Palo Santo’s Jacques Gautier on His Restaurant’s Elaborate Rooftop Garden
Are you able to supply to any other restaurants at all? Does Fort Reno, at least, benefit from your harvest?
We don’t yet grow enough to be able to sell to other restaurants. But certainly we give to Fort Reno. We have an abundance of salad greens in the late spring, so we send some over and they make a rooftop greens salad as a special.
Are you actually able to save money, growing on the roof, or does it wind up just being a wash because of supplies and labor?
We do turn a small profit on this garden, which is important for other restaurants or landlords that have access to their roof to know. Because the fact is, true sustainability has to be profitable. If it’s not profitable its not sustainable, because you can’t keep doing it otherwise. You can’t keep putting in time and money and effort to lose that time and money and effort.
More than anything else, this garden is an experiment to show that in an urban setting and with the resources an average restaurant has, you can grow a good deal on your roof. And I hope that, eventually, I’m able to do this on a larger scale.
You hear about more and more urban beekeepers, or Brooklyn residents with chickens. You actually have rabbits! Why rabbits, and what purpose do they serve in the garden?
I actually have a funny story…last week two of my neighbors came by and I heard them ask one of the waiters, “is the owner around? Does he keep rabbits?” And I was like, oh man, I’m in trouble, they’re complaining about my rabbits. But it turned out that they wanted to raise rabbits too, and talk to me about how to do it. They also wanted to breed their female rabbit with one of my males. That was probably one of the funniest requests I’ve ever received in the restaurant. But it’s encouraging to see that we’ve had some sort of effect on our neighbors; that we’re inspiring people to practice urban agriculture. Our neighbors will have both a fun new hobby and a source of extra protein to put on the table. That’s definitely something we made a point of putting across to our neighbors; that we use our rabbits as livestock and not pets.
Even with a pragmatic understanding of the circle of life and all that, how do you emotionally separate from the hard fact that you’re raising these animals to be eaten? Especially since you used to be a vegetarian?
Well, how do you remove yourself when you’re eating a hot dog, or boneless, skinless chicken breast? And are you a better person for not actually doing the killing? I definitely want to challenge people in our society that feel very comfortable being disassociated with the production of their food, especially meat. And I think that perhaps someone who’s not able to raise a rabbit and kill it, or hunt, or fish, should consider vegetarianism. There’s no shame in that at all. But most people, when forced with that decision, would continue to eat meat. So, for the sake of the animals, our detachment from the agricultural processes and the production of meat is not helpful at all. The more that that we’re in touch with the raising of our animals, the less likely that real atrocities are going to happen. If people knew how their egg-laying hens were raised in tiny cages or how their beef was raised in a feed lot, they wouldn’t necessarily stop eating meat, they would demand that we change our agricultural system.
Besides what goes on customers plates, what other kinds of events or programs have you structured around what you do on the roof?
I got together with Garrett Oliver from Brooklyn Brewery who brought in some beers he was still working on, and I cooked an entire meal made from the ingredients from our rooftop, like the rabbits and tomatoes and eggplants and beans and corn, and we paired each dish with the beers. That was a lot of fun. We also schedule tours with schools.
Do you have any quick tips for small scale urban gardeners?
What’s really helped me is being resourceful and keeping it cheap. We grow our vegetables in Styrofoam fish boxes, which you can find in sushi restaurants or grocery stores or fishmongers. They throw out these white Styrofoam boxes, which you can use as bins. They are super lightweight, the perfect size and shape for a modular garden, and provide great insulation and drainage. Don’t bother buying an expensive setup, because you’re just creating more useless garbage.
Palo Santo: 652 Union St., (718) 636-6311