I couldn’t remember the last time I ate at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, so clearly it had been too long. And after my meal there last night, I definitely won’t let such a long time elapse again. The restaurant, now over three and a half years old, seems to have finally hit its stride, fulfilling its mission of being a local farm-to-table restaurant without tripping over itself trying to strictly adhere to those principles. To point, a magnificent dish of raw fish over thin slices of local pear. The choice of fish? Wahoo. Certainly not a native local selection! But it’s precisely this kind of unapologetic creation that has really rounded BHSB into form. Stick to the best of what’s local, but don’t restrict yourself because of it. If there’s an outside product you need to make the best dish possible, go ahead and use it. But don’t worry, they still feature their local ingredients first and foremost, sometimes bringing things over in between courses to show the diners what the raw materials look like- in one case a display of their unique bean pods, and in another a tray of locally foraged mushrooms including a gigantic specimen of oyster mushroom. It’s definitely cool to hear a little about where some of the stuff came from, and equally cool to see the sincere exhuberance in the servers’ as they convey that info.

Execution at Blue Hill has always been outstanding and that hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s actually even elevated a few notches. Fennel is apparently in season and made its appearance in a shotglass of creamy fennel soup as an amuse, and then again later in simple braised form. The baby Berkshire pork chop was so perfectly cooked it was a thing of beauty. It was cooked all the way through, but just barely, so that the color of the meat was the same pinkish gray from the outer edge all the way to the bone, which incidentally had been frenched for a particularly refined presentation. The chop had the thinnest rim of gorgeous fat around it, and it was encrusted with a mild coarse mustard. I swear, if they didn’t tell you it was pork, there’s no way you would you would have guessed its identity because the texture of the meat was so ridiculously tender and moist, it was almost as if the muscle wasn’t even composed of fibers; there was no real grain to speak of. Simply the most amazing execution of a pork chop I’ve ever had.

It seemed as if every dish in the tasting menu strove for a higher purpose, usually to showcase a particular ingredient, yet unfailingly you would find something a little extra to dazzle you. A yogurt foam turned out to be a great dressing for the baby greens adorning one dish. The mundane looking coin-sized pieces of sausage hidden in the side of sauteed roasted mushrooms turned out to be the most ethereal bits of forcemeat I’ve ever tasted- it might have been made from veal, but it was definitely richer than chicken, lighter than pork, and somehow delicate yet nuanced in flavor. And while I’m singing all of BHSB’s praises, I have to even go so far as to say that their Concord grape soup with a fromage blanc quenelle was actually even better than Chika’s version, with the bits of peeled grapes adding a little texture and an additional sweet, juicy burst in every spoonful.

Even details like the bread service have been raised to new heights. While Blue Hill has always featured exceptional butter, they’ve now added a presentation of three other toppings for your bread- a carrot dust, an arugula dust, and best of all, a lardo spread that has been perked up with pimenton, the mildly spicy Spanish paprika. I don’t usually get excited about bread at restaurants, but I tell ya, spread a little bit of lardo and sprinkle a little arugula dust, and it becomes way more than bread to me.

Everything about the meal from beginning to end was just so delicious that you don’t even realize until afterwards how healthy and light everything actually was. There was no cheating involved in this cooking; no obvious use of butter or bacon, no cloyingly heavy or sweet sauces. Yet somehow even to my jaded palate, the flavors just seemed to sing so loudly and clearly. Maybe I was just lucky to have gotten a reservation at the right time, a month where a lot of great stuff is being harvested. Whatever the case, I have to say, if you haven’t been to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, you simply must. And if you haven’t been there in a while, I’d highly recommend checking it out again. You may discover like I have, that they’ve really taken their craft to new heights.