Marc St. Jacques Helms Philo Ridge Farm’s Restaurant

Chef Marc St. Jacques

Position: Executive chef and director of food and beverage at Philo Ridge Farm
Location: Charlotte
Age: 49
Education: Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, N.Y.
Experience: Most recently chef-owner of Bar Bête in Brooklyn
What’s on the menu? Spiced lard-fried pecans ($5); ham plate with savory doughnuts ($15); roasted carrot and hazelnut salad with husk cherries and Jasper Hill Farm’s Bayley Hazen Blue cheese ($15); tomato-braised lamb shank ($39)

When Philo Ridge Farm reopened to the public this summer after a year-and-a-half-long closure, it brought back a market stocked with farm-grown produce and meat, as well as one of Vermont’s most elegant dining rooms and a vine-draped terrace overlooking fruit trees and pastures. It all felt familiar — especially the beloved chocolate chip cookies and cheddar-chive buttermilk scones served from the market’s coffee counter.

Behind the scenes, much is new. The 500-acre organic, regenerative farm in Charlotte is now a nonprofit, continuing its research into sustainable farming practices while establishing itself “as a multi-generational community asset,” married founders Diana McCargo and Peter Swift said in a March newsletter.

A new executive director, Bryan Flower, leads the organization. And since March, executive chef Marc St. Jacques has been driving the food and beverage program, putting the farm’s bounty to work in everything from delicate plates of Swiss chard and mint ravioli with chile lamb ragù to a killer potato salad.

St. Jacques leads a team of roughly 10 in the kitchen, working daily with the farm’s growers, livestock managers and butchers. The chef grew up in Montréal and Toronto and has cooked all over the U.S., from Las Vegas to New York’s Hudson Valley.

From those experiences, he’s developed what he called a “personal cuisine,” pulling from European-centric fine-dining and family traditions. At Philo Ridge, the result is “fine countryside cooking,” he said.

St. Jacques moved to Vermont when his wife, Debbie Lee, became Burton’s chief marketing officer in October 2024. After a five-year run at Brooklyn’s Bar Bête, which he still owns, he was planning a bit of a break.

“I was looking forward to playing golf and hanging out with my kid,” he said.

Around the same time, Philo Ridge was hiring its first executive chef since December 2023. St. Jacques saw the posting, met McCargo and Swift, and “fell in love very quickly” with the Charlotte farm, he said. His drive, he joked, got in the way of golf.

Rib-eye steak with blistered Jimmy Nardello peppers, spiced squash and beef vinaigrette Credit: Bear Cieri

As fall takes hold, Philo Ridge is serving dinner on Friday and Saturday nights. Wednesday and Thursday are reserved for events, both private and those open to the public, such as an upcoming Harvest Dinner on October 23. This month also marks the start of hot lunch service — a weekly changing menu of soups, sandwiches, pot pies and pasta available Wednesday through Saturday — and family-style Sunday brunch.

St. Jacques sat down with Seven Days in the Farm Commons Barn last week to chat about his time on the farm, losing interest in tasting menus and meat doughnuts.

“I have never cooked this much eggplant in my life.”
Marc St. Jacques

What’s it like to be part of this new chapter, with the farm now a nonprofit?

I was very fortunate that my grandparents had a 150-acre farm outside of Toronto. When Diana [McCargo] spoke about Philo Ridge, it was often in the same context as what I had experienced.

There’d be days where you’d sit in the dining room and have Thanksgiving dinner or Sunday supper. You had to sit a little straighter and behave. Then there’s days where things were coming off the grill, we’re sitting at a picnic table, and Grandpa was hosing us down after the watermelon. We want to bring a lot of those different experiences.

Philo Ridge has always been the same thing, trying to push research and development and education. The food and beverage program is just an extension of those things. I think [becoming a nonprofit] hasn’t changed anything. We’re just moving forward and trying to reach all those goals.

Have people been happy to have this space back in action?

There are these very sweet moments where people come in and are excited that the chocolate chip cookies are back. It’s actually a different chocolate chip cookie, but they’re still excited. They feel like they have ownership in this property, which is great.

What’s new this month?

As of October 12, we’ll be starting brunch. It will be family style. Families like to get together in big groups, and we thought, What a lovely way to pass food around a table. There will be an egg section, a vegetable section and a meat section, all farm-focused. And Laura [Tutko], our pastry chef, is incredibly talented, so we’ll have a beautiful pancake and some baked goods.

