You can find natural wines, coffee, and treats like reverse chocolate chip cookies, coffee cake, and freshly baked sourdough and baguettes made every morning. Make sure to try their delicious grab-and-go sandwiches and rotating prepared foods. You can sit and enjoy your meal on the front porch or take a picnic to go.

The restaurant side is an experience, featuring a five-course menu that changes throughout the year. Starting with a bread course and followed by various plates containing locally sourced veggies, grains, homemade pastas, it ends with a delectable dessert. A few favorites on the menu are the sourdough toast topped with onion schmaltz and carrot pastrami. Every meal is thoughtfully created with seasonal foods and locally sourced ingredients including their very own farm called Lost Glove Garden.

It’s impossible not to notice the care Kate and Rich took when preserving the history of their space. With exposed wood beams, wainscoting, and creamy walls with blue accents, the interior will transport you to a Colonial-era farm- house. Its simplicity rightly places your attention on the food and conversation. The furniture and seating—as well as the art on the walls—are all sourced from local antique stores and reused from the former Dilworthtown buildings on site. There is an existing wood china hutch that they fell in love prominently featured in both spaces. It’s been creatively split, with the top hanging on the wall in the dining room and the bottom half serving as a merchandiser for products in the market. With so many windows, the natural light gives the place a bright, airy and open feel; in the evenings, chandeliers create an intimate ambiance for dining. As Kate says, “We want the vibe to be celebratory without being fussy. We want you to feel well-cared for, like longlost friends.”

Ground Provisions opened in January of this year and has quickly won the hearts of locals. Kate and Rich’s team includes a talented bread maker, pastry chef, and chef de cuisine to create an experience that’s unrivaled in the region.

story andrea mason @andreamasondesign photo ERIK WEBER @westchesterviews

Dining Out

Sampling some of the borough’s best meals in West Chester’s premier dinner destinations. This Month: Split Rail Tavern

As someone who spent their early 20s partying in the bars that used to occupy this space, I’m always a little shocked when I walk through the doors of Split Rail Tavern. It’s as if I’m stepping through a magical wardrobe into a wood- and copper-clad wonderland that’s evolving and aging as I do, because Split Rail Tavern is as perfectly suited to the adult I’m grudgingly becoming as 15 North was to the hard partier I used to be.

When I got into my craft beer phase, who was there for me? Split Rail Tavern, with taps galore and a beer list full of beverages, from just down the street and all over the world, with names both familiar and impossible to pronounce. When I got into my whiskey phase, my gin phase, my craft cocktail phase, Split Rail was there for me with a liquor list comprising drinks that made me realize how poorly I’d been ordering everywhere else. And now that I’m entering this... well, the internet is calling it my “sober curious” phase, Split Rail still has my back.

My dining partner this evening is Kate Chadwick, our managing editor and a person who espouses sober life on Instagram. So, with me being new to this whole “not getting drunk” thing, I let her take the lead, and she orders up an Athletic Brewing Company Golden Dawn, a non-alcoholic golden ale made with Vienna malt that tastes like Belgium and won’t have me feeling any regret come tomorrow. I’m still not fully sold on the it’s-a-beer-but-it-won’t-get-you-drunk thing, but this ale has me reconsidering.

It was a genuine challenge for me not to eat every ounce of the mezze platter in the brief moments while my dinner date was away from the table after excusing herself to go wash her hands.

Mezze Platter

Don’t let the shrimp fool you, hummus is the real star of this starter made for sharing.

We’re tucked into a table on the first floor, back behind the bar where it’s quieter. Kate graciously accepts the booth seat, as I snag the chair across from her. The light is dim enough to give us that illusive feel of privacy and hide the egregious zit above my left eyebrow, but generous enough that neither of us needs to flip on a flashlight to read the menu. Since the low-end age of the crowd on this random Thursday is about 30, the background chatter from the bar is a gentle rumbling that blends into a pleasant white noise filling the lulls as we chat, rather than the overwhelming roar that drowns the capacity for conversation at other hot spots.

