The restaurant Materia, which opened less than two years ago in the tiny Connecticut borough of Bantam—nearby Lake Bantam is far better known—reminds me of the small-town, one-Michelin-starred restaurants in France and Italy that I used to love.
They were never pretentious, nor were they in the business of re-inventing food. And they were such a point of local pride that nearby farmers would regularly appear at their kitchen doors, offering products they had grown or raised.
