The Joys of Country Dining

Home is the harvest, or soon will be, and there is a buoyancy in the air as autumn comes in with its blazing hues of foliage. Vacation time is past, but ahead are football weekends with all their tangy exuberance. And for many a family, now is the time for the weekend jaunt. Increasingly, the stop en route will be for good eating. Whether steered by word of mouth or by such guides to gastronomy as the Mobil Travel Guide (which this year sold more than 1,000,000 at $1.95 each), discriminating motorists are timing their trips to take advantage of the thriving country restaurants that in recent years have sprung up in profusion across the U.S. (see box).

What makes a good country restaurant worth the trip? Basically, skillfully prepared food, an excellent selection of wines and attentive service--plus one magic ingredient: setting. Whether the restaurant is placed among dark spruce and silver birch beside a mountain stream in Vermont (Manchester's Toll Gate Lodge) or beneath giant pecans and live oaks in Texas (Salado's Stagecoach Inn), it offers a view and a personality that its city cousins can never match.

Venice by the Pacific. In the end, however splendid the setting, the quality of the dining depends on the owners and chefs. Some of them are professional restaurant people. New York's La Cremaillere is run by Fred Deere and Robert Meyzen, who also own Manhattan's elegant La Caravelle. Albert Stockli quit his strenuous job as director of chefs for Manhattan's Restaurant Associates on his doctor's advice, moved to the country to take over Connecticut's Stonehenge.

Yet some of the very best country restaurants in the U.S. are operated by people who began as amateurs and almost by accident. When the death of her husband left Bertha Hinshaw a mon eyless widow 37 years ago, she did the only thing she knew how to do. She put a sign in front of her house and started cooking. Now her 125-seat Chalet Suzanne Resort Inn is one of Central Florida's greatest attractions. Fly-in diners can land on an 1,800-ft. turf airstrip and her famous soups sell for 690 a can in markets all over the world.

After six years in Paris studying cello and savoring the food, Norman Goss decided he would rather take a flyer in the restaurant business than starve as a musician. He chose the name Stuft Shirt both as a satiric jab at his neighbors and to convey the idea of a well-filled belly. There are now three Stuft Shirt restaurants in Southern California --best and newest a Venetian-style palace at Newport Beach.

Years to Stop Crying. The most adventuresome of all the country restaurants is Aspen's Copper Kettle. Owners Sara and Army Armstrong began collecting recipes from 50 countries during the years that Armstrong worked for the State Department. When he retired, they moved to Colorado, opened the Copper Kettle.

Each night the Armstrongs serve a different regional food. Monday is Latin American; Tuesday is Eastern European; Wednesday, Oriental; Thursday, Central European; Friday, Scandinavian; Saturday, French. Although the restaurant has been open for twelve years, the Armstrongs have yet to repeat a complete menu. Like any good cook, Sara Armstrong gets her reward from the way in which her food is received, and her sensitivity typifies the best in American country chefs. "It took me years," she says, "to stop crying when a dish was sent back to the kitchen."

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