EACH morning, as the breakfast dishes are cleared, Nick Melvin escapes the kitchen at the Inn at Serenbe, where he is the executive chef, and drives five minutes down a country road to a sumptuous 25-acre organic farm. There he examines the collards and the mache, the sunchoke and the carrots, and decides what looks best for that night’s table and next week’s menu at the Farmhouse, Serenbe’s acclaimed restaurant.

Since opening in Palmetto, Ga., in June 2006, the Farmhouse has become a Southeastern showcase for the country’s growing farm-to-table movement, winning accolades for food that is both innovative and authentic. The same ethos, it would seem, infuses just about everything in Serenbe, a utopian experiment in New Urbanism being molded out of red Georgia clay, about 30 miles southwest of downtown Atlanta.

In just a few years, this idyllic community — which aspires to be something of a Sonoma for the New South (though without the wine) — has become a destination for Atlantans in search of a day trip with the kids or a getaway without them. My wife, Dina, and I recently took the latter course, and quickly discovered a refuge that washed away the stresses of city living within minutes of arrival, after an hour’s drive through Atlanta’s ever-worsening traffic. Despite only word-of-mouth advertising, it is increasingly attracting visitors from afar, some on extended layovers at nearby Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Serenbe defies easy description, and is perhaps best understood through the story of its creation. In 1991, Steve and Marie Nygren, an Atlanta couple with deep roots in the city’s culinary life, took their three daughters for a ride in the country. The trip was prompted by the advertisement of a farm for sale, and the family ended up buying the 60-acre parcel, with its 1905 farmhouse and rolling terrain, as a weekend home.