From the city to the suburbs, restaurants are touting their "homegrown" nature, sending a message to customers - a vastly exaggerated message, in some cases - that the menu is driven by what the restaurant is growing.
Just as with home gardeners, some farm-driven chefs are growing garnishes while others are building main dishes around the vegetables they've planted.
The menus at Mitch Prensky's Supper restaurant were farm-driven long before one of his partners started Blue Elephant Farm in Newtown Square in 2009 to grow exclusively for Supper.
"Now every piece of lettuce and every herb comes from the farm," Prensky says.
A staff of six at Blue Elephant grows "every imaginable vegetable," plus laying hens, Nubian goats (for their milk), and sheep (for cheese-making). And they're nurturing a herd of cattle.
California foodie Alice Waters is his role model, Prensky says, and former White Dog restaurateur Judy Wicks deserves credit for being among the first to elevate the status of growers by putting their names on her menus.
But he thinks some restaurants are going too far in their claims.
"The last three restaurants that opened in Philadelphia have 'farm' in the name," Prensky says. "It's becoming disingenuous."
For years, Aimee Olexy has grown vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruit in a "fairly tiny" garden outside her Chester County home for the meals at Talula's Table. Her new Talula's Garden also draws from her home farm, as well as from pots outside amid the wisteria, and under grow lights inside.
"Having grow lights in a restaurant is unheard of," says Olexy, who is also tilling soil on three acres in Chester County owned by a friend. What she can't grow, she buys selectively from the best food crafters.
And she especially favors saving money and the environment by growing her own flowers for the table.
"Cut flowers are expensive and many come from as far as Holland, so if you can grow your own, that's better."
