March 2018 Digital Issue

GO LOCAL
iSTOCK.COM/MARIANVEJCIK [FARMER CARRYING ASPARAGUS]
TEAM EFFORT
Supplier/chef partnerships are key
to planning local, seasonal menus
BY AMY BOSTOCK
Corporate executive chef Ted
Corrado of The Drake Hotel in
Toronto is a long-time advocate
for local ingredient sourcing and
has built the menus at the Drake
around seasonality and his belief in supporting
local farmers. “Local food and seasonality
go hand and hand and have become the foundation
of how I built the menus at the Drake,”
he says. “I look at what’s around me and what
my suppliers have on hand — it’s very easy to
build my menus that way.”
Corrado’s first phone call of the day comes
from his suppliers touching base about what
they have available. “I’ve been fortunate to
forge these relationships over the years and
[my suppliers] know how excited I get about
having the first crack at things and being as
hyper-seasonal as possible.”
The challenge, Corrado says, is that some
purveyors are so small, they don’t have access
to cities such as Toronto. “They make the stuff
and sell it there…we aren’t talking industrial
farming — it’s small farmers who maybe have
a100 acres to grow on and they aren’t driving
things into the city two or three times a week.
I’ve turned that around and I go to them and
bring ingredients back myself. It gives me
access to something unique and special.”
But not all chefs are that lucky. According
to Genrys Goodchild, Marketing and
Communications manager at 100km Foods
Inc., there has long been a massive barrier
to chefs ordering local food. In response,
100km Foods Inc. was formed 10 years ago.
“Even though agriculture is a gigantic part of
Ontario’s GDP, chefs were having a hard time
accessing that and there was a real need to
connect farms with chefs. So we collaborated
with farms and chefs to determine how best
to serve both their needs.”
In its first year, the company did a few
hundred thousand in sales. In 2017, it logged
approximately $6 million in sales, worked
with more than 85 farms and had more than
250 active restaurant accounts.
“There is a gap to be filled by suppliers
who act as bridge between farmers and
restaurants and 100km Food is helping fill
that gap,” says Corrado. “But there is still
more room.”
Goodchild agrees. “There’s still a lot of
room to do more regional programs and
inter-regional trading. There’s a move to
strengthen regional imports and exports so
that we can maximize the percentage of local
food we’re consuming and distributing
in Ontario.” FH
WHAT’S IN SEASON?
March is an interesting time for chefs,
says corporate executive chef Ted Corrado of The
Drake Hotel. “We’re starting the thaw in Ontario,
so we’ll be transitioning out of root vegetables,
cabbage and onions and moving into that amazing
time of year where ramps are starting to come in
and asparagus is available.”
But, he says, spring is also tricky because
fiddleheads, for example, are short-lived so chefs
have to be creative about getting it on the menu.
“It’s something that’s always tough,” he says.
“You want to put something on your menu that’s
so short-lived so you’re constantly reprinting
menus and there are costs that go into that. When
you’re four or five properties deep, to change one
ingredient on a menu is the most cost-effective.”
The approach he’s taking this year is to focus
on “things I know are long-living, such as rhubarb,
I can carry [them] through for a few months.
Something like fiddleheads or ramps, we’ll do
cross-property seasonal-feature menus so we
don’t miss out. We’ll have ramp week and fiddlehead
week and whatever mushrooms start
popping out in early spring.”
He says if chefs want to support local,
they need to be forward thinking. For example,
chefs can meet with farmers ahead of time to
plan crops.
At 100km Foods, the team updates local offerings
week-to-week and also offers a tool on its
website for chefs to look up by farm or by time of
year what will be available so they can potentially
plan a full-year’s menu based on what’s ready.
“For restaurants that have the capacity to do
this, we’re shifting towards working with farms to
grow things specifically for them. It guarantees
they will use it on their menus and also guarantees
the farm can sell everything they’re going
to seed,” says Genrys Goodchild, Marketing and
Communications manager.
Right now, she says chefs are excited about
wild leeks. “That’s the real marker of the season
actually starting to take off. Green garlic gets a
lot of traction and, in May, we’ll start to see some
asparagus, depending the weather.”
FOODSERVICEANDHOSPITALITY.COM
MARCH 2018 FOODSERVICE AND HOSPITALITY 13