Make great food. Make it fresh. Serve it with pride. And then, as day turns to night and the night winds down, slash the price by half, so that every last morsel is eaten and nothing goes to waste.That’s been the quiet weekly rhythm for a while now at the Junction’s rustic Farmhouse Tavern, where proprietor Darcy MacDonell and chef Ashley MacNeil take up the waste-not-want-not challenge every Sunday, aiming to end the night with happy patrons, bellies full and wallets still surprisingly fullish — and as little as possible left over for the green bin.It’s a fresh twist on an old story in the hypercompetitive Toronto restaurant scene, where tight profit margins sometimes force chefs to reinvent yesterday’s roast chicken into today’s chicken pot pies. But unlike other establishments, the Farmhouse Tavern, is upfront about its no-waste ambitions — and caters to a like-minded clientele who place their trust in the freshness of the food and the virtue of the smallest environmental footprint possible.“The key for us is freshness — farm-freshness — sourced from small-scale farmers within 100 kms and delivered directly to us,” chef MacNeil told The Star. “So we’re not talking about taking old food and repurposing it. Everything we serve is in season and made fresh that day.“We’re open Thursday through Sunday and so the goal with our Sunday night deal is to sell out completely and then come back and start anew on Thursday. And people — especially the younger folks here in the Junction — they are aware. The no-waste movement is gaining momentum. “Our thing is farm-fresh ingredients inside a 100-km limit — farmers that we’re connected to delivering directly to us, farmers who are also-waste conscious,” MacNeil said.MacNeil says the quest for zero-waste “is like a weird game of teeter-totter — a bit stressful but really fun at the same tim ...
|
