From Farm to Table | Isprava Blog
“To understand why provenance is so important to chefs, one needs to unravel the food philosophy behind ingredient driven menus”
– GAURI DEVIDAYAL
In March 2014, Devidayal took a small group of people to The Table Farm in Alibaug where they harvested the produce that was then used to make their lunch. Since then, excursions to the farm in Alibaug have been consistently sold out.
What’s really on your plate? And where does it come from? Gauri Devidayal, the woman behind some of our favourite Mumbai restaurants and The Table Farm in Alibaug, sheds light on produce and provenance, organic farming and building a real farm-to-table ecosystem.
”I’m fresh off a flight from California, the OG of the farm-to-table movement, championed by Alice Waters, who opened Chez Panisse in the early 1970s and was notorious for serving just one perfect peach with a knife for dessert. Fifty years later, the movement not only continues there, but is thriving. ‘Organic’ is no longer counterculture, it’s as mainstream as it gets. Almost every restaurant I had dined at, between Los Angeles and San Francisco, paid homage to the farms from which it sources its ingredients. But doesn’t all produce come from some farm or the other? So what’s all the fuss about?
To understand why provenance is so important to chefs, one needs to unravel the food philosophy behind ingredient-driven menus. I had the privilege of dining at Nopa in San Francisco, which is a restaurant that simply describes itself as specializing in “simple food created with seasonal ingredients sourced from local purveyors”. To really get under the skin of this, I accompanied production chef Sean Eastwood to the renowned Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.
We spent a few hours that morning walking around several stalls with a large trolley that needed to be repeatedly loaded with crates overflowing with fresh produce, followed by multiple trips unloading it into Eastwood’s van. I asked him why he needed to come and personally buy produce from the market three times a week and why the farmers and vendors couldn’t just supply him at the restaurant directly, like we do in India. He explained, quite categorically, that if you want the good stuff you have to come and get it. There’s limited supply and demand is high.
The produce comes from small, local and regional farmers and ranchers, many of whom are certified organic. Being chemical-free means there’s scope for more spoilage of the crop due to pests and it also takes longer for produce to grow naturally when the process isn’t expedited using chemical fertilizers. All this results in it being considerably more expensive. But these very farmers are trustworthy sources of crops that are bursting with flavour and variety and which are sustainably farmed, ensuring that natural resources are not destroyed in the process. The microclimate of California has farms predominantly located within close proximity to the markets, which means the harvest has travelled a relatively short distance, thus reducing the environmental impact. Visit Isprava to read more.
