Men Who Like to Travel - David Latt

Heading inland from Seattle , a city he knows well, our foodie adventurer, David Latt, explores Spokane and Eastern Idaho in search of restaurants that fly the flag of the farm-to-table movement.  Like fashion, food delights the soul but is often subject to hype. "Organic," "Natural" and "Low Fat" have been co-opted by marketing campaigns, obscuring the true intent of the words. When we think of "farm-to-table," w e imagine a farmer driving a beat up 1980's Ford pick-up to the back door of a neighborhood restaurant and unloading wooden crates filled to overflowing with leafy bunches of arugula, round and firm beets, thick stalks of celery, fat leeks, freshly laid eggs, plump chickens, freshly cured bacon, ripe apples, dark red cherries and juicy peaches. The high quality product inspires the chef who quickly writes the menu for that day's meals.  In the ideal, a farm-to-table meal reconnects diners with the seasons and the land.

At the conclusion of the Civil War, the Ocean House was one of half a dozen luxury hotels built in the resort community of Watch Hill, R.I.. The hotel sits commandingly on a bluff overlooking the waters of Block Island Sound, with the northern tip of Long Island only a few miles away. In time, the hotels fell into disrepair and were lost to the ravages of fire, weather, and residential development.  Declared unsafe, the Ocean House was slated to disappear along with her sisters. In 2005 the hotel was rescued from demolition with a commitment to restore the property by dismantling the structure, piece by piece, and reconditioning storm battered wood and eroded stone. Reopened in 2010, the interior rooms were modernized, with the lobby and dining areas redesigned to take advantage of the sweeping views of the water and private beach below the bluff. The room with the best view is Seasons, the main restaurant, with windows running along the ocean facing side of the hotel. S