Beacon on the Erie Canal
The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal must have been quite an event. Crowds lined the banks. Speeches heralded feats of engineering and forecast growth and prosperity to come. They were right: The canal unlocked land and agricultural abundance in Western New York and America’s Midwest and towns sprouted along its banks. One of those sprouts became Medina in Orleans County.
Recently, a restored “beacon on the canal” has re-emerged in Medina at Bent’s Opera House. It is reclaiming its historic position as a community gathering place while first-floor Harvest restaurant is becoming a destination dining experience for foodies.
Harvest restaurant’s Executive Chef Malik Von Saint used that phrase to describe Bent’s Opera House, which originally opened in 1865. “It was literally a beacon on the canal, with all the events that they’d done. It was a real staple.” A recent Mother’s Day brunch highlighted the building’s renewed prominence in the community when reservations swelled from 60 to 270 guests, requiring a move to the third-floor opera house space.
Constructed of iconic Medina sandstone, the structure’s original wood support beams nearly succumbed to time. After its last owner donated the building to the community through the Orleans Renaissance Group, ORG took an initial step to stabilize the structure. Then, Medina natives Heather Farnsworth Hungerford and Roger Hungerford of Talis Equity acquired the building and undertook the multiyear, award-winning restoration of the landmark, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The effort was a significant long-term economic investment in their community, so it’s no wonder that the Hungerfords also invest in staff development by taking them to visit high-end restaurants. “It’s important to give them that experience so they know what they’re going for,” says Heather Hungerford, who serves as general manager.
For her, it meant starting from great, yet actively looking for ways to improve continuously as a restaurant and team. One example: The recently added herb wall is a practical and beautiful addition to the bar space that is carefully maintained by Rose Arnold, who laughs that her role as mixologist and bar manager expanded to include “herbalist and horticulturist.”
It’s a level of effort that invites guests to keep coming back to see what’s changed. Hungerford has a deep background in hospitality and also attended culinary school. She set out with a clear vision “to do things in the healthiest and freshest way possible.” That’s a passion that means finding people who share her desire to make something really special. “I knew it was going to take a while, but it’s really coming,” she says.
Von Saint cites the commitment and long-term vision of the Hungerfords for preserving the legacy of Bent’s Opera House and helping the team tap into the building’s rich tradition on the canal. He also credits Heather Hungerford’s work to promote a culture of trust and positivity. It all enables creative freedom to explore big ideas on the plate. The trust translates to a nimble menu that changes with the whim of Western New York’s seasons and Von Saint’s rustic cuisine aesthetic. (“I had this idea for a [mustard-battered chicken] schnitzel with the foot sticking up in the air looking wild on the plate.”)
While the Hungerfords painstakingly restored the building to its original glory, inside Harvest, “Every mise en place changes almost every day depending on … what’s coming in, what’s left,” Von Saint says. That requires their talented service staff to communicate the latest composition of the menu’s “salad” or “vegetable.” And it’s all thanks to local agriculture.
‘You Can’t Go Wrong’ Agriculture
Von Saint loves working locally. He says this motivation is in his DNA, having grown up in the mixed-use “mom and pop” Buffalo neighborhood of Elmwood Village. After tracing the Erie Canal east to Medina, he noticed immediately that he was in farm country, and that advantage to him as a chef quickly became clear.
“I used to drive south, sometimes an hour. Now I can just put my hand out the window and there’s Pudgie’s Farm. Take the other door and there’s Collins Good Earth Farm with chickens.” He says they “barely lift a finger” to source local ingredients for the kitchen. Von Saint says his heart is currently with Pudgie’s, stemming from when they first showed up unexpectedly at his restaurant door with “beautiful purple asparagus and ramps.”
Another great relationship is Panek Farms: “Their strawberries? The wild ones with that tartness. The bright red ones from that nice sun. You taste that and it’s just an explosion of sugar.” Or the native Saskatoon serviceberries that popped for a couple of weeks and landed on his menu before vanishing for the year. It’s that ever-shifting mise en place, a malleability he welcomes on his menus, including in previous work at Hotel Henry or Iron Tail Tavern in Buffalo. It’s Western New York. It’s Orleans County. It’s Medina.
What’s going on? “Western New York soil is very underrated,” he says.
Throughout the year there’s a wide variety of availability, but Von Saint says winter raises questions for chefs who are newer to the region: “We have the most beautiful root vegetables: rutabagas, the most beautiful potatoes. There are Michelin restaurants who get shipped these potatoes that we grow here.”
Hungerford says the sky’s the limit. She’s particularly excited about their new wine pairing menu series—which the team built together—that attracts foodies coming from Rochester, Buffalo, Toronto and farther but also caught the attention of her husband at a recent dinner who, despite having had a late lunch, kept trying to steal her food.
“You can’t go wrong with Western New York,” says Von Saint.
A More Beautiful Route
Von Saint views recipes as road maps with multiple routes to the same destination. And as with following the scenic Erie Canal, when going “from point A to point B [in cooking], you can take a more beautiful route.”
For Chef Malik, everything starts from taste. The three pillars of salt, acid, fat. Some attention to details in prep to make it special. Seasoning, he says, that makes sense. Describing adding seasoning to the water and some other details in preparing potatoes, he adds, “It sounds like so many steps, but honestly, it’s not a lot. But you’re going to have someone taste a simple potato and be, like, ‘Oh, this is the best potato. What is it?’”
And then? “Presentation. That’s where you go the extra step.”
Hungerford agrees, alluding to some new “elevated plating” they have coming in.
All these steps and attention to detail tap the legacy and tradition of the place. They honor the hard work of the local farmers with whom they partner. And they also respect the effort of guests who seek Harvest as a destination, who follow the historic path of the canal to the big bend where Bent’s Opera House sits mere steps from the water. Where, “Thank God the building held on for us because now it can stand for another hundred years,” Hungerford says.
Because of their remote place on the map, destination is an important word at Bent’s Opera House and Harvest restaurant, and it means a lot of different things.
At Harvest, it starts with great food. Channeling a guest’s perspective, Von Saint says, “Make it worthwhile for me to drive 45 minutes to Medina to this restaurant that I’ve never heard of and I’m going to try something, and ‘oh my goodness!’ That tiny little extra step really makes a difference.”
All the little steps add up.
“I really want people to experience this place,” Von Saint says. “It’s not very famous yet and I would like to bring … success to this and make Medina proud.”
It’s another forecast on the path to becoming true.
