october-2009

068
from, says Veronica Volny of Meadow Lark
Farm Dinners in Boulder, CO. The selftrained
chef, along with a few fellow cooks,
gardeners, foragers and preservers, bought
an old school bus and turned it into a
mobile kitchen. Between June and October,
the group serves five-course dinners for 36
people, twice weekly, on 10 local farms.
“For us, and I think for a lot of chefs,
it’s about wanting to taste food at its prime.
Knowing that an ear of corn changes 12
hours after it’s picked, and having the
chance to eat it right away—that’s powerful,”
says Volny, whose menu isn’t set until
the day of each dinner. “We didn’t want to
take the produce to a commissary kitchen
and then bring it back. This way, what we
eat never leaves the field.”
For diners, creating a connection to the
land is a way to fight back against the 20th
century rise of industrial food production.
“In the last five years, more people have
become aware of the industrial food chain
and its impact on the environment,” she
says. “They are seeking alternatives and
ways to support sustainable practices.”
In its basic form, sustainable agriculture
offers a way to raise food that is healthy for
consumers and animals, doesn’t harm the
environment, provides fair wages, and supports
and enhances rural communities.
YOU CAN ALSO EAT RIGHT ON THE
farm at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a former
Rockefeller estate located 30 miles north of
New York City in Pocantico Hills. Opened
in 2004 and co-owned by Chef Dan Barber—named
the nation’s top toque in 2009
by the James Beard Foundation—the restaurant
has no menu. Instead, the kitchen
creates multi-course “farmer’s feasts”
around the day’s harvest and the diner’s
preferences. Servers explain what’s fresh,
ask for any requests—and the feast begins.
Guests experience the freshest possible
GO MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2009
ingredients, virtually yards from where
they were grown or raised. The five- ($105)
or nine-course ($135) menus always start
with a selection of just-harvested, lightly
dressed baby vegetables.
At the height of the growing season, the
farm’s 23,000-square-foot greenhouse and
22 acres of pasture provide as much as 80%
of the ingredients used in Barber’s kitchens
(he also co-owns Blue Hill in Manhattan’s
Greenwich Village, opened in 2000).
“The recipes are being written in the
field,” says Barber, whose grandmother
owned a family farm in Massachusetts. “I
have yet to find a carrot or a leg of lamb
that tasted good, yet had bad ecological
decisions behind it. It’s not possible. Ultimately,
taste is the most powerful tool in a
chef ’s toolbox. And by seeking better tasting
food, by default we’re making good environmental
decisions. Chefs are fueling the
movement away from commercial farming
because, in our search for delicious food,
we’re influencing the way farmers farm.”
DINING IN THE FIELD IS ON THE
menu for fall at Congress Hall and the Virginia
Hotel in Cape May, NJ. Both hotels will
“Being on the farm
feels like you’re in
another world.”
Traders Point Creamery
feature farm picnics as part of their corporate
retreat programs. Curtis Bashaw, whose
company Cape Resorts Group owns the
hotels and five restaurants (including Ebbitt
Room), also has a 62-acre farm. He first
noticed the rustic tract of deserted farmland
in West Cape May two decades ago. As his
business grew, he kept an eye on it, and
finally bought the long-fallow farm in 2007.
Planted with summer crops like
blueberries, asparagus, tomatoes and strawberries,
along with a large perennial herb
garden, the certified organic farm already
supplies Bashaw’s restaurants with close to
their 50% of seasonal produce. The Ebbitt
Room’s chef, Lucas Manteca, looks forward
to expanding with chickens and pigs next
year. “Once you taste organic food straight
from the source, and understand the process,
it’s hard to go back,” he says.
Due to guests’ enthusiasm for the farm,
organized bike tours are offered twice weekly
in addition to the picnics, which hotel guests
can reserve through the concierge for groups
of six or more. “Being on the farm feels like
you’re in another world,” Bashaw says. “It’s
a connection to the way things used to be.
And we want to be a part of that.”
A COMMITMENT TO PRESERVING
heirloom strains of grains and vegetables—original
strains that haven’t been
manipulated in any way—is what inspired
Sean Brock to start farming a 2.5-acre tract
of Low Country land on Wadmalaw Island,
about 20 miles outside Charleston, SC.
When the executive chef of Charleston’s