SAUCE MAGAZINE
Posted On: 06/01/2010
In the last few years, more and more area chefs have carved out vegetable plots adjacent to their restaurants, giving the kitchen easy access to ultrafresh food. In most instances, the harvest is featured in locavore-happy dinner plates, but at Sanctuaria in The Grove, some of that crop won’t touch a single fork; rather, it will be poured into old-fashioned and highball glasses.
Bar manager Matt Seiter has been plotting since December with chef Chris Lee and gardener Jim Mund to transform the landscape surrounding Sanctuaria’s outdoor patio into an edible garden that will service the kitchen – and the bar. This month, young herbs, peppers, tomatoes, beets, turnips and other vegetables started from seedlings will find a new sanctuary when they are transplanted to their new home on Manchester Avenue.
“For herbs, there will be basil, spearmint, lavender, sage and parsley, for sure,” said Seiter, who’s developed a name around town for crafting outstanding vintage and contemporary cocktails using fresh and even homemade ingredients. “We’re toying around with the idea of … sweet potatoes.” Sweet potatoes? In the bar? “I’m sure that I could,” responded Seiter, who’s less concerned about whether he’s got the creativity to transform such food into tasty potations than about the quality of light and soil depth for growing root vegetables. “This year is the experimental year,” he added.
Seiter is preparing to do a lot more with the fresh fare than just garnish a Mojito with mint. Edible flowers can end up in tinctures. Infusions, liqueurs and simple syrups like lavender or basil-mint are indubitably on his list. And he’s thinking foams. Last winter, he puréed roasted butternut squash scented with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves with heavy cream, then added vodka to prepare a fragrant butternut squash foam that topped a 10 Cane Rum-based cocktail appropriately deemed ButteredNut Rum.
As with all good things, you’ll have to wait a while before you see all this garden goodness appear on Sanctuaria’s cocktail menu. “I need at least a month to have the supply grow a little bit more and [to] play around with some ideas. Summertime and fall is when you will see use of the garden in terms of cocktails on the list,” said Seiter.
