Quality may not be a new mantra for the restaurant and wine industries, but for some local restaurateurs and winery owners homegrown, fresh produce is a new trend — with owners Old Erie, Anyela’s and Elderberry Pond not only creating culinary masterpieces, but growing the ingredients for them.
For Ted and Beth Tomandl, owners of the Old Erie Restaurant, it’s all about “consistency and quality.”
Beth, the daughter of Cindy and Rich Green, said that having grown up on a farm with fresh vegetables, she thought it was a good idea to incorporate fresh vegetables into the restaurant’s menu of continental American cuisine.
Cindy and Rich are also partial owners of the restaurant, and provide certified organic produce every morning to the restaurant from their 90-acre farm, five acres of which are specifically committed to restaurant vegetables, Ted said.
“Dad goes to pick vegetables at 5 and we’re serving at 11,” Ted said of the farm fresh products the restaurant serves.
According to Beth, a vegetarian herself, the restaurant offers a variety of vegetable dishes including salads, wraps, paninis, zucchini fries, soups and more.
Ted said that along with maintaining fresh, quality produce, home growing their food is a way for them to “try to do what we can for our economy and the environment as well. … Reduce our carbon footprint.”
“If we’re thinking that much for the vegetables, you can imagine what the center of the plate looks like,” Ted said of the restaurant, which he refers to as “a diamond in the rough.”
Beth said they take great pride in all the food they put out, not only by using homegrown vegetables, but also by making every pastry from scratch, grinding their own meat, smoking their own barbecue, and using USDA choice meat.
“It’s just the right way to do things for the restaurant,” Ted said. The Old Erie has been in business for 25 years, with the Tomandls as the third owners. “We’d just like to keep the tradition going,” Ted said.
Anyela’s winery owner, Jim Nocek, said of home growing his own crops, “my whole emphasis is identifying the agronomic potential of the area.”
The winery dedicates two acres to harvesting a variety of fruits and vegetables to serve to its winery patrons.
Nocek said the menu changes weekly, based on what the garden produces and inspires Chef Luke Houghton to create.
Some of the fruits and vegetables grown at the winery garden include tomatoes, lettuce, eggplant, squash and carrots.
The winery’s menu is derived solely of the produce grown on site, with items like salads and purees. Nocek said he wants the patrons to “see exactly where their produce comes from. … What you see is exactly what you get.”
Nocek said that the idea to grow produce on site started in 2009. The vineyards themselves were started in 2001, and the winery in 2008.
“Being local we wanted to emphasize the growing of homegrown produce. … It felt appropriate to expand and make (the homegrown process) a little more tangible,” Nocek said in reference to local agriculture, “Give people a feeling of how it is, was and should be.”
Since Anyela’s focus is on grapes and wine, and the gardening is more secondary, Nocek said he provides a supply of overages to some local restaurants and also a basket program, where customers can come once a week and pick up baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables to take home the same day they are picked.
Nocek said he might expand to grow some herbal gardens in the future, in addition to the vegetable and flower gardens at the vineyards.
“So far we’ve heard positives. They’ve enjoyed the salads, the garden scenery,” Nocek said of his customers take on the vineyard’s garden, which is coordinated by Arlene VanRiper. Nocek said the garden coordinating is very intensive, with lots of rotating and multiple croppings.
One person who has been in the homegrown business for years, 32 to be precise, is Lou Lego of Elderberry Pond. Since the inception of the Elderberry Pond farm and country store, Lego opened the Elderberry Pond fine dining restaurant six years ago.
“It’s a good venue to taste many of the unusual fruits and vegetables the farm grows,” Lego said of the restaurant. The unusual fruits and vegetables that Lego refers to include over 100 varieties of apples, 10 to 12 varieties of potatoes, 15 varieties of tomatoes, and also raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and currants — “Just about every vegetable you can grow,” Lego said of his mostly certified organic produce. Elderberry Pond also has pasteurized meats which it serves at its restaurant.
Lego said he decided to build the restaurant when his son Chris, a trained chef, came back to the farm after having worked at a winery in the Finger Lakes.
“It’s been a great year, every one’s been better than the last,” Lego said of the business, which drew over 20,000 customers during the summer, as it is closed in January and February due to the fact that the restaurant is largely farm based and tied to the growing season.
Upon walking into the restaurant you can see the passion for homegrown foods that the Legos have from their display of books on the subject.
Lego said that they teach a lot of classes during the spring and fall to show people how to grow their own gardens and produce their own food; he said he takes a lot of pride when patrons come to the restaurant with pictures of their new gardens.
“It’s a big new thing,” Lego said of the homegrown gardening trend.
source: http://auburnpub.com/lifestyles/article_ab865676-aa61-11df-9a3a-001cc4c002e0.html
