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State-of-the-art hydroponic operations have won converts among chefs who venerate local produce.
State-of-the-art hydroponic operations have won converts among chefs who venerate local produce.
NEW YORK Chef Michael Anthony likes the butter lettuce he has been buying for the past month so much that he invented a salad for it. The $12 dish he serves at Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan is also made up of pickled eggplant, ricotta, pickled cherries and heirloom tomatoes, but the greens are the star, and for good reason.
Often picked only hours before arriving at his kitchen, four miles from the farm, the lettuce could not be fresher, or more local. It has just about all a demanding chef could ask, except one thing: dirt clinging to its roots.
The butter lettuce is grown at Gotham Greens, a new hydroponic garden that turns romantic notions of farming on their head. In a $2 million greenhouse, baby plants emerge from seeds embedded in tiny sponges made of fibers spun from volcanic basalt.
Water? It's recycled so that 700 gallons are used per day, a tenth of that used in conventional farming. Soil? That's replaced by thin films of nutrient-rich water sluicing down hundreds of plastic channels cradling the roots of salad greens, lettuces and herbs.
The sleek garden that has improbably touched down on the roof of a huge two-story former bowling alley and light-manufacturing space is one of the largest commercial-scale hydroponic greenhouses in urban America, providing pristine, sustainable produce for restaurants and high-end retailers.
Changing the image
Until recently, there have been two associations with hydroponics: 1. marijuana and 2. lack of flavor. But state-of-the-art operations have won converts among chefs who venerate local produce and celebrate terroir.
"This volume, and this level of expertise: This is something we haven't seen before," Anthony said of Gotham Greens produce. "They've taken it to another level."
So far, hydroponic produce "doesn't replace field-grown vegetables" in Gramercy Tavern's kitchen, he said. For now, "it may be working in a supporting role." And although the supply of products is year-round and theoretically could subvert chefs' increasing seasonal obsession, "it doesn't really challenge our notion of seasonality," Anthony added.
Advocates of urban greenhouse produce have long touted the benefits of proximity, quality and job creation.
"For certain crops, hydroponics can be a boon," said John Magazino, president of Primizie Fine Foods in the Bronx, an upscale produce supplier that has sold hydroponic crops from nonurban suppliers to restaurants. "Lettuces, chicories, endives and all the fresh herbs do extremely well. And if Gotham Greens can grow chervil, which isn't easy to grow and doesn't transport well, they will make a lot of New York chefs happy."
Not everyone agrees. John O'Neil, a senior vice president in charge of purchasing produce at the Patina Restaurant Group, rejects hydroponic products in the company's restaurants "because they look pretty but they are lacking in flavor," he said. "I go for Mother Earth every time."
Field crops, however, can be taste-challenged because "they can be affected by too much rain or lack of rain, too much sun or lack of sun," said Gene A. Giacomelli, a hydroponic designer who is a professor of agricultural engineering at the University of Arizona. For both field-grown and hydroponic produce, he said, taste can be a complex mix of genetics, plant cultivars (different species), growing conditions and agricultural management. According to Giacomelli, there are only a few U.S. commercial-scale urban greenhouses like Gotham Greens. The farm's projected yearly yield of 100 tons is Lilliputian in comparison to that of "big hydro." That is the inventory of vast commercial hydroponic operations in sparsely populated areas of Arizona, California and Texas, where land is cheap and greenhouses can stretch as much as 360 acres.
But, given global warming, drought, weather instability and runaway energy costs, hydroponic agriculture, with 10 times the field-crop yield, makes increasing sense.