Neighborhood harvest: embracing local growers, restaurants cut distance from farm to plate.

You're starting your dinner at a neighborhood bistro by enjoying a fresh salad. Do you know where those greens came from?

Perhaps you're savoring them at The Kitchen, a restaurant in Boulder, where chef/owner Hugo Matheson procures them from Cure Organic Farm, an 8-acre farm in Boulder County.

The Kitchen's philosophy has always been to buy local, based on common sense and a sustainable method of running and operating the business, Matheson says. A large chalkboard provides diners with the "provenance" of the foods they order, from cheeses to eggs to greens--part of a growing trend by restaurants nationwide to buy as many of their supplies as possible from local sources.

"I just saw that nobody had a clue in the first restaurant kitchen I stepped foot in here in Boulder," Matheson says. "Everything came from one large distributor, and I was surprised at that."

The first person Matheson approached for The Kitchen was Anne Cure, now of Cure Organic Farm, which has become the bistro's No. 1 supplier of fresh produce and honey in the area. In the peak summer season, the bistro is able to buy at least 50 percent of its ingredients from suppliers in Colorado, including several hundred pounds of dried beans, Durango grass-fed lamb and naturally bred chickens.

"We have about 32 suppliers," Matheson says. "Six of our suppliers are just for fish, including one in Hawaii for tuna and a supplier in Alaska who smokes only 400 pounds of salmon a year."

If you sampled strawberries with your dessert at The Kitchen, you were likely eating fruit grown by another of Matheson's suppliers, Monroe Organic Farms in Kersey, southeast of Greeley.

With some 60 acres of fruits and vegetables on their land, Jacquie and Jerry Monroe provide produce to a select group of restaurant chef/owners including Matheson, Teri Rippeto at Denver's Potager Restaurant and Wine Bar, and others with whom they have a symbiotic relationship fueled by trust and loyalty.

Like other Colorado restaurateurs, Matheson and Rippeto are committed to obtaining as much of their meat, poultry and produce locally as is feasible, a trend often credited to Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., who made buying local an essential ingredient in her famed cuisine in the early 1970s.

Along the Denver/Boulder corridor, the names of small farms such as Cure, Monroe, Pachamama and Abbondanza, and purveyors such as Destiny, Wisdom, Haystack Mountain and John Long are revered by local-minded chefs as they head to the Boulder County Farmers' Market, one of their favorite haunts, or open their kitchen doors to a delivery.

Even in winter, where there's a will--and a good connection--there's a way. Rippeto and others can get produce from local farmers until Christmas. "At the last Farmers' Market in October, I buy 20 cases of winter squash," she says. "Potatoes, dried beans, onions, garlic and shallots are all local, all year-round."

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Still, with a plethora of vegetables from dugouts like those Jacquie Monroe maintains for winter storage, Colorado's short growing season prompts even the most locally dedicated chefs to look elsewhere for fresh produce and meats during the winter months. Many turn to suppliers such as Denver's FreshPoint or to Denver's Grower's Organic, where sales manager Christa Long says the demand for produce from California and other western states with winter produce is increasing.

"Our goal is to support the smaller farms and growers," she says. "And even when chefs can't buy this way in large quantities, many of them still order things here and there for specials."

Buying close to home requires more than a passing interest in supporting neighboring agriculture. It takes dexterity and dedication, a talent for juggling culinary skills so that when a farmer calls with a last-minute offering of 60 pounds of asparagus you're ready to go. And it requires a willingness to conduct business in a nontraditional way.

"We're so disconnected that kids think food comes from the grocery store and have no idea that people grow it," says Rippeto, who takes her little red wagon to the Boulder County Farmers' Market twice a week in season, loading it with the freshest of greens, garlic and myriad other finds for her Potager customers.

"Connecting to the growers gives us an appreciation for what we put in our bodies," she says. "If we buy locally, where only two people have handled the produce, we won't have these health scares."

Rippeto opened Potager 10 years ago on Capitol Hill, after working with her father in his Missouri restaurant, which also served local produce. "It's never been about organic; it's about knowing what is locally grown, having a relationship with growers, and working closely with them," she says. "Our menus change every four weeks and are based on who has what and at what time of year. I can buy 100 percent of my produce from the Boulder market for seven months out of the year."

