Randall's Ordinary

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Randall's Ordinary
Colonial Connecticut Cookery

By Hal Smith

Randall's Ordinary is anything but. Certainly other country inns can date their posts and beams to the Revolution, and some, too, offer authentic 18th-century-style food served by people dressed in period costumes. But Randall's in Stonington, Connecticut, is the only inn we know of in the country to serve up gourmet Colonial fare cooked entirely in an open hearth fireplace.

Packed to capacity on weekends, the "ordinary" (meaning inn and social center), whose earliest room was built in 1685, gives new meaning to the term "dinner theater," with food, drink, music, and setting all authentic to the 18th century.

Surprisingly, the cooks at Randall's Ordinary say it takes no longer to prepare a meal at the hearth than by our modern methods. They make soup and a choice of three entrées using antique fireplace cranes, spits, utensils, and trivets. The cheery fire, fueled mostly by oak cut on the 27-acre property, sometimes imparts a mildly smoky flavor to the sautéed scallops or roasted turkey, venison, lamb, beef, pork, and duck.

As the Randall wives and daughters did, the staff at the hearth have to be careful with their floor-length skirts—clothing fires were the second leading cause of death (after childbirth) among Colonial women.

Overhead, the hearth room's hand-hewn ceiling beams are blackened by more than 200 years of smoke. Next to the hearth room is a tiny tap room where a barmaid dispenses 18th-century libations such as port, ale, Madeira wine, and hot cider. An authentic wood grill above the bar, lowered as needed, blocks access to the beverages after hours.

An eclectic mix of antiques combine with chipped, milk-painted woodwork to give the three small dining rooms a comfortable informality. Use your imagination, and you're a dinner guest at the home of John Randall, a farmer who emigrated from England in the 1600s. An Anabaptist, he helped found North Stonington after a religious disagreement with Stonington's Puritan minister. In later generations, William Randall fought in the War of 1812, and Darius, the last Randall to own the property, saw action in the Civil War and hid runaway slaves in the root cellar, still accessible by a trap door in the hearth room.

But all is not antique. Randall's has made some compromises, either to satisfy restaurant regulators or the modern tastes of visitors. The inn is air-conditioned in summer and, of course, outfitted with refrigeration and plumbing. In the dimly lit dining rooms, the mirrored sconces on the walls hold electrified candles, which keep fire marshalls happy but still create an appropriately shadowy, romantic look. One fire hazard still requires vigilance; as the Randall wives and daughters did, the staff at the hearth have to be careful with their floor-length skirts—clothing fires were the second leading cause of death (after childbirth) among Colonial women.

But aside from minor concessions to the 20th century and cars in the parking lot, guests see little to inhibit their imaginations. Even when it's filled to capacity on weekends, Randall's feels warm, intimate, and as genuine as the worn, wide-plank floors. As guests munch on corn popped in the hearth, the obliging staff answers questions about the inn's history and the work at hand. Meanwhile, period music, the crackling fire and cooking aromas complete the inviting ambiance.

Except for Saturdays when there are two seatings, dinner guests arrive at 7 p.m. and relax with a drink in the hearth room where the evening's entrées are cooked in a variety of three-legged skillets, reflector ovens, kettles, Dutch ovens, and broilers. All the ingredients are fresh—there are virtually no boxed, canned, or frozen foods in the kitchen—and provisions are ordered daily, based on the number of reservations.

Your feast, costing a fixed price, starts with corn bread baked in a shallow pan nestled in a bed of coals on the perimeter of the fire. This tasty treat arrives at your table with a made-from-scratch soup, such as tomato-carrot, pumpkin, Shaker tomato, butternut squash, or fresh herb, whose flavorful essence may have come from the kitchen garden.

Don't have seconds on the corn bread, as delicious as it is. Save room for the other homemade bread. On Monday it's whole wheat, baked in the beehive oven built into the side of the hearth. The schedule for the other weeknights is honey oatmeal, rye, Sally Lunn, and whole wheat walnut. On Saturday it's coriander-ginger and on Sunday anadama (white and whole wheat flours mixed with cornmeal). If you want to take some home, you can purchase a loaf of the brick oven bread or, better yet, you can arrange for baking lessons.

When your entrée arrives, you'll find the portions generous; after a long day of chopping wood, spinning wool or building stone walls, 18th-century adults put away a staggering 4,000 to 7,000 calories a day. A typical Randall's menu might include a choice of roast duckling with pear chutney, scallops fried with garlic, onions, and bread crumbs or a pork loin rolled in herbs and accompanied by a cranberry orange conserve, with small red potatoes, carrots with mint and cream, cubed rutabaga, or Iroquois squash (a blend of summer squash and zucchini simmered in honey) on the side.

The real question is whether you can clean your plate and still have room for dessert. One night's choice was between Bird's Nest Pudding (an apple baked in custard and filled with golden raisins and nuts) or Thomas Jefferson Bread Pudding.

If the menu sounds too sumptuous to be authentic, that's because the recipes, selected from antique cookbooks and sometimes modified to fit our 20th-century palates, were not typical daily fare in the Colonies. Rather, these meals were reserved for special occasions in the homes of wealthier families. In other words, the traditional spreads at Randall's would be extraordinary in any century.