Field day with flavours

More and more restaurants are serving fresh produce sourced from organic farms. Anusha Parthasarathy on the farm-to-fork concept that is fast catching up in Chennai

May 26, 2014 06:34 pm | Updated 06:35 pm IST - chennai

What if you could walk into a restaurant and be served a meal of vegetables fresh off the farms? Even better, what if you could pluck those bulbous tomatoes or search for mushrooms for your stew? Farm-to-fork is a concept that is fast catching up with restaurants in the city. Whether the produce is sourced from their own farms, smaller terrace gardens or from others in the fringes of the city, rest assured that it arrives on your plate as fresh as possible.

Take, for example, The Farm, a restaurant-cum-BnB (bed and breakfast) on OMR, run by Shalini Philip and Arul Futnani. This 70-acre farm produces most of the vegetables and fruits that the restaurant needs and cooking with them is definitely different from cooking with market-bought vegetables, says Shalini. “The most obvious reason is of course, that they have been harvested an hour before you eat them.” The Farm was started a few years ago. “We’ve had a dairy farm since the 1970s but as time went by we had to think of ways of generating additional income. So, we first started a restaurant, and then a bed-and-breakfast facility. This way, we have a ready market for our products,” she explains.

The produce grown on the farm is organic and is sold to customers too. But that said, the restaurant is not completely organic. “We need up to 15 types of vegetables everyday and so not everything comes directly from the farm. We do source our potatoes and onions from the market but our dairy products, mangoes, chillies, gooseberries, and brinjals come from the farm. Our strawberry preserve is very popular and while we don’t get them from our farm we source it from a friend’s,” says Shalini. There is even a Farmer’s Meal option on the menu, offering rice, two types of vegetables, curd and gravy. “The rice is organic and from the farm. Both the curd and the vegetables are sourced here as well. The meat alone is sourced from outside,” she says. “We do basic, simple and straightforward gardening. But our customers like it because they get to see where the vegetables are grown and even take some home with them. Sometimes, we allow them to go pluck the vegetables themselves. More and more people are becoming aware of the luxury of fresh produce.”

While Haven Sampoorna, a chain of restaurants in Besant Nagar and Velachery, don’t have their own farms, their Continental dishes are made from vegetables sourced from farms nearby. “We find that using them in Continental dishes enhances the flavour of the dish. The same vegetables in an Indian dish don’t make much difference because of the heavy spices,” says R. Mahendran, director. The restaurant uses them to make pizzas, sizzlers and bakes.

Mahendran feels that going completely organic is not an option at this point, but maintains a 40 per cent ratio of fresh produce from local farms. “Even our market-bought vegetables are bought early in the morning, when the price is the highest because they are the freshest at that point. Apart from that, we get supplies from two farms for vegetables like bell peppers, zucchinis, carrots and mushrooms,” he adds.

The restaurant makes sure they don’t hold over any food from the previous evening. “We have no freezers in the kitchen. So whatever is cooked that day is cooked fresh,” says Mahendran. “The reason we don’t have farms ourselves was because the climate won’t sustain vegetables all year round, which is what you need with a restaurant. So this arrangement seems better. The food definitely tastes better, from what our customers have told us.”

Ashvita’s restaurants in Mylapore and Alwarpet thrive on the terrace garden that Ashvin Rajagopalan and Sruti Harihara Subramanian have grown on the roof of Ashvita Bistro. “We started it about two years ago to try and see if we can grow organic produce as well as use an unused space. We strongly believe that if everyone grows vegetables on their terrace, we can substantially reduce our living costs as well as our carbon footprint. We started with basil, added tomato and now we have spinach too,” says Ashvin.

Currently, though, the garden only grows basil. “We are at our minimum capacity in summer. However, the pesto we use in the restaurants come from our basil. We use tomatoes, okra and chillies whenever they are available,” he explains.

Whatever they grow is organic. “It is the freshest you can get. We pluck whatever is ready to be harvested and use it. We are going to be selling organic mangoes from Ashvita Farms in a week or so. Several varieties, all grown close to Chennai will be available.”

Gardening is hard work and to be able to grow on that scale requires a lot of dedication, says Ashvin. “It is tougher to go completely organic as that depends on the quantity and menu. You can’t grow all the vegetables. Just the basic stuff. But this by itself is a lot,” he says.

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