Michael Jordan's passion for locally sourced meals has influenced the menus at some of Orange County's top dining venues ? Pinot Provence, Napa Rose and The Ranch Restaurant & Saloon.
When the master sommelier worked at Napa Rose in Downtown Disney, Jordan persuadedDisney's top brass to grow chard, colorful artichokes, corn and tomatoes in the most unlikely of locations: A Bug's Land at Disney California Adventure and Tomorrowland at Disneyland.
Bees swarm beekeeper Zach Fontes as he holds a hive's frame while working on the Fairmont Newport Beach Hotel's rooftop. At right are the hives and in the distance the Newport Beach skyline. The hotel has an estimated 300,000 bees on the rooftop that produce honey used in the production of the hotel restaurant's savory "honey infused" dishes.
H. LORREN AU JR., THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
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Farm to Table Honorary Mentions
The restaurants at?The Resort at Pelican Hill?take advantage of locally grown fruits and vegetables from the Irvine Ranch farm.?Future Foods Farms?is a 25-acre organic aquaponic farm in Brea that offers a tour and "farm fresh" multi-course tasting most Saturday nights.?Lucca Caf??in Irvine sources from Orange County Produce, which distributes locally grown fruits and vegetables.?Canyon?in Anaheim Hills, owned by Sage's Rich Mead, has an onsite herb and produce garden.?Studio?at Montage Laguna Beach has its own on-site garden. Seabirds Truck gets a majority of its food for its vegan dishes form?Tanaka Farms (Irvine), Orange County Produce (Irvine), Bautista Creek (Hemet) and local farmers markets.?
Talk to us:?Write in and let us know about your favorite farm-to-fork restaurant.
Contact the writer:?nluna@ocregister.com?
Jordan was among a few local epicureans who followed the slow food crusades of Alice Waters. These "locavores" believed in pure ingredients long before "farm to fork" became an industry buzz phrase.
"We never used those terms. We were just homegrown," he said.
Today, Jordan's philosophy is playing out at aptly named The Ranch in Anaheim, where he works as vice president of food and beverage. Depending on the season, about 20 to 70 percent of restaurant's menu incorporates produce from a 2-acre farm eight miles away in Orange Park Acres.
"It is for real. It's legit. We are really bringing the farm to the table," he said.
Other Orange County restaurants are embracing farm to fork practices.
For them, it's not a gimmick. It's a way of life.
FAIRMONT NEWPORT BEACH: THE UNCONVENTIONAL
When Chad Blunston became executive chef at Fairmont Newport Beach in 2010, he wanted to launch a rooftop garden. That idea changed swiftly when 30,000 bees swarmed the hedges outside the lobby in spring 2011.
"I believe in fate," said Blunston, who was toying with the idea of raising honeybees.
He hired Backyard Bees to relocate them into hives on the hotel's north-facing roof. Backyard co-founder Janet Andrews was skeptical. The MacArthur Boulevard hotel is in an industrial area near John Wayne Airport.
"I didn't think there would be enough foraging for them," she said.
But the bees, which can travel up to five miles from their home base, made do with their unconventional surroundings. A month later, they were making honey.
The 30,000 bees have since grown to 300,000 housed in six rooftop hives. Over a two-month period, they make about 35 pounds of honey. Blunston -- who grew up among the red-soiled farms of Prince Edward Island, Canada -- uses the honey in salad dressings, pastry dishes and specialty cocktails served at the hotel's Bambu restaurant. The hotel also keeps a collection of small private label jars for VIP guests.
"I call it liquid gold. It's one of those natural wonderful wonders," he said.
Honey isn't the only farm-to-table experiment playing out at Fairmont.
Last year, Blunston adopted seven goats from Drake Family Farms in Ontario. Each Sunday, the always hands-on chef drives to the farm and fetches up to 80 pounds of goat cheese. Traditional, honey apricot, jalapeno and lemon-pepper goat cheeses are used on everything from tasting menus to salads.
Next up for Blunston? Beer.
"I want to grow my own hops. Why not? I'll try anything."
