As we near a future that accepts sustainable living, environmental awareness, and local sourcing of ingredients, products, and services, we must look at our own communities to see if they are riding this wave or trying to turn the tide in favor of more traditional practices.
One of the greatest examples of seeing these progressively popular ideals practiced is within local businesses, especially local restaurants and foodservice establishments that define and uphold the cuisine landscape of a community.
In Moscow, there are several locally-owned and operated restaurants, cafes, and distributors that make it a priority to serve their customers and patrons in the most beneficial ways possible, whether it be through the way they acquire their ingredients for their dishes, their cooking and food preparation techniques, the flow and design of the interior and exterior of their business or the small ways they encourage their patrons to participate in a more sustainable dining experience as well.
One World Cafe is a locally-owned and operated cafe that is often visited by the caffeine-driven college student, busy nine-to-fiver or cultural coffee buff. They have made a name for themselves in Moscow, credited to their wide selections of coffee, beer, wine, pastries, snacks, local art, and musical performances.
Brandy Sullivan, the part-time owner of the cafe since 2005, feels strongly about making sure that One World functions sustainably and has implemented several ways to achieve this goal throughout the business for ingredients and other products.
“We try to get as much as we can locally, which means food/ingredients come from smaller, more environmentally sustainable practices versus from larger, higher impact sources,” Sullivan stated in an email. “We purchase our produce from local small farmers seasonally when available. Our honey comes from Woodland Apiary (a Moscow family-owned business), our sandwich meat is butchered and smoked by Hog Heaven here in Moscow, we always have a couple of locally brewed beers on tap, and our coffee is roasted by a family-owned business just outside of Troy (Landgrove coffee). Landgrove features Fair Trade, Organic coffee and has a direct trade relationship with the coffee farmers of Yepocapa, Guatemala.”
The close quarters and collaboration of Moscow businesses and restaurants allow for easier local sourcing of products.
“The small businesses here in Moscow support each other, and we have personal relationships, usually texting orders and requests,” Sullivan stated.
An interesting strategy of incorporating sustainability with a fun twist into a menu can be creating seasonal dishes and beverages that include ingredients easily found and produced at a certain time of year.
One World takes into account the ideas of its owners, manager, kitchen staff, baristas, and customers to create specialty seasonal dishes each year, according to Sullivan.
The environment these dishes are prepared in and the way they are presented also offers opportunities for sustainability and environmental awareness.
“We use reusable dishes and silverware, provide “Hay straws” rather than plastic, have replaced kitchen equipment with more energy and water-efficient fixtures (and) we give incentives for purchasing thermoses (first drink is free with purchase),” Sullivan stated.
As a business, One World also participates in the Avista My Clean Energy program to offset carbon emissions and has recently joined the Climate Action Working Group to work towards solutions to mitigate climate change, according to Sullivan.
At this time, One World does not have an established composting or recycling system in place due to the lack of an official commercial facility, although they have been in contact with Latah Sanitation and the City of Moscow to discuss this issue.
“From time to time we collect coffee grounds for various individuals and groups that request them for gardening/composting purposes,” Sullivan stated.
All in all, One World’s success comes from the support of the cuisine community and people of Moscow. Working with local businesses allows them to sustain and grow their own business as well.
“UI Design Build class worked with us to design and create the recently expanded outdoor seating areas,” Sullivan stated. “BookPeople of Moscow and Ampersand join with us for group purchasing opportunities, and we are part of a group of several businesses that help each other out, whether it’s loaning items on backorder (thank you Breakfast Club and Maialena!), letting us use their ice machine when ours was broken (thank you Nectar!), or sharing ideas and expertise (thank you Black Cypress!).”
In the future, One World is looking to promote their location in the Janssen Engineering Building on UI’s campus, revitalize live music and events pending the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and expand their food menu and potential pub-themed offerings.
From the cafe, abundant with espresso and treats galore, we can explore the seemingly never-ending bar and restaurant scene that Moscow has to offer.
