May/June 2009
By Michael Wall, Georgia Organics
Procuring local food is a hot trend in quality restaurants these days, and for good reason.
Many patrons look for local food offerings because they’re interested in many of the social, environmental and economic benefits that eating local food provides.
For restaurant operators, one-on-one relationships with farmers is one of the best ways to attend to quality control, and chefs in the know use as much locally grown food they can get their hands on for the most important reason of all – taste.
In a weeklong (or more) delay from harvest to dinner table, sugars turn to starches, plant cells shrink and produce loses its vitality.
Now, a handful of chefs and restaurant operators have taken local procurement to a whole new level.
Food grown in your own community was probably picked within the past day or two. It’s crisp, sweet and loaded with flavor. Several studies have shown that the average distance food travels from farm to plate is 1,500 miles.
Shipped food is usually chosen for its durability rather than taste. In the modern industrial agricultural system, varieties are chosen for their ability to ripen simultaneously and withstand harvesting equipment, for a tough skin that can survive packing and shipping and for an ability to have a long shelf life in the store. Only a handful of hybrid varieties of each fruit and vegetable meet those rigorous demands, so there is little genetic diversity in the plants grown.
Local food, in contrast, is usually grown in a huge number of varieties to provide a long season of harvest, an array of eye-catching colors and the best flavors. Many varieties are heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation, because they taste good.
Many conscientious chefs care about nutrition, too. A recent study showed that fresh produce loses nutrients quickly. Food that is frozen or canned soon after harvest is actually more nutritious than some “fresh” produce that has been on the truck or supermarket shelf for a week.
Billy and Kristin Allin, the chef and owners of Cakes and Ale in Decatur, are headed into their second year of growing food in their own ½-acre vegetable and herb garden. The size of their garden is much too small to produce all of the restaurant’s needs, but it does provide ingredients for creative specials that keep patrons returning.
It’s also a kind of experiment that fulfills many of their efforts to reduce the restaurant’s carbon footprint – a
worthy goal more and more restaurant operators are striving towards.
“Sustainability and health are related and those are very important things that I’m interested in,” Billy says. “It’s an added bonus that while we are working on those important ideals, we are also improving the taste of our dishes.”
Almost all of the herbs used for seasoning at Cakes and Ale are grown in the attached farm. The Allins are experimenting with crop rotation, and, with the help of hundreds of worms, they turn the food waste from the restaurant into nutrient-rich compost that feeds the farm’s growing vegetables.
This allows the Allins to feed their plants without relying on artificial fertilizers, which are commonly derived from oil and mixed with chemicals that are known carcinogens.
Composting is the most widely used practice for adding nutrients to the soil and combating soil-borne pests and diseases. The time to apply compost is when plants are actively growing, not during late autumn and winter, when long wet spells will wash valuable nutrients deep down into the earth.
Organic gardeners recycle “browns” (leaves, woody mulch, grass clippings, twigs) and “greens” (kitchen scraps, vegetable and fruit peels, coffee grinds, tea leaves, egg shells and torn cardboard) into a compost heap of decaying matter.
Two Urban Licks, Bacchanalia and Floataway Café are some of the other restaurants that are growing for their kitchens.
Summerland Farm, near Cartersville, supplements the excellent dishes produced at Star Provisions, Bacchanalia, Floataway Café and Quinones at Bacchanalia. Chef Anne Stiles Quatrano and Clifford Riley Harrison moved to Summerland 15 years ago to enhance the food quality produced at their beloved restaurants.
Over the past 15 years, the soy bean fields have been nitrogen fixed, cover cropped, turned, fertilized and fenced into 60 acres of pastures, herb gardens, raised bed agriculture and acres of fruit and nut trees – many of which were planted more than 100 years ago.
Harrison oversees the farm with the help of a few restaurant employees who enjoy spending some of their work week in the open air.
The Two Urban Licks garden, about 40 feet by 15 feet in size, is large enough to provide a variety of herbs and many of the seasonal vegetables that go into the chef specials the restaurant is famous for. Garlic, tomatoes and many different types of peppers are just a few of the tasty items that come from its garden. This produce supplements the restaurant’s staples, and is often used in the family meal that’s prepared every night for the staff, which is yet another time-honored custom that keeps the busy world of running a kitchen down to earth, so to speak.
