Wildflowers Fall Menu
A romantic restaurant in Central NY shares a love story of its own.
On a beautiful summer evening in Central New York, the tables at Wildflowers at The Lodge at Turning Stone wait in anticipation of the weekend's guests. This highly awarded restaurant may be closed for the evening, but the energy in the air here is palpable. That's because a team of talented chefs and highly skilled cooks has started to arrive.
They're bringing with them some prized ingredients: Their travels. Their training. Their weeks of research. Most importantly for this menu, they're bringing heart.
For the next two hours, this diverse culinary team will be sharing the ideas and inspiration they've been collecting and curating leading up to tonight. The occasion is one they've all been anticipating: the collaborative creation of the new Wildflowers fall menu.
A peek inside the kitchen of the best fine dining in CNY
Food is its own type of love language to the chefs and cooks at Wildflowers, who show up for such events out of a shared passion for what they do.
It's thrilling to get a peek inside this lively kitchen to see how such notable menus come to life. For fall, the team has been challenged to start with the seasonality, then build around it with a sort of refined sensibilities that continuously seat Wildflowers on the list of the best fine dining in CNY.
This year, fall's bounty is ripe with inspiration. An ingredient as simple as a leek may arrive at its kitchen from a local source, and go on to become a creamy, French-inspired leek fondue served as an accompaniment to a beautifully marbled USDA Prime steak.
Fall also marks the start of peak salmon season, and Wildflowers is fortunate to source a menu favorite, wild-caught King Salmon, fresh from Turning Stone's own Salmon Acres. This 36-acre stretch along the Salmon River is recognized as some of the best salmon fishing in the country.
By the time such a prized catch makes its way to the menu, it may be elevated by complementary ingredients like top-tier morel mushrooms, crisp English peas, fava and a house-preserved lemon. Even the thoughtful selection of a preserved over fresh lemon for added complexity and depth of flavor shows the precision with which the flavors have been designed to enhance and balance the dish to perfection.
A star-studded date night idea
While the culinary team's talent and passion for their craft is the heart of Wildflowers, at its core is Turning Stone's highest standards of hospitality. This combination has earned Wildflowers a reputation as one of New York's most renowned and highly rated restaurants - and among Central New York's more romantic date night ideas.
One often wonders what it takes to earn such high accolades as a Forbes Travel Guide Four-Star Award. Let's take a look.
What determines a Forbes Four-Star Restaurant?
Forbes is an independent, global rating system for luxury hotels, restaurants and spas worldwide.
Of the nearly 150,000 full-service restaurants in the US alone, only about 5,000 are fine dining. The Forbes Travel Guide visits nearly 2,000 of the world's best hotels, restaurants and spas in more than 70 countries across the globe. Anonymous inspectors rate every property based on nearly 900 objective standards. That means on any given night, during any given service at any given table, a restaurant may be evaluated.
Wildflowers is among a select group of fine dining restaurants in the world to have earned this award recognizing "exceptional properties, offering high levels of service and quality of facility to match."
Wildflowers is also the proud recipient of the AAA Four Diamond Award as well as the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for more than eight consecutive years.
Palates and Pairings at Wildflowers
Join us each month for Chef de Cuisine Joseph Kolo's Palates and Pairings, a beautiful four-course meal with hand-selected wines curated by a Turning Stone sommelier. As with all menus at Wildflowers, this popular wine dinner series is a celebration of the season.
The thoughtful process behind each season's menu creation, the exacting levels of detail, the precision behind each pairing, all come together to make Wildflowers a place we hope Turning Stone guests will love. Because when you put this much heart into every story a plate tells, there truly is no higher honor.
