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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.

And yet, Eigensinn Farm may be the greatest dining establishment in the history of this country. Eating there is considered a kind of rite of passage among Canadian foodies. Susur, Canoe, Splendido—nothing comes even close to the bragging rights of a date at Eigensinn Farm. Diners sometimes wait years for reservations and travel from as far away as Australia and China just to taste Stadtlander's cooking. All face the same long drive and bad signage.

Most come back, or at least attempt to. There is no end to the line of would-be guests. When a new block of reservations becomes available, it is filled within days. Eigensinn Farm has received the highest possible praise from Canadian newspapers and magazines. And in 2002, Restaurant magazine, a British biweekly read by foodie insiders, ranked Eigensinn Farm the ninth-best restaurant in the world.

All this from a man who wishes he had more time to do carpentry.

According to popular lore, the Stadtlander story begins in 1978, when he met—while working at the Grand Hotel National in Lucerne, Switzerland—Jamie Kennedy, a young Canadian chef who subsequently lured him to Canada. The myth is partly true: Thanks to Kennedy, in 1980 both chefs were hired to head up the kitchen at a new upscale Toronto restaurant called Scaramouche. But Canada had been in Stadtlander's blood for some time. As a teenager growing up on a farm in northern Germany, he watched National Film Board documentaries about Canada, as well as a short-lived CBC series called Adventures in Rainbow County, which was shot on Manitoulin Island. The scenes of vast, untouched wilderness and wildlife ignited something within Stadtlander. From that point forward, he had visions of moving to Canada.

After landing in Toronto, Stadtlander's career underwent the remarkable rise that seems part of the life cycle of all hot chefs. By the age of 22, he was a co-chef at Scaramouche, which quickly earned one of the best reputations of any restaurant in the city. In 1984, he ventured downtown and opened Stadtlander's. Acclaim was universal: "I have been seduced by Stadtlander," one reviewer gushed "...to say he's very good is to imply, incorrectly, that his cooking is like all the other French cooking in town, only better. It isn't. He speaks a different language from the others."

In 1988, Stadtlander opened his most ambitious restaurant yet: Nekah, a high-concept venture that challenged the very notion of a Canadian restaurant. There was no à la carte menu; instead, diners were offered a choice between two tasting menus. The restaurant featured the country's first-ever wine bar serving only Canadian vintages, and the dishes, too, were a celebration of Canadian flavours. Stadtlander brought in rockfish from British Columbia and caribou from the Northwest Territories, and Ontario farmers showed up at the restaurant's door with fresh fruits and vegetables. Once again, the critics loved it: "Words are insufficient to describe this man's creativity. His technique is superb, his touch delicate."

That's the celebrity-chef version of events: a montage of easy, glorious success. But when it comes to the professional life of Michael Stadtlander, there is a more sobering version of history: the business one. Scaramouche didn't turn a profit under Stadtlander and Kennedy; Stadtlander's went out of business in 1986; and Nekah was busy on weekends, but not enough people showed up on weekdays, making it impossible for the restaurant to meet its $19,000-a-month rent payments—like Stadtlander's, the restaurant lasted less than two years and closed in 1990.

Right around that time, two other significant events occurred in Michael Stadtlander's life: He met Nobuyo Isagawa, a Japanese law student who was visiting Canada to practise her English. And in 1991, the couple were married and settled in the Kensington Market neighbourhood of Toronto. One day, a friend invited them to visit his farm about two hours north of the city. "I walked on the fields," Stadtlander says, "and had visions of these food stations." The visions culminated in an event called the Feast of Field. Stadtlander invited prominent Toronto chefs up to his friend's farm to man food stations and prepare dishes using local ingredients. An invited roster of about 100 guests toured the property, travelling from station to station, eating the various creations. (Stadtlander has hosted a similar outdoor event—with a focus on festivity and local ingredients—every year since.)

In January of 1993, Stadtlander and Nobuyo noticed that a farm next door to their friend's property was for sale. Stadtlander's vision—part Canadian wilderness, part farm—was coming into focus. He imagined a farm-cum-bed and breakfast, except guests would be served a fantastic dinner, too. Raising his own meat and growing his own vegetables and herbs, he would bring the ingredients gloriously together in a different meal every night.

But there was a problem. Considering the failure of Stadtlander's and Nekah, it was a predictable one: money. Stadtlander and his wife were all but broke, and no restaurant investor would go anywhere near a venture as unorthodox as the farm. With nowhere else to turn, the couple turned to a loan shark. They met a man in a small office in Toronto who offered to lend them the money they needed at an exorbitant interest rate. They took the deal. "He was rubbing his hands together," Stadtlander remembers. "He was sure the farm would be his in less than a year."

