Truly local eats don't just happen by chance. They're the product of tremendous work and dedication by chefs around the area who are committed to serving you the best local food they can find. Here's a look at two of those spots.
I smelled them before I saw them. The door to Sovana Bistro opened, and I got a whiff of that sweet, distinctly strawberry smell, just a moment before Chef and Owner Nick Farrell whisked a flat of strawberries past me and into the kitchen. That was followed by armfuls of other fresh vegetables, all grown by local farmers on local farms.
Nick and his staff at Sovana have committed themselves to using the best ingredients -- and for them, the best ingredients are local ingredients. That commitment led to the birth of his 100-mile menu at Sovana. It's rather self-explanatory -- if it's on the 100-mile menu, everything on your plate comes from within 100 miles of the sophisticated Kennett Square bistro.
The menu isn't something that Nick whipped up on a whim. It is the product of a commitment to local food, relationships with farmers and careful planning.
It started with a local farmer who would bring Nick a basket of vegetables in the morning, then come in that night and expect to see the veggies on the menu.
Now, on any given morning, you can find Nick walking with local growers through their fields. They could be telling Nick when their arugula will be ready, when they expect the first tomatoes, or when he can start planning to feature their peppers on his menu.
That's part of the challenge in working local. Every farmer, every farm, every grower is different. The same vegetable isn't ready at the same time at every spot, which can make menu planning even more difficult. Nick's passion about local foods is evident, though. The way he talks about it, nothing could keep him from serving the best, local ingredients on his menu. And not just local ingredients, but local ingredients grown by people who really care about what they're growing.
With one bite of the strawberry shortcake, I understood why. The strawberries didn't have that half-hearted pink color, or grainy texture of grocery store strawberries. Their sweetness filled my mouth, and brought back memories of my sister and I sitting on the ground at my grandmother's house, picking strawberries from her plants and eating them. They were strawberries that actually tasted like strawberries, rather than a pale imitation.
That bite, that taste, that experience, is why Nick is committed to local food, no matter how challenging it is.
It started much smaller. Four years ago, when Chefs Phil Pyle Jr. and Brian Shaw bought the Fair Hill Inn, they planted a small garden next to the parking lot.
But as a light drizzle fell from a slate gray sky last week, Phil stood in the middle of a garden that can now only be described as expansive. There are more heirloom tomato plants than I can count, some planted this year, some which have re-seeded themselves from last year. They grow among beets, cucumbers, more than a dozen different lettuces, beans, squash, pumpkins, peas, eight different types of carrots, heirloom radishes, and herbs, all growing without any pesticides at all.
Food doesn't get fresher -- or more local -- than this.
What the duo uses in their kitchen, they grow. What they grow, they use in their kitchen -- along with the cheese that they make, the meat that they cure, and the goodies they preserve. They churn their own butter.
Most strawberries are done for the season, but in this garden, there are still some heirloom strawberries, grown from seeds provided by the largest collector of heirloom strawberries in the United States. They're tiny, only as big as the tip of my pinky finger, but they're sweet and taste almost like perfume.
Past the garden is the vineyard, where grape vines dotted with tiny, delicate flowers crawl up four rows of trellises. These grapes are destined not for wine, but for verjus -- harvested before they have a chance to develop any sweetness and pressed to create verjus. Why use store-bought vinegar?
Venture through the vines and you'll find two large, white boxes. Bees flit in and out, to the garden and back. Not content as just chefs and farmers, Phil and Brian have become apiarists, expecting to get about 100 pounds of honey from their two hives.
While Phil and I were out exploring the garden, Brian was inside the small kitchen at the Fair Hill Inn, making a manchego cheese. When we left him to go out to the garden, he was stirring a pot on the stove with a long whisk, and I could see the curds in the liquid. When we walked back into the kitchen, the cheese was round, wrapped in cheesecloth and being placed under weights.
Once the cheese was ready, it would go downstairs into their cave, where meats in various stages of curing hang from the ceiling, other cheeses age on the top of shelves filled with wine, along with a few remaining canned goods from last year's harvest.
It's not easy. A sheep's milk cheese was curing in the cave, that had to be brushed with olive oil every night. A curing cheese doesn't take a day off. In order to keep the best environment in the cave, it needs to be kept at a constant humidity, and 55 degrees. An air conditioner on one side keeps it cool, but draws too much water out of the air. So a humidifier sits on a table on the other side of the cave.
Weeds are a constant battle in the spring and early summer -- it takes Phil almost 12 hours, start to finish, to weed the garden every couple days. And once he gets to the end of the garden, the weeds are growing again at the beginning.
Both agree that all of the work -- the hours weeding, brushing a cheese with olive oil every night, rubbing meat with lard before hanging it in the basement -- is worth it. Even if there wasn't a restaurant, Phil would still be gardening, and Brian would still be making cheese as a hobby. This way, they get to do what they love, and diners get to benefit. They call it farmstead cuisine, and have gone so far as to trademark that phrase.
Plus, Brian said, when you make all the good stuff that you need, it's like having your own gourmet market where you can shop. And who wouldn't like that.
