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Georgia Grown Menus
The collective culinary conscience of the United States is being awakened by chefs with a vision of sustainability and vitality. The public is embracing farm-to-table restaurants with an eagerness once reserved for the toy at the bottom of a Happy Meal.
This trend has been encouraged in Georgia with the implementation of the Georgia Grown Executive Chef program. Its mission is “to promote and foster relationships between chefs and farmers,” and to “create a pathway for consumers to find ‘Georgia Grown’ in their communities in order to support local, seasonal foods when dining out,” according to its website.
The chefs with the honor of being inducted into the program serve as ambassadors to local farmers and consumers. Diners can enjoy the local bounty Georgia has to offer, while supporting local farmers, the environment and the economy.
Georgia Grown Executive Chef Dave Snyder of the Halyards Restaurant in St. Simons Island described the chef-to-farmer relationship as unique, since the farmer serves as an advisor, letting the chefs know what they’re going to have available for the next week.
Snyder says he uses the farmer’s insight for foods that are in season to craft his menus. He also says he strives to maintain a respectful balance with Mother Nature because “she always wins.” As a fisherman himself, Snyder often supplies his restaurant with the fish he catches, but he’s careful to respect federal limits and regulations to avoid overfishing.
“We have to be responsible,” Snyder says. “We can harvest incredibly efficiently, but if you do that for 15 years, the species will take a beating.”
Fellow Georgia Grown Executive Chef Ahmad Nourzad says he does his best to respect the environment as well. His catering business, Affairs to Remember Caterers, became Atlanta’s first Zero Waste Zone caterer in 2009. It composts food scraps and other organic matter, recycles, donates grease to be turned into biodiesel fuel, and donates unused prepared food to Atlanta’s Table to feed local hungry people. These efforts have reduced the catering company’s landfill material by 83 percent.
Chef Jennifer Hill Booker of Your Resident Gourmet in Lilburn and Chef Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta also embody the tenets of the Georgia Grown Executive Chef program with their locally sourced produce and seasonal menus.
Georgia residents have responded to conscientious and sustainable culinary practices with overwhelming support. The prevalence of farm-to-table restaurants is the result of chefs and farmers uniting to provide fresh, delicious food to an enthusiastic public.
As Snyder says, “We’re in this thing together.”