Photo: Tana Butler
For more information or to make reservations for Outstanding in the Field’s upcoming LA event Oct. 1, go to outstandinginthefield.com.
Photo: Tana Butler
On a rare sunny late afternoon in Half Moon Bay, 20 minutes south of San Francisco, 70 people mingled at a beachside cocktail party. As they sipped blush wine and watched the waves rush up on shore, the barefoot guests, faces glowing in the late sunlight, marveled at the break in the summer fog and looked upon a surreal tableau.
A stark 80-foot shale cliff towered over a long, slightly curved table set with white linen and elegantly mismatched plates. The sea’s high-water mark etched a line of dark sand two feet from the last chair. Up the beach a safe distance from the water, mesquite smoke drifted from a pavilion where guest chef Lewis Rossman and his staff, of Cetrella Bistro and Café in Half Moon Bay, labored over a grill.
Guests had come to this dinner, hosted by a group called Outstanding in the Field, for a simple reason: to eat at this table between bare earth and open sky with the same farmers, fishermen and winemakers who had coaxed the crops to ripeness and the seafood to the plate.
Fennel, green beans and tomatoes were the contribution of a local, “Farmer John” Muller of Daylight Farms, who confided that he’d last been at this beach in 1962, wooing his summer neighbors, the Baker sisters, just before Mr. Baker chased him all the way up the hill. Halibut, sardines and calamari arrived courtesy of the owner of H & H Fresh Fish, Hans Haveman, a strapping young blond man with wraparound shades and a doting way with his infant daughter and wife Heidi. Tall, ponytailed Jeff Emery of Santa Cruz Mountains Vineyard, who arrived with his librarian wife Andrea and their daughter during the second course, had crafted the wines.
Presently Jim Denevan, the creative brain behind Outstanding in the Field, addressed the assembled guests. A tall surfer with an introverted air, he looked like a GQ version of a castaway with his cuffed jeans, straw hat and strong cheekbones. It was difficult to hear him over the roar of the surf as he made introductions and welcomed everyone, but I got this much: Denevan had a plan for us, and it involved saltwater.
Besides being a chef, Denevan is a regionally renowned artist whose work consists of large-scale beach drawings and designs that inevitably are washed away (think Andy Goldsworthy meets Christo at the shore). In an artistic flourish, Denevan had purposely positioned the far end of the table so that at high tide some of the diners might feel the water swirling across their toes.
“A few waves may wash through the end of that table at high tide,” he explained, “but according to my calculations you should be pretty dry.”
“I don’t think the tide will come up here…” he said, almost to himself. “Who knows what will actually happen.”
We had become part of a Denevan art installation, and as we ambled across the sand toward our places at the table, it was with the happy understanding that this was going to be no ordinary dinner.
Deneven launched Outstanding in the Field seven years ago, as a series of farm dinners at Santa Cruz’s tiny Gabriella Café, where he was then cooking. His goal was to encourage his customers to appreciate the folks who grew the spectacular produce on which chefs based their menus. “The chef is always the rock star,” he laments. “It should be the farmer.”
With longtime friend and Gabriella Café co-founder Andrew McLester handling the wine, Denevan moved the dinners from the Café to Santa Cruz-area farms. And after three years of growing success, Katy Oursler, a 27-year-old former teacher, restaurant manager and wedding planner, joined the team, lending form and focus to Deneven’s airy musings.
“I came in and put together seven dinners in two weeks,” she says. “And then it was kind of joking—‘Hey, let’s go across the country!’” They bought an old snub-nosed bus—a 1953 FLXible. “And then it was one place on the Eastern Seaboard, and then it was four.”
In the years since, Outstanding in the Field has won a small but devoted national following. This season it’s taking its field-to-table show to 17 cities, throwing multi-course local foods dinner parties with a guest list that includes all the purveyors plus anyone willing to fork over the $130-$180 for a ticket. The team hires area servers and chefs, sources local produce and wine, and pays for a core staff of six. Last year the largest dinner was in Minneapolis; 130 people came.
