On Common Ground

October 29, 2024Radcliff Menge

Travel at all and you hope the road ends in a familiar place. What brings on that sense of belonging? Food. Music. Shared interests and passions. Joy. In a word: culture.

I’ve been fortunate to share a great deal of travel with my good friend and creative conspirator Will Hereford. A year and a half ago he brought me up to his home in the Catskills. This year that old familiar feeling brought me back upstate to Bovina Center, as quiet a village as you’ll find anywhere, tucked away a couple of short hours from New York City and a decidedly longer way from my home in Birmingham.

Will and I were in truth working (and fishing), but the main draw of this trip was an extended stay at Brushland Eating House. Conceived, owned, and operated by the incomparable husband and wife team of Sohail and Sara Zandi, Brushland is a familiar place from the first moment you walk in.

All of the important details have been thought of, but not in a fussy way. The beer is cold, the wine list tight and well considered, the music is rolling. The mood is casual. And the food is incredible, a blend of upstate ingredients mixed with Sohail’s Jersey and Persian roots that is creatively fresh and, well, familiar.

The Zandis’ personal story was instantly relatable as well. Sara and Sohail escaped industry careers in New York for slower time and open air for their young family. Trade industries and a few minor details, and the Tom Beckbe story isn’t much different. But the connections didn’t stop there: Sohail and I have a shared passion for hunting and fishing.

Outdoorsmen fortunate enough to travel find new terrain and varieties of game, but in other sportsmen they only find kindred spirits. That universality in truth extends to all people, but in our small corner of the internet we try to highlight the familiar passion of sportsmen from across the U.S. and beyond. I found that old familiar feeling in Bovina, and I wanted to share a bit of it with y’all.