The gardens behind Atlanta’s farm-to-table restaurants
On a crisp fall morning, the Chastain’s edible garden is a feast for the senses. Hidden behind the restaurant, pink dahlias and red hibiscuses weave among beds of peppers, eggplants and a pumpkin patch. When the breeze stirs, basil’s sweet fragrance wafts through the air. While the restaurant hums as locals line up for their morning coffee, the garden remains softly quiet as a chef pops out of the kitchen to snip a basketful of squash blossoms.
“I still get goose bumps thinking about walking out here and just seeing the potential and what could be,” said chef Christopher Grossman.
While farm-to-table is touted on many menus around town, only a few metro area restaurants can say they have their own edible garden or farm. The Chastain, which earned a Michelin Green Star for its sustainability efforts, is part of a small but growing number of Atlanta restaurants cultivating their own ingredients within view of the dining room.
Others include Milton’s in the Crabapple Historic District, which grows everything from sweet potatoes to okra throughout the year in its 1-acre yard. At Souper Jenny’s West Midtown location, Jenny Levison worked with Jeff Collins, a regenerative farmer who also works with Grossman at the Chastain, to install a farm on the adjacent 1-acre lot.
As a regenerative farmer, Collins focuses on improving soil health and strengthening the ecosystem using cover crops, crop rotation and no-till planting without pesticides.
“We feed the soil, not the plant. You can grow lots of things very healthy and nutrient-dense if the soil is healthy,” said Collins.
This entails protecting the soil with cover crops (like fava beans), layering wood chips and incorporating the restaurant’s coffee grounds.
“We sprinkle them on the soil on top of the wood chips to get them to break down, so we’re composting and growing in the soil at the same time,” said Collins.
Though the Chastain uses its crops in dishes and drinks, including the garden tasting menu, the garden doesn’t produce enough to replace sourcing from other farms. That’s OK with Grossman, who sees value in the garden beyond the harvest.
“It’s right outside the window, and when you’re sitting there, and it’s in front of everybody, it starts a conversation with people,” he said.
At Kimball House, where herbs and vegetables grow in several raised beds, the joy of an on-site garden lies in growing items that are harder to source from local farms. Every winter, co-owner Miles Macquarrie and head oyster shucker He Ro (who manages the garden) plan what they want to grow for the year.
“We decided that it didn’t make a lot of sense for us to grow regular tomatoes and peppers this year because so many great local farms have that,” said Macquarrie. “So I wanted things that were harder to get.”
The result is a garden brimming with six types of basil — including Genovese, opal, and African blue — plus striped eggplant, cucumbers (for the flowers) and lemongrass.
“It’s been really cool to have stuff that not only can we not get from a commodity standpoint, but we can’t even get from local farmers,” Macquarrie said.
Restaurants don’t need much space to grow a meaningful harvest. Cory Mosser founded Natural Born Tillers after discovering a niche for edible gardens in compact spaces. Mosser works with restaurants like Avize in West Midtown and Communidad in Old Fourth Ward to install and manage their gardens.
“We’ve just learned that the most important things are sun and water. If we can have sun and water, we can grow food,” said Mosser.
When Mosser works with chefs, he grows what they need most on the menus. At Communidad, this means chile peppers, turmeric and cauliflower, while Avize’s garden sees a lot of cucumbers, chicory and marigolds.
Back at the Chastain, Grossman reflects on his favorite aspect of having a garden outside the kitchen. In addition to the produce, the garden provides an entire sensory experience.
“For me as a chef, salt, fat, acid, heat is a very real thing. But you can’t get basil this fresh unless you grow it,” he said.
When the freshly plucked basil hits the heat, for example, the aroma fills the dining room and diners can practically taste it as a dish passes by.
“It’s those little intangibles that happen when you’re surrounded by this,” added Grossman, referring to the subtle ways that an edible garden influences the food and the overall ambiance.