My sober curiosity, while partly driven by the desire to avoid hangovers which are becoming multi-day affairs, is primar- ily tied to my vanity. Every year it gets a little bit harder to remain fit, and it’s a sad truth that being hot is basically a cheat code for real life. If cutting out booze and fixing my diet aids my attractiveness, I’m all about it. So, as I’m perusing the menu, I’m quietly counting calories. Kate is kind enough to let me choose, so we (me) opt to start healthy, with the mezze platter and the Split Rail salad.

Step One: Scan this code Step Two: Provide an address Step Three: Get this magazine mailed to your home for free.

The salad is excellent. It’s equal parts sweet and savory, rich and light, with the toasted walnuts balancing the vinaigrette and berries pairing with the bleu cheese. Every bite of spring mix is loaded with these accents, and it makes the act of eating a salad feel decadent.

Next up, the mezze platter, which — based on an article I read on the internet five years ago about how the Mediterranean diet’s optimal for longevity — must be healthy, despite being built around a creamy hummus atoll with a generously olive oil-filled lagoon. The

Split Rail Salad

Toasted walnuts, blueberries & bleu cheese crumbles turn spring greens into an indulgence.

rest of the board features Greek vegetable salad, with fresh crumbled feta, plus a bowl of tabouli and some bright and zesty tzatziki for dipping the perfectly toasted and spiced pitas. If you want to make it an entree, you can even throw on a shrimp or chicken skewer. It was a genuine challenge for me not to eat every ounce of the mezze platter in the brief moments while my dinner date was away from the table after excusing herself to go wash her hands.

One of my go-to moves when eating out is to order something I’m not going to make at home. Hitting the perfect sweet spot where “flavors I crave” meets “things I’m not even sure how to source for home cooking” is duck. I love it, and yet it’s hit or miss — a dish so easily ruined by poor preparation that it’s either exquisite or inedible. So, despite the duck noodle soup screaming at me from the entree section of the menu, I ask our server to weigh in on whether it’s a good option. I received an unexpectedly honest answer: he doesn’t eat duck, so he couldn’t tell me either way. Fair enough, I think, but this meal is getting expensed, so why risk ruining my dinner by misfiring on my entree order, if I can double down and also order the pickle-brined fried chicken sandwich?

As it turns out, the backup entree was entirely unnecessary — Split Rail has officially served me the best duck I’ve ever tasted. Ever. It’s crispy, yet melts in my mouth. Its natural oils are brought forth without the dish feeling greasy. Served atop dense noodles with a little bit of bite, sitting in a simmering, red broth with what I’d consider just a little kick and my mother would classify as spicy, topped with thin-sliced, sauteed mushrooms, and garnished with some sesame seeds and green onions, it’s easily a top-ten dish in this town.

Kate is a much more basic eater, and I mean “basic” in exactly the way you think I do. The idea of even sampling my duck was a hard “no” for her, so she retreated to the comfort of a cheeseburger, which, even if a little boring by my tastes, she espoused was perfectly executed. Having overcooked beef more times than I can count, I credit any kitchen that nails a diner’s requested temperature. Oh, and the hand-cut fries — my god. Incredible plain, but if you order them with a little parmesan, they’re a standout in their own right.

Split Rail has officially served me the best duck I’ve ever tasted. Ever. It’s crispy, yet melts in my mouth. Its natural oils are brought forth without the dish feeling greasy.

Another consequence of not drinking is that I’ve been going to sleep earlier and earlier, so by the time I’m polishing off Kate’s remaining fries (the benefits of my health conscious ordering erased by an inability to say “no” to such good grub), it’s 9:15pm and my Fitbit is buzzing at me that it’s time to start getting ready for bed. We ask for the check and prepare to call it an evening.

As I open the door for Kate on our way out, a squad of college-aged guys thunders past, a riotous mass of boasts and bumps. It seems that as I’m stepping out the door of my magical wardrobe and back into the real world, the universe wants to remind me of how time passes

Best. Duck. Ever.

The fried chicken sandwich in the background is tender and juicy, but crispy duck confit atop a bed of noodles is a show stealer.

in the blink of an eye. I watch my former self trundle off with that group to whatever bar their crowd swarms these days and wonder what I’d trade to go back. But then I remember that I’m currently holding onto a takeout container filled with a fried chicken sandwich that I’m going to eat for breakfast, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

photos

@DANIELKMATHERS