Taking the Regional Lead in Sustainability

This form of fossil fuel-free “cooking” dovetails with Hemm’s as well as the inn’s emphasis on sustainability. “We’re a ‘last-mile resort town,’ which means that almost everything we get here is trucked in,” says Hemm. “So it’s important to offset everything we do.” Mirror Lake Inn was the first hotel property in Lake Placid to adopt a comprehensive recycling program. A business-wide energy audit in 2021 validated the inn’s adoption of a rooftop solar program, which has reduced its dependence on the local electrical grid by 450 to 500 kilowatt hours a year. Fourteen EV stations are being installed, the inn has switched to more eco-friendly detergents and cleaning products, and a $1.5 million laundry facility has introduced more energy efficient machines.

In the kitchen, Hemm is keenly attuned to minimizing oven use to save energy, and not just during triathlon season. “If I can use a flat-top (cooking range) that’s on, I’ll do that. I don’t want to turn an oven on. I’m a garde manger chef,” he says, referring to the cold station of a restaurant, where salads, hors d’oeuvres, appetizers, and charcuterie are made or kept. In fact, Hemm—who grew up in Peru, NY, studied culinary arts at Paul Smith’s College, earned two certificates of gastronomy from the Cordon Bleu in Paris, and spent two years cooking in Burgundy—published the culinary textbook titled Garde Manger: The Cold Kitchen while he was dean of culinary arts and director of online programs at the New England Culinary Institute. “Cooking is not just the application of heat, it’s the denaturing of food,” he explains. “If I can let acid and time equal cooking then I don’t need to turn on a fossil-fuel oriented implement.”

His zero-waste approach to cooking has led to the addition of some popular menu items. For example, any remaining house-made sourdough bread is transformed the following day into passatelli, a northern Italian dumpling made with the addition of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, and eggs, then cooked in brodo, or broth. “I maximize the use of any food that I bring in. I will pickle juiced lemon rinds and use the zest as a flavor agent in sugars, in Indian chutney, or in a mousseline for a deviled crab salad,” says Hemm. Through actions such as these, he’s cut kitchen waste to almost nothing. Another practice he’s adopted is around the custom-raised, grass-fed and -finished Red Devon beef he sources from Asgaard Farm. “I pay for an entire steer, which includes the fat, and the bones, the entire hanging weight. It’s custom cut for our needs, then I save the prime cuts, ribeye, strip loins and tenderloins, for the holidays, when demand is highest. Everything else becomes the grass-fed, grass-finished beef I use throughout the year.”

Hemm has also reduced the amount of non-reusable plastic packaging that comes into the kitchen. The View does not offer to-go products because he does not want to use single-use plastics. Mirror Lake Inn offers two watering stations where guests can fill up their plant-based carafes with seltzer or still water. The restaurant’s composting program, administered by Blue Line, has helped reduce its use of plastic garbage bags by 80 percent. “That’s sixteen fiftyfive gallon garbage bags not going into landfill every day,” Hemm says. Blue Line sends three truckloads of rich compost soil back to the inn each year, which is used to fertilize the herb garden outside The View kitchen, and the flower beds spread throughout the inn and spa property. The flowers grown onsite provide all of the floral arrangements for the inn, spa, and restaurant as well.