The crew from The Acorn restaurant recently made their way up to Pemberton’s North Arm Farm and I was glad to be invited along for the ride. The sprawling, stunning piece of land – truly one of BC’s most spectacular places – provides the Main Street vegetarian restaurant with loads of ingredients all the way through the year, everything from sunchokes and potatoes to kale and tomatoes. It was a beautiful day for Chef Brian Luptak and the front and back of house staff to join farmer Trish Sturdy for a long tour of the fields. They walked rows of lettuces, tasted late season strawberries and raspberries from the vine, discussed culinary uses for different parts of different plants, and talked a lot about seasonal diversity. The aim was to get them to physically connect to the place that produced so much of the food they serve.
After the tour, North Arm’s resident chef Ryan Bissell made everyone a huge harvest feast of baked squash, pasta with farm fresh tomatoes, and platters of roasted and grilled vegetables. For dessert? Pumpkin pie. Everything had come fresh from the farm, and it was as delicious as you can imagine.
We hear about farm-to-table cooking a lot, but if you’re out there chatting with the farmer in her fields, tasting right from the soil and feeling the genuine magic of the place — it does make the food taste better. It was great to see the beauty of North Arm Farm again and to watch the passion of the farmer registering in real time with the staff. Take a look for yourself…
1888 Sea to Sky Highway 99 | Pemberton, BC | northarmfarm.com