PITTSBURGH

Has Farm-to-Table Dining Concept's Time Come?

The walls of Tutoni's in York are covered with chalkboards — one displaying cuts of a pig, another showing different types of cheese — each with a description of where the food came from.

The pork loin, for example, was once a Heritage pig that roamed free on Rettland Farm in Adams County.

Bright green arugula leaves, one chalkboard says, were grown in the greenhouses of Brogue Hydroponics in Chanceford Township.

Soft, silky mozzarella was made at Caputo Brothers Creamy in Jackson Township.

The restaurant's focus on local products drew executive chef Scott Robinson. But it hasn't been the safest business plan in York County.

Robinson, a Hanover native, tried the concept in his hometown before the lack of interest pushed him to bigger cities. He was drawn back home for what he sees as a movement for fresh, local products.

Robinson believes that restaurants can take advantage of the reddest strawberries, ripest tomatoes and fattest pork — all coming from this area.

"It's always been here," Robinson said. "You can look back decades, and this area — York, Lancaster, Adams — has been creating items you can't get anywhere else."

But the thought of fill-your-belly-for-the-best-price has driven many restaurant customers away from eateries that charge more for what chefs believe is a better product.

Some think that's changing.

As consumers are more aware of what they eat — avoiding ingredients they can't pronounce or being conscious of where food comes from — they think York County might be ready to embrace the farm to table mentality.

Try, try again

In 2006, Chef Andy Little took over the kitchen at Sheppard Mansion in Hanover. Robinson soon followed as his sous chef.

In the silk wallpapered, Victorian bed and breakfast, Robinson and Little dreamed of a house packed with people devouring local produce and meat.

Little began cultivating relationships with area growers and plucking produce from a garden behind the mansion.

"I think food needs to have a sense of place and help tell a story," Little said. "Those producers not only had a clearly defined sense of place, but they were also producing products that were on par with the best products I'd seen in Philadelphia, (Washington) D.C. and New York."

One Friday night during dinner service, Little got a call from Beau Ramsburg of Rettland Farm outside Gettysburg. He heard about Little and wondered if the chef would be interested in his pork.

"We were able to get together, talk about food and farms, and of course, I loved his pork," Little said. Their relationship would start with swine and branch into chicken.

The idea of farm to table seemed to click with the chefs and the farmers, but one key player wasn't buying it. Although people visiting Central Pennsylvania seemed to like the food, by 2012, there weren't enough local customers coming into the mansion.

On Dec. 31, 2012, Little left Hanover. He went to Nashville and he opened Josephine, a restaurant that focuses on the dine-local mentality he had pursued in Pennsylvania. This time, he said, it works.

"Overall, the dining public in Nashville are so excited to be trying new things and embracing their local food and agriculture scene," Little said.

When he returned to Pennsylvania recently for a wedding, Little was happy to see Robinson was trying a similar concept in a different way.

He hopes it succeeds, but he has doubts.

"The key to all of it is, if you want to have access to these pristine products, then you need to buy them and support the restaurants who buy them," he said.

Watch the farmers grow

Robinson left Sheppard Mansion to work for other restaurants in the region, most recently at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore.

But he didn't go alone.

Beau Ramsburg's truck full of chicken and pork followed the sous chef across the Mason Dixon Line, where it's still served on plates at Woodberry, Shoefly and other restaurant ventures started by chef Spike Gjerde.

For Ramsburg, restaurant contracts made his business.

Almost immediately after joining forces with Sheppard Mansion, Ramsburg outgrew his 4-acre farm. In April 2013, he bought a 38-acre farm and rented two other properties, giving him a total of 85 acres.

His property is speckled with creatures. Hundreds of chickens roam under the watchful eyes of two Great Pyrenees that protect the foul from foxes or birds of prey. Over a hill behind the chickens are where about 60 pigs roll in the mud and hide in the shade of a trailer.

The Heritage pigs are raised from birth, and at this point, Ramsburg has raised most of their parents from birth.

These particular pigs, a mix of Berkshire and Tamworth breeds, have a high fat content, not only on the surface of the meat but throughout, Ramsburg said. Don't expect it to look like the "other white meat" that big sellers try to market, he said. The meat from these pigs is red, and some cuts remind people of restaurant-quality steaks.

But everything Ramsburg does, including letting his animals out in the elements and putting them at risk of being scooped up as prey, drives up cost.

While he sells whole chickens, or whole and half pigs to area restaurants, the slabs of bacon, pork chops and sausage he sells from a self-serve refrigerator in a property storefront comes at a premium price.

His customers don't seem to mind.

"I think people realize there are things worth paying more for," he said. "I can't imagine what a mass-market farmer must do to get chicken thighs down to 89 cents a pound at the grocery store. That blows my mind. I know people care because I'm still selling. There's a demand."

While the farm to table movement in restaurants has helped Ramsburg's business grow, it's been a choppy ride for others.

Bob Kilgore of Brogue Hydroponics in Chanceford Township has been in nearly every market avenue available.

When he and his wife, Nancy, started the farm in 1983, the concept of hydroponics — growing plants in water — was unique.

