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Hyper-local farming
Doesn't get much fresher than traveling a few feet
By CARA BAYLES
del.ico.us
reddit!
Henrietta's Table—the famously fresh restaurant with an entrance that resembles a farmers market and a menu that shifts with the seasons—is the poster child for Boston's local dining scene.
And for the past seven years, founding chef Peter Davis has grown produce on the restaurant's patio. "We've always had the flower pots on our outside dining area, so it just sort of made logical sense that we should start putting in things that we could use," Davis says. "And it's great to be able to go out and snip rosemary and use it immediately. Even when we buy from local farms, it's a day old or more by the time we get it and use it. ... The closer from the earth to the table, the better the chances of it tasting good."
The herbs and tomato, cucumber and pepper plants are all used in the restaurant, but, Davis adds, it's nowhere near their total supply. "We'd love to do boxes on the top of the hotel, but right now, building the boxes and maintaining them I don't think, for us, is a worthwhile endeavor at this point," he says. "But we've looked into it a couple of times."
b.good, a local burger chain consisting of four restaurants in greater Boston, recently realized such a dream, founding "Brookline's only farm" with a dozen baby pools on the roof of their restaurant. "It's the right thing to do, but it's also the way to make things taste the best," says co-owner Jon Olinto. "We want to take the industrialization out of food that's made quickly. We grind our own beef, we cut our own fries, we make our own salad dressing. ... It's the natural evolution of where we want to be. ... We get great fresh produce and cut it in our kitchen, but it's about getting it local, and growing our own, it doesn't get any more local than that."
Green City Growers, an urban farming startup, created the small roof plots of tomatoes, microgreens, red leaf lettuce and watermelons in exchange for free burgers. According to co-founder Jessie Banhazl, Green City has 30 clients, but this was their first business venture. "It seemed totally applicable to restaurants, especially ones that want to involve themselves with locally sourced foods," she says.
The idea of a garden on the "dead space" of the roof immediately appealed to Olinto, especially since b.good's lot used to be a gas station. "If there's any space that you'd think isn't suitable for a garden, it would be an old frigging gas station that had been around for 80 years," he says.
And growing farms in unlikely spaces may become easier. A new bill working its way through the Legislature would make it easier for small-plot urban farms to be zoned as agricultural. Currently, you need to have over 5 acres. The bill would make 1 acre or more that produces $1,000 worth of produce considered a farm. "Energy prices are only going to go up forever from here on out," says Rep. Steven D'Amico, D-Seekonk, the bill's sponsor. "In a state as densely populated as Massachusetts, that means turning to smaller plots to increase our agricultural footprint." The bill doesn't currently include restaurants that grow for their own use, but D'Amico said he anticipated amendments, and "that's something we should accommodate."
That's good news for Banhazl, who thinks restaurants with urban farms have great potential. "It's practical and sustainable and it saves money," she says. "We can come in and basically set them up, and restaurants are basically a machine unto themselves already, and it's basically adding a task to the prep kitchen, going up to the roof and harvesting the tomatoes."
GREEN CITY GROWERS
11 OLIVE SQ.
SOMERVILLE
508.395.1987
GROWMYCITYGREEN.COM
B.GOOD
455 HARVARD STREET
BROOKLINE
617.232.4800
BGOOD.COM
HENRIETTA'S TABLE
1 BENNETT ST.
CAMBRIDGE
617.661.5005
HENRIETTASTABLE.COM
