INGREDIENTS

St. Louis is a scrappy city, and perhaps some of that scrappiness crosses over to the food industry, where restaurants and their respective bars put emphasis on helping one another – and our diverse biome as a whole – by sharing kitchen scraps that would otherwise go to waste. From utilizing backyard gardens in the city to giving Granny Smith apples new lives in the form of kimchi, St. Louis is full of spots doing their due diligence when it comes to sustainability.

Vicia

Take Root Hospitality – the restaurant team behind Vicia, Bistro La Floraison, Taqueria Morita and Winslow’s Table – makes local food a point of focus. “When we changed formats to offer the Farmer’s Feast, [a seasonal threecourse, chef-selected menu experience], it dramatically changed how we were able to not waste product,” Take Root Hospitality co-owner Tara Gallina says. “We also cross-utilize ingredients at the bar and across all our restaurants. If we get in a whole pig, we use prime cuts for our tasting menu, skin for chicharrones at Taqueria Morita, sausage for Bistro La Floraison and ham for sandwiches at Winslow’s Table.” Vicia bar manager Phil Ingram takes pear cores and transforms them into infused spirits for the bar, Gallina adds. In general, the drink menu is influenced by what’s growing in the restaurant’s garden, with Ingram finding clever ways to use plentiful ingredients, such as rhubarb and fennel.

Vicia, 4260 Forest Park Ave., Central West End, St. Louis, Missouri, 314-553-9239, viciarestaurant.com

QUEEN OF THE VINES COCKTAIL: MADE WITH The Royale’s fromscratch grape juice shrub

The Royale

Although The Royale humbly touts itself as a “neighborhood public house,” it’s all that and more. When the warmer months allow, the brick building’s exterior boasts a lush courtyard with its own garden. Much of the garden’s produce ends up on plates in the kitchen and in drinks at the bar. “Our garden has been a boon to our menu,” owner Steven Fitzpatrick Smith says. “We’ve harvested Cucuzza squash, service berries and jujubes, which we’ve incorporated into the menu. We use peppers, lavender, herbs, grapes and more in our drinks.” Smith points to one drink in particular, the Queen of the Vines cocktail. It’s made with The Royale’s from-scratch grape juice shrub, Pisco brandy, egg whites – or a foamed, vegan substitute – angostura bitters and nutmeg.

Yellowbelly

The bar-and-kitchen combo at paradise-themed restaurant Yellowbelly is a masterclass in low-waste mixology and cooking. “Outside of careful ordering and inventory, the biggest way to reduce food waste is fermentation,” co-owner Tim Wiggins says. The restaurant uses Granny Smith apples and leftover cabbage, cauliflower and cucumber for kimchi; it brews Tepache – a fermented Mexican beverage prepared with piloncillo, a type of brown sugar – by saving the skins and cores of pineapples. “We use the Tepache for garnishing oysters and in mimosas at brunch,” Wiggins says. “We also do this process with watermelon in the summer.” Other items make their way into many quintessential Yellowbelly drinks: “Our housemade ‘curry pack’ with fresh galangal, curry leaves and lemongrass gets made into a clarified cordial for our Instant Gimlet cocktail,” Wiggins says.

Yellowbelly, 4659 Lindell Blvd., Central West End, St. Louis, Missouri, 314-499-1509, yellowbellystl.com

Molly Rockamann / CEO and founder, EarthDance Organic Farm School

What different educational opportunities does EarthDance offer?

We offer two different programs: One is more tailored toward gardeners and is five weeks long in the spring, and then one is because we knew that people wanted an immersive thing. … It’s 40 hours a week for 10 weeks of the summer. We call it the summer apprenticeship now. It’s really geared toward a lot of college students or recent grads who are looking to get into farming. We also have an agri-culinary internship program in partnership with Innovation High School, which is part of the Ferguson-Florissant School District. … It’s a really out-of-the-box learning model. … It’s all very project-based and very “real world” experience-based. Students at Innovation can choose to come to the farm a few days a week. … What they’re focused on is learning how to use really fresh ingredients.

What sustainable growing practices does EarthDance implement?

We do almost no-till farming – so farming in permanent beds, rather than tilling the soil after each crop comes out. What that does is really build up the health of the soil. There’s the term food forest: Basically, our orchard is meant for it. It is creating a multi-story, multi-layer [system of plants] from the fruit trees down to the ground cover – like having strawberries as the ground cover and other herbs at a lower growing level than the trees. … It’s ultimately maximizing the yield in the footprint we have.

How does EarthDance view and prioritize food justice?

In the 15 years it’s been in operation, EarthDance Organic Farm School has continually brought sustainably grown produce and educational apprentice programs to Ferguson, Missouri. For CEO and founder Molly Rockamann, agriculture represents the nexus of her passions; she sees it as a multicultural intersection of social justice, ecology, international development and human health.

In the pursuit of equity and food justice, EarthDance offers a paywhat-you-can farm stand, an online course for beginning gardeners and a full-time, paid apprenticeship program to help develop the next generation of farmers.

At EarthDance, we’re extremely committed to the health of the soil, and it goes so hand-in-hand with the health of the community. I think there’s a myth that some people still hold, which is that people without a lot of money don’t care about eating healthy, and that’s not true at all. It’s just that it’s often out of reach. We’re very dedicated to increasing healthy food access at EarthDance, and having the pay-what-you-can distribution model speaks to that.

EarthDance Organic Farm School, 233 S. Dade Ave., Ferguson, Missouri, 314-521-1006, earthdancefarms.org

Must-Try Fruits & Vegetables From EarthDance