Sunday Harvest Dinner with Chef Jill Mathias | July 28th, 3pm - 7pm
To join the waitlist for any of our Sunday Dinners, please email us at chef@stonewoodny.org with your name, phone number, the dinner you are interested in, and desired number of seats.
Jill Mathias is the executive chef of Chez Nous, a convivial neighborhood restaurant serving unpretentious European comfort food in Charleston, South Carolina. Chef Mathias uses the word “simple” to describe her passion for cooking. She has great appreciation for the bounty available where she lives and works and uses that to inspire the culinary creations she offers her guests. She hand writes the Chez Nous menu daily, drawing inspiration from the Mediterranean cuisines of Southern France, Spain, and Northern Italy, then condenses it into an ever-evolving selection of just six items a day. Each dish showcases the farmers and the fishermen with whom she works and illustrates Mathias’ deft hand at restraint to let ingredients speak for themselves. The Charleston City Paper writes “Mathias’ dishes are simple and straightforward - a handful of ingredients, a basic sauce - but eminently fresh and flavorful.”
Born in Wisconsin and raised in Fargo-Moorhead, North Dakota, Mathias says she remembers receiving a most influential cookbook - Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen - when she was only 18 years old. She went to college for art history before attending culinary school at Johnson & Wales. After culinary school, Mathias worked in kitchens in Puerto Rico and Martha’s Vineyard before moving back to Charleston to work at, then eventually helm, the beloved, now shuttered restaurant Carolina’s. During her tenure at Carolina’s, she met her now husband and business partner Juan Cassalett. In 2014, Mathias, Cassalett, and their business partners, Patrick and Fanny Panella, opened Chez Nous.
It has been said that Chez Nous is hard to find because the restaurant exists in another dimension: one of fairy tales, hiding in plain sight behind a gravel driveway that could be a portal to a magical realm of flavor. Whatever the reason, the restaurant, housed in a stately 19th Century Charleston single down an alley on a side street., feels just as spellbinding as the day it opened. Chez Nous accommodates 36 guests inside its two small stories. It has wooden floors, a fireplace, a little bar, and a wooden staircase leading to tables upstairs. It feels homey and historic, but you could also call it rustic.
The kitchen is minuscule - there isn’t room for a walk-in refrigerator - so supplies are bought daily and used efficiently. But Mathias says the space limitations restrict how much food she can buy in a good way; she is dedicated to eliminating food waste. Part of the homespun appeal that permeates everything at Chez Nous - the classic antique mirrors, the bar staff quietly pouring wines instead of loudly shaking cocktails - is the menu’s connection to the seasons. The goal of Chez Nous and Mathias’ culinary approach is to cultivate the feeling of dining in one's home, being ever mindful of waste and utilization, while embracing the bounty and seasonality that the low country offers via her fishers, foragers and farmers.
Homespun hospitality, avoiding food waste, celebrating local and seasonal . . . we can’t think of a better match for our ethos at Stonewood Farm. And we couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome Chef Mathias and her extraordinary culinary talent this July! It’s guaranteed to be a memorable experience.
To make a donation and reserve a place at the July 28th dinner, please select the number of seats you’d like and then click the DONATE button. We ask that you read and accept the “fine print” at checkout.
We will attempt to accommodate special dietary requests related to the eight common allergens - gluten/wheat, milk/dairy, egg, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, finfish and shellfish - provided that you share your allergies with us when you reserve your seats.