These days, it’s hard to find a restaurant that doesn’t offer a helping of seasonal, regional cuisine, but there’s no doubt that is what customers want. Indeed, what began as a blogger’s 100-mile eating experiment has blossomed into a movement that is being described as a “macro trend,” a development “backed up with concrete innovations” and likely to be long-lived. So, chefs are finding ways to put more local, or at least Canadian, food on their menus.
At Calgary’s Market restaurant, local means made-on-site and sourced as close to the kitchen as possible. The company logo — a graphic coat of arms with locally inspired images — says it all: from grain to grape, pig to pear, fish to pitch fork, this is a place where local ingredients are king. “I didn’t like the stereotype that eating local was only for fancy restaurants,” says owner Vanessa Salopek who opened Market in 2013, with a casual menu that includes house-made bread, cheese, cured meats and sodas. “Market wanted to show that eating local, sustainable food could come at a reasonable price tag and be done in a humble, relaxed and comfortable setting.”
Sourcing local ingredients, in season and direct from the producer, is a goal for most serious cooks. But local goes beyond the kitchen; it’s a mantra for community-minded individuals. Many chefs feel they have a responsibility to support farmers and sustainable food production, if only to ensure a future supply of fresh, quality ingredients. “There’s not a chef anywhere these days who isn’t doing his (or her) absolute best to use local ingredients,” says Ned Bell, executive chef at Vancouver’s Four Seasons Hotel. Bell is serious about sourcing local ingredients — so serious, he recently cycled 900 km across Vancouver Island to promote the idea.
And, despite the conventional wisdom that local food costs too much to make good business sense, not all chefs agree. “If you’re smart enough with ingredients, and pay attention, you can offset the higher cost of ingredients by making sure everything has a spot on your menu,” says Dave Bohati, executive chef, Market.
With daily lunch specials and careful recycling of trimmings, whether protein or vegetables, Bohati keeps his food costs hovering around the magic 30-per-cent mark. From the daily quiche ($12) and bison tartare ($17), to house-made sausages and carrot purée served with dinner entrées, nothing is wasted. “I challenge my cooks to come up with new ideas — they compete to see what they can do with something like chard stems,” he says, noting one solution was to pickle them.
Small farmers invest more to produce organic and sustainable food, but it’s affordable. “I’ve looked at the numbers myself to compare, and the price difference isn’t that substantial,” Market’s Salopek says. Working in a big hotel with a successful restaurant helps when buying local ingredients, says Bell. Banquets, with less focus on local suppliers, bring his blended food costs down to 26 per cent, allowing him to spend more on the menu at Yew Seafood + Bar, where fresh produce and locally sourced seafood is the focus. “I can use Qualicum scallops in the restaurant, because we serve steelhead trout for banquets,” he says. “I get a better price for sablefish, because we buy so much. It’s a huge advantage.” Local ingredients shine on his menu in the vegan tacos with baby heirloom tomatoes, roasted peppers and cucumbers ($11), and the beet salad with sweet and sour cranberries, goat cheese and hazelnuts ($15).
While many chefs across the country now work directly with local growers, some are getting right out onto the field. In Victoria, longtime restaurateur Michael Murphy changed the name of his popular Bon Rouge restaurant to 10 Acres Bistro + Bar to reflect his newest acquisition, a 10-acre organic farm near the city. “We’ve noticed an improvement in the quality of salad greens,” says Murphy, whose farm manager oversees the production of seasonal vegetables, eggs, heirloom pigs for bacon and ham, and beehives for honey. He’s even built a few south-facing “walls” in his apple and cherry orchard to shelter lemon trees. The farm can never completely fill the needs of his three busy restaurants, but it’s Murphy’s way of promoting a sustainable, local food system. “We have some of the best farmland in the country,” he says. “I’m trying to purchase locally to help other farmers and show people what can be done.” Popular items on his menu range from pork chop with wild mushrooms, potato pavé and house-made sauerkraut ($23) to seasonal farm vegetables for the table ($7). The food philosophy is similar at Hôtel La Ferme, the trendy hotel in the town of Baie-Saint-Paul, just outside Quebec City. The sprawling property is a 21st-century interpretation of the historic barn, mill and sheep pens that once stood on the site. And it’s still surrounded by a garden of vegetables, herbs, flowers and other edibles that feed the garde manger. “I love this broccoli — it’s so much sweeter when it’s just been picked — just a burst of green, like candy,” says chef David Forbes, wandering the fields that feed the hotel’s various foodservice outlets, from the casual Marché to the sleek open kitchen of Les Labours. Not only does Forbes grow his own produce, the hotel’s mandate to source within a 50-km radius means he uses local cheeses, duck and even locally milled flour. From wild mushroom salad to the Seared beef Ferme Oiseau Bleu with sweet pepper purée, sprouts and turnip, diners enjoy the bounty of the region.
