The modern farm-to-table movement in America began with Alice Waters, who opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley with a manifesto: only serve food at the height of freshness, and change menus with the seasons. In 1971 this was a radical idea, and Waters and her team were a huge influence on what came to be known as California Cuisine. The expression of this idea has changed over the years, become multiethnic, and deepened into chefs doing their own pickling, smoking, and other processing, but the idea is the same.
I contacted three South Bay restaurateurs whose establishments feature the farm-to-table experience. All said that cooking according to this philosophy changes the way they think about food, the way they cook it, and how they relate to their customers.
The Pioneer: Michael Shafer of The Depot
“I was doing farm-to-table cooking before people were calling it that,” mused Michel Shafer. “In 1980 when I was cooking in Vienna, the farmer would pull up with this truck and we would pick stuff off the back. That was the way things were – if it was in season, fresh, and local, you bought it.”
In that decade most posh restaurants boasted about using imported ingredients, partly to justify high prices, partly because so many crops now regarded as common weren’t grown here.
“Belgian endive only came from Belgium, white asparagus was only available when it was in season in Holland,” Shafer explained. “Radicchio and Treviso, those Italian lettuces, same thing. It wasn’t that American produce wasn’t as good, but the imported stuff was more exotic. Now we’re growing all of that and more locally.”
Chef Shafer takes the idea of local cuisine quite literally, but makes clear that proximity isn’t the only thing to look for in sourcing fine ingredients.
“There’s a 94 acre ranch in Palos Verdes called the Catalina View Gardens that I get fruit and vegetables from, but it’s not year-round. When it’s heirloom tomato season like now, I get 60 to 70 pounds a week from there. That’s farm-to-table by anybody’s definition. But if I go to the farmer’s market and buy from the guy who drove it down from Salinas or up from Temecula, where it was in the ground yesterday, that’s farm-to-table too. Torrance has one of the most highly regarded organic farmer’s markets in all of California – Mary Lou Weiss, who started it, wrote the book on the topic. I’m there all the time, and I know by name the people who grow a substantial percentage of what I serve.”
Shafer uses imported products happily when they’re better than anything he can get locally.
“Today I got a shipment of papayas and mangoes that are in season, and they came from Mexico. They’re perfectly ripe, they’re gorgeous, and the fruit sweetness is there. It’s better than anything Monsanto-grown in a test tube.”
The farm-to-table label has brought new attention to restaurants like his, but when asked about it, Shafer was dismissive.
“You can call it farm to table, seasonal cuisine, quality cuisine; I’ve used all of those because it’s all a reflection of the same thing. If I can’t get the quality I want, it’s not in my restaurant. Some of these guys are taking it to the nth degree. There are chefs think they have to make their own ketchup, but I disagree with that. If the customers want Heinz ketchup, give it to them. I’m not going to waste my time trying to reinvent the wheel.”
Innovating on tradition: Michael Fiorelli of Love & Salt
No restaurateur likes to anger or turn away customers, but Michael Fiorelli has no regrets about doing both. The customers in question are those demanding something he won’t serve – produce below its peak of flavor.
“People can go to any grocery store and get corn or tomatoes year-round. They’re shiny and pretty but they don’t taste the same as they do when they’re in season. Our philosophy is that we are cooking from our back door out – if we can’t get it at its peak of flavor and close to home, we don’t want to serve it.”
Love & Salt has a sophisticated clientele who might be expected to understand ideas like seasonality, but some customers get passionately attached to a particular item and get grouchy when it’s not available.
“Someone will come in because they have this memory of a corn dish they had in August, and they come back and want it again in fall. They’ll say ‘I drove all the way from Pasadena for that corn dish, I can’t believe you don’t have it.’ What you want to say is, ‘Call Mother Nature, I don’t know what to tell you.’ If I were to make that dish it wouldn’t be the same. I lose either way – either we’re not serving something they liked, or we made it for them and it wasn’t like they remembered. It’s up to the restaurant staff to say, hey, that’s out of season, but if you liked that, then you’re sure to enjoy this squash dish, which we’re making because those are perfect right now.”
Love & Salt has an ocean view garden in Manhattan Beach that produces some fresh items, so some local items are indeed grown within blocks of where they’re consumed.
