What Exactly Is A Farm-To-Table Restaurant

Chances are, if you're tuned into food culture, you've probably heard of farm-to-table restaurants. Fans of the sketch comedy hit, "Portlandia" might recall the very first episode from 2011, simply titled "Farm," in which Peter and Nance leave a restaurant to visit the actual farm on which "Colin the chicken" (who they were about to be served) was raised. It's a hilarious bit but if you've never experienced the pleasure of eating at a farm-to-table restaurant, you may be left wondering exactly what this trendy food term actually means. 

Though precisely how farm-to-table is defined can vary depending on who you talk to, at its core, the idea is fairly straightforward. Farm-to-table restaurants skip food distributors, opting instead to source their ingredients directly from local farmers or other food producers with an eye for organic and sustainable products that exemplify the very best and freshest bites available.

With no middlemen gumming up the works, food is literally brought from the farm to the restaurant at its peak freshness to be used by chefs the same day or soon after. The result? Food that is ripe, seasonal, and sustainable — good for the environment, good for the local economy, and good for your tastebuds.

The popularity of farm-to-table (also called farm-to-fork, farm-to-plate, or farm-to-school) has skyrocketed in the last couple of decades. Even some chains prioritize sourcing high-quality organic ingredients these days. 

Farm-to-table, like Slow Food, is considered both a movement and a philosophy with roots dating back to the early 1970s. One of the first of such restaurants was Alice Waters' Chez Panisse, which opened in 1971. Waters, widely regarded as having birthed the movement in her Berkeley enclave, insisted that her menu be filled with local, ripe, in-season, and sustainable ingredients from nearby farms, precisely because of the superior flavors and freshness. Her reverence for the best tasting and freshest ingredients and her commitment to eating with the seasons, choosing local farms and foragers, and reinventing her menu to support locally available products instead of imports, soon caught on and a movement was born. 

But Waters' passion for farm-to-table didn't begin and end with freshness of flavors, it extended to a belief that this practice could help improve the lives of everyone who grew, delivered, cooked, and ate the food. Reconnecting people with their tastebuds, their community, and the environment in which they live, creating a direct connection with food grown right where you are — that's what farm-to-table is all about. Sometimes served right on the farm, for the ultimate farm-to-table experience, it's something you can also replicate at home. The next time you grab a juicy tomato or a handful of fragrant basil from your garden, remember you're eating farm-to-table, too.