Community Corner
A good time to eat out: Farm To Fork Loudoun kicks off July 21
Chefs, farmers and wine makers bring 'fresh and local' menus to 21 Loudoun restaurants for 11 days
Foodies rejoice: For 11 straight days starting Thursday, July 21 and through Sunday July 31, 21 Loudoun restaurants (including one cooking school and one chef’s supply market) are offering a special Farm to Fork Loudoun menu – 70 percent of the ingredients on that menu will be harvested on 17 Loudoun farms and all of the wines will come from Loudoun’s wineries.
The food is going to be as fresh and local as it gets – tomatoes picked that morning at Greenstone Fields in Purcellville will be one the sandwich plates at Shoe’s Cup & Cork in Leesburg (along with beef from Red Hill Farm in Lucketts). Diners at Clyde’s Willowcreek Farm in Ashburn will choose among free range, organic chicken from Ayrhsire Farm in Upperville, just-picked vegetables from Potomac Vegetable Farms near Purcellville and tomatoes and greens from Stoneybrook Farm in Hillsboro.
Find out what's happening in Leesburgwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
In all, 17 farms and 11 wineries will be filling the market baskets for those 21 local chefs.
Diners will choose from a wide geographic and price spread – from Grandale Farm Restaurant up north in Neersville, to Market Table Bistro and the Restaurant at Patowmack Farm in Lovettsville south to Vintage 51 in South Riding with the Red Fox Inn, French Hound and Goodstone Inn on the way in Middleburg; east from Cookology in the Dulles Town Center to Magnolias out west in Purcellville.
Find out what's happening in Leesburgwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Prices range from the $5 lunch at Tenderjacks to the “extremely fresh, approachable and refine” dinner menu at Goodstone Inn – where you don’t go if you worry about prices anyway.
Ground zero for Farm to Fork Loudoun is Leesburg, with 10 of the 21 participating restaurants.
It all started when Miriam Nasuti, founder of on-line Talk Loudoun, decided to share her commitment to fresh, local food with a wider audience. She wanted to support those restaurants that had already made a commitment to support local farmers – Tuscarora Mill in Leesburg and its sister Magnolias in Purcellville, Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm in Ashburn, Market Table Bistro in Lovettsville. Those restaurants “are supporting the local farmers,” Nasuti said. “First, the food is fresh and tastes fantastic and it’s good for the environment – it traveled a couple of miles to get to the kitchen, not hundreds or thousands.”
Then she watched the movie Food, Inc. (a “must see” for anyone who wants to know about industrial farming and what it does to its animals) and the die was cast. The Nasutis were going to shop local. She makes it affordable, she said, by buying whenever possible in larger quantities. Twice a year, they purchase a side of beef from Donnie Ulmer’s Milcreek Farm west of Lovettsville. She’ll do the same thing with chickens and lamb. Buy in bulk, and the price comes down.
And the more local farmers can count on large orders from local restaurants, the more they can keep their prices down.
Before even approaching the chefs, she lined up media sponsors: Visit Loudoun, Salamander Hospitality, Leesburg Today, the Dulles Greenway, Fortessa, the Sun Gazette in Springfield, Virginia Business magazine, Flavor Magazine, Comcast Spotlight, Virginia Commerce Bank, Loudoun County Farm Bureau and the Loudoun County Bed and Breakfast Guild.
Top on her “thank you, thank you” list is Norman Styer and American Community Newspapers. “They came in as a $25,000 media sponsor. Every week, Middleburg Life, Leesburg Today, Ashburn Today have had an ad for Farm To Fork Loudoun. And they are also in Fairfax County and will bring people from there to eat here. We have free ads ion all their Web sites and publications.”
The goal, Nasuti, said is for existing customers to frequent these restaurants during Farm To Fork, and to draw in new diners, to create a new batch of regular customers.
Sponsors in hand, Nasuti started approaching chefs. Clyde’s was easy, she recalled. “This is a no-brainer,” the regional manager relied. “You’re just asking us to do what we’re already doing on a bigger scale.”
The next step was to get the farmers, the chefs and the wine makers all together. That happened in February, at the Briar Patch Bed and Breakfast in Middleburg. The farmers were going to have to get ready for these large orders far ahead of time.
Nathan Thomas, sous chef at Clyde’s, is already the liaison from the kitchen to the on-site farm, and plans menus daily and weekly with the resident farmer. Thomas has been working with Ayrhsire Farm, Potomac Vegetable Farms, Stoneybrook Farm and Great Country Farms to procure the quantities of chicken and pork and vegetables that he will need to fill the plates of a 650-seat establishment. All the wines on the Farm To Fork menu will come from one of Loudoun’s newest wineries, 8 Chains North.
Two obstacles keep institutional buyers from shopping locally: they demand large quantities, and they can’t be driving around to the farms to pick it up every day. Farm To Fork helped surmount those issues by mandating that participating restaurants include a special inserted menu, 70 percent locally sourced. Chefs will offer their usual menu at the same time.
