Chris Keff
A Unique Partnership
Chris Keff, chef and owner of Flying Fish Restaurant, is not only recognized as one of Seattle’s finest masters in the kitchen, her creativity has spilled over into the restaurant’s business office. Up until almost four years ago, and with the exception of a few small farms that she was dealing with directly, Chris was not very satisfied with the selection and quality of produce that she was getting from her local commercial sources. While her direct farm contacts did have fine quality, their harvests were too inconsistent to base a menu upon. "I thought if I could have a serious financial arrangement with a particular farmer, it would make it worth their while to work with me and I could get better produce into the restaurant," explained the chef.
She decided to invest half of the restaurant's produce budget in subsidizing a local farm. In 2003, Keff forged a unique relationship with Whistling Train Farm in Kent, Washington. She contracted with owners Mike and Shelley Verdi to grow organic produce specifically to supply her busy seafood bistro in the heart of Belltown, Seattle's famed restaurant district.
Chef Chris first funded money to Mike and Shelley, which allowed them to expand their acreage and operations to accommodate the needs of the restaurant. Flying Fish continues to pay the farm a flat monthly fee to plant, grow and supply what the restaurant needs with a lot of input from Chef Chris.
The relationship is a variation of the recent trend of subscription produce that some growers are doing through Community Supported Agriculture programs (C.S.A.). However, in this case Chef Chris collaborates with Shelley and Mike over their crop plan before plantings and makes daily menu changes based on a morning conversation with the Verdis about what is ready for harvest that day. While Chef Chris still must fill in with some fresh produce from other parts of the country during the winter months, most of the time the menu of Flying Fish reflects what is growing at Whistling Train Farm.
"It does get to be a bit of a challenge during the late fall for instance, when there’s an abundance of winter squash but not much else coming out of the fields," said the chef, "So we do something like maybe make a wonderful roasted squash soup, and then we'd make a pumpkin gnocchi to go with one of the dishes, and we might have a straight candied squash side dish. The trick, and fun of it, is to make each dish look and taste completely different so that the same item might be on the menu three or four times but in totally diverse forms."
The chef went on to observe, "Not only has this partnership allowed us to support local farmers and sustainable agriculture, but it has also stretched our creativity and encouraged us to think seasonally. With all of these fresh, beautiful ingredients that we have to work with, we can’t help but be inspired in the kitchen!"
From the Verdi's point of view, the guesswork has been taken out of what to plant, plus their production is not subject to the traditional supply-vs.-demand dynamic that governs the price of each crop in the commercial marketplace.
Shelly Verdi puts this in practical terms, not only as a grower, but as a mother trying to run a household: "Since Flying Fish pays us basically a salary, where we get a check every two weeks, you can imagine the financial stability brought to our business and our family. Chris' input and the steady income helps us concentrate on farming. We now have money when we need to have money to hire the help we need and plus buy our seed or fertilizer on time. That leaves us free, assuming the weather cooperates, to just focus on growing stuff, and growing a lot."
"The relationship has really matured our business," Shelley went on to explain. "Since any restaurant needs some consistency of available product, agreeing to provide Flying Fish with as much seasonal produce as they could use meant that we had to center our crop plan on the goal of keeping Chris and the kitchen happy. It forced us to come up with an actual plan of what we would have available to harvest throughout the year, and provided the background for some new crop experiments that we could not justify before, like a 20-variety Italian radicchio field trial or our newest experiment with Belgian endive last winter."
From the Whistling Train Farm commitment, Chef Chris then began to think about all the other raw products for her restaurant that would better impact the planet if they were organic. She noted that her guests had begun asking questions about sustainable and wild seafood as far back as 8 or 9 years ago, so Chris began schooling herself and her staff about the many issues surrounding food from both the sea and the land. As part of her ongoing personal and professional evolution, Chef Chris made the decision to convert 100% of Flying Fish's raw products (dairy, produce, meat, dried goods) to organic.
