Home grown: the restaurants - and veggie Pret - with tiny hydroponic gardens in their kitchens 

Evogro
Evogro allows chefs to grow produce in their kitchens Credit: Julian Simmonds

It's no longer enough for a restaurant to simply serve good food. As we become increasingly concerned with provenance, sustainability and welfare, chefs are responding accordingly. Farm-to-fork, root-to-stem and nose-to-tail are all methods of addressing those needs; menus now frequently play up how their food has been "sourced" rather than acquired. 

In an ideal world, all chefs would have a nearby orchard and vegetable patch, from which to pluck the juiciest apples and freshest asparagus, as the likes of Raymond Blanc or Dan Barber do, keeping food as local and seasonal as possible; for most, it's just not feasible. There is, however, one company offering urban farming to a growing clientele, and no more than a little spare restaurant space is required. 

Evogro was founded in 2011 by Jason Hirst, who drew on his background in tech and software, as well as his Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall inspired passion for gardening, to create a device enabling chefs to grow their own produce. Inspired by Thanet Earth, a greenhouse megacomplex in Kent, and a report he read on NASA's research into using LED lighting to grow plants in space, Hirst set about developing his product. 

Today, several high-end restaurants, such as Fera at Claridge'sAlimentum in Cambridge, catering colleges, and even a Veggie Pret, have signed up to the Evogro, which looks just like a fridge but is a rather more complex and fascinating machine.

In essence, it enables chefs to double up as horticulturalists, though with the size limit (you can't grow an apple tree in a fridge-sized machine), most focus on micro herbs or small edible leaves and flowers. "It provides our on-site kitchen team with instant access to fresh and flavoursome basil for some of our freshly prepared food, and customers have been really interested to see the system and learn about in-shop growing," says Clare Clough, food and coffee director at Pret A Manger. 

The Evogro is a hydroponic system, meaning plants are cultivated without soil, and fed by liquid nutrients. They grow in recycled coconut husks, with vermiculites helping drainage. Low-energy LED lighting provides the right mixture of blue and red light for growth. Each shelf within the machine is independent, essentially providing a separate climate, so varying crops can grow concurrently, and the plants sit in a reservoir for direct-to-root irrigation. 

Everything is connected to the internet, with all data recorded, ensuring the correct amounts and ratios of nutrients, water or light are optimum. The temperature, a balmy 22 to 25C, ensures "the plants grow like a perfect June day every single day," according to Hirst. 

Pret
Basil growing at Veggie Pret in Exmouth Market

Why are chefs turning towards the Evogro? "Consistency and freshness," Hirst believes, are paramount. Then there are environmental factors. "Small leaves are just about the most perishable and consequently wasted food commodity there is. In the home, about 40 per cent of salad is thrown away." In theory, an Evogro could house root veg like carrots and potatoes, but these require more space, grow slowly, and have a longer shelf life. 

Another benefit of the Evogro is improving the quality at a chef's disposal. "Aromatic herbs in particular in this country are really problematic. We grow a lot of basil, but what you get in the supermarket doesn't taste like what you get in Italy. In a UK greenhouse, you lose a lot of the light, so you end up with quite stretched, thin leaves. It's feeble. In our system, we can change the lighting so it's just like being on a Tuscan hillside." 

Aqua Kyoto, a trendy, modern, fifth-floor restaurant in central London, is the first Japanese restaurant to introduce the system. Group executive chef Paul Greening, originally from New Zealand and with a background in microbiology, beams about the reduction in carbon footprint and wastage the plant-growing device has encouraged. 

But it's the ability to cultivate rare Japanese herbs and plants (and Greening is ambitious, experimenting with leaves that stretch the boundaries of what the Evogro can fit), that made him fall in love with the project. All Greening needs is a seed, and within weeks (just three days for some plants) he can have the piquant, rocket-like red mizuna or the edible Chrysanthemum shungiku, which are expensive to import.

Evogro
The stages of production at Aqua Kyoto Credit: Julian Simmonds

"We're producing a large amount for low energy levels," Greening explains. "Every single Asian restaurant will buy internationally and it'll be shipped over, there's a massive carbon footprint." 

Not everything Greening uses is grown in Aqua Kyoto's small kitchen, but the four Evogro systems produce enough for the restaurant to have recently launched a menu peppered by produce about as homegrown as it gets.

For £30, customers are treated to a starter, main, dessert and cocktail all featuring herbs, leaves and flowers grown 20 metres away; the bounty makes appearances on the regular à la carte, too.

The flavours are fresh and zingy: a wasabina leaf is spicier than a spoonful of English mustard. Highlights include a salmon and avocado sushi starter elevated by the peppery mizuna; a teriyaki salmon with braised shungiku, not unlike wild garlic in appearance; and a baby chicken with a scattering of fresh Japanese herbs. 

As a chef with a scientific background, Greening takes great interest in his new mini-farm, and believes the final product is better than anything you can import, or indeed grow naturally, in the UK. "There are some farms here that do grow Japanese produce," says Greening, "but it is usually only for two months a year." 

Then there's the matter of weather and soil - a plant grown in one country won't taste like one grown in another. By manipulating the nutrients, lights and irrigation, "we can recreate the same environment you'd have in Kyoto," says Greening. "It's amazing". 

Additional benefits include year-round productivity and maximum freshness (Greening's staff harvest every day, and only take part of the plant, allowing it to regrow), which in turn ensures the plant remains as nutritionally potent as possible. 

Meal at aqua kyoto
Salmon teriyaki with homegrown shungiku  Credit: Julian Simmonds

Does Hirst work this closely with all his clients? "No, not at all, but they don't all have as many ideas." There's also the fact that, rather than growing parsley and basil, Greening is experimenting with obscure, often rare, ingredients. "He's got a unique set of requirements," says Hirst, which requires a great deal of tampering with the Evogro's configurations. 

One day, Hirst hopes the Evogro could play a role in revitalising long-lost species. "There's a universe of plant varieties that don't get grown regularly," Hirst explains. "There are 1,200 known varieties of lettuce, yet around five might be sold in a supermarket. We want to turn that model on its head, giving each customer exactly what suits them." 

Eventually, the Evogro may even populate our homes, sitting alongside the fridge and replacing those sad supermarket basil plants that rarely last a month. For now, the pricey devices (around £5,000), are solely in use at restaurants, some staff canteens, and catering colleges. 

It's clear that an increasing number of chefs are attracted by the ability to control exactly what they put in their dishes. Japanese cuisine, with its focus on showcasing produce in its freshest form, seems the right fit. "If we cut something and leave it for a week, the flavour will be completely different. But you're getting something at its optimum," says Greening. "It's like having freshly caught fish sashimi, which is essential. This is the sashimi of vegetables." 

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