Terroir , is a French term usually used to describe wines, cheese and how their tastes reflect the geography and climate from which they came. However, it seems like local restaurants are becoming more and more curious about how it can apply to their menu and North Carolina. What does North Carolina taste like?

When you think of a farm-to-table restaurant, you may think of a place in which several farms are contracted to supply the restaurant with food. The popularity of these types of restaurants stems from their ability to create organic dishes for customers who are environmentally and health conscious.  Although it may now be normal for restaurants to change their menu season to season, Little Hen, a farm-to-table restaurant located in Apex, has gone even further in terms of unpredictability by changing the menu every few days.

“What separates me from a lot of people that say they do what I do,” Regan Stachler , owner and head chef of Little Hen, said, “is that they often work at places like this where they make a menu of what they think will be coming out for the season and they’ll have that for like three months on the menu… and I take it one step further where basically whatever the farmers bring me, that’s what’s going on the menu. They basically say what’s on the menu. I don’t.”

Examples of what has been used in the dishes include ramps, wild leeks native to North Carolina that show up only in spring, fava beans from Holly Springs, and goat cheese that tastes different depending on the seasons in which the goat’s diet changes.

The frequent change of dishes has been a main feature of what sets the restaurant apart from its competitors, yet some customers have voiced complaints over the changes in variety.

“Some people criticize us for having such a small menu, but what we try to convey to them is my dishes probably wouldn’t even be there four days later,”  Stachler said. “Our menu is actually bigger than any other restaurant because it changes so often. Yes, that night there’s only eight to 12 items to choose from, but give it three or four days, you know most of them are going to be different.”

Not only do the dishes change, but the drink menu changes frequently as well.  Local beer gets rotated every two weeks and the bartender, Craig Rudewicz , helps invent seasonal drinks for every occasion. On St. Patrick’s Day, Rudewicz  created a green drink without food coloring or unnatural ingredients by using bright green kale juice from the kale farmers supplied and turned it into an appletini with the fresh smell of lettuce and kale. “For Easter, we gotta do [something similar], like get pastel color without using food coloring,” Rudewicz said.

The idea of Little Hen began with Stachler’s previous experience working in several farm-to-table restaurants in New York. Having experienced getting the best organic products for these restaurants inspired him to start his own with the help of his wife, Dawn Stachler , who is manager of the Little Hen.

Stachler credited not only his wife but also his neighbors and his team of chefs and bartenders to the restaurant’s success. Decisions regarding what dishes to make and what drinks to serve do not get made unless it has been decided among the team.

“My chef and I, he might know something I don’t know,” Stachler said. “We test our food on each other, bartenders test the drinks, everyone tests the drinks… we all make a decision on that. When five or six people make the decision on that, it’s probably something good. You don’t make that decision on your own. I think that’s what separates us.”

According to Dawn Stachler , this team not only agrees with what is good and what is bad, but also believes in the restaurant’s concept, which increases their confidence in the menu.

“We picked people who understand the concept… who embrace it and who are interested in learning more about it in the hopes that we build a staff that stays with us for a certain amount of time,” Dawn Stachler  said.

The Little Hen restaurant finds it necessary to update their Facebook page every day.

“The reason why we have such a strong presence on Facebook is when we started this and realized we were changing the menu everyday… so every day when it’s ready at about 3 p.m . or 4 p.m ., bang, it’s a post on Facebook and everyone sees it,” Satchler said.

With a network of almost 600 people who “like” their page, it seems like its not only the staff who embrace the concept.