Lindsay Saripkin squats by a garden bed, running her dirt-caked hands through the wet earth. Saripkin, who has been a server at Canoe in Vinings since 2009, was approached by executive chef Matthew Basford at the beginning of this year to take on the task of planting and maintaining this year’s garden, which has grown from three beds to 11 on its 3,000-square-foot plot.
“So much of the staff is invested in this restaurant, so I see this as taking care of my home,” she said. “Being involved in the educational side of gardening and then delivering a plate to guests with ingredients I harvested myself makes me more passionate about the whole process.”
Restaurant gardens are a blooming trend in the industry as more chefs begin trading in kitchen knives for shovels. Hyper-local sourcing, specifically from a restaurant’s own garden, ranked No. 6 in the 2014 Culinary Forecast, according to the National Restaurant Association. Diners appear to like the concept. The survey showed that 64 percent of adults prefer visiting restaurants with locally produced food items.
“American consumers are growing increasingly interested in what is served on their plate, and fresh-from-the-garden ingredients hold allure with guests,” said Annika Stensson, senior manager of research communications for the National Restaurant Association. “Chefs have a natural relationship with the ingredients they use, so nurturing produce from seed to harvest can also be an expression of their passion for culinary arts and creativity.”
When the path from farm to table is as close as the back door, guests take notice. At Milton’s Cuisine and Cocktails’ garden dinners, guests sit among rows of Carolina Gold tomatoes and garlic for a true “seed-to-fork” dinner.
“I travel frequently on business and have eaten at many good restaurants throughout the country, but Milton’s is certainly my favorite,” said Brian Soucy, a longtime regular who dines at the restaurant monthly. “My family enjoys the seasonal variations in the dishes that they create from the garden.”
Behind the restaurant is Milton’s Acre, a plot of land where the restaurant grows more than 90 varieties of heirloom crops. Come summer when the garden flourishes, guests can pick a sampling of produce to take home.
At Kyma on Piedmont Road in Atlanta, the garden is steps from the kitchen door. Three raised beds add green pops of life t0 the surrounding concrete parking lot. “I prefer to source from our garden because I can control everything about the environment that the plants grow in and everything is 100 percent organic,” said executive chef Pano I. Karatassos. The garden provides 10 percent of the restaurant’s vegetables year-round, including all the core ingredients for the restaurant’s Briam, a Greek-style ratatouille dish.
Executive chef Billy Allin, of Cakes & Ale restaurant, carries over his passion for organic farming in an effort to change the way his guests are looking at food. “My cooks and I are conscious of health, and we cook food that we want to eat ourselves. Growing our own makes it so much easier.”
Allin’s garden is a slice of green space in his backyard in Decatur. He concentrates his efforts on growing four crops specifically for the restaurant menu. This year, it’s rocket arugula, broccoli rabe, baby dandelion greens and purple sprouting broccoli.
Allin was influenced during his apprenticeship in California working under Alice Waters. The Chez Panisse chef is considered one of the pioneers of using locally sourced, organic produce in her restaurant.
“California opened my eyes to how much more delicious organically farmed crops taste,” he said. “When you nibble a carrot within an hour of being picked, you understand why it is so good — it has character, a soul. That is how a vegetable should truly taste.”
And evidently the critters agree. Unassuming and innocent, squirrels and rabbits wreak havoc on months of tending in the search for a snack. Raccoons have been known to chow down on corn stalks. Gardening, especially in conjunction with a restaurant, is not for the faint of heart. It can be thought of as a test of patience, spontaneity and trial and error.
Even though there are costs and time requirements to start and maintain a garden, it can yield more cost-effective benefits in the long run. “It is easier to select what I can use without worry about what a supplier will have in stock,” said executive chef Derek Dollar of Milton’s Cuisine and Cocktails. “We have ingredients right in our backyard.”
“Restaurant gardens are extensions of operating philosophies of farm-to-table and local sourcing,” Stensson said. “Growing your own also allows for a supply of plant varieties that might not be readily available from other vendors all the time.”
Back at Canoe, Saripkin has transformed the garden area. Sprouts of green emerge from the coal black soil, contrasting with the surrounding Georgia clay that lines the Chattahoochee River banks. The transformation since the garden’s conception is staggering. Before the river flooded in 2009, the plot of land was the site of an overgrown kudzu forest and sinkhole.
This turn of the soil is nothing new for Saripkin. In 2012, she completed a fellowship in Israel with the nonprofit Ma’ase Olam, where she worked with the Druze community to create the Julis Matnas garden.
Canoe’s new garden space is a gem on the river banks, and it adds to the restaurant’s romantic setting. Maintaining the garden is a testament of connecting both the community’s mind and body to nature.
“I am a huge advocate of local foods, especially after being part of an environment that relies on garden sourcing,” Saripkin said of her time in Israel. “Food is not just medicine for our body, but for our community as well.”
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