From farmer to table

California is America’s most innovative State when it comes to protecting the environment. Forward thinking and trailblazing, it is not just a leader in clean energy and green technology, it has also been at the forefront of the country’s sustainable food revolution.

It all began in 1971, when Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, with the then ground-breaking notion of embrac-ing home-grown, seasonal ingredients.

But now there’s a new concept that is taking the idea of farm-to-table dining a step further. And this time it’s not in San Francisco or the Bay Area but in the heart of Los Angeles.

Farmer at the centre

The new Farmhouse restaurant, which launched in Beverly Hills in mid-March, offers a menu that not only brings farm-fresh produce to the table, it also brings the farmer. The restaurant has been developed by Southern California farmer Nathan Peitso and seasoned restaurateur Laurent Halasz, founder of the Fig & Olive group of Provencal restaurants, with outlets in New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, Houston and Southern California.

Farmhouse aims to redefine the traditional restaurant model by placing the farmer at the centre of the business and creating a new culinary movement focused on a direct connection with local farms. Collaborating to grow and harvest ingredients that dictate the menu, it operates on a “seed-to-table” basis. The restaurant is led by Peitso in the unique role of executive farmer, whose responsibility not just involves the growing and sourcing of the ingredients directly from farms, but also how they are used on the menu.

“The dishes we serve at Farmhouse come from my brain,” Peitso explains. “I am an accomplished cook but not a chef so I develop the idea and our executive chef Craig Hopson (ex-Picholine and Le Cirque in New York) turns them into something you can serve in a restaurant. Laurent is the ultimate taste tester, who refines and tweaks the dishes. So the menu is a complete collaboration between the three of us.”

Family affair

Peitso is a second-generation farmer, who grew up on his family’s farm, Kenter Canyon Farms in Ventura County. His mother, Andrea Crawford, was a forerunner in the farm-to-table movement in California who, in the early years, worked as a waitress at Chez Panisse. An avid gardener who began growing European-style salad greens, her passion for growing eventually became a business, with celebrity Los Angeles chef Wolfgang Puck helping to finance a move to Southern California, where, together with her husband Robert Dedlow, she began growing on a larger scale. Today, Kenter Canyon Farms includes more than 150 acres across California, producing mostly lettuce and herbs for Whole Foods and other health-focused grocery stores, as well as the area’s most acclaimed restaurants.

Farmhouse opened on 17 March at the Beverly Center, a luxury mall in Beverly Hills. The shopping centre is currently undergoing a $500m (£350m) revamp, including the creation of an upscale food hall on the seventh floor, overseen by San Francisco’s Michelin-starred chef Michael Mina, as well as eight high-end restaurants. Among them is the 7,000sq ft, 250-seat Farmhouse. Located on the street level of the Beverly Center, it features an open kitchen lined with shelves of canned and preserved pantry goods, along with a wood-fired oven and expansive grill. There’s a living room area around a fireplace, and a greenhouse atrium with floor-to-ceiling windows.

“We looked at a lot of different locations,” Peitso says. “But the Beverly Center was a good fit because we wanted it to be of a size and scale that would be impressive and enable us to reach a larger audience.” He adds: “Retail is struggling right now; the internet is taking business away from bricks and mortar stores, so malls and shopping centres need to offer an experience to draw in customers. One of the ways of doing this is to have exciting new culinary options and they made us a very competitive offer to open within the centre.”

Seasonal and local

The underlying idea for Farmhouse is for Peitso to oversee the restaurant’s entire supply chain, with all ingredients coming either from his own farm or other farmers he knows and respects. All fresh produce comes from farms in California. His own farm supplies salad greens, culinary herbs, avocados and citrus, while other well-known farms such as Weiser and Kong Farms supply things like potatoes or cauliflower. Responsibly raised meat and sustainable seafood is also mainly local, except for the restaurant’s beef, which comes from Creekstone Farms in Kansas. Peitso also intends to showcase lesser-known ingredients from smaller farms, giving customers a truly unique, farm-style dining experience. “We’ll have things like wing beans and long beans or different types of squash that aren’t commercially available,” he explains.

The menu, which will change monthly, is driven by the seasons. “We are blessed in Southern California in that we can grow most things year-round but even in that wide seasonality there are times certain items are at their peak,” he says. “Right now, we have fantastic carrots, cauliflower and peas, which are just coming in with the start of spring.” These items are on the current menu in dishes such as Southern Sierra carrots from Weiser Farms that are served confit with harissa, avocado and almonds ($14/£10); and peas from Kong Farm with burrata, pea tendrils and croutons ($15/£10.60).

Larger dishes include an eight-hour braised lamb shoulder, served with carrot-saffron romesco, roasted carrots and almonds ($24/£17).

There are breads and pasta, made exclusively from heirloom wheat grown at Kenter Canyon Farms and milled at Crawford’s Roan Mills Bakery, which uses grain-specific techniques for its unique ancient grains. These include Sonora Gold, which is used for the restaurant’s daily brioche rolls for its burger, and an ancient grain Durum variety for the pasta. Peitso adds: “We also have a pizza programme and it’s a 100% California pizza: we grow all the wheat for the dough and top it with local tomatoes, herbs and mozzarella.”

Pushing the boundaries

While Peitso admits that the idea of bringing the farmer to the restaurant table isn’t necessarily new, he insists that Farmhouse is pushing the concept to the next level: “There are a few people doing something similar – there’s a consortium of farms in the Mid-West for instance or Kimbal Musk (Elon Musk’s brother) who is partnering with different farms to minimise the supply chain.

“But I do think that our concept is the most authentic because it’s coming from an actual farmer, who is growing things specifically for the restaurant, and I believe we’re the only ones doing that.”

Kerstin Kühn is a journalist specialising in the US hospitality sector