Farm 255 is a restaurant that seeks to reconnect food to its roots & people to their food. We serve local, seasonal, & sustainable food for supper nightly. In addition to the Farm we manage Full Moon Farms, a 7-acre organic/biodynamic farm in Athens. Unlike the owners of any other restaurant we know of, we are the folks sowing turnip seeds in the morning and cooking turnip greens in the evening. We supplement our harvests with those of other local family farmers and ranchers that avoid harmful chemicals and practice sustainable agriculture. Our menu, based on seasonal shifts in the field, changes as often as the weather. Our meat comes from pasture-raised animals & is hormone & antibiotic free. We purchase whole animals & use all the various cuts of meat throughout our menu.

We are as committed to good community as we are to our cuisine. We have an open kitchen so that dinner is a dialogue, where the farmer-chefs and diner-neighbors can have a meaningful exchange; we offer live music every night in honor of its legacy in this town; and we designed our restaurant with an eye toward the history of the 1930’s building that houses it. For us here at the Farm, eating is a celebration of food’s origins, the paths it travels on the way to our tables, and the lessons learned through the journey.


Mission Statement

Seventy-five years ago, most Americans’ relationships to their food was not unlike their relationships to their family: immediate, unexpressed, bound in tradition, ritual, and personality. Today, the commodification of nourishment has become a cornerstone of our food culture. The predominant conception of food trumps expediency and replicability over quality, effortlessness over thoughtfulness, and industry over community. In order to reverse this trend, and reclaim our culinary traditions, the first step is to deconstruct our food into its constituent parts, un-cooking it before we cook it, and reconnect food to its source. The investigation of source goes further back than the kitchen and container: where and by whom the raw ingredients were grown, what methods were used to grow them, how far they traveled to arrive at our table, what was added and taken away, how and by whom they were coaxed into becoming a product or dish, what cultural histories are reflected in those processes.

Answering these questions – knowing the source – is, for us, the root of all “good food.”
For those of us in our partnership, the source of “good food” begins on the farm. We are the founders and farmers of Full Moon Farms, seven acres of organically-cultivated fruits & vegeatbles housed within 100 acres of historic farmland just east of downtown Athens. Full Moon sells its produce through its CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), a subscription service that entitles members to a share of newly harvested fruits, vegetables, and flowers during the growing season. We have developed a dedicated constituency – customers, workers, growers, suppliers, students, neighbors, professors, professionals – deeply connected to the farm and its operations. Now in our fourth season of successful production, Farm 255 is the logical extension of Full Moon’s enterprise development and community influence.

Farm 255’s cuisine is comfortable yet innovative. Food is farm-fresh, first and foremost, Mediterranean in influence with a Southern culinary drawl. Our menu is simple and elegant, focused on quality rather than quantity of choices. The source of our food is local, sustainable, and apparent: ingredients come from our farm as well as other local sustainable producers, with a great emphasis placed on our personal relationships with the people whose food and drink we incorporate into our menu. We favor organic over conventional and Georgia-grown over foreign, but make concessions in both areas in order to highlight small-scale farmers and producers with time-honored methods and excellent products. Hoping to revive lost culinary traditions, we reacquaint customers with the narrative behind their meal by using historical recipes and artisanal cooking techniques from around the globe. Our open kitchen engages patrons in the cooking process. Menus change daily, as the morning’s harvest frames our culinary choices. We emphasize in-house production of value-added products, including making our own pastries, cured meats, preserves, pickles, etc. Our cuisine acts as the intermediary between producers and consumers, urging people to discover and celebrate the source of their food.

Until a century ago, almost everything that everyone ate everywhere on earth was organic, free-range, artisanal, and locally-grown or locally-produced. It wasn't special or high-end, it was just food. We hope for our restaurant to help achieve that norm again, and make everyday food genuinely “good food”: locally sourced, seasonal, steeped in tradition and narrative, connecting people to each other, to their community, and to their right to eat and live well.