Not a single thing on Grey County's 10th Concession Line gives passing drivers the slightest indication they happen to be in the vicinity of a dining establishment. There is no billboard saying "Eigensinn Farm, Next Right," no sign out on Highway 124 bearing the symbol of a knife, fork and plate and an arrow pointing in the direction of the place, not even a sign at the farm itself that says so much as "Eigensinn Farm." The driveway is unpaved, disconcertingly narrow and rutted enough to suggest that guests from the city are not expected. The only hint, in fact, that the farmhouse and barn at No. 449357 are in any way a departure from others in this area are two stone sculptures on either side of the driveway and a crude, raised gate fashioned out of a naked pine trunk that has become greyed with age. In short, the signage at Eigensinn Farm is terrible.
So, for that matter, is the location. A meal at Eigensinn Farm costs $250 per person (soon to be $275), and yet it is situated more than 150 kilometres—about a two-hour drive—from Toronto, which is where the vast majority of Eigensinn Farm's target market resides, not that the place has anything as sophisticated as a target market. There is no possibility of a walk-in crowd or overflow from nearby restaurants. If you don't count tractors, the traffic on 10th Concession Line is almost zero. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting a Restaurant calls location the "single most important factor in your restaurant's success," and Eigensinn Farm seems to fail the category in every possible way.
Eigensinn Farm does not have a liquor licence, either. Instead of selling alcohol to guests, for which there is a standard industry markup of at least 100%, guests are told they can bring their own bottles. Almost all of them do, and they are charged nothing in the way of corkage. (Corkage fees in Ontario range anywhere from $15 to $40 per bottle.)
It isn't unusual for an upscale restaurant to seat more than a hundred diners in a single evening. Eigensinn Farm, by comparison, can accommodate a maximum of 12. There is no website, no voice mail, no takeout booth, no line of professional cookware and no bottled sauces or rubs. As a concept, Eigensinn Farm is too rural, too expensive and too bizarre to ever be turned into a franchise.
Not surprisingly, chef Michael Stadtlander considers himself to be more artist than chef. Two summers ago, he decided to close during one of the hospitality industry's busiest times so that he and 20 apprentices could spend three months creating a whimsical outdoor dining experience out of a tree house, a new garden and six large, whimsical statues. It became known as the Heaven on Earth Project, and one of the statues was a four-metre-tall representation of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, made out of wine bottles set into concrete. Between his godlike legs hangs a jeroboam (a four-litre bottle) through which wine can be—and has been—poured. The next summer, Stadtlander, his wife, Nobuyo, and four apprentices set out on a journey across the country in a school bus, and he has turned the adventure into a documentary called The Islands Project. Recently, he completed the script for his first movie: The Chef's Dream, which Stadtlander describes as "a love story that brings out all the big issues in food production."
All these diversions—not to mention his distaste for routine and his fear of getting bored—conspire to keep Stadtlander out of the kitchen, so Eigensinn Farm only serves dinner two to three nights a week. And that's when it serves dinner at all. The farm closes for weeks and sometimes months at a time, depending on the creative whims of its owner. No matter how high the demand, Eigensinn Farm will only accept reservations up to three months in advance.
