Back in December of 2023, Carol and I had a rather nice visit to Northampton, MA, including a fairly spontaneous visit to Homestead. (Review here), particularly enjoying the Focaccia and the house-made pasta. Our late October trip down to Connecticut to visit Hogpen Hill Farms Sculpture Garden had us returning home via Interstate 91, which ideally set us up for a stop in Northampton for some light shopping and dinner. Since it had been a while since our last visit we decided that a stop at Homestead. for an Offbeat Eats “Health Check” revisit was a great idea. (editorial note: “Homestead.” styles itself complete with the period at the end of its name, but it makes for some odd-looking sentences, so for the rest of this review I’ll simply call them “Homestead”).
On our previous visits to Homestead, the highlights of the visit were some good craft cocktails, some excellent house-made pasta, and some nicely-executed desserts, and we didn’t feel a need to vary much from that formula on our most recent visit. We started with cocktails, the Apple Cider Margaraiita (Tequila, curacao, hard cider, boiled cider, lime, and cinnamon sugar rim) for Carol, and the Donkeys in Paradise (Drumshanbo Pineapple Gin, Bourbon, Lime, Ginger Beer, and Angostura) for myself. Both were nicely-crafted cocktails with nice flavor profiles, and well-suited to the “starting to feel like Fall” weather.
Next up, an order of the focaccia. We had particularly liked the house focaccia back in ’23, with a nice yeasty body, a good oil crisp, and nice sharp salt and herb notes, and the version on this visit was every bit as good as our previous visits. I know that with the whole gluten-free movement, fewer places are doing bread, but I’m glad it’s still a focus at Homestead, and nicely executed.
Next up, a beets and peas salad, which was an excellent salad of roasted beets, charred snap peas, whipped urfa goat chese, a nice pepita-based dukkah, and a sherry glaze. Pretty much everything here word: the beets roasted just to the point of being slightly nutty, the peas bright and crisp, the cheese distinctly not burying the nice pea and beet notes, and the salad being nicely but not overly dressed. I’d definitely get this again.
For the main course, we simply selected from the list of nightly pasta specials, switching our entrées partway through so we could sample two items. I started with the bucatini. A nice house-made bucatini with pancetta, tomato, toasted parseley, calabrian chile, and pecorino romano. Pretty much a perfect bucatini, and very similar overall to the excellent carbonara I had on our last visit: a simple and straightforward classic pasta dish, executed flawlessly.
For the other entrée, we ordered the cocoa radiatore. Radiatore is one of my favorite pasta shapes (maybe it’s the heat transfer engineer in me…), especially with a nice ragu. This one was funky, and very hard to photograph, but it was a cocoa-based radiatore with a deep-brown color, served with a cider/white-wine ragu, rosemary, bitter greens, and shaved pecorino calabrese. The cocoa taste primarily came across as earthy, and this combined nicely with the tangier notes of the ragu and the bitter notes of the rosemary and greens. A bit funky, I’m not sure I’d order this regularly, but it was a great change-up from the more classic pasta presentations. Delicious, but unusual.
Homestead always has top-notch desserts, so we decided to split the budino. Rich chocolate, flakey sea salt, vanilla whipped cream and cocoa nibs, served up in a mason jar, this was the perfect amount of “smooth chocolate” without being overly sweet (especially as I age, I find the combination of chocolate and sugar to be a bit cloying, so I’m always delighted when someone makes a more subtle chocolate dessert).
So, how’s Homestead doing? Based on this re-visit, they are still at the top of their game, serving up great cocktails, excellent house-made pasta, and some thoughtfully-composed desserts. I’m certain we’ll continue to have Homestead on our short list for future Northampton visits.
