Kona resort focuses on local ingredients

BY ERIN MILLER

WEST HAWAII TODAY

emiller@westhawaiitoday.com

Farm to table is one of the hottest culinary trends across the country, and it hasn’t missed Hawaii, where high-end restaurants and resorts tout the local origin of their ingredients.

But it’s not exactly a new concept, says James Babian, executive chef for the Four Seasons Hualalai. Neither is tip-to-tail cooking, incorporating both the highly prized cuts of meat and lesser used ones, such as cheeks or tail.

“Using the whole animal, that’s sustainable,” Babian said Wednesday.

It also supports local farmers, something Babian tries to do as he focuses on ingredients that are seasonal, regional and artisanal. And while the phrase farm to table may be trendy, he thinks the concept is here to stay.

“I think it’s here forever,” he said. “I think we got away from all that. People understand the health benefits of eating better food.”

Locally sourced ingredients not only taste better, he added, but have more nutrients. And every purchase benefits more than just the farmer and farm employees. The produce delivery driver fills the delivery truck’s tank at a local gas station. Tax revenues on the sale are kept in state.

“There’s a ripple effect beyond the vegetables,” Babian said.

The full impact has not been quantified, said Paul Johnston, owner of Kekela Farms in Waimea. Babian is featuring Johnston Monday night, during a Farm Dinner at the resort’s Pahuia restaurant.

Johnston and Babian’s relationship goes back 13 years, to when Babian was still working at the Fairmont Orchid and Johnston was Babian’s wife’s doctor. Several years later, Johnston and his wife had purchased 20 acres of Waimea farmland, initially thinking they’d subdivide the property and sell lots. Instead, they fell in love with the land and began growing lettuce. Johnston approached Babian about purchasing the lettuce. Babian said he sampled the produce as part of a blind taste test with lettuce from other farms. Johnston’s lettuce was superior.

These days, Johnston grows way more than lettuce. He’s got Swiss chard, spicy greens, beets, squash, kale and more, several varieties of most, on seven acres. He employs nine workers full-time, who tend to the plants, mostly without machinery.

Babian can ask Johnston to try a new item, to see how it will grow. Rhubarb hasn’t worked well, but parsley root did. Babian said he and a number of farmers work together to guarantee a market for new items and seasonal items, with his chefs getting those items on the menu.

Not everything grows well in Hawaii, at least not yet. Babian has a produce wish list of items he’d like to be able to purchase locally. Those include asparagus, artichokes, Russet and Yukon Gold potatoes, all kinds of berries, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, Brussels sprouts and stone fruits.

On the other hand, he said, he now works with more than 160 farms a year and gets locally sourced products, such as celery, that people used to say couldn’t be grown here. Farmers took years to finally conquer heirloom tomato growing, he said, because those particularly varieties are so prone to cracking and bugs. But he now has a steady supply of those, as well as other kinds of vine-grown tomatoes.

Something else he’s now able to do, he said, is get aged, local beef.

“I said, if you age it, I will buy the whole animal,” Babian said, recalling his conversation with the beef seller. “Nobody does that.”

Local beef can taste gamy if not properly aged, but aging meat wasn’t something many people were doing here, Babian said.

His kitchen also uses wild boar — he prefers animals that forage on macadamia nut farms — and, most recently, he’s been working with Hawaii-grown goat.

Part of his enthusiasm comes from his desire to support as many local farmers as possible.

“Why give that money to Mexico or California or where ever?” he said.

For more information about Monday’s three-course farm dinner, which costs $69, go to hualalai.fourseasons.com/2012/01/made-in-america-2-schedule-of-events/