In July, 1993, backed by the loan shark, the Stadtlanders bought the property and christened it Eigensinn Farm (roughly translated, Eigensinn means "single-mindedness"). When they took possession, the farmhouse had been gutted of even basic appliances. "We had no stove, no fridge and a crying baby," Nobuyo remembers. For the first few weeks, the family found itself camping inside their new house.
After purchasing an antique stove for $75, Stadtlander was ready to cook for his first guests. They arrived on a cold night in November—Doug and Cathy, two doctors from Toronto. The moment they appeared at the door, suitcases in hand, Nobuyo was struck by a panicked thought: "They're staying here?" That night, Stadtlander created a menu that included East Coast scallops with a carrot-and-ginger-sauce risotto. Doug and Cathy have returned to Eigensinn Farm every year since.

Considering Eigensinn Farm's flagrant disregard for standard hospitality-industry rules of business, its success seems, if anything, paradoxical. One can't help but wonder, does it have a secret?

One aspect that makes the farm notably different from almost any other restaurant is vertical integration. Stadtlander personally raises about 60% of the food he serves. In other words, he controls the chain of production—if you can even call it that—from pasture to plate, thus obviating the high costs associated with buying ingredients from middlemen. But the theory doesn't bear up under scrutiny. In his quest for ingredients of the highest quality, Stadtlander adheres to a costs-be-damned approach. Meat and vegetables are raised on a scale so small as to be uneconomical—only 19 pigs were butchered last year, and this year he grew a mere half bushel of purple carrots. "I don't care if it costs me $30 for a chicken," Stadtlander exclaims. (A typical restaurant chicken costs about $7.50 wholesale.) "That's my philosophy."

Philosophy has its price. One night this past July, a mink got into the henhouse and killed 30 chicks. The next night, a skunk got in and ate another of Stadtlander's birds. All told, he loses about 20% of his chickens to predators.

A restaurateur might examine the inner workings of Eigensinn Farm and decide that its ace in the hole is free labour. Stadtlander uses anywhere from two to six unpaid apprentices. "From day one, it was understood that this place would become a school," Stadtlander says. The apprentices do everything from mopping the floor and feeding the chickens to plating dishes in the heat of dinner service. But while apprentices may be cheap, they're not free: They have to be fed and housed. For the Heaven on Earth Project, 20 of them had to be put up for three months, during which no revenue was generated. Just like the farm's guests—who pay $250 each—the apprentices' meals are prepared using the fine, wholesome ingredients of the farm itself, including $30 chickens (at least the ones that don't get killed by predators).

A brand manager—or a cynic, for that matter—might consider the example of Eigensinn Farm and declare that its secret is viral marketing. Stadtlander does not advertise and does even less in the way of marketing. And yet, the long lineup for reservations makes it one of the most exclusive dining experiences anywhere. Even at Masa, the ultraexclusive 28-seat Japanese restaurant in New York City with a $400 prix fixe menu, people can score a reservation within two weeks if they have a flexible schedule. (The Stadtlanders, for their part, are all too ready to pour water on the comparison. Nobuyo claims it's much easier to get reservations at Eigensinn than most people think. "A lot of people give up without even calling," she says.)

The truth, though, may be much simpler. The fact is, Stadtlander hasn't learned very much from his mistakes. When he gets an idea, one of the very last questions to run through his head is whether or not he can afford to do it. Whereas most restaurants are equal parts accounting and cookery—each ingredient, down to a pinch of sugar, is evaluated in order to determine the price of a dish—Eigensinn Farm runs on something closer to inspiration.

But money is still money. While Eigensinn Farm may not be driven by the profit motive, like every other business, it cannot spend more than what it takes in, a rule that's as immutable as the law of gravity. And it's here, in the running of the finances, where one finds Stadtlander's secret: his wife.

Nobuyo handles the business side. She collects money and pays debts while her husband cooks and creates in blissful ignorance. A year after they served their first meal, it was Nobuyo who drew up a business plan on a spreadsheet, visited a bank and walked out with a loan. Soon after, they broke their agreement with the loan shark. "They never told us we would have to pay a discharge fee," she says, refusing to elaborate on the amount.

Nobuyo has no formal business training, and she is anything but an officious manager; like her husband, she seems to regard money as a necessary nuisance. Their style is informal: When Stadtlander says he wants something, she tells him whether they can afford it. "He puts the idea in my head," she says. "He says it in front of other people so we don't fight. If it goes beyond a certain amount, I'll say we can't do that. It doesn't happen too often." Earlier this year, Stadtlander decided he wanted a tractor. Nobuyo told him he could get it if he opened the restaurant more often to bring in additional revenue. Stadtlander complied, serving dinner up to four times per week. In June he got his tractor, which is bright orange.

