Leopold Center - How two chefs built restaurants around local food

New York City chef and restaurant owner Dan Barber says his job is one part cooking and two parts storytelling. And he’d like that story to include the farmer as well as the person who developed the plant or animal.

“When it comes to buying food, who we are and how we feel makes a big difference,” Barber told participants at the Seeds and Breeds conference in Ames in September. “We go to great lengths to find food we know something about and when you know the story, the food tastes better. The story is a seasoning that I simply can’t provide.”

Barber operates the Blue Hill restaurant in Manhattan, and has been named one of the nation’s top new chefs by Food and Wine magazine, Gourmet and Bon Appétit. In May 2004 he opened a second Blue Hill restaurant at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills about 30 miles north of New York City.

The Center is located on 80 acres that had been part of the Rockefeller estate. It is named for the barns built in the 1920s to house dairy cattle so that the Rockefeller family could have fresh milk. The Center was established in 2003 to provide education and outreach, the barns were remodeled and adjoining land was turned into a working farm. The farm has a half-acre greenhouse where more than 40 kinds of produce are raised and 22 acres of pasture for sheep, Berkshire hogs, turkeys and chickens
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Barber said 78 percent of all food served in the restaurant comes from the Stone Barns Farm or farms within 150 miles. Both the restaurant and farm are set up to be self-sustaining, so much of the produce and livestock is sold at a weekly farmers market, and to other restaurants and a community supported agriculture enterprise.

He said he walks the farm every week to find out what is available. Servers also meet regularly with farm managers and cooks often harvest right from the garden.

“We don’t just grow garlic, we grow garlic from an Italian family that’s been growing it for generations,” Barber said. “It’s very sweet and our produce manager received it as a gift from a family member who decided not to grow it anymore, the first gift to anyone outside the family. The customers begin to taste family, traditions and Italy when they eat this garlic.”

More about the Stone Barns Center

More about the Blue Hill Restaurant

Local food also has been a key to success for farmer and entrepreneur Tod Murphy. Murphy visited Iowa in July to share his insights from three years of operating the Farmers Diner, a 50-seat restaurant in Barre, Vermont (pop. 9,300).

During peak season, Murphy said 70 to 80 percent of the food served in his restaurant came from within 70 miles. When he opened the diner in 2002, his goal was to have 40 cents of every food dollar go to local farmers and food processors, and the overall average has been about 65 cents.

In August, Murphy temporarily closed the popular diner to set up a nonprofit organization that will operate as a holding company to manage the restaurant. He said the group also plans to develop a regional brand of Vermont smoked and cured ham and offer educational programs about local foods. Murphy said he expects to re-open the diner in October but with a limited menu for only two meal periods a day (breakfast and lunch) from Tuesday through Saturday.

“We found that the Barre restaurant is too small to be profitable as a stand-alone enterprise,” he explained. “But it’s where we want to be - in a small, rural community supporting farmers and other businesses. Realistically, we need a 150-seat diner in a town two or three times the size of Barre.”

He said the group plans to open a second diner in summer or fall of 2006 about an hour away in Lebanan, New Hampshire, and to expand to the Boston area within two years. He said he’s had numerous inquiries from other regions including Iowa, California, New York, Chicago and the Twin Cities.

“People like the idea of a restaurant serving mostly locally grown food with the profits staying in the community,” he said. “We feel confident that we could go into any of these regions and find investors willing to commit half or even two-thirds of the funds needed to open a diner.”

He said the nonprofit status allows more flexibility in finding capital without the pressure to generate high returns required by most for-profit ventures. Murphy also is developing a “playbook” that outlines how much local support (finances and farmers) would be needed to open other diners.

Murphy heads the operations team that includes four full-time and two part-time employees. The Barre restaurant employed about 15 people (both full- and part-time), of which three plan to return when the restaurant re-opens.