Do you have a go-to brunch order?

I know what I make the most at home right now: Parmesan soft-scrambled eggs for my daughter. But I’m pretty straightforward: eggs and bacon. I love a fried egg. I love scrambled eggs. I’ve made a tremendous amount of omelettes in my life. In general, I’m not a one-plate eater. I want to eat as many things as I can.

I’m with you on that. It seems like the “Let Us Cook for You” option on the dinner menu is designed with that in mind. How does that work?

About half of our guests order that [instead of à la carte]. The idea was to take our visitors to the farm, curate the experience for them. It’s an opportunity for us to experiment and be creative, with surprises and off-menu items.

Is it a set number of dishes?

No. We ask funny little questions, like “How hungry are you?” The servers come back and go, “Well, I think they’re an eight.” And I’m like, “I don’t know what an eight means. Were they very excited?” Then we decide.

We do some check-ins, but at this point we know what two people can eat. It’s great for larger tables. In any restaurant, somebody comes in and wants to eat the whole menu. But if there are five of you, that’s probably not the right move because you’ll get one tiny little bite of something. So we’ll give them two turnovers instead of one and omit something else.

Is that more in line with the fine-dining, tasting menu-style cooking you’ve done in the past?

The thing about tasting menus that I lost interest in was that I didn’t want to have everybody eating tiny little plates of food. We don’t want to be too precious.

I often talk about elbows. People sometimes go to restaurants and never move their elbows off their bodies because they’re so tight. I want people to reach for things and feel excited about sharing and passing a plate of food.

Spinach and bread dumplings with Philo Ridge Farm pears, crispy sage and brown butter Credit: Bear Cieri

In an old interview, you said you “believe in micro-seasons,” rather than the four seasons. Are you still thinking that way here on the farm?

That was a long time ago. [Laughing.] Actually, the opposite happens here for me. I don’t think I’ve thought about a season once since I’ve been here. All the produce just gets dropped off. We’re at the mercy of Jeremy [LeClair], our grower — which he loves. All the meat that comes in is very specifically timed. It’s much more reactionary than philosophical.

Those reactions must change as it gets colder, right?

There are things that just naturally happen. You want to eat higher acid in the summer. You want a little more olive oil. The other day, we were cooking, and I said, “Hey, hand me some butter.” Nobody had butter on their station, which has got to be a first for me.

What’s coming out of the garden right now?

We’re still holding on to tomatoes, which I’m almost at the point of being sick of. If you want to talk about seasonal cooking, that’s one of our silly little philosophies: When something’s in season, use it ’til you never want to eat it again.

Are there ingredients that you’re using more than you have in the past?

I’ve been fortunate to work in a lot of butchery-driven restaurants. With those, you’re using the premium cuts — the steaks, the lamb chops, the pork chops — then think, I’m gonna use this offal or something specifically for braising, like a shank. But with our livestock program, there’s all this other stuff. We have to figure out what we’re doing with it, and that’s exciting.

Also, Jeremy has a lot of eggplant planted this year. I have never cooked this much eggplant in my life. It’s a lot of moussaka for staff meal.

What do you like to do outside of work, now that you’ve settled into Vermont life?

I have, in my opinion, the greatest 6-year-old of all time, who will soon be 7. We spend a lot of time being together. We go to Pho Hong [in Burlington] every Saturday morning after soccer or swimming.

Before we go, I have to ask you about the dish I’ve been calling “the meat doughnuts.” I can’t stop thinking about it.

Yes, I’ve heard you call it that. [Chuckling.] It’s a ham plate with savory doughnuts, based on the classic Italian prosciutto with zeppole.

I was thinking about what rings true in Vermont and thought about orchards and cider doughnuts. Mike [Kirk, the farm’s meat and butchery manager] makes these beautiful hams, and I wanted to have a charcuterie element that felt like New England cuisine.

We have more beef fat than we know what to do with, so we put some of that in the fryer, and it gives a beautiful, rich flavor. It’s interactive. The guest gets to build their bite. It’s salty; it’s sweet; it’s spicy. It’s fun.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Philo Ridge Farm, 2766 Mt. Philo Rd., Charlotte, 539-2912

The original print version of this article was headlined “A New Season | Marc St. Jacques helms the reopened dining room at Charlotte’s Philo Ridge Farm”

This article appears in Oct 1-7 2025.