Beyond Farm to Table: How Chefs Can Support Climate-Friendly Food Systems
At the height of summer, chef Rob Rubba and his team at Oyster Oyster, a vegetable-first restaurant in Washington, D.C., are preparing for the dwindling of food in the coming winter. It’s a tedious but worthwhile process: drying mushrooms, vegetables, and herbs, making pickles and slaw, and preserving garlic blossoms and coriander seeds in airtight jars before these ingredients vanish with the end of the season.
This may seem like an antiquated concern for chefs in an era of global food distribution systems, but it’s an all-consuming preoccupation for Oyster Oyster, a restaurant named after two ingredients—a bivalve and a mushroom—known for their ecosystem benefits. This radically seasonal, regional restaurant sources its ingredients exclusively from the ocean, climate-adapted farms, and wild plants of the Mid-Atlantic.
“Toward the end of winter, it gets a little . . . . scary and sparse,” admits Rubba. “Come February, we have this very short farm list. It’s just cellared roots and some kales. Making that creative takes a lot of mental energy.” That’s when Oyster Oyster draws heavily from its pantry of foraged wild plants and ingredients preserved from nearby climate-friendly farms. They lend the food “bright, salty, acidic flavor pops throughout the winter” that wouldn’t otherwise be available, and give his food a joyful exuberance that one critic described as “a garden of good eating.”