Sourcing locally is more labor-intensive and costly, Rippeto admits. "If you're only interested in the bottom line you'll never do it this way," she says. "If you make the right choices it will all come together. You go into it believing you'll be successful. It's based on pure faith, on doing the right thing, supporting your community and keeping the money with local farms as much as you can. And, of course, it's about your kitchen."

Potager customers, who expect to know where their food comes from, see its origins on the menu and hear about it from educated servers, but it's taken until now for people to fully appreciate the value of local produce, Rippeto says.

The chef at one of Google's employee restaurants has helped generate nationwide publicity for the buy-local movement.

"At the moment, buying locally is a trend, but hopefully people will realize that it's a better practice all around. You end up with a more vibrant and fresher product with a longer shelf life, which in turn gives you a better final product in the kitchen," says Nate Keller, executive chef at Cafe 150, on Google's high-tech campus in Mountain View, Calif.

Keller, the poster chef du jour for local buying, gets everything on his menu from farms and purveyors within a 150-mile radius.

"It benefits local farmers to a large extent," he says. "If you are buying from a large purveyor, the product will sit for a few days before it makes its way across the country to get to a restaurant or grocery store. However, if you are buying directly from the farmers, the money goes directly to the farmer, and the product doesn't travel nearly as much and is fresher when it arrives."

The popularity of serving local produce and meats is growing, says The Kitchen's Matheson. "Our customers expect it to be available, and our model is as big as we want it to be. Some chefs want to jump on the bandwagon, and I get requests from resort chefs who want to know how to buy locally. The only way is to go to the (farmers') market and to meet people."

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Trust between chefs and suppliers works both ways, Matheson says. "With Monroe Farms, for instance, I work out how many fresh eggs we use, and I commit to buying 150 dozen a week and pay Jacquie Monroe's asking price. I never haggle."

Loyalty plays a part in how small farms choose those restaurants they will work with, says Anne Cure, who, with her husband, Paul Cure, operates Cure Organic Farm.

"We first take care of those who have been with us and who are in tune with buying locally and with our relationship to the land," she says. "If there is excess we can distribute our produce, but we've also turned people away."

Smaller farms such as hers are the face of agriculture, Cure says.

"This is the way I choose to do business. It's more profitable for me to sell to the end user," Cure says. "I make more money and get fringe benefits with the advertising and marketing the restaurant does in mentioning our farm. And when people come to buy at our market stand, we tell them which restaurants we supply."

Western Slope chefs are more apt to procure their ingredients from niche growers such as Jerome Ostentowski, who sometimes can offer figs, or from small-scale producers such as Brook LeVan at Sustainable Settings in Carbondale, who offers eggs, lamb, chickens and Ark vegetables (heirloom vegetables that appear on the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste list).

"We deal with growers and producers in Crawford, Paonia and Hotchkiss," says Mark Fischer, chef/owner of restuarant six89 and Phat Thai, both in Carbondale. "There are also people who show up at our door. Someone may have sourced some chanterelles on McClure Pass, or have a basket of nettles for salads, pesto and soups. Our menu is market-driven and seasonal so we can take advantage of those opportunities. It's a system that has manifested over the years."

Fischer says many of his suppliers were hesitant at first about selling to chefs in the Roaring Fork Valley, because of the logistics involved.

"Farming and ranching are hard work, and it took a long time to cultivate these relationships," he says.

It's a challenge to buy produce when your concerns transcend price and poundage, he says. "I think local buying will continue to grow, and those who don't practice it will be the bad guys because buying locally is the best of all worlds for everybody."

As in so many culinary terms, the phrase for locally grown produce and ingredients sounds more sophisticated in French.

"We call it Cuisine de Terroire, from the land around you," says chef/owner Patrick Dupays, of the 30-seat Z Cuisine, a Parisian bistro in Denver's HiLo neighborhood.

Dupays, who offers several gourmet vegetarian dishes on his ever-changing menus, says customers are becoming more aware that local produce is better, and chefs are taking more time to select it.