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You know it’s the ultimate farm-to-fork dining when the chef brings his own fresh produce from home.
That’s what executive chef Eric Alexander of Auburn’s Carpe Vino often does on his way to work, plucking some fennel or grabbing an armful of mandarins from the five-acre Four Tines Farm in Placer County he owns with his wife, Courtney McDonald, who does double duty managing the farm and working as Carpe Vino’s pastry chef.
And thanks to this focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients and local sourcing — not to mention Alexander’s culinary flair, melding French techniques with modern styles and global flavors — Carpe Vino was ranked among OpenTable’s Top 100 U.S. restaurants four years in a row.
The Auburn hot spot, housed in a historic mid-19th-century building, first opened in the early 2000s as a wine bar specializing in small-production California vineyards. In 2006, the owners brought Alexander and McDonald on board, quickly elevating Carpe to four-star status with all kinds of delicious fare. Try a starter of heirloom tomato fattoush with sunflower tahini ($13) or an entrée of tea-brined pork chop with charred plum and bacon ($32). Alexander loves to play with flavors, but not to be trendy. He wants folks to know what they’re eating and know where it came from. And chances are, it came from home.
Naturally, we had questions — and Alexander was happy to dish.
Q: What’s your culinary background?
A: I wouldn’t really say I grew up in a foodie home. I grew up in upstate New York and my family had pretty simple tastes. But then I started working in restaurants in high school and went to Michigan State to major in the hospitality business, but I decided I just wanted to cook, cook, cook. So I enrolled at the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, in Hyde Park, New York. That’s where I met Courtney.
Q: How did you end up in Auburn?
A: Courtney was born and raised in Auburn. When we came here after working at some restaurants on the East Coast, I just fell in love with this area. We were originally patrons of the (Carpe Vino) wine shop, where we befriended the owners. We just started talking about food and wine and they were, like, “You know what, we need to start serving food.” So Courtney and I said, “Let’s do it!”
Q: Tell us about Four Tines Farm.
A: Courtney grew up with animals and had always wanted to take that experience to the next level. A couple of years in at Carpe Vino, she did an internship with Dan Macon of Flying Mule Farm, who does grass-fed lamb. She fell in love with sheep. She bought her first dairy ewe, and we started building our flock from there. Then we bought this farm property from friends, and now we raise grass-fed lamb and chickens, we do eggs for the restaurant, we have our orchards, apples, pears, cherries, mandarins, grapefruit and an acre of row crops.
Q: Do you get out there and dig in the dirt yourself?
A: Am I the one out there with the tiller, planting the rotation stuff? No way. Courtney does all that. I do a lot of the mowing and weeding and pruning and I take care of the orchard.
Q: What’s the advantage of having the farm?
A: You can experiment and plant a little of something and see if it pans out. You have this array of things that are edible, even things for garnish, whether it be edible flowers or whatnot, that make such nice additions for finishing plates. Just pick it as you need it. Keeps things super fresh.
My menu isn’t solely from our farm, though. Here we are in Placer County near Sacramento, known as the farm-to-fork capitol. There are so many great farmers around here and from the very beginning, we had developed relationships with them. So, we were very careful about what we planted and we purposely didn’t grow certain things. We want to keep those relationships going.
Q: How would you describe your cuisine?
A: Our food is hyper-seasonal. For both of us, our training had been very French, so we apply that French sensibility to a modern American way of cooking. But I’m inspired by dishes from all over the world. I have a Slavic heritage, my great-grandfather was from Lithuania, so I might have a vareniki (similar to a perogi) with some braised local rabbit and fava beans from our farm. But at the same time on the menu, I might have something very Middle Eastern inspired.
Q: Tell us about your fall menu …
A: For fall, we’ll probably have some of our classics, like beef cheeks braised in red wine with potato puree. An herb salad with shaved horseradish is always a mainstay. We just put a quail dish on, wrapped in bacon, stuffed with greens and dried fig, and served with a nice fennel puree. I’m just harvesting our apples now, so we’ll be having some dishes with that.
Details: Carpe Vino is open for dinner Tuesday-Saturday at 1568 Lincoln Way, Auburn; www.carpevinoauburn.com.
