on our plate

Farm to Table with Tom Colicchio’s Own Top Chef James Tracey: What’s On Your Plate?
Jeff Gangemi Apr 16, 2012 On Our Plate 0 comments
James Tracey is Executive Chef at Craft Restaurant and Colicchio and Sons Restaurant in New York, the two flagships in Tom Colicchio’s Craft Restaurant Group. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Tracey has also worked at The Gramercy Tavern and the St. Regis Hotel in New York, before helping Colicchio launch Craft in 2002.  The restaurant won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant that year and has continued a successful run of serving local, seasonal fare ever since. Tracey says being able to rely on a trusted group of farmer-producers makes his job easier, and it’s been a key to the success of both restaurants. "When you can look, taste and feel what the...
Farm to Table at James Beard Award Winner ABC Kitchen: What’s On Your Plate?
Jeff Gangemi Apr 03, 2012 On Our Plate 0 comments
New York’s ABC Kitchen, which won the 2011 James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant, has gone to great lengths to earn its farm-to-table reputation. The restaurant and its team of chefs have committed to sourcing 70% of its menu from within 90 miles of the restaurant between May and October but often sources up to 85% locally.  The majority of produce in the restaurant is locally grown on organic farms that do not use pesticides synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, or GMOs. The meat products are also locally sourced where possible, and the animals were treated humanely. That’s an astounding achievement for a fine dining restaurant in New York City! We at...
David Kinch's Manresa Restaurant & Love Apple Farms: An Obsession With Local Ingredients
Jeff Gangemi Jan 10, 2012 On Our Plate 0 comments
Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Manresa Restaurant’s David Kinch now calls the California coast home. Kinch, who was GQ’s Chef of the Year in 2011, is fanatical about the ingredients he uses in his cooking.   That’s why the award-winning chef struck such a unique relationship with a champion produce grower near his Los Gatos restaurant. Cynthia Sandberg and her Love Apple Farms have worked almost exclusively with Kinch and Manresa for about six years now. Sandberg owns the farm, but she and Chef Kinch work together closely to raise the best possible ingredients for Kinch’s signature style of cuisine (Kinch, a James Beard Award finalist, has serious cooking chops, having...
Top 10 Producers at The Farm Table: What’s On Your Plate?
Jeff Gangemi Nov 30, 2011 On Our Plate 0 comments
The Farm Table Restaurant, which is affiliated with the Kringle Candle Company, opened several weeks ago. Chef Brent Menke can’t believe the demand he’s seen, especially for being in the small town of Bernardston, Massachusetts. “We’ve had two-hour waits for lunch,” he says. Typically, demand like that is a great thing, but Menke, who cares deeply for the quality of his ingredients and the quality of his service, is careful not to sacrifice either of those elements. Before opening The Farm Table, Menke had been chef on motorized luxury yacht Paraffin. Since only a precious few individuals had the means to afford such an experience, Menke is set on sharing his culinary expertise...
Farm to Table at Vermont’s Skinny Pancake: What’s On Your Plate?
Jeff Gangemi Nov 15, 2011 On Our Plate 0 comments
In a few short years, Burlington’s Skinny Pancake creperie has become something of an institution. Co-founder Benjy Adler started his business in 2003 as a two-man operation with his brother Jonny. Together, they manned a cart on the main pedestrian walking mall in Burlington, making sweet and savory crepes for hungry passers-by. In 2007, they opened a full-fledged restaurant on Burlington’s waterfront. Benjy later launched a second Skinny Pancake location in Montpelier, and in 2010, he launched The Chubby Muffin in the Old North End of Burlington. All three locations – along with the still-running food cart – source a majority of their food locally from a group of about 30 farms and...
Farm to Table at Chez Panisse: What’s On Your Plate?
Jeff Gangemi Nov 08, 2011 On Our Plate 0 comments
Cal Peternell is the café chef at Chez Panisse. He is a 16-year veteran of perhaps the best-known farm-to-table restaurant in the country, which was founded by Alice Waters in 1971. Far from lamenting the growing popularity of the local food movement, Peternell celebrates it. “Luckily, more and more people are doing it,” he said. “We like to remind people that this is the way everyone ate until 100 years ago. Local and seasonal - you didn’t have much of a choice…” Happy to publicize the farms he sources from, Peternell listed them one by one, with the ingredients they buy from each. All except the organic pork, which Chez Panisse sources from Iowa, come from the restaurant’s local region in...