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From plot to plate
The case for restaurant gardens
Just outside Gundaroo, Michael Plane and Joyce Wilkie grow organic vegetables.
Their Allsun Farm supplies several local restaurants, including Gundaroo’s
Grazing, Canberra’s Silo and The Gods restaurant at the Australian National
University. At one time Joyce was also involved with Lynwood Café at Collector
and laments the fact that the Lynwood vegetable garden is no more.
There’s obviously some tension between the idea of a restaurant growing its own
produce and the need to deliver a consistent product on the plate. Not every
chef is prepared to change things around to respond to a glut of tomatoes. Joyce
understands Lynwood’s reluctance to continue with their garden, but argues for a
wider view.
“When you do the budgeting, gardens never make huge amounts of money”, she
explains. “There’s a lot of grunt but not much in return in the mark-up on a
vegetable, whereas when you take them into a restaurant kitchen and go chop,
chop, chop, three lengths on a plate or three leaves on a plate, suddenly the
value of the garden grows huge. The real value of the garden at Lynwood was its
magnetic quality. It drew the people there. The message was ‘there is fresh food
growing and we’re going in here to eat it’. There’s got to be a connection” she
insists.
Joyce told us about their visit to Primo in the United States. This restaurant
in coastal Maine employs a master gardener, and vegetables, if at all possible,
are picked that morning from their extensive gardens. “You drive into a place
where you’re going to eat and you’re surrounded by gardens which are full of
food. You can be surrounded by any kind of garden, but if it’s attached to a
restaurant, why not make it vegetables? If it’s going to be beautiful, you have
to pay a gardener, so it might as well be growing food.”
Michael and Joyce suggest that any surplus vegetables produced could be sold to
visitors. “Just have a market stall at the front door with an honour system”
suggests Joyce. “It makes a special connection for the clientele.”
The pair have high hopes for the just planted garden at Grazing. “It may work
there because Mark Mooney is great at growing vegetables and you need someone
with a passion to grow and who will bend themselves backwards to convert the
chef.”
Passion isn’t lacking with Joyce and Michael. “We have a ‘no retirement’ policy”
Michael laughs. “Neither of us is interested in retiring, we’re interested in
dying on this job.”
(Joyce and Michael have shared their methods and experience in planning and
tending café gardens in their
CD book.
See their website for a
sample.)
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