Outstanding Ovation: A Dinner with Outstanding in the Field

A version of this article was first published in Bob Cut Mag, San Francisco CA, November 2019

“We’ve never done one of these dinners inside a cloud before, so we’ll see how this goes.”

With these words, Outstanding in the Field founder Jim Denevan kicks off one of the final dinners of the team’s fall season. He couldn’t be more spot-on in his clever and charming personification of the evening’s atmosphere. As we stand in a glorious, soupy blanket of haze obstructing the view of Half Moon Bay’s rolling hills, I am struck with the strange and specific sensation that we have, in fact, landed ourselves inside a particularly hospitable cloud. 

As a first time guest with Outstanding in the Field, I quickly come to understand that though the locations change with each dinner, there is a palpable sense of community amidst the crowd. I overhear fellow guests rattling off the dozens of dinners they’ve attended across the country, and others who admit this is a bucket list experience they’ve saved and planned for over the span of years. More than once, I hear seasoned guests quip, “You can never go to just one. You’ll want to come back again and again.” From their stories, it’s clear there are countless reasons to return to Outstanding in the Field, and from my vantage point it appears this evening in Half Moon Bay is encapsulating each of them. One might think it’s avant-garde—the day-long feast, the clean white table arching across the land. But it’s real, it’s remarkably grounded in its construction, and perhaps that’s why guests attach this lore to it—a particular quicksilver magic only this traveling celebration can expend.

Jim Denevan founded Outstanding in the Field in 1999, with an honorable and incendiary idea to change how people interact with their food, with each other, and with their surroundings. At its core, Outstanding maintains this concept: build a restaurant for one night only, in the middle of a beautiful place, bring a group of people together (mostly strangers), give them wine and unforgettable food, and watch them remember how fulfilled a simple, good thing can make them. 

Since that first dinner in 1999, Outstanding in the Field has held events in all fifty U.S. states, as well as fifteen foreign countries. This year (2019) marked their first event in Sweden, in addition to a new glamping experience at a select few events. Over one thousand dinner events have been planned, prepared, and served by the Outstanding team, taking the concept of “farm to table” and amplifying it a hundred fold. In fact, it’s the table that’s being brought to the farm here.

This dinner, set on the Markegard family’s cattle ranch, complete with ocean views and cliffside panoramas (if only that fickle fog would let up), lends a Western romanticism to the day. The coastal chill in the air and the sheets of mist whip through the wine tent, past the big red bus, between the Appaloosa horses, and nip at the heels of the cattle dogs. Cowboys roam on horseback, donning Stetsons and lassos. I am reminded of an elusive, rougher kind of living. I realize I can’t speak to every dinner orchestrated, but this one strikes me as completely devoid of gimmick.

The beauty of this dinner is largely thanks to the Markegard Family, whose cattle ranch is not only beautiful, but soulful, mindful. Husband and wife team Eric and Doniga Markegard have tended to the land for years, both coming from impressive backgrounds—Eric as a sixth-generation cattle rancher and Doniga as a seasoned wildlife tracker and regenerative agriculturist. In all honesty, it takes me less than fifteen minutes to feel like I really want to be a Markegard, and I just may have a chance. One of Doniga’s young daughters asks me to “hold her cow” while she grabs an appetizer (I am all too eager to oblige), while her older sister shares her last grass-fed slider from the burger bar with me. I think we’re bonding. I try to imagine this land being the earth of my childhood as it is for them, as opposed to an adult culinary field trip as it is for me. I wonder if the Markegards are looking for a live-in ranch hand, a permanent cow-holder. Anything, really. We haven’t even reached the main course, and I’ve already decided I want a reason to stay.

Doniga Markegard, one of the prevailing forces behind the ranch and family, knows a thing or two about being one with the wilderness. Her family’s land is a testament to that. In a worn cowboy hat, she’s denim-clad, a real presence. She greets guests from her station next to Jim Denevan, who is happy to cede her the floor. The crowd hushes with drinks in hand, as Doniga points out the array of species that inhabit the land around us, from deer to owls to the highland cattle that graze behind a wall of mist. Her trained eye misses nothing, and with patience and natural leadership she reveals the land to us bit by bit, so we can feel better acquainted with it come dinnertime. With a background in wildlife tracking and permaculture, Doniga has dedicated her life to discovering ways she can be part of a solution to the devastation taking place in nature. 

