What Farm Provisions does best is hiding ‘Easter egg’ techniques and ingredients in dishes that appear straightforward in word-form on the menu.
Photos By: Jess Phillips & Julia Mac Marie
I have been to Farm Provisions over a dozen times now, and have tried almost every single item on the food, drink, and dessert menus. Most recently I was there on a Friday afternoon purposefully after the lunch rush and before the dinner rush. Why at that awkward time? Because during normal eating hours they regularly have a 30-minute wait time for tables both inside and out, in every season, and this is a well-earned symptom of provisioning Prescott with excellent food.
What Farm Provisions does best is hiding ‘Easter egg’ techniques and ingredients in dishes that appear straightforward in word-form on the menu–Smoke on the Water for example sounds like “just” a watermelon martini, but comes out with a surprise (more on that, below!). Where they might use some help is checking on their Walleye batter. I could say they could stand to standardize dishes a bit more tightly, but I don’t actually want that, because flavors of the farm change not only season to season, but day to day, and the ever-so-slight variations are never disappointing here.
Farm Provisions could easily be pretentious if they wanted to; their food is just that good. Taking its menu at surface-level, it could also just as easily brand itself another casual, algorithmically deemed “no frills eatery” and eliminate the more complicated preparations and presentations. Instead, Farm Pro, as I like to call it, is a professional presentation and execution of a respectably diverse menu of good, locally sourced food, in a clean small space, with pro-level staff. With these folks it isn’t one or two ingredients, or one or two menu items that are “featured” as local, but as you read the menu you’ll see they weave in local offerings wherever they can, it seems.
The opposite of local is imported, and it takes both careful curation and confidence to invite imports to the table at a place that prides itself on local. That’s why I ordered the blackened prime Wagyu steak on one of my first visits to check them out. The more accurately dubbed somewhat blackened prime steak (coming from an utter perfectionist), the delicious cut comes served in thinner slices so they’re not chunks, which stops the steak from cooking itself further on its way out to the table, and which looks really great on the plate.
This dish–my favorite–comes on a generous bed of creamed local corn, with maple bacon jam, micro-greens, deep-fried asparagus, and long-roasted tomatoes. The obvious acid in this dish comes from the saliva-gland-awakening, punch-packingly tart roasted tomatoes, but don’t miss that the cooks also sneak a tiny bit of acid into the absurdly delicious bacon jam, too. On last visit, my creamed corn came with sizable pieces of corn silk or husk mixed in. And good. That means that a human being is actually shucking raw fresh corn to make this dish and if there isn’t something a little gritty that reminds me of the farm at a place called Farm Provisions, I’d frankly be disappointed. I see this dish as sort of a “pick any three”: the asparagus, steak, and tomatoes; the creamed corn, tomatoes, and the steak; the bacon jam, steak, and micro-greens; but altogether the components I admit seem maybe a little mismatched all on one plate. Which means it’s really like a meal with a built-in appetizer. And, what is Prescott if not a little unexpected bonus? It may be a strange melange at first but after a few bites you’ll realize, this is also your kind of weird. I have to be convinced not to order this dish on most of my visits because I like it so much.
Both of the burgers they serve up are juicy and huge–how else would you want a burger served? If my body needs a burger, and my wallet needs it to be worth the price, and my sassy standards demand peak deliciousness (and they increasingly do), Farm Provisions always stands like a sturdy farm-hand up to the task. The tacos come in threes and, served on the more dry and large American-style corn tortillas, are a hefty portion. More than once the batter or oil on the fish tacos tasted like the kitchen had either let it linger near its smoke point too long, or perhaps just hadn’t seasoned the batter sufficiently and so the prevailing beer flavor (it is a beer batter) reads as the above. After spoiling myself on the giant Wagyu meal many times, the Scottish salmon is very tasty, but does come with a smaller amount of its accompanying components. The one time I had it, it was just a little bit dryer than I like my fish. The fettucine and the pork tenderloin dishes are each fantastic, I only wish I had more room on the page to wax poetic about them–consider this my Ode to Farm Pro’s Pork and Polenta.
The charred heirloom cauliflower is a diner favorite, and the FARM crab cakes melt me into a puddle of deliciousness every time. The smoked burrata with smokey grill-charred boule slices comes as such a generously sized pouf (it is light, it is buttery-airy, it is… burrata pouf) that it could be made a meal, and comes with a dropper-injector of olive oil to squeeze into or onto your delectables. This is one example of what I would argue is emblematic of Farm Pro: unexpected creative elements accompanying staple dishes. Pro-tip: if you love those slow-roasted tomatoes that come with the burrata, remember they come even longer-roasted on the Wagyu plate. I’ll wait while you wipe your anticipatory drool.
The dressings on the salads are alone worth coming back for. The Caesar has a mellow heat which I like to think is at least partly from their unfettered use of real garlic. The lemon thyme vinaigrette is very herb-forward in a lovely summer-welcome way that I can’t seem to replicate at home. Though sometimes the ratios of ingredients on the goat cheese salad leaves diners with a lot to chew on (those sun-dried strawberries!), the wedge salad and goat cheese salad are each easily full and satisfying meals.
Beyond the foods, Farm Pro are also providers of creative craft cocktails that often come with beautiful, artful presentation–techniques that are no doubt pains in the you-know-what during rush hours, but which I assure you patrons like me so delight in. A table-side charred rosemary sprig adorns their “Midnight in the Pines” which partly takes its name from the high quality Pendleton whiskey it features. “Smoke on the Water” comes out with an impressively timed third-softball-sized bubble encasing swirls of smoke sitting on top of the fresh-pressed watermelon refresher. Watch it pop then swirl mystical smokiness in front of you, if you can handle waiting to take a sip. The flavorful, savory smoked “Sal de Gusano” (a gourmet Oaxacan spice with ingredients I’ll let you discover on your own) that comes on the rim of the very cleverly named “Salt of the Earth” is an amuse bouche in its own right. While not coming with table-side entertainment and artistry like the cocktails do, their draft selections, bottled drinks, and wines are also consciously local and feature some of the very best Prescott and northern Arizona products, in addition to select imports. Their dessert list is half drinks, half eats, and like the classy joint that Farm Pro is, includes both a 10- and a 20-year port. Their liquid creations and après dinner options are an unlikely facet of this gem, and I would come here just to have before- or after-dinner drinks or dessert.
Friendly management is likely to stop at your table to check on your experience, and staff regularly help each other out tag-team style as necessary, with no weirdness in team dynamics apparent to even this “highly sensitive” diner. Staff here also have to navigate a tight patio that is frequently laden with dogs at all hours. Despite this added complication, you’ll never get anything but smiles as they tiptoe past our precious pooches even when they’re in high gear to serve soon-to-be smoking, popping cocktails and fresh sliced, hot Wagyu (I know, I know, I keep mentioning the Wagyu, it’s just so good). Although server timing does sometimes come with very minor hiccups here, I never feel like anyone’s burden, and that matters to me, a lot. It’s how I felt going back to my grandparents’ farm as a littl’un every summer: never a burden to those working hard around me, and always well-fed. Farm Provisions lives up to its moniker by representing the deeper farm-life elements in its restaurant and the eating experience it provides, and this Hungry Javelina regularly roots around there for exactly these reasons. Welcome to the Farm (Provisions)! E-I-E-I-Oh yeah, it’s good.
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