Southern Farm to Table

Farmstead 303, a Southern-style restaurant, recently opened in the Old Decatur Train Depot space.  It embraces the 'Farm to Table' concept that is now trendy among restaurants.  I am a proponent of eating locally and was excited to eat at Farmstead even though Southern food is not historically vegetarian friendly.  However, this is 2010 and in Decatur so I figured I'd be okay.  I went to dinner there on a Tuesday night.  The decor was modern country (lots of dark wood and wrought iron) and there were lots of young families dining.  True to it's Southern-style, a lot of the appetizers were fried (blue cheese grits, onion rings and cauliflower) and most people around me were having fried chicken as their main dish.  There were two vegetarian options for the main course, a mushroom spinach stroganoff and the vegetable plate.  The stroganoff didn't appeal to me so I went with the vegetable plate.  I find the vegetable plate, when offered at restaurants, to be a lazy solution to appease vegetarians.  This isn't a well-conceived dish but a cobbled together plate of sides - what you end up with at Thanksgiving when you're the only vegetarian present.  Despite my misgivings, I wanted to see if the local vegetables would shine enough to alter my opinion.  There was certainly a variety - sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, squash casserole, turnip greens and collard greens all on one plate.  The turnip greens turned out to be the best testing vegetable - fresh and mildly bitter.  Everything else was a bit off.  I was looking forward to trying the squash casserole but it was under-seasoned and flat.  The peas also needed a bit more seasoning and the sweet potatoes were leaning toward dessert in terms of sweetness.  I felt good about eating so many veggies but I was not full and ate a couple of bites of my son's mac'n'cheese, which tasted so-so.
I really want restaurants who support local farmers to do well but Farmstead needs to improve some of its basics.  The cornbread offered at the table was dry and tasted more of egg than of corn.  There was only one soup offered and it wasn't vegetarian.  When it's cold, I like soup - or a bean stew of some sort would be nice.  Local vegetables are fabulous on their own but a chef should be able to add some creativity to make a proper main course.  I know I didn't try the stroganoff, so maybe I missed the good stuff.