Chef/Ow n e r , Ed e n Ea s t & H i lls i d e Farmac y
sonya Coté The chef and champion for local food brings the table to the farm.
By Meredith Bethune
According to Sonya Coté, restaurants should be a true reflection
and catering companies in the Dallas area. Eventually she noticed, “people
of the chef. Then you could say that her latest venture, Eden East, unques-
started to come to my art shows to eat the food, not look at the art.”
tionably embodies her personal dedication to community.
Coté left Dallas in 2003, moving to Austin with a teenager and $600 in
Occupying one of Austin’s loveliest settings, the unique dining concept
her pocket. For years, she had nursed a dream to open a bed and breakfast,
is set at Springdale Farm, where diners enjoy a prix fixe, locally-driv-
so she jumped at an opportunity to work at a boutique hotel and restaurant
en menu of “elevated comfort food” under a canopy of twinkling lights
in Fredericksburg. Ultimately, though, she grew bored with small town life
hanging from oak trees. Both Eden East and Coté’s other restaurant,
and returned to Whole Foods—this time in Austin. On a company trip to
the French-influenced Hillside Farmacy, represent her “commitment to
San Francisco, she toured farms and learned about local food, and while in
work with the best possible ingredients, and that’s usually local,” she says,
the airport waiting to return to Texas, Coté found a copy of the book Alice
which, in the case of Eden East, means that most of the vegetables are
Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee. Inspired by the pioneer of
harvested just mere feet away. “Basing a menu on the ingredients is a
California cuisine and local food, she vowed to adhere to a similar ethos in
big challenge,” Coté admits, yet she considers, for example, developing 15
her cooking. “I wanted to keep money in the community, create an environ-
ways to use sweet potato or fennel a cherished learning experience. She
ment where people can have a better experience, and increase their quality
explains, “I don’t want to do things that are on any other menu. I don’t
of life,” she remembers.
want to just recreate masterpieces.”
Another chance encounter lead Coté to become executive chef at East Side
Fans of Coté’s stylish cuisine might be surprised that punk rock was
Showroom after running into the restaurant’s co-owner Mickie Spencer, an old
the catalyst that brought her to Texas. “I ran away from home when I was
friend from Dallas. Although at that point Coté had been cooking professional-
fifteen,” she recalls, “I then traveled with a band of wild punk rockers.
ly for years, she had to overcome a steep learning curve, working 12-hour days
They were my community.” Perhaps she had left behind her large Italian
nearly every day of the week. Despite the challenges, Chef Coté became a local
family in Rhode Island to recapture the spirit of her early childhood on
food champion while working at the Showroom. “I was Glenn’s first customer
a transcendental meditation commune in Iowa. According to Coté, her
ever,” she says proudly, referring to Glenn and Paula Foore of Springdale Farm.
father “rescued” her three years later, but her eyes twinkle as she recalls
“I hated leaving, I just wanted to hang out there all the time.”
her adventures with the other children there, saying wistfully, “we were a band of wild children.”
That feeling was the impetus to open Eden East earlier this year, explaining, “I wanted to help the farmers, so why not pay them rent?” Coté now
In Dallas, Coté married young at age 18, and becoming a mother forced
spends most of her weekday afternoons at this restaurant on the farm, prep-
her to abandon her self-described “gypsy tendencies,” working at Whole
ping for the weekend, and making stocks and pickles. Opening a fine dining
Foods as a graphic artist while also attending art school. The job pro-
restaurant on a farm could sound overly romantic to some, but Chef Coté
voked “such a craving for food knowledge because it’s endless, like art,”
insists the process only took about six months from the initial concept to fru-
Coté explains. “You can never know everything about food.” Her new-
ition. According to her, “Opening a hotel gave me the stamina... It’s a piece
found interest motivated her to apprentice with several different chefs
of cake to open a restaurant.” tribeza.com
december
2013
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