Top Australian restaurants growing their own produce
by Leon Gettler
The big trend in Australian restaurants now is to grow their own.
Assagio restaurant in Adelaide, named in the Australian Financial Review’s Top Restaurants presented by Qantas, overhauled its menu and focuses now on fresh, locally sourced ingredients.
Assagio’s chefs,co-owners and family members now grow ingredients in their backyards, supplying at times up to 60 per cent of the restaurant's produce. They also forage in the Adelaide Hills for watercress and flower garnishes.
Awards director Jill Dupleix says a growing number of chefs are growing their own vegetables and herbs.
It’s not just to save money but to give them more creativity in preparing the food. It works much better than placing an order for someone else’s fruits, vegetables and herbs.
"They see a bigger picture of fresh, locally sourced, organic produce and realise they can do it themselves, with their staff, as part of their work ethic and business model," Dupleix told the Australian Financial Review.
The owner of Wasabi restaurant and bar in Noosa Danielle Gjestland, says she grows much of her Japanese and non-Japanese produce at her farm at Honeysuckle Hill at Noosa Heads. She grows ingredients such as kinome and myoga.
Indeed, 80 per cent of the ingredients she uses at the restaurant come from the farm.
She maintains it’s not about costs.
"We're cuisine specific which makes us ingredient specific," she says. "We grow daikon radishes. If we were to order these we'd just get the radish. Instead we grow them and we can use the leaves around the base in a pickle, the flowers as a garnish and the ones that don't work out we let go to seed and use the seeds which are crunchy," she told the AFR.
As part of the trend, chefs at Attica, Brae and the Three Blue Ducks cafe at The Farm in the Byron Bay hinterland all spend part of their roster gardening. It’s now regarded as a key part of their training.
7th March 2016
