High Tech & Home Grown
Charlotte chefs get a taste of county’s bounty
By LARRY DALE
Daily Courier Staff Writer
RUTHERFORDTON – Charlotte chefs and Rutherford County farmers talked face to face on county land Monday.The meetings were set up by Foothills Connect Business & Technology Center, located on North Main Street.
As Tim Will, executive director of Foothills Connect, pointed out, there has been a disconnect between food production and food preparation since distributors created a middleman between the two operations.
Foothills Connect has set up a Web site to directly connect chefs in the large Charlotte restaurant market with farmers in Rutherford County who could provide foodstuffs to them. Will noted that $4 billion in food is consumed in Charlotte annually, with $2 billion of that non-canned or non-frozen items. He added that chefs are anxious to return to a system where chefs and farmers can communicate and deal directly with each other. Executive Chef Jean- Pierre Marechal of Charlotte Marriott City Center, 100 W. Trade St., came to Rutherford County along with two other Marriott chefs and Marriott’s chief buyer to talk about their food needs and to see what Rutherford County farmers can provide. Jane Smith Patterson, executive director of North Carolina’s e-NC Authority, was in Rutherford County for the tour, and Will said she later called him and said “how inspiring it was to see big-city chefs and farmers like colleagues.” The e- NC effort is a grassroots initiative to link all North Carolinians, especially those in rural areas, to the Internet. In Rutherford County, the chefs were taken to see the John P. White farm in Bostic, the Henry and Edith Edwards farm on Duncan Road and the Calvin Freeman farm in Bills Creek. They also visited R-S Central High School to see the greenhouse operation where instructor Brandon
Higgins has students growing bib lettuce and microgreens, such as arugula and mustard greens, for the Charlotte market, as a learning experience for the teens. Will said that the greenhouse experience demonstrates how innovative the students can be. When the students found out that the chefs didn’t want dirt on the crops, they developed a new methodology using a fabric that the plant’s roots could go through but that kept the crop away from the dirt. “ The teens went out and found a solution,” Will said, and added that chef Marechal was duly impressed. Higgins noted Monday that one of his students is hoping to build a greenhouse soon at his home to grow produce. When the chefs went to the Freeman farm they were introduced to cressy greens, which most of them had never seen or even heard of. “ They have an unusual taste, and are kind of strong, but when they are mixed in a salad they are tasty,” Will said. “ The chefs are not used to having taste in what are supposed to be fresh greens,” he added, referring to the long process of transporting produce from the fields to buyers that has become the norm in American restaurants. Foothills Connect’s Web site, at farmersfreshmarket.org, is seeking a return to a time when food buyers and sellers knew each other and when “fresh” food was really fresh. Contact Dale via e-mail at ldale@thedigitalcourier.com