Press

Ethereal, fabled, stunning- these words dance around in my mind as we drive up the cypress tree-lined path leading to La Petraia.

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'Most guests to La Petraia, however, come for lunch or dinner: food is the main attraction here, and Susan is an accomplished chef who produces imaginative dishes.'

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'Chef Susan McKenna Grant and her husband, filmmaker and financier Michael Grant, are setting out to make La Petraia not just another luxurious Chianti agriturismo but a culinary and agricultural beacon for the region…As well as establishing organic vegetable gardens and a biodynamic vineyard, the couple also set up a range of courses – cooking classes, wine and olive oil tastings, farm tours, foraging and talks from leading figures in the food world… Meals, taken on the sunny terrace looking down over lavender beds to the fortified village of Albola, consist of many dishes but nearly everything you eat is grown not just locally but on the estate. That means vegetables, of course, but also pork from the resident herd of handsome white-banded Cinta Senese pigs and eggs and chicken meat from Valdarno hens.'

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Four new culinary trips are aiming to fine-tune your palate this fall.

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The aroma of wild lavender eddies through the car as we turn onto the forest road outside Radda in Chianti. We're following the innkeeper's directions – such as they are – yet as each sharp turn brings the thrill of rowdier terrain we begin to wonder if this could possibly be the right route to the well-appointed lodge and its promised erudite dinner.

Just as our phone signals shrink to a terrifying trickle, we see a manicured courtyard occupied by a mildly curious canine and her two-legged companion, Michael Grant, who swings open a pair of iron gates in welcome to La Petraia.

For Italian gourmands this sort of circuitous drive down an unpaved 'white road' is part of the anticipatory run-up to an epicurean meal at a countryside agriturismo (the meeting ground of agriculture and tourism). But to us, encountering early medieval farm buildings restored with handcrafted 18th century furnishings so deep in the woods is as astounding as stumbling upon the five-star Four Seasons Tented Camp in a remote corner of Thailand.

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Imagine a 14th-century painting: At the end of a long row of cypress trees surrounded by fields of lavender, a farmhouse sits on a hilltop. In the cobblestone courtyard, two attractive people (my hosts Susan McKenna Grant and her husband, Michael Grant) are smiling the kind of smile people have when they’ve found something they’ve been seeking for a very long time. I have arrived at La Petraia. As McKenna Grant shows me to my room, her golden retrievers, Olive and Hockley, drop a blue ball and a rubber chicken at our feet in the hope of a quick toss. “People come here to unwind, so I get to spend real quality time with them,” she says. She’s right: I’m here to escape the crazed city pace, but I’m also here experience what I know will be an unprecedented gastronomic adventure.

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Amid the frenzy of watching my first Iron Chef America episode, I stared in wonder as my culinary idol, Susur Lee, inelegantly lunged at slabs of bacon (the secret ingredient) unveiled house-of-horrors style in a mist of dry ice. Yes, the battle in kitchen stadium would be intense, as Canada’s star chef (turned gladiator), would face off against American Iron Chef and marketing machine Bobby Flay. Lee, his lustrous ponytail propelling him forward, stacked as many cuts of the meat onto his arms as he could handle. Time was, after all, of the essence. These fare warriors had only one hour to create five courses featuring the secret ingredient. A mere 60 minutes to achieve gastronomical nirvana. At the other end of the culinary universe, far from the lights of the L.A. television studios, there is Susan McKenna Grant—a patron of a movement that is bravely competing with what has become a fast and furious food industry…

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Finally last month – and for the first time – I enjoyed a lovely, grand, authentic multi-course Italian lunch right here in Yorkville. It began with a selection of excellent breads, including a ciabatta, each made with hand-ground flour. The olive oil for dipping them in was sourced from a single organic grove high in the Tuscan hills. There were ripe olives too.

Then came the pillowy-light ricotta gnocchi con piselli e menta – with mint and spring peas – these, too, smuggled in frozen from a Tuscan farm…

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Right now, Canadian Susan McKenna Grant is living the dream. She's eating fruits, vegetables and meats raised on La Petraia, her farm just outside the ...

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Susan McKenna Grant is a Canadian who fell in love with Italian food. At the same time, she fell in love with Italy.

Here is a woman who fulfils the western dream of finding and buying an abandoned farm on a Tuscan hilltop, and nursing it back to its former productive glory.

Her farm-cum-guesthouse sets the scene for this elegantly written homage to naturally raised animals, wild game, seasonal specialties -- all the foods and food traditions that are celebrated in the first three Italian books.

McKenna Grant is another Carol Fields, examining the Italian way of breadmaking, soup cooking, garden growing, even winemaking. It's a sumptuously written book, with as much emphasis on the culture and agriculture of Italy as there is on the recipes.