5 days ago
This food truck is so good it's worth the trip to Sperryville
Never mind that he cooks in what used to be a cattle trailer — basically outside — where winter can be freezing and summer is broiling-don't-you-know. Dan Gleason says no other kitchen competes with his screened-in food truck at Sumac in Sperryville, Virginia — not even the gleaming beauty at his onetime employer, the Inn at Little Washington.
'Being in the kitchen and feeling a breeze is incredible,' says Gleason, who co-owns the operation with his wife and hospitality director, Abigail. 'You don't get that often, except for a backyard grill.'
Five years ago this September, the owners of Pen Druid Brewing asked Gleason if he'd be interested in putting a food truck on the grounds of their 27-acre site. He and Abigail responded with a pop-up showcasing an upscale menu using mostly ingredients from the Piedmont region of Virginia, including sumac, a plant that grows widely in the area. (The fascination goes way back. Gleason, who grew up in Rockville and has cooked for 20 years, remembers making tea from the berries when he was in fourth grade.) 'Place' has always inspired the couple, says the chef, who cooks much of what is served at Sumac over live fire. A big slab of oak, burned with the letters of the restaurant's name, welcomes customers to the couple's charming, shabby-chic venue.
Having booked Sumac's five-course tasting menu option, two of us check in at a host lectern fashioned from apple logs, cedar planks and an aluminum roof. (Two dozen customers are admitted every 30 minutes.) There are multiple seating options: a nearby picnic table on the grass and a shaded perch near the entrance of the brewery, both dog-friendly, or inside Pen Druid, where you can buy beer, cider or wine and help yourself to water. 'Sit where you like,' says the ticket taker, who turns out to be the chef. 'We'll find you.' The day of our visit was hot and steamy; the air-conditioned interior, which also plays music, called. Before we head to the brewery, Gleason invites us to take a kitchen tour after the meal.
A few minutes later, the first course is brought out. It's a bison tartare, seasoned with a paste of fermented plums and perilla leaf (wild shiso) and offered with bao buns. The meat is lush and better for the Lilliputian pickled chanterelles that garnish it. We smile as we sink our teeth into the shiny bread but set it aside after an exploratory bite. The bun, alas, is gummy.
We almost forget about the slip when the tomato 'steak' comes out. The second course turns out to be a single sliced tomato draped with a loose custard of cream, egg yolks and corn, then finished with a few slivers of onion and a pinch of mustard seeds. The tomato tastes as if it had just been plucked from the vine; the cloud on top tastes like corn crossed with silk. The coupling is a midsummer night's dream. On its heels come a rainbow coalition of diced beets scattered with savory granola, made with wild juniper on my visit, and splayed on a fluff of tangy goat cheese. The mousse is ringed in a shimmering green oil coaxed from chive and dill. We sop up traces of all the goodness on our compostable plates with a nice surprise: warm focaccia to make up for the underbaked bun.
Everyone makes mistakes. Sumac shows how to recover from one, quickly.
Around us, a few people are eating a single dish or two. One of the nice things about the operation is the ability to order a la carte if you happen to drop by sans reservation. If you only want say, the pork skewer from the day's lineup, it's possible.
Cubes of loin meat, charred over the wood fire that touches much of the food at Sumac, are finished as if they were about to be presented at some Michelin-starred establishment. Slivers of apricot drape over the juicy pork, which is seasoned with fennel blossom and set over apricot soup striped with tangy yogurt. A bite of pork, a sip of soup — the duo goes down like summer camp for adults when it's washed back with a brew made with native yeast and cooked over a wood fire. (Pen Druid, which embraces an orchard, celebrates its 10th anniversary Saturday and might be best-known for its floral blonde beer, Golden Swan.) Finer still is the skewered cabbage, a meatless marvel of many-layered cabbage braised in charred onion butter, brushed with a shrimp butter and made more exciting with a carpet of chopped oyster mushrooms. Even people who say they don't like the vegetable become converts after trying this sermon.
Sumac is an equal opportunity feeder, by the way. The kitchen always offers a few a la carte vegan options.
This being July, peaches are poached in brandy and sunk into a soft pillow of ricotta sweetened with almond, and blueberries bestow their color on a refreshing sorbet paired with sparkling basil granita. Which dessert is best? In search of an answer, I go from one to the other and back, repeating the process until they do a D.B. Cooper. The investigation results in a tie for first place.
Except for seafood and a few pantry staples including olive oil, much of what Gleason and team use is procured from within 150 miles of where they cook. Lemons have no home here, a role filled by native sumac. There's no soy sauce, either. For umami, Gleason makes his own malt vinegar from black walnuts. (Shades of the Dabney in Washington when the Mid-Atlantic dining destination rolled out a decade ago.) Buying local isn't as simple as it sounds, says Gleason, who points to this year's 'terrible' and 'short' apricot season, the result of a punishing frost.
Time for the promised kitchen tour, where we meet a handful of cooks from Sumac's residency program and get an up-close view of their tight quarters, which, to be specific, is a cattle car topped with a shipping container whose 36-foot length includes an extended screened porch. Gleason refers to the structure as a 'Franken-box.'
I didn't have a thermometer with me, but a minute inside the structure was hot as Hades. How do the cooks stand it? 'You acclimate,' says Gleason, who jokes that a cook starting fresh in August 'wouldn't survive.' (Sumac hires four cooks a season, which starts in March and ends in December. Applications are now being accepted for 2026.)
Once guests have left, the team gathers to decompress, talk about the day and swap stories. The backdrop for their meeting is a sunset: 'no barrier to nature,' says Gleason, whose fantasy setting he considers 'chef bait' and whose honest cooking is worth a hike or a drive from points near and far.
The food truck is at Pen Druid Brewing, 3863 Sperryville Pike, Sperryville, Va. No phone. Open 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Prices: A la carte plates $10 to $30; five-course tasting menu (including 20 percent service charge) $95. Sound check: 72 decibels/Must speak with raised voice (in the brewery). Accessibility: ADA-compliant restroom in the brewery.
