Alan Morstein, owner of Regi's American Bistro on Light… (Baltimore Sun photo by Gene Sweeney Jr.)
June 22, 2010|By Laura Vozzella, The Baltimore Sun
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.
"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.' "
