Midwestern farm to table - who really delivers on it?

I had a conversation recently where we were trying to list Chicago restaurants who put themselves out there as "farm-to-table" and really deliver on the idea. I know there are more than what we came up with, so I thought I'd turn to the unparalleled expertise on this board to build out the list.

In the list we came up with, some very clearly have the stated goal of being a "midwest farm-to-table" restaurant. Others don't make that goal explicit, but judging from the food, it is clearly an important element of what they do.

I know that "farm-to-table" can be a loaded term. Taken literally, the food at nearly every restaurant started at a farm and ended at a table. And then there's those who just see it as good marketing, etc. The best shorthand description for the criteria we were using is a place in the Alice Waters/Chez Panisse mold - fresh, best of whats in season right now, locally sourced, locally focused. Bonus points for organic and sustainable. Run by chefs who take the idea seriously and are committed to putting quality food that is emblematic of the midwest on the table.

The places we came up with:

Browntrout
Elizabeth
Farmhouse Tavern
Lula Cafe
Nightwood
North Pond
Two

So, what have we missed?

Perennial Virant and Vie

Homestead on the Roof

I don't personally care too much about the locally sourced aspect but from a seasonality point of view, I think Anteprima does a great job.

Came in here to say Perennial Virant.

In addition to what's already been mentioned:

The Publican
PQM
Vera
Prairie Grasss Cafe (where I am a minor investor)

I think all 4 of these places are really dedicated to the mission of supporting local farms and featuring their products.

=R=

Still somewhat off the radar is Two Sparrows, which is generally open for breakfast and lunch, and features a few "market" items and specials that focus on their local farm partners. The gyro is really excellent, as is the fresh biscuit "Belly" breakfast sandwich with peach mustard and greens.

More specifically farm pipeline are their (ir)regular evening dinners, when they serve seasonal fare with the suppliers present for around $50 a head including booze. I was at a September event where Nichols Farm, Catalpa Grove, Seedling Farm, and North Shore Distillery were the purveyors. There is some banquet-izing (things cooked and held, pork was dry), but the raw materials are laudable. I should mention that North Shore absolutely hit it out of the park with all four drinks, especially a berry shrub and a fizzy savory tomato cocktail with fresh herbs. The space is very conducive to urban barn-imagining with lots of wood and ample room for the owners and chef to circulate and talk up their philosophy, which they do both at these events and during regular service.

Does it need to be exclusively sourced from "Midwestern" to qualify? For example Big Jones is a diehard snout to tail for almost everything and using local suppliers but also uses heirloom rice sourced from South Carolina and has engaged with other suppliers outside of the region to support such things as heirloom greens. So is the question are there Midwestern restaurants doing farm to table or are there restaurants exclusively sourcing from Midwestern sources? I'd think the latter would be severely limited on what they could offer.

Any such list like this has to include Frontera-Topo-Xoco

Kman wrote:Does it need to be exclusively sourced from "Midwestern" to qualify? For example Big Jones is a diehard snout to tail for almost everything and using local suppliers but also uses heirloom rice sourced from South Carolina and has engaged with other suppliers outside of the region to support such things as heirloom greens. So is the question are there Midwestern restaurants doing farm to table or are there restaurants exclusively sourcing from Midwestern sources? I'd think the latter would be severely limited on what they could offer.

I think that many of the places mentioned would be eliminated using the strictly-Midwestern criteria. Oysters? Saltwater fish? Olive oil, for that matter? Out, out, out.

chgoeditor wrote:

Kman wrote:Does it need to be exclusively sourced from "Midwestern" to qualify? For example Big Jones is a diehard snout to tail for almost everything and using local suppliers but also uses heirloom rice sourced from South Carolina and has engaged with other suppliers outside of the region to support such things as heirloom greens. So is the question are there Midwestern restaurants doing farm to table or are there restaurants exclusively sourcing from Midwestern sources? I'd think the latter would be severely limited on what they could offer.

I think that many of the places mentioned would be eliminated using the strictly-Midwestern criteria. Oysters? Saltwater fish? Olive oil, for that matter? Out, out, out.

Exactly.

chgoeditor wrote:

Kman wrote:Does it need to be exclusively sourced from "Midwestern" to qualify? For example Big Jones is a diehard snout to tail for almost everything and using local suppliers but also uses heirloom rice sourced from South Carolina and has engaged with other suppliers outside of the region to support such things as heirloom greens. So is the question are there Midwestern restaurants doing farm to table or are there restaurants exclusively sourcing from Midwestern sources? I'd think the latter would be severely limited on what they could offer.

I think that many of the places mentioned would be eliminated using the strictly-Midwestern criteria. Oysters? Saltwater fish? Olive oil, for that matter? Out, out, out.

Well, by that standard, the OP's own example of Chez Panisse doesn't even qualify (unless their gulf shrimp are from the Berkeley gulf).

