Dig Inn Rye Brook restaurant - New York, USA

Many restaurateurs make a great to-do about building communities through food, but few do it with as much style as Adam Eskin – a private equity investor who’s transformed a health and fitness restaurant chain into a bona fide template for farm-fresh dining.

Dig Inn’s latest outpost in Rye Brook, an hour’s drive north of Manhattan, is located in, of course, a 1930s retail community centre. The New York-based design studio ASH NYC, which also worked on the group’s Boston outlet, has furnished the long, light-filled space with warm blond wood, Shaker-style benches and communal tables, low-backed grey banquettes, deep green marble, hand-blown globe lamps, and sunny posters by Hudson Valley artist Erika DaSilva.

The best seat in the house is by the L-shaped bar-counter overlooking the open kitchen. For Dig Inn’s mostly vegetarian menu, the group’s culinary director Matt Weingarten plunders the area’s farms (think organic vegetables, antibiotic-free meats and wild-caught fish) and artisanal producers.

The all-day menu begins with a breakfast of gluten-free quinoa waffles paired with lemon-infused ricotta and grain parfaits before segueing into platters of vegetable charcuterie and tactile bowls – handmade in Brooklyn by the ceramicist Wynne Noble – in which grains are mixed and matched with protein and vegetable sides.