Food For The Table -- And For Thought

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Last Thursday afternoon, I checked in by phone with Jimmy Schmidt, the chef-owner of The Rattlesnake Club, the favorite restaurant of many auto execs and other Detroit businesspeople. When I asked Schmidt about that evening's menu, his talk quickly became peppered with wild asparagus and ramps (a form of leek) foraged in Northern Michigan forests, organic chicken, and fruits, greens, and mushrooms from the farmers' market. Almost all the ingredients he was using were wild or organic, as well as locally grown.
Schmidt -- and many other chefs of his caliber -- exemplifies one of the most promising trends on the food scene: a dedication to using the freshest, most-flavorful local ingredients available. And they may not make a big deal about it, but many of them also are committed environmentalists who go out of their way to support small local farmers using organic and other sustainable growing techniques.
FRESHNESS AND FLAVOR. "In the 1970s and 1980s, it was sort of badge of honor [for a restaurant] to serve things out of season -- like, say, raspberries in January, says Chris Douglass, chef/owner of Icarus, a top Boston restaurant. "You weren't supposed to think about the fact that it had to be shipped from Peru or someplace. Since then, there has been a big change in the way many chefs think about food."
In fact, many of the nation's fanciest restaurants are playing an important role in keeping alive small farms that otherwise might be forced out of business by urban sprawl and rising land prices. That's true of Alice Waters (Chez Panisse, Berkeley, Calif.), Thomas Keller (French Laundry, Napa Valley, and the newly opened Per Se in New York City), Charlie Trotter (Charlie Trotter's, Chicago), and Daniel Boulud (Daniel, New York). But it's also true for mainstream, white-tablecloth restaurants at many of the Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton hotels.
The chefs are a key market for small farmers because they're willing to pay a premium for high-quality goods. Michael Romano, executive chef at New York's Union Square Cafe, says he regularly pays $1.70 per pound for organic chicken, which he considers healthier and more flavorful than supermarket-style chicken, which costs half as much. These chefs also tend to be understanding about weather and other vagaries that afflict small farmers.
PREACHING IN THE FIELDS. "We have to be constantly thinking, 'What am I going to do if this or that farmer's delivery doesn't arrive today?' " says Judy Rodgers, chef-owner of San Francisco's Zuni Cafe. "A small farmer's delivery truck can break down or a field can get flooded, but their [produce] is also often a lot more delicious than what you get from big producers."
More than 100 top chefs are members of a Boston-headquartered group called The Chef's Collaborative, formed in 1993 to promote sustainable agriculture. But many chefs who aren't members quietly support the group's principles. Cleveland's Parker Bosley, whose Parker's New American Bistro has been ranked No. 30 in the nation by Gourmet magazine, has turned cooking at the restaurant over to other chefs so he can devote himself full-time to educating small sustainable farmers on how they can better market to restaurants.
Top chefs don't necessarily care if the food they buy is certified organic. "That's nice, but I wouldn't not use a farmer just because he occasionally uses some herbicides or pesticides," say Romano, who still buys much of his produce from the farmers' market at Union Square.
IN COD WE TRUST. What chefs mainly care about is freshness and flavor. For instance, on Thursday when I checked in with Eric Ziebold, chef de cuisine at the French Laundry, he noted that some of the berries he was serving that evening were bought at a roadside fruit stand run by a farmer the chefs respect.
Chefs won't hesitate to go to great lengths to find -- or cultivate -- the best producers. Ziebold, for instance, is leaving the French Laundry to open a new restaurant in Washington D.C. on Aug. 31 (to be called City Zen). He's already calling around to find the best growers of local fruits and vegetables. And he's taking with him bags of seeds for hard-to-get heirloom vegetables in the hope a farm near D.C. will grow them for him.
While local produce is preferred, meat, poultry, and fish are often shopped for nationally. I was astonished to learn that French Laundry, Charlie Trotter's, and Daniel, among others, buy poultry and pork from Sylvia and Stephen Pryzant, who run a tiny farm a few miles from where I live in Northeastern Pennsylvania (hardly a center of gourmet cuisine). Chefs prize the Pryzants' meat because of the care and humane methods they use raising their animals. Douglass pays a premium for line-caught cod from the Cape Cod Commercial Fisherman's Assn. because he considers the fish fresher and more environmentally friendly than trawler-caught cod.
BIG TABLE. Sometimes the chefs' environmentalism and their well-healed clientele make for strange bedfellows. Odessa Pipper, chef-owner of the highly regarded l'Etoile in Madison, Wis., recalls that a couple of years ago she hosted a gathering of high-ranking business executives in her main dining room while a group of passionate foodies toasted Jose Bose, the French farmer-turned-antiglobalIzation activist, downstairs in the less-formal cafe.
"Everyone is welcome in my establishment, whether it's the head of a tobacco company or a farmer struggling to stay in business," says Piper. Of course, they'll all be eating the same sustainably grown cuisine.