Wildly Local at Sumac
Atop vast rolling hills overlooking the Thornton River sits Sumac, where Chef Daniel Gleason cooks pristine local fare in a mobile kitchen.
chef daniel gleason of sumac | Photos: Will Blunt
exterior of sumac
After years of working in high-end restaurants, Chef Daniel Gleason needed a change.
“I was so fucking tired of refinement and fine dining cooking,” he says. “The atmosphere. The service. There were so many options. It’s like swimming in a sea of too much creativity.” So when the opportunity to open a concept next to Pen Druid Fermentation, a brewery that focuses on spontaneously fermented beer located on the gorgeous rolling hills of Rappahannock County, Daniel’s prayers were answered.
The concept had to be operated as a food truck or trailer, so there were creative parameters from the jump—and on top of that, he could play off Pen Druid’s wood-fired, wild-fermented approach to brewing. “I got a whole bunch of old country homesteading cookbooks and fell in love with the whole approach, from ingredients to preservation.” Daniel and his wife, Abigail, purchased an old trailer and, with the help of two local metal artists, refurbished it by-hand, decking it out with a to-go window and a wood-fired oven. They opened their concept, Sumac, in fall of 2020.
Everything at Sumac is local and made from scratch, excluding cooking fats and a handful of spices. Even the stack of logs used to fire the oven are from the trees that blanket the mountain range.
Abigail, who has a background in agriculture, leads the charge connecting with local farmers. “It’s been really cool to have strong connections with farmers to the point where I always wanted and never thought was possible,” says Daniel. They design their menu around what the farmers can provide and what Daniel forages himself. One day he’ll have pan-fried rabbit with fermented black walnut sauce. The next, grilled pork loin with wild blackberries and house-made ricotta. It’s refined food, prepared and served in the most rustic way imaginable: On a paper plate, at a picnic table, with guests looking out at the land that brought them the food they’re eating.
