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Eat your vegetables
Chef Greg McPhee earned a James Beard Award nomination the year he opened The Anchorage restaurant in West Greenville.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
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Farm to table
What Chef Greg McPhee harvests at Horseshoe Farm this morning will end up being served to his dinner guests that night.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
Red Ace beets. Mokum carrots. Kookaburra spinach. Hon tsai tai. On a warm spring day, Chef Greg McPhee, who owns The Anchorage restaurant in the Village of West Greenville with his wife, Beth, is standing in a field in Travelers Rest, naming the neat rows of tiny, bright-green shoots that are poking their heads above the loamy soil of the Reedy River basin.
These are but a sampling of the budding crops that will soon fill an acre of the 21-acre plot the couple leases in Travelers Rest. Horseshoe Farm—so-called for the horseshoe-shaped pond that embraces the plant beds and the luck they had in finding the place—is a partnership between Greg, Beth, and Chris Miller of That Garden Guy, who oversees the day-to-day operation of the farm.
The idea took root when the couple was having trouble obtaining local ingredients for their 2-year-old restaurant. Though they had cultivated relationships with a bunch of local farmers, they just couldn’t find the diversity of produce they needed for the chef’s vegetable-centric menu. “We wanted to have that actual connection where the farm feeds the restaurant,” Greg McPhee explains.
Recognizable by the bright mural Village Harvest that adorns the Pendleton Street side of the building, The Anchorage exudes a modern farmhouse vibe inside, with its whitewashed brick walls, shiplap paneling, contemporary local artwork and small open kitchen. Upstairs, the white-granite-topped bar lures locals for craft cocktails and conversation.
The menu of reasonably priced small plates changes each week, featuring the seasonal vegetables grown on Horseshoe Farm. “It’s exciting for our customers,” notes Beth McPhee. “Every time you come in you’re going to get something new.”
The chef’s belief that “the core of any dish is color, height, texture, balance and acidity,” yields dishes that sing with fresh flavor, as in hand-rolled garganelli with Bethel Trails rabbit, hon tsai tai (aka Chinese kale), pesto alla Trapanese and mustard seed oil.
“We want to take the same attention to detail at the farm as we do in the restaurant,” Greg McPhee says, referring to the fact that Miller’s sustainable farming methods include using organic compost, not employing chemical sprays, and not tilling the soil in order to avoid erosion and disturbing the natural organic matter.
This spring, the farm added a Community Supported Agriculture program that allows customers to buy a weekly allotment of fresh produce, as well as locally made chocolates and cheese, or prepared foods made at the restaurant (think pickles, arugula pesto, chicken-liver mousse). This summer, the couple also plans to sell their produce at the Travelers Rest Farmers Market.
“I get great satisfaction from seeing something that lasts,” Greg McPhee says of the successful farm operation. “It doesn’t just get consumed on the plate.”
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The Anchorage
586 Perry Ave., Greenville
(864) 219-3082; theanchoragerestaurant.com
Hours: Dinner: Wednesday and Thursday, 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Brunch: Sunday, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Walk-ins welcome, but reservations are recommended.