Culinary Gardens – repost
Posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009
I first experienced dining ‘locally’ in several of the Ohio City neighborhood restaurants while living in Cleveland, OH.
The difference in taste is IMHO unparalleled. I was thrilled to read this article about chefs going rogue with their ingredients – a concept which had crossed my mind and come up in conversations enough times that I was amazed something had not been formed earlier.
I’m very curious to see where this movement goes with the growing trend and occasionally city supported rooftop gardens. If nothing else the spirit of trying something new in the name of more responsible agriculture and better food should be supported at every opportunity.
Where Does Your Garden Grow?
A handful of urban chefs are growing everything from exotic herbs to tomatoes and corn – on the roof
By Andrea Pyenson for MSN City Guides
A ledger tracking dbar’s rooftop yields.
For a small but growing number of urban U.S. restaurants whose chefs are concerned about serving the finest, freshest local ingredients available, the distance from farm to table is shrinking. It can be as short as a flight of stairs; stretch several flights; or extend a few blocks away. But the distance is, increasingly, vertical, because in this latest iteration of urban farming, the gardens are on the roof.
Four years ago Rick Bayless, award-winning chef, owner of Frontera Grill, Topolobampo and the brand new Xoco in Chicago, cookbook author, and host of PBS’ “Mexico – One Plate at a Time,” installed a garden on the roof above his restaurants. A celebrated supporter of urban agriculture, Bayless says, “I think it’s really important to prove to people it’s easy to grow things even in an urban setting… even in downtown Chicago.”
Bayless (pictured): “I think it’s really important to prove to people it’s easy to grow things even in an urban setting.”
In 60 self-watering EarthBoxes, he grows five varieties of chiles and 12 kinds of tomatoes to serve Frontera Grill. “It’s a salsa garden, minus the herbs. Herbs are more fragile, and the garden gets 100 percent sun all day long,” Bayless explains. With Xoco’s construction behind him, though, Bayless plans to begin growing herbs next summer.
Frontera Grill’s “Rooftop Salsa,” served with grilled fish, is on the menu from the first harvest through the end of the growing season. Usually, the tomato harvest begins in early July. This year, because spring and early summer were unusually cold, the first tomatoes did not arrive until early August.
Bayless also has a production garden at his home, about 10 minutes away from the restaurants, where he grows all the greens and edible flowers used at Topolobampo — roughly $25,000 worth of produce annually. Bill Shores, who designs and manages urban landscapes and edible gardens, works at the production garden and visits the rooftop garden roughly once a week. Bayless and other Frontera chefs work in the rooftop garden, too. “It’s also important for the chefs to have direct access to food at the source,” he says.
At dbar, in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, climbing a metal ladder and stepping carefully across a small, slightly pitched roof area are the only way to reach the flat, rubber blacktop above the restaurant where chef Chris Coombs grows 10 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, four kinds of corn, and 38 varieties of herbs and edible flowers. These, he says, form “the basis of my cuisine… very European influenced with American ingredients.”
Coombs estimates that he and the rest of the kitchen staff go up to the roof 15 to 20 times a day during growing season to water, harvest or snip herbs. After spending hours in a hot, busy kitchen, “It’s great stress relief,” he says. “We’re doing something for the environment. The guests really get a kick out of it, too. They know where their food is coming from.”
Chef Coombs (pictured) with the last of his corn harvest.
This is the fourth year for Coombs’ garden. Limited by the northeastern climate, he can only grow outside for about six months. He begins all the plants under grow lights in the building’s attic. “When I start seeds in January, I think about where I’m going to be with the menu” when the plants are ready to harvest.
While the garden does not produce enough to supply all the restaurant’s needs, last year it yielded $3,000 worth of produce and cost only $600 – $700. One of the current dishes, “Herbaceous Spiced P.E.I. Mussels, with rooftop sorrel, lemon verbena and basil, in a white wine sauce with jalapeno, garlic, shallot and tomato,” is almost entirely rooftop sustainable. Only the mussels and wine do not grow upstairs.
- See more photos of these urban gardens: Up on the Roof
The chef takes care of the garden with one of the restaurant’s servers, Jon Sanford (pictured), who also works in the kitchen.
