|
Area
restaurants
insisting on
locally
grown
produce
by: Jeff
Wilkin
Date:
February 20,
2011
|
|
|
|
For Guy Sementilli, fresh ideas
for his restaurant start with
fresh produce from the garden.
That's why the owner of Scotti's
Restaurant and Pizzeria on Union
Street in Schenectady depends on
local farms for his peppers,
tomatoes, eggplant and other
vegetables.
"First and foremost, it's the
freshest produce you can get,"
said Sementilli, who has
operated his 15-table restaurant
since 1994. "Usually, any
produce that comes from Mexico,
California or Florida, by the
time it gets freighted here it
takes two or three days up to a
week."
New York growers provide quicker
delivery. "If you're using a
local farm, they pick it and we
prepare it," Sementilli said.
"It doesn't get fresher than
that."
Chefs in other local kitchens
also buy locally when they can.
They believe the practice is
good for business and benefits
the local economy. Michael
Obliskey, chef at Wheatfields
Bistro in Clifton Park, said one
of his assistant chefs is on the
road three times a week during
the growing season, picking up
vegetables like tomatoes and
greens for the market salads,
butternut squash and asparagus
for risotto and bell peppers
used for the chicken rigatoni.
"Anything we can get our hands
on," Obliskey said. "Variety is
the spice of life."
Wheatfields lets
customers know local products
are being used for lunch and
dinner diversions. That's why
farms in Peru and China are
never in the mix.
"I
could, but we make the choice
and try to be committed to what
we're doing, to say, 'Hey, we're
getting this from a farm that's
a half-hour away from here.'
It's an organic farm that
doesn't use pesticides, trying
to treat the food the way it
should be treated."
Obliskey prefers to cook with
locally grown goods. He likes to
know someone is working as hard
in the fields as he is in the
kitchen, a silent team-up that
results in food excellence. The
chef added that people who know
the Wheatfields' policy
appreciate that foods being
sliced and steamed are coming
from the general Capital Region.
"The people who actually know
about it and care about it are
the ones who actually say
something," he said. "For the
general mass population, I don't
know if they really have the
knowledge or want to know this
is from the guy down the
street."
Wheatfields is also happy
to help local farmers. "It's
impossible these days, for these
guys," Obliskey said. "They're
barely getting by, some of these
guys. Farms are dying out."
TOUGH TIMES
Stan Horton, president of the
Schenectady County Farm Bureau,
said New York farmers deserve --
and need -- local support.
"New York is an expensive place
to live in, and it's an
expensive place to farm in,"
said Horton, whose group lobbies
for farm rights. "The property
taxes, they're up against the
wall. Fifty to 100 acres is a
fairly moderately sized farm,
and the taxes on that are
astronomical."
Horton said buying locally is
also buying green.
"For the environment, it's
certainly better because we're
not trucking produce 3,000 miles
across the country," he said.
The support comes at a price.
Chefs say New York produce can
be a little pricier than fruits
and vegetables grown in other
parts of the world.
"It's a little more expensive,
and sometimes the availability "
they're seasonal, there's a
raspberry season and a
strawberry season," said Andrew
Plummer, executive chef and
co-owner of Creo in
Guilderland's Stuyvesant Plaza.
"For local strawberries, we try
to use them as much we possibly
can for the short season that
they're around."
Plummer also said some of the
farms produce a smaller amount
of edibles. "So some of the
exotic stuff tends to be a
little bit more expensive," he
said. Wheatfields'
Obliskey added that New York
farms also have shorter growing
windows, and cannot harvest all
year long as their international
counterparts do. And payroll --
sometimes to teenagers from high
school picking crops -- can be
higher than wages earned by
laborers at overseas farms.
on-site gardens
Plummer said restaurants can
help themselves by growing some
crops on premises. Creole has an
herb garden that wraps around
the building off Western Avenue.
"It's kind of neat, because if
we run out of chives, we can
just go out with a pair of
scissors and snip what we need,"
he said. "People get a kick out
of it."
Scotti's Sementilli does the
same thing -- basil and other
herbs grow in back of his
restaurant. He also has a perk
other restaurants do not -- a
farmers' market on Union Street
that operates Saturdays during
the growing seasons.
"You go out on a Saturday
morning and have no idea what
the Saturday night specials are
going to be," he said. "I visit
the farmers' market and I get
all sorts of ideas."
At
the 333 Cafe in Delmar, chef and
co-owner Chris Dangerfield also
keeps locally grown products in
his coolers.
"We use a lot of apples, we use
pumpkins, tomatoes in season,
green beans," Dangerfield said.
"They can go into anything from
savory dishes to dessert, maybe
a pumpkin soup, maybe an apple
soup, a stew, a layered dish."
Like chefs in other restaurants,
Dangerfield is sold on the taste
factor in local goods.
"When it's in season, local
stuff tastes 100 percent better
than anything you can get down
south," he said.
Dangerfield loves New York
apples, so he loves Indian
Ladder farms in New Scotland. He
used the last of his apples in
late December.
"We do try to get people to use
our apples," said Cecelia
Soloviev, retail manager at
Indian Ladder. "A lot of the
time, they'll promote it to show
the freshness of the fruit and
the freshness of the their
products. It also promotes our
name as well. Every little bit
helps."
Soloviev said her orchard has
over 50 clients in the
restaurant industry. Not all are
slicing apples for desserts --
she said the Albany Pump Station
uses Indian Ladder cider for one
of the tavern's specialty ales.
"We do Perfect Blend, they make
pies in Delmar," Soloviev said.
"We also have cider for
Bountiful Bread [in Stuyvesant
Plaza], we do different types of
fruit and squash for the Crisan
bakery on Lark Street."
People in the kitchen stress
that people in local farm fields
make their breakfasts, lunches
and dinners better. Obliskey
said some chefs cook exclusively
with canned or pouched foods but
he likes to be as fresh as
possible.
"It's like night and day," he
said. "A customer will have a
hard time differentiating
between the two, but as a chef?
By far."
Reach Gazette reporter Jeff
Wilkin at 395-3124 or at wilkin@dailygazette.com.
? Archives Technical and Billing
questions: For questions
regarding your Archives account,
please send an email to
dailygazette@newsbank.com
Copyright (c) 2011 The Daily
Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
|
|
|