From Lost Creek to National Recognition: Meet the Couple Behind Lost Creek Farm
LOST CREEK, W.Va. — From a historic family farm in Harrison County, Amy Dawson and Mike Costello have built a culinary destination that has attracted the attention of Anthony Bourdain, the James Beard Foundation and visitors from across the country.
Their Lost Creek Farm has become one of West Virginia’s most distinctive food experiences while remaining firmly connected to the small community whose name it carries.
And a recent long-form interview from MetroNews Television is giving West Virginians an opportunity to hear much more of that story directly from Dawson and Costello.
Lost Creek Farm is rooted in Dawson’s family history. She grew up near the property, which had been in her family for generations, and the farmhouse at the center of the farm dates to the 1880s.
Dawson and Costello began working to restore the property in 2013, bringing agricultural production back to a farm that had once supported vegetables and livestock but had largely gone unused during later decades.
What developed from that work was not a traditional restaurant.
Lost Creek Farm combines farming, food, history and West Virginia culture through its Farm & Forage Supper Club and other programming. Its meals are built around seasonal ingredients, heirloom crops and food traditions connected to Appalachia and West Virginia.
Over time, that work began attracting attention well beyond Harrison County.
One of the farm’s biggest moments came when the late Anthony Bourdain visited West Virginia for an episode of CNN’s Parts Unknown. Lost Creek Farm was among the stops featured when the West Virginia episode aired in 2018, introducing Dawson, Costello and their work to an international audience.
More national recognition followed.
In 2022, the James Beard Foundation named Dawson and Costello semifinalists for Best Chef: Southeast, placing the operators of Lost Creek Farm alongside chefs from across West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
Their work preserving West Virginia food traditions also became part of a larger documentation project.
Dawson and Costello worked with the West Virginia Folklife Program and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress on the Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia series, documenting food traditions practiced by West Virginians around the state.
Then, in 2024, Lost Creek Farm earned recognition from West Virginia’s entrepreneurial community.
The business competed in the inaugural Hayhurst Invitational, organized through West Virginia University’s Morris L. Hayhurst LaunchLab during Bridging Innovation Week in Huntington.
Lost Creek Farm won first place and the competition’s $100,000 top prize, providing another boost as Dawson and Costello worked to expand what they could offer from the Harrison County property.
More than a decade after they began restoring the farm, Lost Creek Farm has developed a reputation that stretches far beyond the community where it started.
Yet its identity remains tied directly to Lost Creek.
That may be what makes the story especially noteworthy for Harrison County.
Dawson and Costello did not have to take West Virginia food somewhere else to gain national attention. They built the experience around the land, history and traditions already here.
MetroNews Television recently sat down with Dawson and Costello for an extended episode of State of Minds, allowing the couple to tell the story of Lost Creek Farm, their approach to West Virginia food and the journey that has taken the Harrison County farm from a family restoration project to a nationally recognized culinary destination.
Watch the full State of Minds interview with Amy Dawson and Mike Costello on MetroNews Television.