Thomas, at Clyde’s, hopes that 10 percent of his 400 diners on any given evening will opt for the Farm To Fork option. If it’s 20 percent and he has to order more, so much the better.
David Levitt at Tenderjacks (mantra: “Keep it simple, keep it fresh”) in Leesburg will track sales from the Farm To Fork menu separately to get an idea how well the idea goes over in a “fast casual” environment. Tenderjacks is already committed to fresh – no frozen hamburger patties here – and welcomed the chance to shop local.
Tenderjacks is not the white-linen-upscale sort of place where the customers will pay three times more for the local and fresh, Levitt said. “But I can create a menu using fresh ground beef, fresh free range chicken breasts and tenders.” The Tenderjacks Farm To Fork menu will include three burgers (beef from Ayrshire), including a shiitake burger made with local mushrooms. “And Ayrshire makes a wonderful bratwurst, we’ll have fresh grilled or battered chicken tenders (also from Ayrshire), and I’m going to do a sirloin steak and a mixed platter with beef and chicken.”
And there will be carrot slaw – local carrots, what else – to go with the burgers.
The Tenderjacks crowd isn’t big into wine, but Levitt will offer wines from Notaviva Vineyards, Tarara Winery and Willowcroft Farm Vineyards. The beer will be from Lost Rhino (new brewery in Dulles, reborn from the remains of Dominion Brewery in Ashburn).
And he’ll keep within his customers’ price tolerance. In the fast casual world, people want to get in and out for lunch for under $10 for a main dish, side and drink, Levitt said. He’ll have sliders, or mini-burgers on the Farm to Fork offering, that will include burger, chicken salad, pulled pork minis, with French fries (hand cut at the restaurant) for under $5.
Brad Spates at Cookology doesn’t need to attract new customers. Every class, every day of the week, is filled, he said, and he and owner Maria Kopsidas are looking for a second location. “I told the owner, ‘I want to do this.’ It’s something we all believe in.”
Spates hopes, he said, that the Farm To Fork adventure will get more cooks over what he calls Farmers Market Phobia. “It aggravates me as a chef that people do not support farmers markets, it aggravates me that on a Saturday I go to the farmers market, it’s pretty empty, and if I can’t find something, I go to Wegmans to pick it up – and Wegmans is packed. Why aren’t they at the farmers market?”
Farm To Fork, Spates predicted, will get more people to the farmers markets, the farmers will sell more, and prices will come down.
For complete details on the planning and execution of Farm To Fork Loudoun, go to www.farmtoforkloudoun.com.
Participating restaurants and food markets (not all take reservations, but if they do, this is a good time to make one. Or two. Or three):
LEESBURG:
Clyde’s Willowcreek farm
Fireworks American Pizza and Bar
201 Harrison St. SE
Leesburg, VA 20175
703-779-8400
703-771-2233
On the Potomac at Lansdowne Resort
44050 Woodridge Parkway
Leesburg, VA 20176
703-779-0060
Shoes Cup & Cork Club
17 North King St.
Leesburg, VA 20176
703-777-9463
Lovettsville:
Market Table Bistro
The Restaurant at Patowmack Farm
42461 Lovettsville Road
Lovettsville, VA 20180
540-822-9017
MIDDLEBURG:
The French Hound
101 South Madison St.
Market Salamander
200 West Washington St.
Middleburg, VA 20117
540-687-8011
540-687-6301
NEERSVILLE:
Grandale Farm Restaurant
PURCELLVILLE:
Magnolias at the Mill
198 North 21st St.
Purcellville, VA 20132
540-338-9800
SOUTH RIDING:
Vintage 51
25031 Riding Plaza
Chantilly, VA 20152
703-722-2844
STERLING:
Cookology
21100 Dulles Town Circle
Sterling, VA 20166
703-433-1909
THE FARMS:
Allder School Berries
Red and black raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, figs.
Purcellville
Ayrshire Farm
Certified organic and humane meats and organic produce. USDA certified processing facility.
Upperville
Checkmate Farm
Heritage breeds of sheep, goats and chickens
Bluemont
Endless Summer Harvest
Hydroponically grown greens and herbs.
Purcellville
Farmer John’s Wayside Fruit & Vegetable Market
Corn, vegetables.
Leesburg (near Lucketts)
Great Country Farms
Fruits and vegetables
Bluemont
Greenstone Fields
Flowers, berries, shiitake mushrooms and heirloom tomatoes
Purcellville
Milcreek Farm
Beef, lamb
Lovettsville
Mill Road Farm
Angus beef, honey, lamb
Leesburg
Oakland Green Farm
Angus beef
Lincoln
Patowmack Farm
Organic herbs and vegetables
Lovettsville
Potomac Vegetable Farms
Vegetables, herbs
Purcellville
Quarter Branch Farm
Soil-grown salad greens and vegetables
Lovettsville
Red Hill Farm
Beef
Leesburg (near Lucketts)
Stoneybrook Farm
Organic fruits and vegetables
Hillsboro
SunPower Farm
Eggs, lamb
Round Hill
