The game changers: Local sourcingThe game changers: Local sourcing

By Fern Glazer


This story is part of an online preview of "The NRN 50: Game Changers.” In this special report, NRN highlights some of the people, ideas, technologies, concepts and trends pushing the restaurant industry in new directions. The full report is available exclusively in the January 23 issue. Subscribe to Nation’s Restaurant News.

Chefs have been trying to select and prepare the freshest ingredients for as long as there have been, well, chefs. In recent years, though, some have taken their quest to hyperlocal lengths, like Dan Barber, who started an entire agriculture center in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., to supply his Blue Hill at Stone Barns restaurant. 


But as diners have shown more interest in knowing where their food comes from, such efforts are no longer the bailiwick of a few passionate chefs. More kitchen professionals today are demanding local products or growing their own, which, in turn, is helping narrow the gap between the farm and the table, and altering the types of food restaurants serve.


In a survey of about 1,800 chef-members of the American Culinary Federation conducted last fall by the National Restaurant Association, locally sourced meats and seafood was the top trend predicted for 2012, followed by locally sourced produce.


Hyperlocal items, such as ingredients from restaurants’ own gardens, ranked fourth on the list, and one-third of surveyed chefs at full-service restaurants said they had gardens on-site.


Chicago-based Technomic also cited local sourcing as one of the seven leading trends for 2012, saying, “The rising use of seasonal and local items suits the less-is-more culinary trend.”


“Eight years ago, it was a lot more difficult [to serve local food],” said chef Kelly Liken. “One of the reasons was people didn’t demand this food. The fact that the American public has gotten on board with it has really been a game-changer for our business.”


In 2004, when she first opened Kelly Liken, her namesake restaurant in Vail, Colo., Liken could source only about one-fourth of her produce from Colorado. What local fare she got came mostly from combing area farmers markets, ferreting out local suppliers or making road trips to Denver. 


To solve the problem, Liken cultivated relationships with local growers and demanded such products from her big-name suppliers. When that wasn’t enough, three years ago she started her own backyard garden. Today, Liken gets 100 percent of the restaurant’s summer produce and 50 percent of its winter produce from local or regional sources.


When chef Mitch Prensky couldn’t source all the local ingredients he wanted for Supper in Philadelphia, he asked his business partners and owners of nearby Blue Elephant Farm to grow it for him. Now, 90 percent of what he puts on plates comes from the farm. The rest he says he “smooths out” with other local purveyors.


“My thing was to take the farm and the table, and put them right next to each other,” Prensky said.


Prensky’s seasonal fare has become so popular that he is preparing to launch a line of jarred sauces and preserves made entirely from ingredients grown at Blue Elephant.


Growing consumer demand not only has shifted the supply chain, but it also has altered the menu. While some chefs create menus and go to great lengths to find the ingredients necessary to realize them, for Liken and Prensky and others like them, it’s the farm that dictates the menu.


“The dream has always been to be a chef and own your own restaurant — [to] be integrated in a way that you could select and harvest your own product,” chef Mark Sullivan said. “We basically write our menu from the farm.”


Sullivan, executive chef of Spruce in San Francisco and The Village Pub in Woodside, Calif., supplies both his restaurants with greens and basic vegetables from the restaurant’s 3.5-acre organic farm. 


Similarly, at Poste Moderne Brasserie in Washington, D.C., chef Dennis Marron sources many of the restaurant’s vegetables and herbs from a container garden adjacent to the main dining room. This spring, Marron plans to take the existing garden to the next level, streamlining the harvest from more than 50 varieties to just a few dozen of only what he requires for a seasonal menu.


“I plant the garden around the menu,” Marron said. “Into spring and summer, every item will have something from the garden. I think every chef should start by growing some herbs, then add some lettuces.”


While it’s not always easy creating a menu based on the limited varieties that can be grown in a small space, these chefs say it’s worth the extra effort.


“We think on our toes a lot, make a lot of concessions,” Prensky said. “If that [ingredient] is not there, we’ll make something different. Starting with the best product at the beginning makes my job and the diner’s end result that much better.”