Anchorage Daily News

Only about 40 miles or so separate Alaska’s farms from its urban restaurants, but locally grown food remains a niche item on most menus.

That is changing, and rapidly.

This winter, at least seven Anchorage restaurants — upscale venues and crunchy cafes alike— are mostly eschewing Outside carrots, potatoes and other root vegetables. Instead, they are buying their vegetables from the Mat-Su.

Obviously, the farmers of the Mat-Su aren’t complaining. They’re thrilled. And several of the chefs involved — many of them adherents of the trendy “local foods” movement that has been spreading around the world over the past several years — said they are salivating for summertime, when Mat-Su farms are burgeoning with leafy greens, sugar peas and a cornucopia of other vegetables.

Few of these farmers and chefs have met. The farmers work all day at their farms. The chefs are chained to their kitchens.

But they’re learning a lot about each other from a trio of Anchorage entrepreneurs whose new business — Alaska Root Sellers — began providing weekly and twice-weekly produce runs from farms to restaurants three months ago.

The new delivery service is a boon for restaurants interested in Alaska-grown produce, the chefs said.

Until now, no other suppliers have provided Alaska produce to them on a reliable, weekly basis, they said.

SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIPS

During a recent Root Sellers pickup at Boyd’s Farm, farmer Adam Boyd waxed voluble about the subtle differences between potatoes.

A third-generation potato farmer, Boyd grows 18 varieties, including some rather exotic-looking blue spuds and blood-red ones.

The farm sells most of its potatoes in bulk — to the military, for example. Big trucks filled with potatoes go out regularly.

Working — albeit at arm’s length — with chefs is giving Adam Boyd a creative new outlet for his specialized spud knowledge. “If I know how you are going to prepare it, I can tell you the best spud,” he said.

Ultimately, the restaurants and the farms are chasing the same thing: local eaters.

Restaurants are just a fraction of Palmer farmer Ben VanderWeele’s clientele. But he said the new deliveries are a valuable marketing opportunity. The farms’ customer base will grow in the long run if more people get exposed to their produce, he said.

Chefs say their customers seem to be getting more interested in local foods. This summer, one Alaska farm began delivering fresh produce to people’s homes.

Veggie love is apparent at the Beartooth Grill in Anchorage, which caters to a hip, young crowd.

The Beartooth’s customers aren’t afraid to try beets, says chef Melanie Harriman.

“People are more aware that root vegetables are yummy. A lot of our clientele is vegetarian. … This is the kind of thing they are looking for,” she said.

VEGGIE EXOTICA

On a recent afternoon, the head chef at Kinley’s Restaurant showed off the sort of gourmet meal he can concoct with Alaska root vegetables.

“If you don’t like them, well, you haven’t eaten them right,” quipped the chef, Brett Knipmeyer, who laid down a sample dinner plate for a reporter’s inspection.

The plate featured Alaska scallops served with a swirly tower of pureed blue potatoes and a saute of multicolored beets and carrots. The potatoes and beets hailed from Pyrah’s Pioneer Peak farm in the Butte area, the carrots, from VanderWeele’s farm.

Yep, even in the dead of winter in Alaska, eating crisp local produce out of farmers’ root cellars is possible. And not just at restaurants: many grocery stores carry carrots and potatoes delivered by trucks from Valley farms.

But the chefs say they rely, for the most part, on wholesale deliveries, and their major suppliers in the Anchorage area don’t specialize in local produce. In the past, they’ve nabbed the produce at local farmers’ markets, but with hectic schedules, restaurant staffers don’t often have the time to go out to the markets. Also, the farmers’ markets are closed in the winter.

Until Root Sellers started up, getting in Alaska-raised produce was kind of sporadic, Knipmeyer said.

ROOT SELLERS

The trio behind the Root Sellers is a food-loving group.

Two of them, Dave Thorne and Scott Caddell, are veteran chefs who have worked in several local restaurants over the years. Caddell was involved in the startup of the popular Moose’s Tooth restaurant. Thorne has cooked for rock musicians including Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson. He now has an Anchorage catering business called Delicious Dave’s. The third in the trio, Kim Sollien, is a local-foods advocate and blogger.

Their business is similar to other local-food delivery operations that have sprouted in Lower 48 cities, including Denver, Portland and Cleveland. They decided to create one here because of their own interest in supporting local agriculture, they said.

“One day we were talking about it, the next day we were making deliveries,” Thorne said.

They buy vegetables directly from the farms at the wholesale price and resell them to the restaurants at the same price, tacking on a delivery fee. They make twice-weekly trips to the Valley, using a turbo-diesel van that belongs to Caddell. They’ve plastered a huge “Alaska Grown” magnet on the hood. They then deliver the produce directly to the restaurants.

Right now, Root Sellers is buying from five farms and delivering to seven restaurants, Thorne said. The restaurants involved: Beartooth, Kinley’s, Sacks Cafe and Restaurant, Snow City Cafe, Middle Way Cafe, Tap Root Cafe and the Yak and Yeti Himalayan Restaurant.

“It’s been a great marriage so far,” said Thorne, who is still amazed by the VanderWeele’s “root cellar,” a chilly warehouse filled nearly to the ceiling with tons of potatoes.

“I had no idea we had this many potatoes and carrots in the state,” he said.

To contact the Alaska Root Sellers and find out about its rates, call 230-7687.

Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.