A cook sliced into an heirloom tomato and threw half of it in the trash.
It was a thoughtless act committed routinely in kitchens around the country—but chef Niven Patel saw it as an opportunity to teach his team about the effort required to grow and harvest ingredients.
“Do you know how long it took to grow that tomato?” asked Patel, now head chef of three Miami restaurants: Orno, Mamey, and Ghee Indian Kitchen. His cook, not unlike many restaurant employees and much of the general dining public, hadn’t a clue.
Patel invited his team to his then-new, two-acre property in Homestead, Florida—where he and his family live—where they trenched through limestone to run irrigation, built raised crop beds, and planted thousands of seeds. That was six years ago. Neither Patel nor his cooks were professional farmhands, but, as the years passed, Rancho Patel grew from a gratifying team activity into the embodiment of everything Patel does in his restaurants….