农业+生活方式
回到她的根
发布于2020年3月23日12:00 AM
What Anne Quatrano remembers about summers spent on her family’s farm is that it was always hot and involved a lot of chores. As an adult, her perception of farm life hasn’t changed that much.
“我非常尊重农民和他们的工作. 我希望下一代能真正接受它. Farmers stand up for what they believe in and create the amazing local produce that I value so much,”她说。.
詹姆斯·比尔德获奖厨师和亚特兰大餐厅老板, Quatrano住在Summerland, the Cartersville farm that’s been in her family for six generations. Moving to Georgia and taking ownership of the farm is not something she could have predicted while growing up in 连接icut.
“我妈妈就是在那个农场出生和长大的, 在成长过程中，我们夏天都会在那里待上几个星期,”她说。. “For years after my mom left and I went to college, the farm was taken care of by other people. 我们大多数人都以为再也回不去了.”
Quatrano在佛蒙特大学上的大学, 学习商业和心理学, but readily admits she had no idea what she really wanted to do with her life.
“During college I worked in restaurants to support myself – and I loved it. I loved the environment; it was like a team sport. 我认为它适合我，”她说. “I started graduate school but went back to managing restaurants. I thought, ‘I know how to run this, but I don’t know how to cook in a restaurant environment.’”
She did, however, know how to cook at home – a talent she learned from her grandmothers.
“我在南方的祖母很有趣. 她从小在农村长大，在她的年龄之前就是个健康狂. 她主要吃蔬菜，喝小麦胚芽. She was also into composting, although we didn’t call it that at the time. She was conscious of waste and what she left behind,奎特拉诺说. “我父亲那边的意大利祖母教会了我很多东西. 我花了很多时间和他们在一起. She would pluck chickens in the sink, and was also a bit of a gourmand.”
When Quatrano realized she wanted to follow her own gourmet path, she moved across the country and enrolled in the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. 在那里, 她遇到了她未来的丈夫, 他是烹饪专业的同学克利福德·哈里森, 她的导师, 厨师朱迪·罗杰斯.
“我从她身上学到了很多. She taught me a respect of ingredients, and I took that to heart. The combination of culinary school and her invigorated what I thought could be my future,奎特拉诺说.
In 1986, Harrison and Quatrano moved east to Nantucket to get their restaurant careers established. After working as a team in several restaurants in New England and New York, by 1992, Quatrano said she and Harrison were beginning to feel that Long Island wasn’t the right place for them to open their own restaurant. 就这样，他们来到了夏日乐园.
“这都是克里夫的主意，”她笑着说. “我丈夫强烈地想要搬回来. We were disillusioned with how expensive it was in New York and so we decided to go work the farm a little and find a place for a restaurant. At the time, Atlanta was a sleepy restaurant town with only a handful of good restaurants. We felt like we could cook well enough to compete in that market.”
Simple enough, but for one thing: They needed to learn how to farm.
“克里夫给我们带来了一匹马, 我们搬进了房子里的双人房, 用图书馆的书自学. We built a barn – and it’s still standing, which is awesome,”她说。. “We got a few puppies, started digging and towing and trying to learn how to do this. 与此同时，我们的目标是开一家餐厅.”
By the end of that year, they’d found a location in Buckhead and opened Bacchanalia. On the farm they began growing things they knew they could utilize at their restaurant, 喜欢萝卜, 胡萝卜和萝卜. Using farm-fresh ingredients is of the utmost importance to Quatrano and Harrison, 并且从一开始就是一个焦点.
“当我们1992年刚到这里的时候, growing the produce ourselves was imperative if we wanted the restaurant to be local. 乔治亚州是一个农业大州, 但当时很少有农民小规模种植,”她说。. “从那以后，事情发生了很大的变化，这太棒了. We used to beg people to grow food for us – there wasn’t any way we could grow everything we needed. We were just two people trying to cook, working 18 hours days, and that left little time for farming. 现在, 如果我们不能种植它, I can look at vendors and actually have a choice of where to get produce grown within an hour from where we are.”
It’s not some altruistic sense of duty that has made Quatrano a stickler for locally-grown produce, 乳制品, 鸡蛋和更多.
“老实说，这是因为食物味道更好. 作为厨师和餐馆老板, my goal always has been to use the best ingredients we can procure made with the simplest preparation to let those ingredients shine,”她说。. “A product that’s three hours old tastes nothing like a product that’s three weeks old. I want to have the best and the freshest ingredients that I can get in order to prepare the food we serve in our restaurants. 我知道新鲜的味道更好.”
It’s a recipe for cooking that has paid dividends five-fold for Harrison and Quatrano. Since opening Bacchanalia, the pair have opened Star Provisions, Floataway Café, W.H. Stiles Fish Camp and Pancake Social – all while living on Summerland.
在过去的几十年里, 夏日乐园已经拥有了20匹马, 300只鸡, 八只狗和几头驴. Their biggest crops are strawberries, blackberries as well as fruit and nut trees. 季节性, 他们种甜洋葱, 韭菜, 土豆, sunchokes, 西红柿, 绿色, 甜菜, 萝卜, 萝卜, 胡萝卜, 辣椒, 茄子和各种南瓜.
“It’s fantastic and wonderful that we have the opportunity to preserve the property and to grow all this food for our restaurants. It’s a family-owned farm from 1840 and I don’t think we could ever get rid of it,奎特拉诺说, 现在60. “拥有这个农场是一种奢侈. 运营成本非常高，而且不赚钱. 我们很幸运拥有它. 我们有五家公司帮助我们支持它. 我们所有的一切都是为了维持那个地方的运转.”
Quatrano said she hopes other chefs will emulate the concepts of true farm-to-table dining, and that more diners will come to appreciate and value Georgia-grown food.
她说:“我说到做到。. “If I and other restaurants will continue to do so, it will make the farming industry grow. We understand that what we get from the farm is worth every cent more we pay. Farming is the most admirable profession that I have ever witnessed or been a part of. They deserve our respect, our dollars and anything else we can do to help them.”
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