"Moving our restaurant toward being 100% organic is really a natural extension of our learning," she explained, "Many here in the Pacific Northwest have become enthusiastically involved in the protection of our wild resources, working to protect habitat and genetics, to ensure that we will have diversity of wildlife for the next generations. I don't know if one restaurant can make an impact in this big issue, but it is a move that gives me a feeling of control of my own patch of turf to try."
In the course of doing this feature for Melissa's, I have met many chefs who have direct buyer/seller relationships with local growers. However, what this chef is attempting to accomplish with Whistling Train Farm is uniquely integrated. The arrangement puts the chef in the field and the grower in the commercial kitchen; it's an exciting symbiotic experiment that could serve as a model for other small growers. Most professional chefs are passionate about the fresh ingredients they use; most small niche farmers are passionate about what they grow – it's a natural partnership. The Verdis provide Chef Chris with a service that she cannot find in the commercial distribution chain. This kind of service just would not be practical on a large scale. In fact, if this experiment continues on the same successful course as it has for the last four years, the reports of the death of small family farming may be a bit premature. After all, I would guess that there are more restaurants than small farms to support them in this country!
The idea for Flying Fish was born on a beach in Thailand. While traveling there, Chris stopped for a while on Koh Samui, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. There were several beach restaurants there that served the catch-of-the-day simply grilled, at tables perched in the sand at the water's edge. The diner could pick a fish out of the ice and it would reappear half an hour later in cooked form. It was very direct and so simple; it just seemed like a good idea to her.
In fact, sourcing fish has always been a primary focus at Flying Fish. Chef Keff has become known for her diverse selection through a network of seafood purveyors across the globe, who contribute to an expansive collection of species on the menu of Flying Fish that are not frequently seen in the city.
"Certainly Washington is well-known for clams, oysters, crab and salmon," says Keff, "but few restaurants served fish like mong chong, opaka paka, monkfish liver or cod cheeks. Now some of those items are commonplace on menus around the city."
Chef Chris has put those unique species on her menu, along with seafood items that are familiar to the consumer; but all are prepared with her particular twist of using spices and ingredients from many parts of the world such as Thailand, Japan, China, Mexico, and the Mediterranean.
Flying Fish attracts the seafood aficionado who knows what's in season, where it came from and how it is best prepared. But at its heart, Flying Fish is a neighborhood bistro: folks drop by for a quick bite or bring in friends from out of town if they want to show them a truly Seattle experience. So the restaurant offers a large menu selection separated into Small Plates (appetizer size), Large Plates (entrée size) and Platters (meant to be shared).
"Our menu is designed to give our patrons comfortable choices to enjoy themselves with. Have a couple of small plates and a glass of wine, or share one of our platters to get started. Of course a multiple course dining experience is there too; it really doesn’t matter to us. We just want our guests to have a good", explained the chef.
Keff is dedicated to the Seattle community and as such, participates in numerous fundraising and culinary events, and holds professional memberships in Les Dames d’Escoffier, International Association of Culinary Professionals, The James Beard Foundation, and Women Chefs and Restaurateurs.
Chef Keff and Flying Fish have won numerous accolades over the last ten years: James Beard Award / Best Chef Northwest and Hawaii, Robert Mondavi Culinary Award of Excellence, Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, Organic Style Magazine Green Cuisine Award, to name a few.
Since this is a story of collaboration between chef and grower, it is only appropriate that one of the recipes for this feature include something from the grower's own kitchen and well as from the galley of Flying Fish. So Chris and Shelley walked the fields of Whistling Train Farm to come up with some dishes that show off the fall harvest. The result is a great meal that could be replicated at home just as it appears here: soup, salad, entrée and dessert. Chef Chris Keff, as well as Mike and Shelly Verdi, hope that these contributions give our readers a few new ideas for some seasonal favorites. Enjoy!