In Toronto, chef Alex Molitz doesn’t have his own farm, but he is making waves with his farm-to-table menu at the aptly named Farmhouse Tavern. The menu at this casual neighbourhood spot is ambitious and technique-driven, whether it’s deep-fried duck eggs with smoked duck breast for breakfast ($14) or the seasonal Veg Harvest (previously an array of roasted radishes, Jerusalem artichokes and butternut squash, smoked over a wood fire). “We are cooking with the bare minimum here, but I’m proud to be pumping out the food we are,” says Molitz, a Culinary Institute of America grad who has worked at top tables from New York to Napa Valley, Calif., and is known for his careful curation of vegetables on the plate. “I came back to Toronto and realized we have the best vegetables here in Ontario, the best beets, tomatoes, fruits that I’ve ever tasted,” he says. “Except for oranges and oysters, during spring, summer and fall, everything is local. If we charge more, to give quality and help the community, it’s worth it, people taste it.”
The Farmhouse’s daily “blackboard menu” helps keep costs down as dishes are determined based on what’s available and cheapest. It includes six appetizers and six entrées, from a ploughman’s platter of local cheeses and meats, pickled vegetables and egg ($23), to Beets & Lamb ($21), the Barnyard Burger ($20) and the Côte de Boeuf ($125), a 70-ounce cut of local beef for four.
It’s more difficult for large QSR chains to adopt a local sourcing program, but restaurant trend watchers — including NPD Group and the Chicago-based Technomic Inc. — say that won’t stop consumers from pressing for more transparency when it comes to ingredients and food origins.
At Canadian Cactus Club Cafe, Rob Feenie, executive chef, has introduced more local buying. With 25 restaurants across Western Canada, Feenie tries to strike a balance “between keeping food costs at a reasonable price point, while also meeting the customers’ demands for locally sourced ingredients whenever possible,” listing mushrooms, bread and poultry from local suppliers. “One local ingredient I am particularly proud to include on our menu is the Steelhead salmon,” he says of the OceanWise fish, farmed in Lois Lake near Powell River, B.C., and served in the Soy-Dijon Salmon entrée with whole-grain barley, snap peas and shiitake mushrooms ($24.50).
At the Vancouver-based White Spot, the management buys “more local products than any full-service restaurant chain in B.C.,” according to the company website. It says it sources 5,000,000 lb of potatoes, 675,000 lb of tomatoes and 73,000 lb of blueberries from B.C. producers every year. It’s also promoted as the only casual-dining chain in the province with a 100-per-cent B.C. VQA wine list.
A challenge, especially for large operations such as universities or hospitals, is finding local producers that are large enough to supply their needs. There are innovators on that front, too. Local Food Plus (LFP) is an Ontario-based not-for-profit operation that offers local and sustainable certification to farmers and food processors. “It’s similar to organic certification — there’s a point system,” says Don Mills, LFP president and family farmer, “but local is the anchor of the program.”
LFP defines local as provincial and looks at animal welfare, labour standards and biodiversity on the farm before branding products with the LFP logo. Since the program launched in 2006, 75 farms have been certified, and LFP is working with 100 Toronto restaurants and institutional buyers such as the University of Toronto, which now spends at least 10 per cent of its food budget on certified local and sustainable food. Chefs can buy LFP-certified products from wholesalers and large foodservice companies such as GFS Canada, which publishes a local products guide for several of the provinces it serves.
Ontario’s Morton Wholesale also offers restaurants certified local ingredients through its Ontario Grassroots Program, while Alberta’s localizeyourfood.com works with 300 food businesses and 50 grocery stores to identify local products with store shelf tags. “It’s an idea that’s becoming fairly embedded in awareness — and one that continues to resonate,” says Mills. l
