How does your garden grow?
Merrill Shindler reports.
| More Front Burner in this issue |
| Stop and smell your dinner |
| Where old meets new |
| Let's do le lunch |
| Gourmet to grow |
| Everyone's a critic |
| More is more |
| Women who wear toques |
Los Angeles—It's probable that most diners nibbling on chef Christophe Eme's signature crispy langoustines at Ortolan, a stylish French white tableclother on the edge of West Hollywood, have no idea that the basil that flavors the dish was grown just a few feet away. For though there's a working herb farm at Ortolan, it sits under a skylight in a large room at the back of the restaurant that it shares with the bar (above)—a world apart from Ortolan's modern elegance. It's also where the rosemary in the lamb b'steeya derives, along with the mint in the mint salad, and the lemongrass in the "milk shake of lime and lemongrass" that accompanies the salmon seviche with osetra.
Indeed, many of the herbs used in Eme's dishes come from his herb farm, which occupies an entire wall of the restaurant. It's seven levels high, equipped with the sort of ladder usually found in an antiquarian's library. The ladder glides back and forth, allowing the chef's helpers to clip chocolate mint, sage, oregano, thyme, sage, parsley, and cilantro, which is then rushed into the kitchen—only to emerge moments later on carefully composed plates.
General manager Joseph Sabato says, "We get to be in the middle of an urban area, on a major street, and have a garden for fresh herbs at the same time." Keeping those herbs at their peak does involve a certain amount of legerdemain. There are actually two herb gardens, kept in flats which are changed on alternate days. "We switch them every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, because the skylight doesn't give them enough light to be at their best." The changing is done by the father of co-owner/actress Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager, Boston Public), for whom caring for the garden has become a labor of love. It's so Hollywood: a restaurant owned by a former space alien, with an herb garden that's got its own stunt double.
