The morning after our Summer Sojourn dinner at Wye Oak Tavern, members traveled to Chocolates and Tomatoes Farm in Middletown for a “Market Basket Surprise” luncheon, where Chef/Farmer Mark Mills built the menu around whatever the fields offered that day and finished with one of his handcrafted chocolate truffles. Along the way, we found a link to our own Bailliage: Chef Mark trained at L’Academie de Cuisine, the school founded by our former Vice Conseiller Culinaire, Chef François Dionot.
Most menus are written weeks ahead. At Chocolates and Tomatoes Farm, the field writes the menu, and it waits until the last minute to do it.
On Friday, July 10, the morning after our Summer Sojourn dinner at Wye Oak Tavern, members of the Bailliage of Greater Washington drove west into the Middletown Valley for a "Market Basket Surprise" luncheon. The idea was simple and a little daring: a soup and a salad built from up to six fruits and vegetables, chosen by whatever the farm had ready to give that day. No one, not even our host, could say for certain what we would eat until the harvest was in.
Our host was Chef/Farmer Mark Mills, whose name on a business card would need room for several titles: lead farmer, chef-instructor, artisan chocolatier, and culinary educator at Frederick Community College. The farm's playful name makes sense once you meet him. Tomatoes and chocolate sit at opposite ends of the culinary world, one pulled warm from the vine and the other tempered with exacting patience. Chef Mark has spent his career at home in both.
We gathered in The Learning Kitchen, the teaching space the farm opened in 2023. It's a room built for conversation as much as cooking. Chef Mark worked through parts of the preparation in front of us and told us where each ingredient came from: what it takes to grow it, what the season had asked of it, and why that effort shows on the plate. The result was a lesson in how food reaches the table, delivered one course at a time.
For many of us, the most meaningful moment had nothing to do with the menu. Chef Mark earned his Pastry Arts degree at L'Academie de Cuisine, the celebrated Washington-area culinary school founded by Chef François Dionot. Chef Dionot served as Vice Conseiller Culinaire of our own Bailliage. Sitting in a Maryland farm kitchen, we were reminded how far the influence of one teacher can travel. Chef Dionot's legacy reached us that day through a former student who now teaches young chefs of his own, and that continuity is exactly what La Chaîne exists to honor.
The meal ended, fittingly, in chocolate. Chef Mark's handcrafted truffle was a small, elegant final note, the "chocolates" half of the farm's name fully earned.
Before heading home, guests could buy from the farm's own bounty: fresh produce, sourdough bread, and farm-fresh eggs. As with the luncheon, the selection was whatever the land had offered that week. Many of us drove back toward the Beltway with a few of Middletown's treasures riding along, a chance to stretch the experience into our own kitchens.
The Summer Sojourn has always taken us beyond the Beltway in search of the people and places that shape our region's food. Chocolates and Tomatoes Farm showed us that the best surprise in the basket is often the story behind it, and sometimes a dozen eggs to take home.