PICK YOUR OWN PARADISE

By Tim Johnson

CHEF SERVING LOCALLY GROWN LUNCH

Fresh is always best – and while farm-to-table has become popular all over the world, there’s nothing fresher than farm-to-farm. At a few select spots, you can eyeball the food you’re going to eat while it’s still growing, maybe even help in the harvest before the chef cooks it up and puts it down on your plate. Here are four of the freshest farm restaurants under the sun.

THE GARDEN TABLE FARM

©TIM JOHNSON

THE GARDEN TABLE (BELIZE)

Lush and tropical, the farm here seems to stretch on forever, although only a small slice of their 12,000 acres is planted with (what feels like) every conceivable thing that will grow in the Central American soil.

HARVESTED VEGETABLES

Located near the southern Belize town of Punta Gorda, fully 70 per cent of the produce and meat served in the restaurant here is cultivated and raised on site, and the rest is sourced from nearby farmers. You’re encouraged to take a tour and see where all the magic happens – there’s coffee, cacao, sugar cane, mango, papaya, passion fruit, cassava and much more, plus organically raised sheep and chicken.

It’s all prepared using traditional Belizean recipes, which draw on a wide variety of culinary traditions, from Mayan to Creole to Indo-Caribbean. Tuck into a superfresh meal, finish with some chocolate from their own cacao plants, then visit the bar, where you can garnish your drink with coconut or lime grown in their Cocktail Garden.

EUMELIA CHEF LEADING A COOKING DEMONSTRATION

©EUMELIA

EUMELIA (GREECE)

At this restaurant farm, the husband-and-wife owners (who once worked for the European Parliament and international NGOs and travelled the world before settling down in this pastoral corner of Greece on their ancestral land) will accompany you outside with a pair of clippers to snip your own oregano, basil, thyme, fennel and other green ingredients, maybe grabbing a few olives on the way back to the sunny terracotta restaurant.

Then you can either take a cooking lesson, combining fruits (or, more properly, herbs) of your labour, or sit back and let them do the work. Either way, you should sip some wine – one of the owners is also a sommelier, and they grow their own grapes.

HAWAIIAN TACOS

O’O FARM (HAWAII)

\Founded by a couple of surfers near the town of Kula in upcountry Maui, this small farm is set on mineral-rich volcanic soil, occupying a scenic spot at an elevation of more than 1,000 metres, with sweeping views to the island’s coasts. Drive up from the beaches, climbing a winding road into the clouds on the flanks of Haleakala, to take their three-hour “lunch tour.”

It includes walking through forest, field and greenhouses, the latter growing tomatoes, lettuce, fruit trees, coffee, herbs and flowers, picking produce all along the way, then sitting down to watch their chef turn your harvest into a gourmet lunch. But if you can’t make it upcountry, you can still get a taste of O’o – the farm supplies Pacific’O, a high-end restaurant set right next to the sand under bending palm trees, down in Lahaina.

TRADITIONAL COSTA RICAN FISH CASADO

MARY’S FARM (COSTA RICA)

Covered in jungle and bordered by rugged beaches, this corner of Costa Rica, near Mal Pais, still feels a long way from anywhere. When Mary’s grandfather arrived, he came on horseback, working hard to clear the heavy brush and planting traditional crops including corn, beans, and rice.

Now hotels and yoga retreats dot the nearby Playa Carmen and Playa Santa Maria, and his granddaughter has taken things a lot further, planting eggplant, peppers, spinach, zucchini, cucumber and other vegetables, gathering eggs from her own hens, raising pigs and chickens, and buying fresh seafood from local fishermen. It’s all served up at Mary’s Restaurant, right on site, where the menu changes daily, based on what’s freshest from field and sea.