Published: Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009 / Updated: Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009 01:21 AM

Fresh, local, organic; just don't ask for a menu at Erin's Restaurant

Eatery inside Durango Bagel offers a different dining approach

At Erin's Restaurant in Rock Hill, there's no menu.

Diners learn what's for dinner when owner Erin McManus accompanies the meal to the table and explains where the ingredients came from. Guests, whether together or not, sit beside each other at long tables.

The meal arrives, one course at a time, on large platters, from which diners help themselves, then pass around the table.

“You get everything,” McManus said. “You have built-in conversation.”

“If you were going to your friend's house for dinner, you wouldn't say, ‘What are you having?'”

Erin's slogan is “Fresh. Local. Organic. The way food should be.”

With the exception of staples such as flour and oil, which she buys in bulk, and produce not grown locally, such as lemons, most of the ingredients come from area farms. The fare depends on what's in season and on “what's fresh and delicious,” McManus said. Meals change almost nightly.

It took losing her job, said McManus, 49, to find the motivation to pursue her passion. She was managing her mother's Rock Hill shoe store, The Cobbler's Bench, when it closed in March for good.

“I was terrified,” she said.

McManus was planning to launch a small catering operation, when Wayne Wingate, a friend from church and owner of Durango Bagel off Herlong Avenue, offered to let her use his restaurant after hours.

“It's a different concept,” Wingate said. “I don't know if anywhere, even in Charlotte, is going to the extent of doing what she's doing to get local produce.”

Erin's, which opened in May, serves dinner at 6 and 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Guests pay a fixed price of $22 for the evening; beer and wine is extra.

McManus arrives several hours early, pulling a trailer crammed with cookware, utensils, ingredients, tablecloths and china. Her sons prepare food and convert the breakfast and lunch shop into a family-style dinner restaurant. McManus and Joe Raines, a friend from church, do all the cooking.

Although she has no formal culinary training, McManus has been a dedicated “foodie” since she was old enough to walk in the kitchen. As a toddler, she filled her grandparents' oven with muddy sweet potatoes from a bushel on the back porch. When the family ate out, she didn't want a hamburger. She asked for lobster.

At her church, First Associate Reformed Presbyterian in Rock Hill, she ran “Erin's Tea Room,” serving breakfast, lunch and tea during the church's fall bazaar. She also wrote a food column for The Charlotte Observer's Neighbors of York County section.

McManus has said she learned the basics of cooking from her mother, then read, watched cooking shows and learned by trial and error.

“I have a real passion for local food,” she said. “I've always wanted to have a restaurant where the menu was seasonal and things changed. It took that kick in the pants to make me do it. I'm such a chicken.”

McManus spends several days each week scouring farmers markets in North and South Carolina. She buys grass-fed beef from Baucom's Best farm in Monroe, N.C.; eggs from Red Dirt Ranch in Ellenboro, N.C.; and stone-ground grits from Cotton Hills Farm in Lowrys.

Aside from a steam pot for pasta, everything is cooked in an oven — Durango Bagel bakes in-house and doesn't have a stove or fryer.

One Thursday evening in November, two tables were set for 6 p.m. Seated at one was a party of 11. At the other, seated as they arrived, were McManus's parents with a couple they're friends with, two newcomers who moved to Rock Hill from New York and New Jersey last year and a pair of journalists.

First out from the kitchen was coleslaw made with blue cheese and cabbage from the Charlotte Farmers Market. Next came a pear salad with local lettuce, goat cheese, cashews and a white vinaigrette; a salad with lettuce, black grapes, mandarin oranges and strawberries from York; and an insalata caprese — mozzarella, basil from Waxhaw, N.C., and the last of this year's heirloom tomatoes, marinated in balsamic vinaigrette.

Dinner included oven-fried green tomatoes with a vinaigrette and bread crumb topping; pork from Underwood Family Farms in Lawndale, N.C., seasoned with herbs; a roasted vegetable medley, covered with melted mozzarella; field peas, which taste similar to boiled peanuts; roasted potatoes; mashed sweet potatoes; a butternut squash and Swiss cheese panade; then scallops cooked in dark rum and mint, topped with mushrooms from Clover Organic Mushroom Farm.

For dessert, McManus served an apple and cranberry tart and a pineapple upside down cake.

By dinner's end the diners, no longer strangers, raved about the food and the “unusual experience.”

Everyone vowed to return.