Some Restaurants, Grocers Prefer Food Grown Locally
Washington Post
By Alejandro Lazo
American Flatbread in Ashburn sits a few turns off the Dulles Greenway on the cusp of burgeoning suburbia. Parked in a strip shopping center behind a McDonald’s and sharing a wall with a Glory Days Grill, this is an unlikely place to find a food movement.
Customers at the new pizzeria dine on weekly specials that include poultry and pork raised free-range and greens that are freshly picked. Much of the food is organic. But the real emphasis is local.
The wood-fired oven is made from red Virginia clay. The beer is brewed nearby. The leaves of the iced tea are grown and packaged on a local herb farm. And a hand-painted map of Loudoun County is emblazoned on the restaurant’s back wall, delineating the farms and dairies the restaurant pairs with to produce its menu.
American Flatbread’s owners say purchasing close to home is more a calling than a business.
“It’s a trust issue,” said Janice Vasko, who opened the restaurant in June with her husband, Scott. “When you buy local, you know what you are getting.”
The eat local movement places emphasis on consuming fruits, vegetables, meats and other products grown miles, rather than days, away. It has gained ground nationally and throughout the Washington area in recent years, particularly in Loudoun County.
Restaurants and grocers are striking partnerships with the county’s small farmers, driven in part by food safety concerns, environmental sensitivities and just plain marketing savvy.
Wegmans and Whole Foods are busy cutting deals with local producers. Restaurants herald their fresh-from-Loudoun menus, and the county government is pushing these farm-to-fork partnerships in hopes of preserving its dwindling agricultural industry.
The push for local agriculture has existed since at least the 1970s. Poet Wendell Berry of Kentucky championed organic farming and community ties. Italian Carlo Petrini founded the Slow Movement — which espouses a philosophy of rejecting fast food and respecting local sources — after organizing a 1986 protest against a planned McDonald’s in Rome.
It has gained currency more recently with the publication of such books as journalist Michael Pollan’s 2006 “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” which asked readers to consider the origins of what they eat. This awareness sparked discussion of environmental factors such as food miles — that there is a cost to the environment when food travels long distances.
Grocers have long recognized the appeal of local produce, promoting products from neighboring and regional farmers in their stores.
Yet local food sometimes comes at a premium and is subject to availability. Businesses still rely heavily on the global agricultural industry for the preponderance of their goods.
Loudoun County, with its mix of country pastures and suburban developments, has become a welcome place for local food.
About half of the county is made up of farmland, yet Loudoun has experienced an increase in what Warren Howell, who promotes agricultural businesses in the county, calls “NPR farmers,” enthusiastic newcomers who sell their goods locally.
For years, they have helped populate the county’s farmers markets and some have started you-pick operations and community agriculture programs. Others have added restaurants that cook using produce tilled on site.
They have also found customers among local restaurants. Tuscarora Mill in downtown Leesburg has long bought produce offered by local farmers, and Magnolias at the Mill in Purcellville, owned by the same family, buys greens from the local farmers market.
Elaine Boland, the owner of Fields of Athenry, supplies several Loudoun County businesses with fresh lamb and sells ready-to-eat packaged lamb meals. Sandy Lerner, a co-founder of Cisco Systems, operates a 1,000-acre organic farm and sells her meat at two of her businesses, the English-style pub Hunter’s Head Tavern in Upperville and the Home Farm Store in Middleburg.
Big business has jumped aboard. When Wegmans opened its first store in Sterling three years ago, it struck a deal with John Whitmore, a fifth-generation farmer, to provide melons, tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant and cucumbers. Whitmore now also supplies Wegmans stores in Fairfax and Hunt Valley, north of Baltimore. Whole Foods Market has been pushing a return to local goods in the last year. The company is in negotiations with at least two Loudoun County food producers.
Sarah L. Roussos, co-owner the Green Alchemy Herb and Mercantile Co., is one of them. She and her husband began selling her herbal tea mixes to businesses in Loudoun last year. She now works as a liaison between farms and restaurants that want to do business with each other as part of an organization formed in March, the Farmers and Artisans Alliance for Responsible Mercantile.
Consumers appreciate the local connection, even if not everyone would go to great lengths to get these foods — attendance at the local farmers market has been down this year.
“This is the only corn that they have here, so that is why I buy it,” said Jennifer Vassar, 30, gesturing toward the rows of local sweet corn on display at the Wegmans in Sterling. “I really like the idea that it wasn’t driven across the country to get here. But I still buy the other stuff.”
Another Wegmans shopper, Jo-Anne Barnard, 59, said she seeks out local produce. “It is very important to me,” Barnard said while picking out yellow squash. “It tastes better because it is fresh and I have some knowledge of the origin of the food. It’s also an ecological thing and I like the idea of supporting local farmers.”
American Flatbread is a Vermont-based pizza company that stresses using local, regional and organic ingredients in all of its products. Its frozen pizzas are sold in Whole Foods and gourmet grocers nationally.
Scott and Janice Vasko first considered opening an American Flatbread restaurant in the Washington area five years ago. He had tasted one of the pizzas while traveling on business in Massachusetts and liked it.
While the company uses organic products, many of its pizza ingredients are not native to Loudoun County. The dough, cheese and tomato sauce are all from other regions. Not all of the restaurant’s soft drinks, beers or wines are strictly local, either. Still, the company is making locally grown food an emphasis, Janice Vasko said.
In the off-season, the restaurant will try hearty roots and winter vegetables for soups and other dishes. They will try to buy local greenhouse greens. But the Vaskos acknowledge they will have to buy outside Loudoun as the colder months begin.
The couple hired chef John LoBuglio in March, turning over to him the duties of building and maintaining local relationships with farmers. LoBuglio has been roaming Loudoun County’s farm country in his tan Dodge Caravan.
As a scorching sun hung high over the Purcellville farmers market one afternoon, LoBuglio conducted a hunt for scallions, spinach, cheese and corn for his weekly special: flatbread pizza with U.S. wild shrimp. Also on his list were baby romaine leaves for a Caesar salad and berries for a dessert plate.
LoBuglio is still perfecting the art of shopping at farmers markets. For one thing, the farmers deal in cash. Receipts come on cardboard with no quantities and a single price, raising accounting issues. LoBuglio responded by developing his own receipts with a spreadsheet, printed on half-sheets of paper.
Planning a menu based on locally available produce also requires flexibility, as LoBuglio cannot simply order whatever he wants.
“I believe in using what I have,” LoBuglio said. “I believe people will love what I have thought up.”
The chef spent an hour weaving between shoppers hunting his quarry. He eyed tomatoes resting on one table. Good for sauce but not salad. He picked up a zucchini and examined it. Too big, and likely to have too many seeds. He picked up another zucchini. Too small.
“I need it to be more uniform in size,” he said. “A restaurant has to present a consistent product.”
In the end, LoBuglio found what he needed beneath a tent belonging to Chester Hess, an enormous man in a plaid shirt, weathered bluejeans and a camouflage hat that read “Git-R-Done.”
LoBuglio picked out 36 ears of sweet corn, six boxes of tomatoes, three boxes of blueberries and six boxes of black raspberries, and began tallying the total on his new spreadsheet receipt. Hess interjected before he could finish, averaging out a price with a discount factored in.
“What will you have next week?” LoBuglio asked, walking away a pleased man with his produce.
“Pretty much the same thing,” Hess replied.
