Happy New Year! We thought you’d be feast-ed out by January, but we’ve had a flurry of inquiries about Feasts at Stissing House. We love the spirit. One season of celebration ends and the next begins–cheers to winter Feasts!
Think of our Feasts as your own private dinner party and Stissing House as an extension of your home. We can host from six to 150 people in our private rooms including:
The Punch Bowl: 6-10 people
The Upstairs Bar: 10-18 people
The Ballroom: 18-60 people
The Barn: 18-60 people
Tavern Takeover: 60-160 people
We cook simple suppers, formal dinners and full-blown Feasts. All menus are planned in advance and cooked over open fire. You can BYOG (bring your own game), pre order a whole lamb or trout baked in salt crust, host a seafood boil, and even request a pick-n-mix table of treats to sweeten the way home…
E-mail Katie for a chat to plan your next feasts@stissinghouse.com.
Please note: we will be open on Valentine’s Day - Tuesday, February 14. Serving our usual menu plus some cheeky things to share. Bookings open on Resy on January 17.
Eben’s pheasant have finally landed. They’re plump and gamey and divine - nothing like the factory birds that are raised and released for shot. We’re pot roasting his 3-week aged birds whole in the wood oven, stuffed with wild rice, orange and winter roots. We have 14 birds each weekend, so come early and come to share. If you’re serious, you will take the bones home to make broth. Please do.
Eben's pheasants are extraordinary because of his ethos and the way he raises his birds. Eben is the founder of Woodbury Game Birds in Vermont, and you could say he’s come full circle. Born in East Dorset, VT, Eben grew up on a third generation 120 acre family farm, where his father also raised pheasant. Post high school graduation, Eben went on a journey, of sorts, to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.
He spent time in Alaska working in a fish packing plant and for a fishing guide out of Port Alexander. He was a (self-proclaimed) snowboard bum in Lake Tahoe for a season, and then went home to Vermont to build fly rods for Orvis. After finally securing a travel visa for Australia, he spent time in Tasmania where he found work with an Englisman who ran an upland hunting preserve. He was an underkeeper and he helped manage 6,000 bobwhite quail, 2,000 pheasant, 60 head of fallow deer and three trout ponds. This was his first glimpse into the English management style of game bird production, and where he found his path forward. After spending time working with the top game bird producers in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America, Eben was awarded the prestigious Diploma of Gamekeeping at Sparsholt College of Hampshire, UK.
In 2012, Eben founded Woodbury Game Birds, a hunting preserve and culinary production partner, in his hometown of East Dorset, VT. He is the sole proprietor and gamekeeper, and 2023 marks his first year focusing solely on culinary production. From an ethical standpoint, he finds that chefs have a deep respect for his birds and they take great care in the way they treat and prepare them. Chefs want to visit and learn more about his operation and how the pheasant are raised–it’s that respect that fuels him and “makes his work more meaningful.”
The English management style of bird production differs from what you’ll typically see in the US. The English rear them in small sheds and push them outside at a couple of weeks old, like Eben does. In the US, they tend to pack as many pheasant as possible in a pen for two months, and they put blinders on them so they don’t attack each other in the confined space. Eben prefers to give them as much space as possible. They’re “wild, crafty little buggers and get much more exercise than American reared birds.”
That exercise takes place in three large pens. Two flight pens, a north and south, are rotated each year to eradicate any disease and allow cover crops to re-establish for the following season. A middle pen is used every year and where a custom cocktail mix of cover crops is planted. Eben rotates the birds in the pens to take advantage of early and later maturing plants like burdock, thistle, rapeseed, dwarf sunflowers, sorghum, peas, oats, corn, and lots of pumpkin in the fall. Eben is trying to rear as wild a pheasant as possible which makes “the flavor profile and bone density so much stronger.”
In his downtime, you can find Eben fly fishing in the northeast or practicing forestry management on his family’s farm. As for his work, we have a deep appreciation for the respect and care he displays in his craft, and we’re thrilled to cook and share his game.