“Since humans have been removed from nature,” she explains, “there is so much destruction as a result of that. It’s not enough to ‘leave no trace’ and then go buy all your food at a grocery store. We’re not doing enough.”

She has a knack for posing human blunder and neglect in an earnest manner, without an air of condescension or blame. She’s all about action, as is the Markegard Ranch, which regularly holds ranch days and community events in addition to partnering with Outstanding in the Field. 

First and foremost, Doniga sees the best way to initiate people into the movement is to help them understand how enjoyable and fulfilling a life lived entangled with nature inherently is. 

“Any opportunity to get people to connect to their food source is key. People love it—they are fulfilled. They’re craving that connection,” she says. 
She goes on, almost waxing poetic: “There is not one force in nature that fails to have an impact on everything else around it. Our actions are also like the rain, the wind, the ocean, and we can choose for those actions to give more life than we take, or we can be oblivious and neglect.”

It is heartening and unspeakably pleasing to look around the lilting hills of Half Moon Bay and see a group of people changed, at least for one day, by this singular, immersive  experience with the outdoors. Whatever that craving Doniga mentions is, it’s being satisfied before our very eyes. We move from an hour mingling over appetizers and drinks (provided by Alfaro Family Vineyards and Fruition Brewing) and begin the trek down the hill to our cliffside table. It holds views of the ocean, if only we could see it. No one seems to mind the fact that the Pacific hides stubbornly under a bed of fog. 

Dinner is flawlessly executed by the team at Alderwood of Santa Cruz, led by Chef Jeffrey Wall. While each course is memorable, certain aspects of his menu strike a note of unique perfection: California rice with celery root puree; the Hen of the Woods shawarma, the sturgeon caviar delicately served on the most democratic of vessels: a Pringles potato chip.

Our night together, this wonderful, lucky congregation of feasters, culminates with a magnificent pillow of pink and gray fog settling along the horizon. Leftovers are traded across stretches of table. Blankets are passed out, the white noise of human voices starts to eclipse the white noise of the outdoors. The strangers that sat across from us are gone, replaced by friends. Together we exchange travel itineraries, restaurant recommendations. We manage to persuade the servers to bring us second helpings of sourdough bread and rice. Someone shamelessly pilfers a stick of smoked butter into their handbag and our table cheers them on as they do so. It’s hardly six o’clock and yet it feels like midnight, or perhaps those hushed, sacred hours prior to dawn. Crème brûlée with pumpkin compote is passed out by the apron-clad team of servers, all of whom by this point feel like friends. More wine, more brûlée. Behind us, the chef’s tent is backlit by the firepits, and the team initiates the breakdown process. They move about the field with ease and capability. In this lighting, in this setting, fueled by the imagination distilled in four and a half glasses of good wine, I could be convinced we’re not just inside a cloud—we’re in a different century, too. We might be pioneers, well-fed wagon trainers seeing the California coast for the very first time. There’s that energy about it all, a kind of collective first sight.  

No experience can last forever, and per Outstanding’s core tenet, this one is designed to last only one day. The last plates are licked clean, cleared, the magic of the dinner gently mourned as it leaves us. The Pacific’s fog layer descends lower around us, spooling like cotton around my feet as all guests move toward the car park and into a pitch-black night. That’s the deal here: you walk into the wilderness for a wonderful experience, and then you must walk out. The process is made a bit easier (and a whole lot warmer) when Jim Denevan himself honks the horn of his massive bus and invites straggling guests to hop in. Despite his gallant chauffeuring, I still manage to get lost. Bless the heroic Markegard son, a pre-adolescent cowboy in every regard, who discovers a group of us walking off the bus deep in the wrong direction, and heroically asks us to hop in his Kawasaki UTV—he knows where he’s going, he’s well-versed in how to exit the cloud and reenter reality. It is not lost on me that every single member of the Markegard family has paid me a tremendous kindness in the seven hours I spent on their ranch. I decide I’ll make up for it someday, though I’m not quite sure how.