Zagat Survey Discussions

By Daniel Paul Simmons III, ZAGAT.com staff editor

Alice Waters, a tireless crusader in the greening of America's tables, has long championed a cuisine incorporating fresh, ripe, seasonal produce. Her revolutionary restaurant, Chez Panisse, has helped foment a sea change in Americans' perception of the importance of biodiversity and sustainable farming practices – an awareness that's increasingly reflected on menus from coast to coast, in which the pedigree and provenance of ingredients are now a central part of dishes' descriptions.

"The most important job in our restaurant," Waters once said, "is finding these ingredients." To realize her vision, she spent decades creating a network of growers whose farms dot the California countryside near her legendary establishment. Today, some top restaurateurs are taking Waters' philosophy a step further, creating their own proprietary gardens in which they themselves nurture some or all of the fruits, vegetables and herbs used in their kitchens.

With spring budding across the country, we recently talked to a handful of these industrious gourmets to learn what they're planting this year, how they plan to use what they grow and what advice they have for amateur gardeners.

Eberhard Müller, executive chef at Bayard's in Downtown Manhattan, divides his time between his kitchen and Satur Farms in Cutchogue, on the North Fork of Long Island, which he co-owns with wife Paulette Satur.

What do you plant?

Ours is not your typical restaurateur's backyard garden. It's 200 acres, 160 of which are cultivated. Even now we're pulling a lot out of our greenhouses, typical spring products like micro greens, pea shoots. And we're getting ready to plant the fields. We already seeded spinach and arugula, and weather permitting we'll start on the lettuces and root crops soon. In times gone by, Long Island was the main source of produce for the New York area, so we're trying to revive local vegetable sourcing for the city of New York. In addition to our own needs, we supply a lot of the major restaurants in the tri-state area: Daniel, Jean Georges, Craft, Babbo, Picholine and many others. Chefs want baby vegetables these days, so you have to harvest them at an early stage. Then we have all the culinary herbs, including some obscure things. A few years ago I said to my wife, "I think we can grow lemongrass," and she said, "You're crazy." But we tried it and it worked.

How do you use what you grow?

The most important aspect to what I'm doing as a chef is that I respect the true seasonality of the crops. You will not find tomatoes in any shape or form on my menu if our tomatoes are not in season. I'm not one of those guys who preaches seasonality and then cooks white asparagus in December. It limits you to a certain extent, but on the other hand it challenges your creativity.

Tip for gardeners?

Grow things that you know will grow well in your area, and grow things that you're familiar with. Or if you're not familiar with something then read up on it or talk to the specialists. In other words, focus on things that are feasible, and be true to Mother Nature. We try to force Nature all the time, but sometimes it's easier and more beneficial to all of us if we work with her and not try to trick her.

Carrie Van Dyck is co-owner, with husband Ron Zimmerman, of The Herbfarm at The Willows Lodge in Woodinville, Washington, which offers nightly tours of the extensive on-site herb gardens that supply chef Jerry Traunfeld's kitchen.

What do you plant?

What do you plant?
We grow a lot of perennial herbs such as orange balsam thyme, lemon thyme, caraway thyme, plus many others, and all sorts of scented geraniums and lavender, which we incorporate into various dishes, as well as some vegetables. In our two-acre garden, we plant a half-acre of zucchini, mainly for the flowers, which we use in many dishes. But if you've ever grown zucchini, you know how quickly it takes over, so even though we harvest the flowers about three times a week we still end up with three-ft. zucchinis, most of which go to local food banks. Now we're getting into the warmer, drier time of year, so we're putting in lots of lettuces. We also use some wild plants, such as miner's lettuce, a wild green, and shot weed or pepper grass – when you touch it the seeds shoot into your face!

How do you use what you grow?

Our head gardener's name is EagleSong, and her basic tenet is that the way to control weeds is to eat them. So there's a number of volunteer plants that we incorporate into our menu. This time of year we have lovage; it's a perennial that comes back up in the spring, at the same time that the wild stinging nettles come up in the woods. So we often incorporate them together. For instance, right now we're wrapping Alaska king salmon in nettle leaves, slow roasting it then serving it with a lovage sauce. In the winter, we make a sorbet out of the Douglas fir, the state tree of Washington, and it's really delicious.

Tip for gardeners?

Eat your weeds!

Jack Algiere holds the title of Four Season Grower at the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York, where he oversees a half-acre in-soil greenhouse and four acres of garden that deliver fresh produce to chef-owner Dan Barber's restaurants, Blue Hill at Stone Barns on-site and Blue Hill in Greenwich Village.

What do you plant?

We base our production on specialty items, especially things we can't find at market. Some of these things may sound normal, but what we're providing is a micro [version] so we can use the whole plant: baby fennel, baby bok choy, baby carrots, hakurei turnips, which are a Japanese turnip. They're very different, very sweet and soft. Of course, we do a lot of large crops too – broccoli, cauliflower, onions, new potatoes, winter and summer squashes, heirloom tomatoes. In our greenhouses during the winter, we grow micro salad greens, spinach and mustard greens, fennel, chervil, parsley, as well as broccoli, radish, sunflower and pea sprouts. We grow over 40 varieties [of vegetables] and more than 1,000 plants. We can provide enough for the restaurants, but we also provide for the public – some go to markets and some to the local CSA [Community Supported Agriculture].

How do you use what you grow?

The wonderful part of working with Dan [Barber] is that he's very passionate about seasonal crops. So when it's tomato season, they show up all over the menu. The [hakurei] turnip is really the one that's been the most daring for him, and it's been a huge success. He often serves it raw: basically cuts off the tap root, puts some nice sea salt around the base and stands it up. And because it's fresh, the greens are still upright and alive, so its stands up like it does in the soil. It's nice to go into a fancy restaurant and see something served like that; it's almost primal in a way.

