Farmer's Inn & Prairie Kitchen
To begin with, this is not the Jefferson Avenue Boarding House, but it shows bits and pieces of its DNA. Richard Perry, who operated that legendary member of the Class of ‘72, has opened the Farmer’s Inn & Prairie Kitchen outside Millstadt, at a crossroads in the midst of Illinois corn fields. The old two-story-plus-cupola building dates back to 1896 or so. It’s not a black-tie sort of place. Standards of service, and available servers, are different in small towns.
This is a country restaurant. That’s not to say it’s thrown together. Even the view out the tall narrow front windows to the tall, narrow stalks of corn across the road seems to add to the aura. But other than the computers, it’s simple, with wooden floors and cool green walls in the dining room, but white cloths and cloth napkins on the tables.
Perry, who was a pioneer, emphasizing 
American traditional food re-thought and using local ingredients waaaaay back when, was perhaps the city’s first celebrity chef; today, he is serving dinner four nights a week, and what he calls "farm breakfast" on Sundays, a meal definitely reminiscent of the Jefferson Avenue Boarding House. There’s a casual menu served in the bar, but we went for the dinner and breakfast. With dinner, a set menu changes every week or so, with choices only among the five main courses. Everyone gets the same appetizer, salad and sides. Dessert is extra; there’s a cocktail and small wine list. But it gives excellent value for the money, many different tastes in reasonably-sized portions. Most of the cars in the lot are locals, which adds to the homey feeling
Ann grew up in a world where "homemadevegetablesoup" (somehow, it always seemed to be pronounced as one word) was considered the sort of supper kids would run home for. Other kids, that is; Miss Picky Eater turned up her nose at it. Perry started off our dinner visit with such a soup ladled from a steaming iron pot carried into the dining room, just like the old days at Jefferson and Utah. It wowed both of us. With a chicken stock base, it tasted – well, like real soup, simmered a long time and with the flavors of the vegetables. The various vegetable notes were in perfect balance, no one taste standing over the others. The stunning soup arrived with a plate of corn fritters that reminded one of really crunchy beignets with a creamy center. A sprinkling of powdered sugar accented the natural sweetness of the corn.
Perry’s country pate is from the recipe of the revered Chicago chef, Louis Szathmary. It’s a spreadable pate, rather than the dense meatloaf variety, full of complex spices and absolutely delicious. However, the portion for the two of us was probably less than a tablespoonful, served surrounded by ten or so slices of baguette that was neither fresh nor dried to the crispness of melba toast, but some pale point in between. It’s a truly inexplicable combination.
Main course options on that visit were beef brisket, pork loin, roast chicken, fresh-water trout or pasta with local vegetables. The brisket was as tender a piece of that often-tough cut as we’ve ever had, deeply browned, and cooked in red wine, herbs and heaven knows what else. It would compete easily with a daube in the south of France, so rich and complex was the flavor. The trout was a whole one, neatly boned and sauteed, with lots of lemon and a little bacon, a real big-flavor choice, even though it’s a mild fish. The kitchen even managed to keep much of the skin crisp. Alongside both were boiled new potatoes and carrots. Sound boring? Nope. The potatoes were Yukon Golds, lightly crushed and buttered, the sort of dish that remind you of just how good a simple potato can taste. And the carrots were roughly chopped and cooked with a little tomato and sweet pepper to create almost a sweet-and-sour style. It was a good reminder that while Mom may have poured her vegetables out of a can, Grandma sure didn’t.
We split an eggy, tender bread pudding with raisins, the bourbon not overwhelming things, and walked out into an evening with a dark blue sky, a golden full moon and just a little gold visible on the corn tassels across the road. It had been a really pleasant experience.
Things were more of a jumble when we visited for the farm breakfast, which is served from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Sundays. Three courses, each with several options, make this a good-sized meal. The bread basket contains tea breads, on our visit an applesauce bread, moist and gently spiced. For medical reasons, one of our friends can’t eat sugar, but a request for some kind of regular bread or rolls seemed to get lost several times.
Local and lovely strawberries came with sour cream and brown sugar for dipping. And Perry’s way with 
oatmeal has always made it a treat, cooked a long time, and topped with butter, brown sugar and raisins soaked in a little brandy. Warm heavy cream came alongside; think oatmeal cookie without the chewiness. But asking for syrup on the side of the blueberry pancakes, rather than having it added in the kitchen? More confusion, but the cakes arrived as ordered, fairly satisfactory but oddly shaped.
Perry buys locally whenever possible, including some good country bacon that is somewhere between ham and bacon, which he uses on eggs benedict and what’s called the prairie breakfast. The benedict’s
hollandaise sauce was unexciting–normally, Perry’s hollandaise is among the best in town–and one egg was poached soft-firm and the other runny. A vegetable omelet tasted good, but arrived ripped open. And the prairie breakfast was AWOL, arriving almost five minutes after the other dishes. The eggs, as promised, were soft-scrambled. But the sausage patty was not cooked through. The country-fried potatoes were fresh and hot on that plate; on the others, they were barely brown and barely warm. They might as well have been two different items.
Dessert is not included in the $16 meal. Gooey butter cake, which is finally being seen on more menus around town, was rich and chewy, some whipped cream gilding the lily. Chocolate pudding, which drew rapturous remarks from our server, just didn’t make it. The consistency was strange, with odd little bits in it, and lacked the cocoa-ish depths that mark a really good chocolate dessert.
Service was very slow and uncoordinated at breakfast, which we suspect was a problem with the kitchen rather than the front of the house. At dinner, however, things ran smoothly on all counts.
Not such a great breakfast, unfortunately, but a fine dinner.
Farmer’s Inn & Prairie Kitchen
7157 State Route 128
Millstadt, IL
618-476-3535
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: Very poor
Smoking: No
Dinner prix fixe: $13-$19, Breakfast prix fixe: $16
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