Terroir

Badger flame beets from Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative

At one of my first fine dining jobs, we technically had two tasting menus- the house menu, which was a 4 course prix-fixe where guests chose their own courses, and a second menu we called "Our Terroir" - a menu composed of variations of local Pennsylvania food and new dishes using special ingredients from local farms and even wild plants that you can only find by foraging.

That menu, and that restaurant in general taught me about the importance of terroir in a restaurant. You may be wondering what that even is. It means "land" in french and is usually used in wine, meaning the place the grapes were grown and all the aspects of it's climate, physical location, soil type, even microorganisms and wild animals that may affect the wines.It means site specificity. In food, similarly, it refers to the influence of the locality on food, the influence of the land on particular ingredients, and further, the influence of local ingredients and products on the food itself.

Chilled tomato soup, made with heirloom New Jersey tomatoes, with melons from White Star Growers

That restaurant i worked at was a Pennsylvania restaurant through and through: we bought grains and flours from Castle Valley Mill in Doylestown, from which we made our house made breads. We partnered with about 20 different local farms to buy the produce used in almost everything. Our mushrooms came from Kennet Square. We paid a random guy to forage morels, chanterelles, and ramps for us in Fairmount Park. We did taste tests between a conventional parsnip and say, a parsnip grown as part of a small batch from Lucky Ridge Farm a few miles away and indeed they did not taste the same. I remember when i started truly seeing the differences in the produce. After getting the beautiful bi-color corn we could get from across the river in New Jersey during the summer, i've made an effort to make sure i only use that corn, only in season, every year. It's so ridiculously flavorful with the perfect amount of natural starch I need for things like corn soups and corn puddings. After using peaches from Weaver Orchards in a dessert a few years ago, i can't buy conventional imported peaches. They lack that perfect ruby color when cooked, a firm texture, and almost hyper peach-y taste.

Tart of Weaver Orchards peaches, with tonka bean whip, fresh mint, and marigolds

I am hoping to reproduce much of the same. At the club, we were forced to use big name suppliers because of the corporate structure of the company. Now we're free. We can plan our menu around the cool and incredibly interesting products we can get from them. We can have a fava bean hummus on the bar menu with a crudite of vegetables from Smith Farm. We can serve ravioli featuring tromboncino squash from Norwich Meadow farm, we can support Green Meadow Farm and Horseshoe Ranch and Joe Jurgielewicz. We'll be adding Lancaster Farm Fresh and Zone 7 to our purveyors. I think a lot of chef's like the idea of promoting themselves as farm to table for marketing purposes, but for real, I just like the products better.

It's genuinely true that a lot of American vegetables and fruits are really bred for their transportability and uniform appearance and size and they lack real flavor. I think it's truly part of the reason people never consider the idea of veganism. If most of the vegetables and fruits you encounter are sort of bland and relatively boring in taste, why would you ever want to ONLY eat that?

I also think terroir, in a restaurant, extends beyond the food to everything else. Having art from local artists, featuring beers and wines made in one's city and drinks invented there as well. Philly is full of breweries, but did you know there's a winery here?

Unfortunately my dedication to French tableware precludes having our plates made here, but i'm thinking of asking some friends who are glassblowers to make us some votive holders for the bar and asking a friend who make pottery to make us table vases. I think a good restaurant when it comes to fine dining, will be more than food, it'll be an experience. Many attempt to transport you to somewhere else-Another country, another era-Sometimes even into the future. A place where every detail is planned and thoughtfully carried out. I'm hoping our new restaurant can transport people to right here in southeast PA, and show them what's actually going in here. Many may not even know.