Chefs take local produce to a new level — the roof

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/dining/bs-fo-rooftop-restaurant-garden-20100622,0,5127931.story


Chefs take local produce to a new level — the roof
Chefs, inspired by local-foods movement, aren't just buying from farmers; they want to be the farmer

High atop Regi's American Bistro in Federal Hill, 55 tomato plants grow in large pots, strategically located along support beams so they don't strain the rowhouse roof.

Looking for a more affordable, dependable source for the tasty heirloom varieties that can fetch $4 to $5 a pound at area farmers' markets, Regi's owner Alan Morstein this spring created a rooftop tomato farmette that he proudly shows off to diners. Regi's chefs Mike Broglio and Ben Troast have grown used to them, traipsing through the prep area to reach the roof.

"We joke that it's the 7:30 tour," Broglio said.

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"We don't have a chef's table," Troast added. "We're going to have a tomato table up there."

First there was farm-to-table dining. Now, "rooftop-to-tabletop," as Morstein calls it.

The same local-foods movement that has revived interest in home gardening is leading more chefs and restaurateurs to grow some of their own ingredients. They've been dealing directly with local farmers in recent years. Now, no longer content to just buy from the farmer, some chefs want to be the farmer.

That urge has given rise to a few restaurant farms, like the 5-acre spread in Howard County that restaurateur Qayum Karzai started three years ago to supply produce to his Helmand, b and Tapas Teatro restaurants. But many of these commercial kitchen gardens are sprouting atop the very restaurants they supply.

Whether in fields or in plastic baby pools on restaurant rooftops, more area restaurateurs and chefs are producing their own heirloom tomatoes, onions, berries, greens, corn — even honey.

They have launched these ventures with the goals of saving money and reaping fresher, more unusual and higher-quality produce. They're also seeking locavore bragging rights. In an era when the provenance of nearly every ingredient is promoted on menus, when house-made charcuterie, house-cured bacon and the like have become de rigueur, why not house-grown produce?

The soup du jour at Jack's Bistro in Canton last week was a gazpacho made with "rooftop onions."

"There's something about when you have 'rooftop onions' [on the menu], and people say, 'Rooftop onions, what does that mean?' " said Christie Smertycha, manager at Jack's. "There's just something wonderful about saying, 'Oh, we grow them on the rooftop of our building.' … There's a real sense of pride."

Morstein is so proud of his tomato plants, which are now taller than the 6-foot restaurateur, that he jokes about buying celebratory cigars when he harvests the first fruit. This, despite the fact that after purchasing seedlings, bags and bags of organic soil, plastic containers, organic squirrel repellant, Astroturf (so the black rooftop wouldn't bake his plants) and tinsel strips (draped on phone lines to deter birds), Morstein has concluded that the tomato venture is not saving him any money. He spends up to an hour a day tending his plants.

"I get up in the morning, and my wife says, 'There goes farmer Al,' " he said. "It's just another thing I want to do."

Most busy restaurateurs and chefs are not looking for anything extra to do, but they are finding time nonetheless for their commercial kitchen gardens.

Jamie Forsythe spent one morning last week fixing a tractor on a 5-acre farm in Howard County. That night, he taught a new cook at a Bolton Hill restaurant how to make cassoulet. In the fields by day, in the kitchen by night, Forsythe isn't moonlighting so much as fusing two jobs into one: farmer-chef. He is manager of Fig Leaf Farm and chef at b restaurant, both owned by restaurateur Karzai.

"Being out there in the daytime and pulling a beet from the ground, knowing that you're going to cook it that night, you feel kind of energized," Forsythe said. "I come back so ready to cook, really just charged up to do it."

James Barrett, chef at the Westin Annapolis, recently installed two beehives he inherited from his father on the roof of the hotel and plans to use the honey in the restaurant. It started as a way to honor his father, a beekeeping hobbyist who died in November. But now the farming bug has bitten him.

"We're talking to two different people about a rooftop garden — or we have a huge courtyard," he said. "If we could put a two-season garden in there, that would be outstanding for what I would have readily available for us to use here. Talk about using fresh, using local — it doesn't get any fresher than that.