Listen, it's inane to expect absolute fealty to local products--salt, cooking oils, spices, many grains, fish sauce, citrus; you just cannot cook without these things. That said, I do feel we are lacking in restaurants who truly want to embrace a sense of place here. There are many great chefs and restaurants out there, most named above, who source as much as possible from local farms and producers. (I once sat in Vie's kitchen, mid-winter, while Paul Virant rattled off how local his menu remained.) Still, Vie, although maybe less than before, still has a Euro-Med slant to its menu. Avec surely more. Big Jones is Southern. Frontera, obviously what it is. Some people have pointed me to North Pond. I know Bruce Sherman was an early adopter to the farmer's market ethos and is still a big shopper, but look at their current menu, especially the seasonal tasting menu. It is awash in lobster, scallop, almond. Hey, I like to eat all of those things, but I'd love to see a Chicago menu without them.

Paul Fehribach has teased me with plans for opening up such a place. It's domain would be limited to local goods (outside the needed cooking ingredients cited above), and its focus would be on Midwest heritage and heirloom recipes. He's in the process of trying to get that off the ground. I really hope he succeeds, and I really hope a few more try the same thing.

The notion that not every ingredient used at local Farm-To-Table restaurants isn't local seems so obvious to me that I'm surprised it's even being discussed, especially this far down the road.

Vital mentioned Vie above. While they focus on local as much as anyone in town, they also have plenty of ingredients that could not possibly be sourced locally. Paul Virant once told me that in such instances, he's sourcing from suppliers he knows and with whom he has relationships. So, while those ingredients may not be local, they are sourced from suppliers who've meet his high standards. For any reasonable people, isn't that enough?

=R=

I know Rick Bayless doesn't source everything locally, but:
1. Even his fast food places, Tortas Frontera, list all the many local suppliers they use.
2. At the Outstanding in the Field meal I attended at a farm in Wisconsin, the farmer told me that they used to have a coop that sold together and Rick Bayless was their lifeline in the early years.

Just want to give Bayless some credit where credit is due.

Yeah, he's selling something close to farm to table in an airport concession too (probably not the avocados). That's impressive.

The original spirit of the discussion I was having - and the original spirit of this thread - was to identify those Chicago restaurants who really do "walk the talk" when it comes to sourcing locally to the greatest extent possible and, perhaps a little more generally, operate on the principal of knowing specifically where your food comes from.

Of course salt water fish, Italian olive oils, etc are not locally sourced. Restaurants that seek out specific purveyors of those products from the area they were produced vs picking whatever is in the Sysco/other giant distributor catalog and compose plates that incorporate those non-local items into dishes that are largely locally sourced (salmon with veg sourced from local farms, for example) certainly fit into the spirit of what we were trying to list.

I'm hoping that beyond satisfying my own curiosity about which restaurants really are committed to local/small-scale farm sourcing, that we could generate a list that could be a useful resource for (the many?) people in this forum who think it's important on some level to support local and/or smaller family farms by patronizing those restaurants who buy from them.

I remember a discussion with a waiter at Farmhouse Evanston, where he apologized for having PEI mussels on the menu (most everything is from the four states bordering on Lake Michigan). He said he didn't think the Lake Michigan zebra mussels would go over very well.

EdE wrote:The original spirit of the discussion I was having - and the original spirit of this thread - was to identify those Chicago restaurants who really do "walk the talk" when it comes to sourcing locally to the greatest extent possible and, perhaps a little more generally, operate on the principal of knowing specifically where your food comes from.

Of course salt water fish, Italian olive oils, etc are not locally sourced. Restaurants that seek out specific purveyors of those products from the area they were produced vs picking whatever is in the Sysco/other giant distributor catalog and compose plates that incorporate those non-local items into dishes that are largely locally sourced (salmon with veg sourced from local farms, for example) certainly fit into the spirit of what we were trying to list.

I'm hoping that beyond satisfying my own curiosity about which restaurants really are committed to local/small-scale farm sourcing, that we could generate a list that could be a useful resource for (the many?) people in this forum who think it's important on some level to support local and/or smaller family farms by patronizing those restaurants who buy from them.

Got it and that's what I figured but the discussion started to veer off into an area that no one really seemed too concerned about. That surprised me a bit.

In any event, it seems like the list that's been compiled here so far fits the bill and is pretty useful.

=R=

Jonah wrote:I know Rick Bayless doesn't source everything locally, but:
1. Even his fast food places, Tortas Frontera, list all the many local suppliers they use.
2. At the Outstanding in the Field meal I attended at a farm in Wisconsin, the farmer told me that they used to have a coop that sold together and Rick Bayless was their lifeline in the early years.

Just want to give Bayless some credit where credit is due.

And (3) sponsors the Frontera Farmer Foundation, which provides grants to support the farms in Farm-to-Table.

chgoeditor wrote:

Kman wrote:Does it need to be exclusively sourced from "Midwestern" to qualify? For example Big Jones is a diehard snout to tail for almost everything and using local suppliers but also uses heirloom rice sourced from South Carolina and has engaged with other suppliers outside of the region to support such things as heirloom greens. So is the question are there Midwestern restaurants doing farm to table or are there restaurants exclusively sourcing from Midwestern sources? I'd think the latter would be severely limited on what they could offer.

I think that many of the places mentioned would be eliminated using the strictly-Midwestern criteria. Oysters? Saltwater fish? Olive oil, for that matter? Out, out, out.

Don't forget coffee, alcohol, and tea.

Seriously, GNRs Floriole and Hoosier Mama are also fantastic players in this arena. Floriole even does monthly dinners and has some pizza nights. I've not attended but they always look fantastic.