They first started selling their lettuce and watercress to supermarkets, but the interest dropped off. Kilgore decided to pursue the restaurant industry. He called the York Country Club and The Accomac, the first restaurants to start serving their gourmet lettuce to customers.

The Kilgores now serve 23 restaurants, but they've found it to be a tricky business. If a chef leaves, they often lose the restaurant.

Today, about 25 percent of their business is restaurants, but their biggest focus is farmers markets.

While the idea of eating local hasn't always worked for restaurants, there are home cooks who are still drawn to the idea, Kilgore said.

"Deeper pockets often mean you'll find people who are willing to spend the few extra dollars for a higher quality product," Kilgore said.

So before he decides to sell in a particular market, he does his research. Stands in Lancaster County and Bel Air, Md. tend to do better thanks to higher income levels, he said. But they've also done well at New Eastern Market in Springettsbury Township, where York County shoppers recognize the name.

"Restaurants helped us get where we are, but I don't know if we'll ever rely on them completely," Kilgore said. "It's just a little harder than you'd think."

The response has been different, almost overwhelming, for another business.

Caputo Brothers Creamery in Jackson Township is a local producer of fermented, stretched mozzarella, provolone and cheese curds, according to owners Rynn and David Caputo.

The fresh-made cheese created by Italians gets its distinct flavor from the fermentation process produced by live cultures. That component doesn't exist in American-style mozzarella, because the same cultures that develop the tart taste create a short shelf life, David Caputo said.

By freezing the cheese curds, the Caputos stop the fermentation process, allowing chefs and home cooks to make fresh mozzarella any day.

"We found a niche that no one else had figured out how to make work," David Caputo said. "The artisan business is growing in ways we never imagined."

Since starting their business in early 2012, Caputo Brothers Creamery, named after the couple's sons, 6-year-old Giovanni and 4-year-old Matteo, is 80 percent wholesale. They serve their product in Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh restaurants. Just this week, they began a trial with Southwest Airlines to overnight the frozen curds to Tennessee. If flying the cheese is successful, they hope to expand to Los Angeles, where distributors are already raising their hands to receive the product.

With a demand for local products, the Caputos have focused on first succeeding here. The company uses milk from Apple Valley Creamery in Adams County, churning 300 gallons of it for each batch of cheese.

"I don't know if we started 10 years ago if we'd have taken off like we did," Caputo said. "There's this demand that people don't just want good products when they splurge on a special occasion. They want it every day."

While the Caputos hope to expand into more retail stores, restaurants have been their success.

"I don't see that going away anytime soon," David Caputo said of York County. "The response has been too great."

Will it work?

At The Accomac in Wrightsville, chef Andre Ebert often buys local, picking tomatoes or zucchini from the restaurant's garden or shopping at New Eastern Market and Lancaster's Central Market. But he knows he can't always get what he wants in this area.

"We use as much as we can locally, which is great in the spring and summer, but not everyone wants to eat beef stew all winter long," he said.

The restaurant hosts a yearly farm-to-table dinner, for which Ebert focuses on items grown within a 60-mile radius. He expanded it to that distance mostly to get seafood from the Chesapeake Bay.

For the restaurant's daily menu, Ebert sometimes has to stray to butchers or farmers in surrounding areas. Buying a half or whole cow from a local farmer isn't ideal when the restaurant only wants to serve filet, he said. Smaller farmers also mean smaller herds, limiting how often they butcher, Ebert said.

But just because the restaurant allows itself to expand outside the area doesn't mean it isn't conscious of the food, he added.

"I do feel an obligation in some ways to make sure what we serve is still grown to meet my standards," he said. "I want to know where the food comes from and who grows it."

Ebert believes local, natural products are best, but he doesn't think it works for every restaurant.

"It costly," he said. "When I cooked in Europe, we had different standards for labeling GMO (genetically modified organisms) and other modified products. It kept people from buying it. Here, people don't care as much. There's a lot more thought about value."

While Tutoni's prepares for its first winter with a farm-to-table approach, Robinson knows he'll have to get creative with the menu.

Carrots, potatoes, onions and squash are in surplus in the colder months, but they'll require lots of planning on Robinson's part. He hopes to can or pickle some items in advance to allow some variety throughout the menu, but he acknowledges he might have to look for items outside Central Pennsylvania.

He's finding confidence in the early responses. Notes of gratitude fill a guest book at the front of the restaurant.

"From what I'm seeing, York is ready," he said. "We're offering more variety of food and we don't have to work as hard to gain people's trust, like we did at Sheppard Mansion."

The city is bigger, it's more mainstream, and if you put a solid plate of food in front of someone, they'll eat it up, Robinson said.

"You see these farmers walk in here with their produce, and there's a pride in that," Robinson said. "It's the same pride on the faces of my staff who master their stations. It carries through me, onto the plate and into the belly of the person who chooses to eat local. I think York County is finally proud of itself."

___

Online:

http://bit.ly/1wxaV3a

___

Information from: York Daily Record, http://www.ydr.com

Copyright AP - Associated Press
Contact Us