Located at 403 E. Main St., Hearth of Malone opened for dinner in May and has since added breakfast and lunch options to its modern American menu.

Executive Chef and Operating Partner Jesse Badger was pleased the new food stop offered locals another choice when grabbing a bite.

“The idea is to utilize as many local ingredients as we can, as many different things from this specific community and the surrounding areas in the North Country.”

Out of town

Jesse Badger, the executive chef and operating partner of the Hearth of Malone. (Photo provided)

Badger grew up on a farm “in the middle of nowhere” of southern Indiana between two towns with populations of about 50 people each.

“To get experience working at nice restaurants, you have to go to big cities, so I moved all over the place for the last 25 years.”

His restaurant partners include CFO Mike Roesler and CEO Darren Gough.

When those two became involved in the revitalization of a downtown Malone building, once home to both a car dealership and a power and water company in the early 1900s, they wanted it to house a restaurant.

Badger was living in Chicago at the time, but, with his small-town roots, offered to move to upstate New York to operate the restaurant.

Downtown Malone’s latest Main Street Restaurant, the Hearth of Malone, is what Executive Chef and Operating Partner Jesse Badger calls an “upscale casual” eatery with a rustic and modern interior. The building’s storefront was remodeled to host the restaurant and opened up in May, serving up farm-to-table dishes from its breakfast, lunch dinner and brunch menus. (Photo provided)

“It reminds me a lot of the closest larger town near where I grew up, population of about 5,000,” he said of Malone. “It reminds me of the stereotypical, at least from my up bringing, small American town, which I really like. Plus, the people are also super nice.”

Farm to table

Badger felt there were a lot of great agricultural opportunities that weren’t well tapped into by the local restaurant scene.

When he first moved, the chef visited the Malone and Canton farmers markets, networking to find meat and produce vendors.

“All of the farmers generally know each other or know of each other, so one person introduces you to someone else and it goes from there.”

Hearth of Malone’s menu features house-made pasta dishes and woodfire pizzas, as well as seafood dishes, including live lobster and raw oysters, and a mix of modern and classic takes on the bites.

All of its land-based protein, with the exception of pork belly, is sourced locally.

“Basically all of the produce on the menu since we opened have come from the northeast, if not New York, with the exception of limes, lemons, oranges and olives — which don’t grow here.”

Seafood is sourced from the northeast, as well.

Locally inspired

Asked his favorite dish on the menu, Badger pointed to the Carbonara.

“That’s one of the four classic Roman pasta dishes. What’s interesting about it is that we make it with locally sourced ingredients to make our own pasta, we use local eggs for it, the cheese comes from cows that are less than a 25 minute drive away from here and we make and cure our own guanciale, which is an Italian-style jowl bacon.

“That’s probably my favorite.”

Featured on Hearth of Malone’s breakfast menu is the Savory Porridge, a regionally-inspired vegetarian dish.

“New York used to be one of the largest producers in the world of rye,” Badger said, adding that it was still grown here. “We take rye and treat it like Arborio rice for risotto and make a savory porridge out of it. Then it gets tossed with scallions and soft cooked eggs.

“It’s pretty inspired by New York produce.”

Hearth of Malone

Badger described the restaurant’s interior as modern rustic, noting some original, and now exposed, brick walls and timber beams, as well as some other work from local craftsman Steve Kemp.

It is between 10,000 and 15,000 square feet with room enough for about 100 patrons, including at its L-shaped bar, which seats about 15.

Badger said they employ nearly 50 workers.

“We want to make a great restaurant, but we want to take good care of all of the employees that we have. Those 46 people are now counting on us for their income, but we also want to take care of the purveyors that we’re buying from; in some way now all of those farms and purveyors and everyone else we’re working with are trusting us to do well to help them be successful,” he said.

“What I’d like to see it bring to the community is a slightly higher quality of life for everybody, maybe a little more attention for the area, a little more traffic from outside and another option for the people who live here.”

‘Oysters in Malone’

So far, Badger said the restaurant had been well-received.

“A lot of people are happy to have another option,” he said. “They’re glad to see something new on Main Street, which has been somewhat on the decline for several years.

“One of the funniest things that we got a lot of, especially when we first opened, was, ‘I did not think I’d be able to eat raw oysters in Malone.'”