"It's just more control I have over the product I want. It's not me going to someone else. It's 'Here's what I want, here's what I'm going to grow.' My wife's looking at me: 'Really? Come on. You're already gone all day.' "

Those long kitchen hours are precisely what led Ted Stelzenmuller, chef-owner of Jack's Bistro, to put in his rooftop garden about a year ago. The kitchen stays open until 1 a.m., and Stelzenmuller could never get up in time to get to morning farmers' markets. So he got a contractor to punch through a skylight in the restaurant's second-floor bathroom and install a ladder, giving him access to the roof. There, in children's pools and other plastic containers, he's growing microgreens, herbs, strawberries and those "rooftop onions."

The restaurant-based gardens also offer respite from the kitchen.

"This is a little Zen for me — get out of the kitchen and water or go and walk through and check on everything," said Sarah Thall, chef of Hamilton Tavern, which has tomatoes, eggplant, sweet bell peppers, hot peppers, cucumbers, celery and corn on its rooftop in a garden installed this spring with help from the Hamilton Crop Circle, a neighborhood composting and gardening operation.

"It's really nice on a stressful day to say, 'Ahhh, got to go to the roof and water the herbs,' and then maybe stay up there too long," said Joe Edwardsen, owner of Joe Squared Pizza & Bar on North Avenue. Edwardsen is growing tarragon, thyme, oregano and "a lot of basil" on his rooftop.

"We drop over $3,000 in an average week in produce, so growing the herbs, I think, probably saves $200 to $300 a week, especially with all the pesto we make," Edwardsen said.

It helps that he picked up his big growing tubs and hydroponic equipment for free. "The police threw it out when they were busting the pot-growing operation next door," Edwardsen said.

But it's not just about saving money. The herbs he grows are more flavorful because he doesn't have to wash them as thoroughly as produce from a commercial farm.

"Growing on the roof, you don't have the pest problem," he said. "You don't have to use pesticides. We can keep most things off our plants. You get things from these farms, and you have to have it soaked three times in bins of water before you serve it because you don't know what they've put on it."

With the rooftop herbs, Edwardsen said, "We can give it a quick rinse, and that's about it. So we don't have to soak all those oils off it. ... You want all that flavor."

Restaurant gardening is nothing new to Fernand Tersiguel, who has had a small farm since before he opened Tersiguel's in Ellicott City in 1990 or its predecessor, the now-closed Chez Fernand, in 1975. He farms about half an acre near Diamond Ridge Golf Course in Baltimore County. The biggest crop is potatoes, 14 different kinds of them, six different varieties of fingerlings alone. He harvests about 1,500 to 2,000 pounds over the season. He also has about 35 peach trees and 30 blueberry bushes.

"We're going to have enough potatoes from now until October," Tersiguel said.

But the farm can't grow everything for the restaurant. Tersiguel's son Michel, now chef-owner of Tersiguel's, still has to go to the wholesale market in Jessup two or three times a week.

The harvest is even more modest for most rooftop gardens, though Morstein of Regi's hopes to get 25 to 30 pounds of tomatoes out of every plant. At Joe Squared, Edwardsen put two blueberry bushes on the rooftop last year. The yield has been small but satisfying.

"One Sunday out of the entire year, I have enough blueberries for maybe 15 orders of pancakes," he said. "And they're delicious."

Some rooftop gardening chefs find themselves fantasizing about getting farms the way they used to dream about opening another restaurant.

"I would love to get a plot of land like the Karzais," Edwardsen said. "I think you have to have three restaurants before you can do that."

Gertrude's restaurant at the Baltimore Museum of Art added a small garden last year and expanded it this year to include 12 varieties of tomatoes, three types of eggplant, herbs, 10 kinds of peppers, heirloom beets and two types of Swiss chard.

But the harvest is hardly enough to supply the busy restaurant with all of its produce.

"There's a tomato in every sandwich," said Jon Carroll, an assistant manager who created the garden as a hobby. So the garden produce gets highlighted in daily specials, like an heirloom-tomato Bloody Mary.

"I would love to get more land," said John Shields, Gertrude's chef-owner. "If we could find a larger plot of land and do a mini-farmette, that's my dream. Do you think the BMA would let me have goats in the sculpture garden?"

laura.vozzella@baltsun.com