The Hunt Magazine
Summer 2015

As the sun dipped behind a grove of oak and hickory trees last September, a rising column of smoke caught the corner of my eye as I joined a stream of guests hiking up to a late 1600s bank barn at Haskell Farm. Then the aroma hit me, an intoxicating whiff of slow-roasting meat.  

Dressed in a green Garrison Cyclery T-shirt and shorts, chef Bryan Sikora breezily chatted up visitors while manning grill grates  laden with meaty racks of spice-rubbed hangar steak and luscious chicken wings preparing a farm-to-table bonanza for 90 fortunate patrons of Haskell's final dinner of the summer.  

Sikora understands how to coax the best flavor from the farm's late summer bounty. Gently dressed and lightly grilled, his gorgeous ode to freshly picked vegetables -- green, red and yellow peppers, zucchini, beans, squash and several varieties of corn -- is a platter brimming with colorful, hearty and healthy goodness.  The smoky flavor provided just the right accompaniment to the grilled local chicken. Equally pleasing was the hangar steak served with hominy or snugged into taco shells warm off the grill with queso fresco and luscious ripe tomatoes.

Haskell's SIW farm stand is a go-to spot for Sikora during the growing season. Sikora delicately loads up his bounty of veggies just picked that morning-- yellow and green squash, Doc Martin lima beans, heirloom tomatoes, an array of varieties of eggplant, and cherry tomatoes. He transports it all to La Fia where he spills out the still-wet-with-dew veggies atop the kitchen table.

Newsworks
WHYY-TV (PBS)
January 2015

Is there a doctor in the house?  If you are dining at Domaine Hudson there is a good chance you will meet its new proprietor, Dr. Mike Ross.

Novices to the hospitality industry, Dr. Ross and his wife Beth purchased the popular wine bar and eatery from Tom and Meg Hudson in late 2011. The Rosses have ratcheted up the original owners' culinary tradition and elevated it to one of the best dining experiences in the state.

A man of boundless energy, a typical day for Dr. Ross starts at dawn with a drive from his Chadds Ford home to the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Chester County, one of the largest and most sophisticated equine hospitals in the world.

An internationally renowned equine orthopedic surgeon, Ross dons surgical scrubs and heads to the operating theater where a half-ton horse has been anesthetized, winched into the air and then lowered onto the operating table. Over the next hour or so Ross performs meticulous arthroscopic surgery on the horse's injured leg joint. Afterwards the animal is returned to a padded stall to wake up and begin his recovery.

Among a countless list of Ross' patients is the great thoroughbred DaHoss who won the 1996 Breeders' Cup Mile and then in 1998-- a year after Ross' surgery on DaHoss' hind leg-- came back to again win the  Breeders' Cup Mile which NBC-TV race broadcaster Tom Durkin dubbed "the greatest comeback since Lazarus." Thanks to Ross' skills over 32 years as a surgeon and professor, countless horses have returned to high-level competition or gone on to have productive lives in second careers.