Picture a 150-foot curved table stretching through a California apple orchard, candlelit faces glowing as the sun disappears behind rolling hills. Strangers pass platters of just-harvested vegetables while chatting with the farmer who grew them. This isn’t some fever dream of perfect dining—it’s Outstanding in the Field, the roving restaurant that has quietly revolutionized how we think about farm-to-table cuisine.
Since 1999, founder Jim Denevan has staged over 700 of these ephemeral dinners across all 50 states and 24 countries, turning farms, vineyards, and beaches into temporary restaurants that vanish by morning.
The Anti-Restaurant That Pioneered Farm-to-Table
Denevan flipped the script by bringing kitchens to ingredients, not the other way around.
Most restaurants source ingredients from farms. Denevan decided to source diners to farms instead. His red-and-white Flxible bus travels from location to location, carrying kitchen equipment and a small crew who assemble the dining infrastructure from scratch each morning.
The curved communal table—seating 70 to 150 guests—is deliberately shaped to complement each landscape, whether that’s rolling vineyard hills or oceanside meadows. The menu remains a mystery until arrival. Local chefs can’t finalize dishes until weeks before each event, ensuring every course reflects what’s currently growing in the ground.
You might discover roasted beets pulled from soil that afternoon or cheese aged in caves just steps from your table.
Where Strangers Become Community
Family-style service turns solo diners into temporary neighbors sharing stories and second helpings.
“We had this idea from the beginning that the farmer should be the star, that the chef should be of secondary importance,” Denevan has said. This creates opportunities for diners to meet the vintners, cheesemakers, and foragers whose work appears on their plates—people whose names usually remain invisible in conventional dining.
The experience unfolds from daylight through golden hour into evening, with natural progression replacing artificial entertainment. No background music competes with conversation. No Instagram walls demand attention.
Yet paradoxically, these dinners photograph beautifully, capturing something TikTok’s algorithm can’t replicate: genuine human connection around a shared table. Events sell out within hours of ticket release, with roughly 70% repeat attendance proving that once you’ve broken bread at a vineyard’s edge, regular restaurants feel cramped and disconnected.
Outstanding in the Field remains more popular than ever in 2024, expanding internationally while proving that in our digital age, people still hunger for meals where they can taste the place and meet the people behind their food.