PARK AVE.: A GARDEN OASIS
At Park Ave., hostesses and servers are often found guiding diners through the restaurant's 5,000 square feet of gardens, where the aromas of cilantro, basil, parsley, sage and chives overwhelm the senses.
"It's so relaxing. I could be having the worst day out here, and everything mellows when you come out here," Chef David Slay said of his picturesque produce oasis.
Slay opened Park Ave. in 2005 ? a "chops and steak" restaurant on an old dairy farm on Beach Boulevard in Stanton. A fan of seasonally driven cooking, he knew the site would be fertile ground for a culinary garden.
"This is where the cows roamed," Slay said.
Throughout the year, the garden boasts about 25 items ? from summer tomatoes to winter squash to spring peas. Year-round, Slay grows arugula, chard, baby greens, fennel, root vegetables and herbs for Park Ave. Il Garage, a bistro Slay opened last year next to the gardens, recently served butternut squash ravioli and eggplant with pappardelle.
"Whatever's in the garden, we work into the menu," he said.
SAGE: A PIONEER
While he was a chef in Santa Monica in the early 1990s, Rich's Mead's cooking philosophy changed with a knock on the door. A local farmer dropped off leafy greens for sampling at his restaurant's back entrance.
"You taste the lettuces and you have this epiphany," Mead said. "That's when you realize what local is."
Since then, Mead has incorporated produce found at the Santa Monica Farmers Market into his menus. But when he opened Sage in Newport Beach several years later, his farm-to-table philosophy was a hard sell.
"People didn't eat vegetables the way they do now," he said.
Eventually, Orange County diners learned to appreciate Mead's passion.
For more than a decade, he has made the 100-mile roundtrip trek to the Santa Monica Farmers Market every week. On a recent Wednesday, his push cart is filled with wild chanterelle mushrooms, baby artichokes, Brussel sprouts, butternut squash, lima beans, gold flame raisins, lipstick peppers, kale, Persian cucumbers, fingerling and red thumb potatoes, winter squash, beets, piquillo peppers, figs, green tomatoes, lettuces and Swiss chard.
"Sometimes the van is sagging," he said of his bounty.
In Sage's kitchen, the mushrooms are put into a stuffing, or topped on a pizza. Green tomatoes are fried for the "BLT" sandwich. The red thumbs become twice baked gorgonzola potatoes.
With Sage slated to close at the end of the year, Mead said he's glad to see the farm-to-table movement expand in Orange County. (Related story: Sage closing)
"It's fun. It's changing the way people eat."?
THE RANCH: HYPER-LOCAL
On a sweltering hot summer day, Michael Jordan isn't feeling the heat. As he guides a group of writers through The Ranch Restaurant's two-acre farm, the master sommelier is on a natural high. He gushes with pride as he shows off rare black cherry tomatoes, figs, squash blossoms, painted serpent cucumbers and hot house peppers.
Much of the farm's 500 plants have grown from seeds collected and sown by Jordan, a culinary gardener since the 1970s.
"I like to grow the really groovy stuff," he said.
But even traditional produce can be inspiring.
The farm's Valencia oranges make for "the sweetest most delicious orange sorbet you'll taste in your life. I'm going ape for it," Jordan said.
When the farm's 70 tomato plants produced a bumper crop over the summer, Executive Chef Michael Rossi made tomato jam from the excess fruit. For a brief time, it was served with the restaurant's signature popover appetizers.
Despite The Ranch's name, Jordan doesn't like to be pushy about its farm-to-table practices.
"Then it is like you're doing it for attention, rather than doing it because it is what you believe in."
Talk to us:?Write in and let us know about your favorite farm-to-fork restaurant.
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Where to find the restaurants:
Fairmont:?4500 MacArthur Blvd., Newport Beach
Park Ave.:?11200 Beach Blvd., Stanton
Sage:?2531 Eastbluff Drive, Newport Beach.
The Ranch:?1025 E. Ball Road, Anaheim.
Contact the writer: nluna@ocregister.com
Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/farm-377095-restaurant-orange.html
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