At The Buffalo Jump, the words “farm-fresh” are about as literal as they can be.
The menu changes daily, in part to make use of whichever crops are abundant that day on 20-acre Coonamessett Farm in East Falmouth, where the restaurant is located.
“It’s fun to create that way because it’s creating out of necessity, and it’s a good brain exercise,” says Laura Higgins-Baltzley, The Buffalo Jump’s chef/owner.
Higgins-Baltzley is an award-winning chef who, with her husband Brandon Baltzley, opened the former fine-dining restaurant 41-70 in Woods Hole and then held pop-up dinners at Coonamessett Farm for two years, from 2016 to 2018, before switching to the daytime cafe. “People like it (the daytime schedule) better because it’s when the farm is open,” she says.
Farm fresh ingredients
The chef’s creative take on eggs Benedict uses eggs from Coonamessett’s 350 chickens, as well as finely chopped farm tomatoes and herbs for a Bloody Mary-inspired hollandaise sauce. The whole dish ($13.95) is served atop a stuffed quahog, paying tribute to the Cape’s seafood heritage.
Guests order at the counter in the screened-in porch and then take food and find seats in the nearby covered pavilion, which can seat 150, but usually has far fewer socially distanced seats set up.
The Buffalo Jump’s daily menu, on one recent day, included watermelon gazpacho ($7.95) and pineapple beet salad ($11.95), in addition to clam chowder ($8.95) and chicken biscuit, which is a smoked chicken thigh on a pretzel biscuit with honey mustard aioli ($8.95). All menu items are marked as vegan, gluten-free or dairy-free, whichever applies. Other menu items included mushroom lentil cake ($16.95) and a chicken salad club wrap ($12.95) or Cubano sandwich with pork ($10.95).
There is also a kids’ menu offering entrees that include a hot dog, macaroni and cheese and a grilled cheese with American on white bread, at $4.95 each.
“I look at the value of ingredients, cost them out and then do a real-life check,” Higgins-Baltzley says. “If I’m a customer, do I want to pay $16.95 for a sandwich? I do have a sandwich that costs that much, but it’s for two.”
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Sandwiches often come on bread from Peck O’ Dirt Bakery, also on the farm and where the chef’s mother, Annie Konner-Higgins, bakes everything from scratch.
“My mom makes vegan and gluten-free as well as all the regular stuff. All her vegan and gluten-free stuff tastes normal,” Higgins-Baltzley says, paying a high compliment and singling out her mom’s whoopie pies and peanut-butter ganache cookies.
Many of these are treats with which the chef grew up and which her 5-year-old daughter, Faunus, is enjoying now. Higgins-Baltzley keeps it all in the family. Concerned about his house-painting job during the pandemic, her dad, Carl Higgins, quit and became The Buffalo Jump dishwasher.
The Buffalo Jump is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays, with plans to close for the season sometime in the fall. Of not being open three days a week during the COVID-19 era, Higgins-Baltzley says, “We hope customers can understand that it’s not the same right now. We need to close, either because we don’t have staffing or the food (supply) is not there. I’m lucky because I have food from the farm.”
The Buffalo Jump is located on Coonamessett Farm
Ron Smolowitz, who has run Coonamessett Farm with his wife, Roxanna, since 1987, says The Buffalo Jump is synergistic with the farm.
“We have a beautiful setting here and we often rent the space for weddings and The Buffalo Jump does the catering, buying food from the farm, so it’s circular,” he says.
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But you don’t have to go to a wedding to enjoy the beauty of Coonamessett Farm.
Besides eating at Buffalo Jump, on Wednesdays, from 5 to 8 p.m. through Labor Day, there is a BYOB Jamaican buffet at the farm, cooked on steel-drum grills by Raymond and Melaine Hinds. They started the tradition two decades ago when they were seasonal workers. The husband-and-wife team have since moved to Cape Cod. New this year because of COVID-19 rules, the $34 summertime buffet is not all-you-can-eat but includes a serving of a dozen dishes, from appetizers to dessert.
On the working farm, Ron and Roxanna grow more than 100 varieties of crops and care for a dozen types of animals: chickens and ducks for eggs, turkeys for Thanksgiving, Nigerian dairy goats for pets and milk, alpacas for wool, a tortoise and rabbits. There are also a few donkeys “because,” Ron says, “they are so much fun.”
“Roxanna is a veterinarian so she always wanted to have animals on the farm,” he says.
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If you want to visit the animals or pick your own produce before or after your meal at The Buffalo Jump, you need to buy a day pass ($8 per person) or become one of the 1,500 to 2,000 families who pay $79 a year for a farm membership for a family of four.
You do not need a pass or membership to eat at The Buffalo Jump; shop at the produce stand; or buy baked goods from the Peck O’ Dirt Bakery.
The Buffalo Jump
at Coonamessett Farm
277 Hatchville Road, East Falmouth
508-361-2361; thebuffalojump.com
Hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays