Column: Farm-to-table chef Rich Mead is behind Farmhouse at Roger’s Gardens

Chef Rich Mead moved through the streets of Santa Monica like a farmers market Sherpa.

After meeting me on one end of the famous Wednesday market here, he checked his list and started down the sidewalk behind the tents, ushering me with him as we made our way toward open roll-up trucks parked out of view from the everyday shoppers on the other side.

“This is where all the chefs walk,” he says as he stops by a stack of boxed greens to catch up with a local farmer, whom Mead has known for nearly two decades.

“I’m old, so when I first started coming here I was in my 30s or 40s and all the big chefs like Mark Peel and Suzanne Goin would come every week.”

Peel and Goin — of Campanile and Lucques, respectively — no longer make the weekly trek to the market themselves, but Mead does.

As he walked through the five blocks of tents during one of those trips last month, he greeted vendors like the old friends they are and wrote checks for even more boxes of their fresh produce, all of which is grown at small, local, family-owned farms.

Everything he purchased — from the Peacock Farms tomatoes and the Tamai Farms squash to the apples from Windrose Farms — ended up on plates at his latest restaurant, the long-awaited Farmhouse, an al fresco dining experience built into the tony Roger’s Gardens in Newport Beach.

The Farmhouse is the chef’s first return to a kitchen since 2013, when the last of his three O.C. concepts closed following the economic downturn.

“I’ve known these people at least for 10 minutes a week for 20 years,” Mead says, filling in numbers on another check. “You can’t help but build relationships.”

It’s exactly these long-cultivated relationships that makes Mead one of the most unique chefs in Orange County and the Farmhouse a restaurant that is due its time.

Mead was cooking farm-to-table food before that term even existed, when buying directly from the person who pulled your ingredients from the earth was a new idea in California and chefs were only beginning to explore what they could do when given the natural local bounty instead of year-round asparagus from Argentina.

He purchased his first batch of produce directly from a farmer by chance, in the late ‘80s when he still owned 17th Street Cafe in Santa Monica. Another restaurant on the same street had ordered too much, a man at the back door told Mead. Would he like to buy the rest?

Intrigued, he started digging deeper into the local farming community, buying directly from the guy who originally approached him and eventually convincing another chef friend of his to come with him to visit the farmer’s property in Topanga Canyon. It didn’t take long for them to discover the Santa Monica Farmers Market, which started in 1981 and is one of the oldest in the state.

“Joe [ of Joe’s Restaurant in Venice] is a classically trained chef, so his idea was that he can take crappy vegetables and make them great,” Mead says. “For me, I can take great vegetables and keep them great because maybe I’m not as great a chef as he is, but at least I have a good product.”

Mead carried his love of the market with him when he moved to Orange County in the ‘90s and opened his first restaurant, Sage in Newport Beach, though he admits his customers were not interested in paying more for farm-fresh vegetables yet. Instead, whenever he needed inspiration, he’d head up to Santa Monica and walk the aisles, turning whatever he found that day into a dinner special at Sage.

“I started doing these tasting menus on Wednesday nights and I’d get four or five people ordering it,” he admits. “But part of it for me was having fun. You can get the sense of the seasons and experiment.”

When he opened Sage on the Coast in the mid-2000s, he started bringing other members of his team up with him to help, including line cooks, sous chefs and bartenders. For his weekly market trips for Farmhouse, Mead is accompanied by a crew of young, eager chefs, along with his mixologist, who seeks out fruits and herbs for cocktails to match the restaurant’s French farmhouse menu.

“To learn to cook the way I cook, you have to come here,” he says, nearing the end of his market mission, grabbing haricots verts, snapping them in his hand before popping them in his mouth.

Farmhouse is the culmination of Mead’s long-standing relationship with the vendors at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, who have become in many ways like family.

Last month, he hosted a fundraising farm-to-table dinner for Weiser Family Farms in Tehachapi, where Alex Weiser and other members of this tight-knit local food community — from Blinking Owl Distillery to Electric City Butcher — convened on Farmhouse’s outdoor dining room, which overlooks the upscale rustic garden store. Proceeds went to buy new farming equipment for the boutique family farm so it can continue to compete with big industrial growers.

“This market is the best market because the farmers all gear their products towards restaurants,” Mead says, closing the door on the restaurant’s white van, which was stocked to the brim with future Farmhouse meals. “Now, as we get busier, I just want to share it with these guys.”

Farmhouse at Roger’s Gardens is at 2301 San Joaquin Hills Road, Corona del Mar. More information: 949-640-1415 or farmhouserg.com

SARAH BENNETT is a freelance journalist covering food, drink, music, culture and more. She is the former food editor at L.A. Weekly and a founding editor of Beer Paper L.A. Follow her on Twitter @thesarahbennett.