Unlike Denevan, who approaches the project from an artistic perspective, Oursler sees Outstanding in the Field as a social mission. Like a lot of people in the Slow Food movement, she views the modern disconnect from nature and food as part of—maybe even the source of—a profound cultural malaise. Inviting people to a dramatic natural environment for nourishment opens them up, she says. People leave with a richer sense not just of where their food comes from and how hard it is to be a farmer—but of who their neighbors are and what their community is. She believes even the simple act of strangers serving each other from family-style platters is healing because it allows them that small connection.
Although Outstanding in the Field aims for organic and sustainably harvested ingredients, there is no preaching. “It’s not about us telling folks how it is,” Oursler says. “What we’re here to do is facilitate the community coming together. Because folks feel lost. I really believe that. They’re coming to these dinners, and they’re not all foodies. There’s a reason this movement is happening when it is.”
We were most of the way through the appetizer course—bruschetta with silky Harley Farms goat cheese, jewel-like peaches and tender lettuce, lightly dressed—when the first wave rushed up under the table.
Not surprisingly, the contingent that had bravely chosen to sit on that end consisted of fisherman Haveman and his family, and Deneven’s Santa Cruz surfer friends—all water folk. Even so, the speed of the frothy little wave as it raced up the sand sparked a minor chaotic flurry. Somehow no one got soaked, not even Molly Ober, who, sitting in the very last chair with limited mobility from a bandaged foot, was a prime target.
The ocean wave receded, but a different wave continued up the table: excitement. What next? A discussion ensued.
“That might be the worst of it,” someone volunteered.
Haveman checked his watch. “I don’t know. High tide’s not for another hour.”
“Maybe we should move the table.”
And so we did, hauling our chairs and plates to our new places at the other end of the arcing line of tables. Then, in mid-move, a light muted crack and a sound like water rushing over stones caused the bustling group to pause and look up at once, to the nearby cliff where a miniature avalanche spilled down to the beach. Things were getting really exciting.
And the food was matching the setting, thrill for thrill. Our next course was mesquite-grilled sardines, sweet and not at all fishy, with sautéed fennel and salsa verde, a subtly perfumed marvel of flavors served with a Central Coast tempranillo, a red wine from Spanish grapes. As we ate, Denevan and a couple of assistants appeared with shovels and began digging a moat, to the crowd’s great amusement. Diners speculated about how far up the shore each wave would make it. The air was charged with shared enthusiasm.
Sometime during the next course—saffron gnocchetti with calamari and artichoke paired with a Santa Cruz mountain pinot noir—the sun set. As dusk fell, the servers lit tiki torches in the sand and candles on the table. By the time the platters of tender mesquite-grilled halibut on beds of green beans had arrived, the stars were popping out. It was a moonless night, and they speckled the sky by the thousands.
Animated conversations lit up every part of the table. At my end, Jeff Emery’s wife Andrea, her daughter Bella perched in her lap, was telling Molly Ober about contra dancing. Jeff Stephenson was relating an out-of-body experience he had had on Ocean Beach while waiting for an ambulance after a surfing accident. Laura Anderson and McLester were discussing astrology, cats and whether certain surfing moves are bad for surfers over 30. For dessert, tangy zabaglione with sweet Swanton Farm berries grown 40 miles south on Highway One, was accompanied by Emery himself pouring his homemade alambic brandy.
Finally it was time to go. It was full dark by then, so dark it was difficult to see the ground outside the pools of light thrown from the tikis. I bid my tablemates a warm adieu and made my way back up the beach toward the parking lot. At the top of the berm I stopped for one last look.
There, in the heady light of the torches against the cliff, stood the mostly empty table with its few stragglers unable to tear themselves away. I could see the massive bulk of the cliff and sense the dark magnet of the water. The dome of brilliant night sky felt at once so close and so immense that my heart swelled just looking at it. I was full of yearning, I was deeply satisfied, I was accepting of all things. I was in love with life. I drove home with the windows down.
Traci Hukill freelances and dines al fresco in Monterey, Calif.