In Providence, Rhode Island, Joseph Hafner started a beautiful and productive garden two years ago on the roof of a residential building three blocks from Gracie’s, where he has been chef for nearly five years. “When we opened the restaurant, the only thing we were missing was a garden,” he says. “This was a perfect opportunity.”
The roof already had recessed beds and a drainage system. Last year, he planted roughly half the beds. This year he planted the rest. In a 900-square-foot and a 1,200-square-foot bed, Hafner is growing several varieties of tomatoes, squash and peppers; eggplant, carrots, chard, shiso, five kinds of basil, lavender, fennel, Siberian watermelon, edible flowers, and more. Three small beds hold a variety of micro-greens. “I grow a lot of these things because I can’t find them,” he says.
For about two months of the year, the garden provides all of the restaurant’s salads and cold foods. Over the course of the six-month growing season, it averages out to 30 percent. But, “100 hundred percent of our garnish comes from the roof,” Hafner says.
The chef takes care of the garden with one of the restaurant’s servers, who also works in the kitchen. Hafner estimates that he spends about 20 hours a week up there, and his assistant spends 25. “We do a lot of tastings, so this lends itself to that kind of menu. It reminds us what we do, why we do it. For the creative process, all you have to do is take a walk.”
Cosentino (pictured): The garden “gets everybody outside for a little while. It’s a fun change,”
Chris Cosentino inherited the rooftop garden at Incanto in San Francisco when he joined the restaurant as chef six years ago, a year after the restaurant opened. The vision of owner Mark Pastore, the garden is maintained by one of the line cooks, who lives in an apartment above the restaurant. The rest of the kitchen staff pitches in to help.
The garden is focused on unique, specialty herbs, including nepitella (a minty herb that usually grows in Italy), bergamot, epazote, lovage, several varieties of thyme, several varieties of mint, and “lavender up the wazoo,” according to Cosentino. There are also a fig tree and a stinging nettle patch, and rose bushes to ward off pests. “We designed the garden to accommodate the menu,” explains the chef. Incanto’s garden is productive year-round, but because San Francisco has a short sunny season, Cosentino says he seeks out items that will grow well in fog. “Some things are heartier than others,” he notes.
The staff recycles all the nutrient-rich potable water from the kitchen – pasta water, water that has been used to wash greens – to water plants. “It can be hard to schlep buckets of water up two flights,” Cosentino admits, but it’s worth it.
The garden “gets everybody outside for a little while. It’s a fun change,” he says. “It gives us some peace of mind and some sanity. Always having nepitella on the roof is a nice thing.”
When the owners of Seattle’s Bastille Cafe & Bar were planning their restaurant, which opened in late June, they thought the flat roof of the single-story building they were occupying would be perfect for a garden. “Few places in the city have the capacity to do this,” says chef Shannon Galusha.
Salade du Toit: “80 percent of our salad is coming off the roof,” says Galusha.
The rooftop garden, designed with the help of Colin McCrate of Seattle Urban Farm Company, is now 5,000 square feet, with roughly half planted. Eventually, says Galusha, the garden will be 10,000 square feet. The beds are raised and heated, so the soil won’t freeze in winter. According to the chef, McCrate helped “figure out the beds, and I built them.” Cedar Grove Composting provided the restaurant’s first compost blend. The company will make subsequent blends from the restaurant’s own compost.
Galusha researched, then planted, items “that would be quick from seed to harvest.” He is growing “every kind of herb,” including lavender, rosemary, thyme, chervil and chives; tomatoes, and rotating varieties of arugula and lettuce. The restaurant’s “Salade du Toit” (rooftop greens in a hazelnut vinaigrette) has been very popular. With a weekly harvest of 60 pounds of arugula, “80 percent of our salad is coming off the roof,” Galusha notes.
The cafe’s cooks love the garden. Many of them “are into horticulture to some degree,” says Galusha. “Being a chef in a busy restaurant is stressful. Being able to go up on the roof and get your hands in the dirt is great.”
Andrea Pyenson is a food writer and editor based in Boston.
