More and more Canadian eateries are serving up local food for a healthy planet and a healthy bottom line

(© Bonnie Schiedel. Originally published in Checkerspot, fall/winter 2008/09). 


Blueberries plucked from a rocky Nova Scotian outcrop are getting baked into pies. The farmer’s grandkids are delivering fresh eggs from their family’s chickens. Jewel-like squash, apples and carrots, purchased from the farmer’s market, are being tucked into storage. It’s just another typical day at Halifax’s The Wooden Monkey, a restaurant that prides itself on its regional cuisine. Serving locally grown food is the way a small but growing number of Canadian restaurants are choosing to do business, and the reasons are as varied as the restaurants themselves. Partly, it’s a matter of quality ingredients. “When you cut out three or four middlemen, the taste and freshness of the food goes way up,” says chef John Taylor of Domus Café in Ottawa. It’s also a way of carving out a niche in a notoriously crowded and tough market. “There are more than enough restaurants out there,” notes Suzanne Fielden, co-owner of Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company, which has restaurants in Vancouver and Canmore. “What we hear repeatedly is that our patrons love how we support local farmers.” But more and more, serving regional cuisine is also about reducing “food miles” —referring to the distance that ingredients traveled to get to your plate, racking up clouds of greenhouse gas emissions along the way. For example, a recent study by the Region of Waterloo in Ontario found that 58 commonly eaten imported foods, like pears, beef and tomatoes, traveled nearly 5,000 km on average, accounting for over 51 000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, the equivalent of nearly 17 000 cars on the road. 

Serving local food does have its challenges though. Rather than using one or two huge companies, chefs and owners rely on up to 40 different suppliers, often at farmers’ markets, throughout the year, which adds time to both purchasing and book-keeping. Small independent operators tend to be more expensive as well, usually because they eschew mass production, instead growing produce from hard-to-find heirloom seeds, creating artisanal cheeses by hand and paying Canadian wages to a local workforce. And while serving in-season food is key—squash in the winter, asparagus in the spring—that means the menu changes quite frequently. “Once the chicken truck broke down, so we didn’t serve chicken that day!” laughs Lil MacPherson, co-owner of The Wooden Monkey. In the end, though, owners, chefs and suppliers agree that the extra effort is well worth it because of the pride they feel in serving excellent food in a sustainable way. And people are responding: Domus Café is entering its fourteenth year in business, and newcomers The Wooden Monkey and Rocky Mountain are, respectively, expanding to bigger premises and developing franchises. “This is not a fad,” says MacPherson. “This is a way of life.”