Tip for gardeners?

We're finding the sweetness of the crops is increasing because of the quality of the compost we're adding. Instead of feeding the plants with fertilizer, we feed the organisms in the soil, increasing its biodiversity and allowing for better breakdown of nutrients. Start with good material: leaves, straw, practically any vegetable material except wood, plus egg and seafood shells. Use materials that weren't sprayed, because pesticides impede organism growth. Turn it regularly to keep the biological action up. Sink a nice, deep compost thermometer in there and raise it to 140 degrees, because at that temperature you're killing any pathogens and seeds. Most important: pick a date to stop adding raw material or it'll never finish. The USDA has created its own guidelines, which are a good way to get started.

Frank Ruta, a former White House chef during the Reagan and first Bush administrations, is executive chef and owner of Palena in Washington, DC, where herbs from a small rooftop planter are used along with produce grown in the large garden at his home in Arlington, Virginia.

What do you plant?

Actually, I just got in from tilling the plot. We're planting now for later harvests of broccoli, cauliflower, radish, arugula and onions. In the summer, we'll plant hot peppers, as well as a good amount of heirloom zucchini, both for fruit and the blossoms. We can't grow all of what we use, but for me it's more for the seasonal rhythm from which I build a menu – a connection of sorts to our local, seasonal approach to cooking.

How do you use what you grow?

I have a large stinging nettle patch that is really fragrant this time of year. We use that to make nettle gnocchi as well as a spring greens ravioli with green garlic and petit-gris snails. The second dish features the garlic we planted in October, picked now before the bulb forms. We don't harvest all of the garlic; some is left in, which will give us garlic scapes [stalks] a little later on. We use these mainly for pickling, as the curly look lends a dramatic flair to the assorted pickle garnish on the Cafe Burger. And our fig tree supplies us with leaves for steaming fish, and some figs in a good year.

Tip for gardeners?

Some of the vegetables I grow are from heirloom seeds passed along from friends and family, mostly with origins in Italy. We save seeds from selected healthy looking specimens and continue the cycle every year – a library of seeds, each with a different story. Some go back as far as I can remember, from my grandfather's garden. So seek out heirloom varieties, fine tune the collection to suit you, save seeds for the next year and pass them along.

Deborah Gavito is co-owner, with partner Donna Binder, of Counter, a vegetarian bistro and organic wine and martini bar in New York City's East Village, which is located just around the corner from a five-story brick building they co-own, atop of which sits their restaurant's compact but cleverly arranged rooftop container garden.

What do you plant?

It's about a 1,500-sq.-ft. garden, so it can't supply all the vegetables for the restaurant, but we do grow beets, red and green chard, garden cress, spinach, a variety of peppers and heirloom tomatoes. We also do unusual herbs such as bay leaf; lemongrass; flax; epazote, a pungent wild herb used in Mexican cooking; five varieties of oregano, including Kent Beauty oregano, which looks like a flower; five different varieties of lavender; savory, which is in the mint family and is reminiscent of thyme crossed with mint; lemon and licorice verbena; Vietnamese coriander; hops. Right now we're planting edible flowers, such as pansies, which work well in cooler weather. And then we also have strawberries, which grow really well. I could easily have a whole strawberry field growing on my roof.

How do you use what you grow?

We have a pistou, a sort of a peasant soup from Nice, that's made with white beans and a pesto; when it's in season, the basil in the pesto comes from the garden. We use pansies as garnishes, and last summer we had an edible flowers salad. We use our lavenders in our organic cocktails, to infuse vodka. Our Counter Cosmo is made with lavender- and rosemary-infused vodka and cranberry nectar, and then it's garnished with a spear of rosemary used as a skewer for cranberries and blueberries, and then the server lights the top of the rosemary.

Tip for gardeners?

The biggest gardening tip is to give your plants love, like they're children. If you yell at them, they're going to shrivel up. But if you love them, they're going to just blossom.

Craig Shelton is chef and proprietor of The Ryland Inn in Whitehouse, New Jersey, which is surrounded by 50 hilly acres in the heart of the state's hunting region, approximately three acres of which is dedicated to the restaurant's garden.

What do you plant?

I had worked at an idyllic French restaurant, L'Auberge de L'Ile. Back in 1990, when I was first looking for a place, I said to myself, "The fish and meats and fowl here compare to what I worked with in France, but the vegetables are still light years away." So I felt the best way to advance the cuisine was to have my own garden where everything was grown in the French artisanal way. We were one of the first major restaurant gardens in America, and we've been organic for 13 years. From about May through mid-November, we're pretty much self-sufficient. Every year we've grown 800 or 900 different things, like 25 different types of basil. Generally we have 200, 300 different herbs growing; same for vegetables. A lot of cutting flowers too. What's different this year is that my cuisine has been taking a Japanese-French direction, so we're exploring a host of Japanese things like sansho [a mildly hot seasoning made from the dried-and-ground berries of the prickly ash tree] and shiso [an annual Asian herb belonging to the mint family].

How do you use what you grow?

One of the best dishes we do is simply our baby lettuces. It may be 20 or 30 different types of lettuces and herbs, all cut to the right size, with a white-truffle vinaigrette and boom: just let nature speak for itself. You can't beat it. It's the way we all should be eating – so much healthier, so much more flavorful, so much more life on the plate.

Tip for gardeners?

Grow soil, not plants. Think that way: "I'm growing soil." We do intensive French planting – we never turn the soil, just layer upon layer that build over the years. And we rotate crops. No pesticides whatsoever. Intensive irrigation. We have grass planted in between the rows to keep the moisture in the ground because everything grows more easily in super-healthy soil. Take care of the soil and it takes care of everything else.