“It can’t provide a great deal of volume, so instead of growing a little bit of a lot of things, we focus on four or five crops. We’ve just picked cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. The rest we get from farmers – we know who’s growing them, how, and where.”
“Having the relationship is important, not only because we get the best stuff, but because we get a heads-up about what will be available soon. Sometimes we get a text message early in the week telling us what will be coming in, and it helps me plan my menus. The relationship with the farmer means we sometimes have things nobody else has. That’s a draw for our customers, who will be able to try things that aren’t available in their local stores. It helps make a meal here a special experience.”
Another thing that makes the experience special for customers is to be offered vegetables they’ve never heard of, or unusual parts of vegetables they already know. Fiorelli says that sometimes he has encountered resistance when these are on the menu.
“The cauliflower leaves and carrot tops are examples – we’re using the whole vegetable, and people think you’re trying to pull one over on them, selling them scraps. Someone gave me a hard time and I had to explain that it probably has more nutrients than the part of that vegetable you’re used to eating, and it’s more delicious too. It’s the complexity of the flavors that blows people away – the cauliflower leaves have more flavors going on than the cauliflower. That’s when you really feel like you have success, when someone who is skeptical tries something and is glad they did. It builds trust with the guest, and they go from ordering only what they know to asking, what’s next? What else have you got? Then they start pushing me to challenge myself to find new things to offer them. That’s what makes it fun and exciting to be in this business.”
The Front of the House: Lisa Cassity of Hook & Plow
Hook & Plow is a rising star in the local scene, whose ethos is reflected in its name. Lisa Cassity is one of the four co-owners, all of whom work there every day, and she succinctly expressed what they do.
“What we stand for is locally sourced products, getting our food, beer, and wine from as close to here as possible. There will be less travel time and more seasonality, so better quality.”
The items on the menu at Hook & Plow don’t change as often as they do at Love & Salt or The Depot, but there are small changes made daily.
“We sub out our fish daily depending on what is available, and we change our menu seasonally. The customer may not always notice we’re doing it. We have an arugula and fruit salad that is always on the menu, but we’ll make it with a peach at one time, a pear at another – something in balance with the other flavors there, but available at its peak. We have had instances where someone complains about the change in something they liked, but when we explain they usually understand.”
Some restaurant managers might want servers to keep conversation to a minimum, to be taking orders and delivering food rather than talking. Cassity explained that interaction with customers is not a nuisance, but beneficial to the restaurant’s success.
“When a customer takes the time to ask questions, it means they’re interested, they’re curious, they’re engaged. We educate our staff so they’re able to answer those questions, and not only about seasonal items – people ask what’s gluten-free, and how we can accommodate allergies. We have meetings at every shift so everyone is educated about what we’re serving right then. Our staffing and customer service is something we take pride in, and performing at that level keeps people coming back.”
Cassity laughed when I asked if she ever envies servers who work at places where the menu doesn’t change.
“I’m sure that some days our staff is tired of going over all of it again and again; of course they are. On the other hand, it’s part of the job here. Here there’s interaction with the server, and if the customer needs clarification about something they’ll go back to the kitchen to ask the chef, then back to the customer – there’s a lot of communication going on. Those extra minutes count.”
This made me ask if farm-to-table ideas would always be limited to small operations serving food at relatively high prices. Cassity’s response was emphatic, and a passionate explanation of her vision of the farm-to-table movement.
“I completely disagree, I don’t think it matters how big the restaurant is. It may take expert management to keep everybody up to speed, but I think you can see that our community, our nation, is going in this direction. Organic produce, which used to be only in boutique stores if you could get it at all, is available everywhere. There is a lot more awareness about sustainability, and it’s not just a restaurant movement, it’s a societal movement. It will be harder in some places – our population is growing, and there’s a question about how we can feed everybody. Overprocessing with hormones is the answer that part of the food industry has for us, but a lot of people are rejecting that answer.”
“We do have it better in a city so close to such productive growing regions, and that’s part of the joy of living here. We choose to be in California because we are on board with this lifestyle, we want to be part of that food community. Still, there’s a national conversation going on. We’re consciously working in the community where we live, trying to improve what we do, eat less wastefully, more sustainably, so we can all be more healthy.”
