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Osteria Stellina-A Point Reyes Restaurant Grows it Too

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Chef/owner Christian Caiazzo at his old Pt Reyes farm.

A trip to Pt Reyes is always about landscape. The rugged wind swept fields, the farms, the ocean, it’s always the experience of the place that you remember. Osteria Stellina is about place too but the experience is more on the savory side. 80-90% of the food on the menu is grown nearby. From Bill Nimans organic, pasture-raised beef to local cheeses, oysters from Drake’s Bay, and specialty crops like broccolini from Fresh Run Farms, everything featured on the menu is local. Chef Christian Caiazzo is so serious about local he’s taken it to the next level, growing food for the restaurant at a farm nearby.  He began growing  produce back in 2010 just a year after he opened his restaurant and the reason  he started is probably not what you’d expect. Osteria Stellina was producing a lot of vegetable scraps and there was no service to recycle the trimmings. He ended up taking it home and composting it himself. Not long afterwards he had some excellent soil amendments,  and growing greens on the quarter acre behind his house near Pt Reyes seemed like the natural next step. When I visited his restaurant and farm last year for a Wall Street Journal restaurant review,  I was impressed with the beautiful organic vegetables.

Since then the farm has moved to West Petaluma where the weather is better and the farm is bigger: tomatoes, peppers eggplants can grow during the summer as well as greens. During the growing season up to 35-40% of the fresh produce comes from the farm, with food delivered fresh 4 to 5 times a week. He works closely with farmer Molly Myerson and they are able to experiment. This year they had amazing luck with sunchokes; he uses them in soups, purées and roasts them. On the other hand, the 1500 strawberries they planted this year did not produce nearly the amount they hoped for. They also raise quail  for eggs and meat and hope to start experimenting with shiitakes and oyster mushrooms. So next time you’re in Pt Reyes taste it, as well as see it. Support a local restaurant and farm with some seriously  delicious food at Osteria Stellina.

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The old farm was just a couple of miles from the Pt Reyes restaurant. 

Zen Beekeeper Therese Oxford

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Therese Oxford on the rooftop of Quince Restaurant in San Francisco where she keeps several hives.

 

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Urban Zen beekeeping is is all about intention, Therese Oxford says. It’s about helping the bees; the workers, drones and the queen, and not just about harvesting honey. It’s about not using pesticides, antibiotics, sugar or even plastic in the hives. She believes the factory farming of bees is contributing to their destruction. Back in the nineties she first became very interested in them as she read about their plight.  She later took classes at the Green Gulch Zen Center. “If bees don’t make it, we won’t make it,” she says. “Time for radical language!  This is it!  We have to get out of denial or we’re done.”
She started maintaining bee hives for restaurants in 2009 and now she maintains roof top hives for some of San Francisco’s  top restaurants including Jardiniere, Quince, Cotogna, Nopa and Tony’s Pizza. She doesn’t do it for the money though, and she takes much less honey than the average beekeeper. She likes to leave enough for the bees to overwinter without having to feed them sugar or corn syrup. She also never uses miticides to treat mites. Her hives are “survivor” hives she says and she believes they are stronger without antibiotics or pesticides. Her unconventional methods seem to work. This year she lost no hives.  Well, except one, to a mouse.
When I asked her if she thought more people should get into beekeeping she says no. “It’s too easy to kill bees, it’s a lot of work to keep bees alive.   Instead, focus on making something green.  Plant a garden, support a tree.” she says, “Make some food for bees and if you really want to get started in beekeeping, help a beekeeper.”
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It’s swarm season and when I arrived to photograph Therese she was there collecting a swarm to put into a rooftop hive.

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