The couple makes enough to pay the bills and contribute to RSPs, but, in their own estimation, they spend far too much on things like sculptures and bus trips to British Columbia to ever amass a fortune. Nobuyo's motivation may be even more basic than her husband's. "I like food a lot," she admits, smiling. She has her explanation for the farm's success: hard work. "One thing I can tell you," she says, by way of advice to any would-be small business owner, "is that if you're creating something, then you are the one that has to work the hardest. If you don't work hard, you never get anywhere."

But the question remains: Why do guests keep coming? Stadtlander, after all, is not the first or only Canadian chef to cook with fresh, local ingredients, though it's safe to say he's taken the concept further than any of his peers. He's also not the first person to buy a farm, create sculptures and hold large outdoor parties. Is his secret his strange yet compelling blend of culinary ability, philosophical rigidity and theatrical merrymaking?

Or is it just that the food's really good? His ham, after all, cold smoked for no less than five months, is served on slices of homemade sourdough bread; his ducks are raised in an open-air pen, and Stadtlander prepares their breasts in a glaze of wild ginger that he hand-picks a few hundred metres from the farmhouse; and his pork chops are grilled over maple wood harvested from Eigensinn and glazed with apple cider that Stadtlander and his apprentices make from wild apples growing on the farm. "It's the land," Stadtlander says of his food.

"You are eating the land."

On the evening of July 18, 10 guests from Toronto drove to Eigensinn Farm to taste that land. The chef and his team had spent the day peeling, paring, searing and braising. Each course was conceived independently of the others. The chef would place the dish's main ingredient on a large granite counter—say, the lake trout, caught the day before in Georgian Bay—consider it for a moment, then walk out to the herb garden with a metal bowl and scissors. He is almost always unable to decide which herb he wants to use until he stands in front of it and smells it. That morning, for example, he was going to bake the lake trout in clay. But he abruptly changed his mind shortly before lunch and instead baked the trout wrapped in lemon thyme and wild grape leaves, a herbal combination that occurred to him spontaneously.

For this reason, Stadtlander is only ever able to give diners a general kind of advance menu. But that's rather the point. After all, the lesson of his life is that the more authentically he has followed his creative impulses, the more successful he has become. Stadtlander himself doesn't see it as having to do with karma, or everyone simply needing to discover his or her inner specialness. "People yearn for this," he says. "When food is pure and clean, it has soul." He thinks there could and should be more people doing work similar to his. "This is the post-industrial revolution," he says. "Do smaller productions and do it really well."

Around 7 that evening, they start arriving. A BMW pulls up and two couples get out, all of whom work in corporate finance. They pour themselves glasses of chilled white wine they brought with them and, in the gentle evening light, begin exploring Eigensinn. Around back, they find Stadtlander grilling pork loin over a bed of wild marjoram. Sauntering into the herb garden, they sniff blossoms and sip their wine, and soon after are joined by a Polish family from Toronto, who have been shuttled over from a nearby bed and breakfast. (Eigensinn stopped taking overnight guests several years ago.) The two men, in their early twenties, have invited their father here as a birthday gift.

Twenty minutes later, it is time for the main event. In the dining room, the guests are treated to a succession of eight stunningly presented courses, while, in the kitchen, the staff experience eight high-pressure plating episodes, each one more tense than the last. The amuse-gueules featured no fewer than 10 individual, bite-sized morsels and is followed by a tomato and basil soup with smoked salmon and lobster, a terrine of foie gras and squab, the baked lake trout on a bed of puréed kohlrabi, the pork loin and a triple-barrelled dessert of homemade chocolate-mint ice cream, roasted-almond cake and a blueberry tart.

By 11:30, the plates have been cleared and the wine bottles are finally empty. Stadtlander and his team sit and gulp down glasses of cold Creemore Springs Lager. As they are talking about the service, the Polish family appears at the door. They are welcomed in. The father, Marek Sikorski, was so impressed with the meal he felt compelled to pay a compliment to the chef in person. Sikorski owns his own sausage company and is a man who knows pork. He asks Stadtlander what he feeds his pigs. Stadtlander tells him: kitchen scraps, stale bread and hemp seed pressings.

"How was it?" Stadtlander asks.

"It was the best pork I've ever tasted," Sikorski says. "You showed me pork from a whole new perspective." The man then looks at Stadtlander, smiles and says, "It was inspiring."