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Outside Atlanta, a Utopia Rises

Nick Melvin, left, chef at the Inn at Serenbe, and Paige Witherington, farm manager, at Serenbe Organic Farms. Credit...Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

EACH morning, as the breakfast dishes are cleared, Nick Melvin escapes the kitchen at the Inn at Serenbe, where he is the executive chef, and drives five minutes down a country road to a sumptuous 25-acre organic farm. There he examines the collards and the mache, the sunchoke and the carrots, and decides what looks best for that night’s table and next week’s menu at the Farmhouse, Serenbe’s acclaimed restaurant.

Since opening in Palmetto, Ga., in June 2006, the Farmhouse has become a Southeastern showcase for the country’s growing farm-to-table movement, winning accolades for food that is both innovative and authentic. The same ethos, it would seem, infuses just about everything in Serenbe, a utopian experiment in New Urbanism being molded out of red Georgia clay, about 30 miles southwest of downtown Atlanta.

In just a few years, this idyllic community — which aspires to be something of a Sonoma for the New South (though without the wine) — has become a destination for Atlantans in search of a day trip with the kids or a getaway without them. My wife, Dina, and I recently took the latter course, and quickly discovered a refuge that washed away the stresses of city living within minutes of arrival, after an hour’s drive through Atlanta’s ever-worsening traffic. Despite only word-of-mouth advertising, it is increasingly attracting visitors from afar, some on extended layovers at nearby Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Serenbe defies easy description, and is perhaps best understood through the story of its creation. In 1991, Steve and Marie Nygren, an Atlanta couple with deep roots in the city’s culinary life, took their three daughters for a ride in the country. The trip was prompted by the advertisement of a farm for sale, and the family ended up buying the 60-acre parcel, with its 1905 farmhouse and rolling terrain, as a weekend home.

Three years later, Mr. Nygren sold his stake in Peasant Restaurant Group, which had helped introduce Atlanta to fine dining in the 1970s with restaurants like Pleasant Peasant and City Grill, and he moved his family to the farm. His wife, whose mother had owned Mary Mac’s Tea Room, one of Atlanta’s most beloved Southern eateries, christened the place Serenbe, because it was such a serene place to be.

Within two years, the Nygrens had converted the farmhouse into a bed-and-breakfast, and begun a series of additions and improvements. The barn became a guesthouse, and several tin-roofed cottages were restored into romantic hideaways. There are now 19 guest rooms in different configurations.

They planted a garden thick with tomatoes and zucchini, and dug a pair of swimming pools, along with a fishing pond. They populated the property with llamas and donkeys and rabbits and goats, and added a croquet lawn, an open-air pavilion for weddings, miles of hiking trails and a labyrinth made of stones cleared from the organic fields.

“We invited people to come and simply unfold and relax,” Mr. Nygren said in a recent interview at the Farmhouse, over a Sunday lunch of peppery buttermilk fried chicken, served with Creole stewed tomatoes and creamed greens. “Just being in nature was enough.”

In 2000, while jogging, Mr. Nygren noticed bulldozers on adjacent farmland and promptly panicked that Atlanta’s sprawl was about to consume his solitude. He quickly purchased 900 acres adjacent to the farm and, feeling it was inevitable that land so close to the city would be developed, determined to set an example.

He did so only after banding together with neighboring landowners to push through zoning changes aimed at limiting development to self-contained clusters, surrounded by wilderness. Under the plan, 80 percent of the 40,000-acre Chattahoochee Hill Country region must be preserved as green space.

In the last five years, Serenbe’s first two high-density hamlets have risen, shaped like omegas to flow with the undulations of the land and constructed according to stringent environmental and conservation standards. They have a Main Street feel, with Arts and Crafts cottages sharing the winding lanes with loft-style town houses and sleek modern boxes. Front porches supplant front lawns, and the sidewalks are dotted with fanciful lampposts that seem to have been designed in Whoville.

One hamlet, Selborne, is devoted to the visual and culinary arts and features two galleries, a gourmet grocer, a bike rental, a salon and several boutiques. A bakeshop, the Blue-Eyed Daisy, serves as the village gathering spot, luring visitors with red-velvet cupcakes. The other hamlet, known as Grange, has an agricultural theme and includes the stables and organic farm. A third neighborhood is being planned, with a focus on health and healing, though the economy has slowed the progress.

The community sponsors frequent weekend festivals, farmers’ markets and other events, including an annual November fundraiser for Les Dames d’Escoffier International, the women’s culinary group, that attracts foodies from across the region to sample the area’s best chefs.

Last August, Hilary White, who had been the longtime executive chef at 103 West, an Atlanta mainstay, opened the Hil on the Hill in the heart of the village, giving diners a second option for cooking that originates at Serenbe Organic Farms. Like Mr. Melvin, Ms. White makes daily pilgrimages to hand-pick produce for dishes like chicken pot pie and pork ribs with okra stew, and to leaf through seed catalogs with the farm manager, Paige Witherington. When we visited for dinner, she stopped by the table to shave fresh fennel onto my wife’s citrus salad.

Dining at one of the Farmhouse’s 10 or so tables is an almost worshipful experience. Soft string music sets the mood, and guests await the next course in cheerful whispers. Our outstanding prix fixe meal, which came with wines paired to each course, started with charred lamb carpaccio and a melt-in-your-mouth gnocchi made with spinach and shrimp, followed by entrees of molasses-lacquered short ribs served over creamed grits and wild Georgia shrimp surrounded by braised fennel, celery, pearl onions and artichokes.

Our breakfast the next morning — with Mr. Nygren pouring the coffee — was equally memorable: perfectly scrambled eggs with an oniony maple-pear sausage and stone-ground organic grits.

The spacious rooms at the Inn at Serenbe, in the main house or the cottages, are simple and fresh, with cushiony beds that insist that you sleep. The Nygrens serve an afternoon tea, and guests are invited to help feed the animals on Saturday mornings, to gather around a lakeside bonfire on Saturday nights, and to take a hay ride on Sunday mornings.

We were not there on a weekend, and found we did not need the distractions. We walked the farm and took pictures with the pigs. We explored the village in fascination at what the Nygrens had built. We watched five consecutive episodes from the “Mad Men” DVD we had packed. We slept and ate extremely well. Ignoring the occasional plane overhead, we bathed in the solitude. And in reconnecting to the land, even for just two days, we found that we connected to ourselves and to each other.

FARM-TO-TABLE EATING

The Inn at Serenbe, 10950 Hutcheson Ferry Road, Palmetto, Ga., (770) 463-2610; www.serenbeinn.com; the Farmhouse at Serenbe, open for dinner Thursday to Saturday and for Sunday lunch; (770) 463-2622; www.serenbefarmhouse.com.

The Hil on the Hill, open for dinner Wednesday to Sunday and brunch on Saturday and Sunday; (770) 463-6040; www.the-hil.com.

Rooms in the Main House, including breakfast, range from a low of $160 a night on weekdays to a high of $225 a night on weekends, while the two-bedroom Mimosa cottage runs from $330 to $350 and a suite in Magnolia Cottage with a kitchenette and a fireplace costs $275 to $295.

Dinner for two at both the Hil and the Farmhouse, with wine or cocktails, runs about $140 without tip. On Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, the Inn will discount rooms to $109 if guests spend at least $60 on a meal that day at either the Hil or the Farmhouse.

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