Nectar, a staple of downtown Moscow for over 10 years, is the pinnacle of class in the wine-and-dine experience. Serving both a broad list of alcoholic beverages as well as a classic menu, Nectar has gained the trust of the Moscow community as a reliable go-to for a night on the town. Nectar has built their reputation on their sustainable bar and restaurant practices as much as their class, perpetuated by manager Amanda Barlow since October of 2019.
Beyond her responsibilities of customer service and employee knowledge about the menu items Nectar provides, Barlow also has a hand in managing Nectar’s business practices.
In terms of recycling and using ingredients most effectively, Nectar has several ways of getting the most out of their products.
“Of course, we recycle, we don’t have a compost set up, but something cool about working in Nectar is that we all get shift meals at the end of the night for free as part of our compensation,” Barlow said. “A lot of times, any food that would go bad … they have the cooks cook them for us for dinner, and then we just try to avoid food waste by using with the same sort of ingredients available for business.”
One popular example of utilizing the same ingredients in different dishes is using steelhead trout, which can be found in Nectar’s chowder, appetizers, entrees, and seared fish selections.
“We try to find ways that we can incorporate sort of the leftover pieces of different meats or different other ingredients. into multiple dishes that way we’re not wasting,” Barlow said.
Nectar, much like One World Cafe, makes a point to source a majority of their ingredients and products locally.
“For the produce, especially during the warm months, (we are) getting most of our produce from the farmers market or from local farmers,” Barlow said. “There’s a lot of other restaurants in town that are also using local purveyors, which is amazing. We get our beef from the … Moscow Co-Op, so that’s great, and we buy various different meats from different distributors, but we do try to stay local. We buy a lot of meat from Smith River Farms, and Anderson ranch which are both local within Idaho, and (as for) the fish, we try to make sure that we get wild-caught fish, never frozen.”
Nectar’s staffer, Dakota Goodman, also contributes to local sourcing through foraging for mushrooms in Moscow to contribute to the restaurant’s ingredients.
Nectar’s forward-thinking practices for food sourcing doesn’t end with the food-based menu items. They also emphasize sustainability with sourcing and preparing their well-known alcoholic selections and beverages, starting with things as simple as not using plastic bottles for their selections.
“We do a lot of local wine, and sometimes ordering from the winery itself is a little bit more sustainable than ordering through a distribution company … one of our favorites is called is Colter’s Creek right down the street,” Barlow said. “Also, there’s a company from Owen Kotler that we order from, a distribution company out of Seattle, and they focus on organic wines and so we like to order from them as well.”
For their cocktails, Nectar buys liquor from local distributors and stores and obtains fresh ingredients from the Co-Op or the local farmer’s market chosen by their bartenders.
Much like One World and other downtown Moscow restaurants, Nectar makes a point to incorporate seasonal dishes into their menu throughout the year, especially through collaborating with other local providers.
The menu changes to highlight ingredients such as cherries, tomatoes, apples, and other fresh ingredients and produce that are only available locally during certain harvest seasons.
Looking ahead, Nectar feels satisfied with their place in the Moscow community.
“As far as growth, I think we’re pretty happy where we’re at, the owners are also the owners of the Monarch Hotel and growth is sort of focused on the motel at this moment, but we’re just happy to be part of the Moscow community,” Barlow said. “We like our size and we don’t really want to grow too much more. I think that we are a staple in the Moscow community.”
It is not only the restaurateurs that shape the way a business or food service establishment is successful- often, suppliers and distributors play just as much of a part into defining a restaurant’s reputation or aiding in making the quintessential, well-known dishes and products of a business successful.
Irish Spike’s Unique Hot Sauces are produced in the Pacific Northwest, right in Moscow, with the highest-quality ingredients possible. Restaurants, bars and other establishments have taken it upon themselves to use and promote Spike’s hot sauce as a selection, establishing it as a legitimate condiment in the Moscow resident’s view.
Christopher “Spike” Connelly is well-versed in the restaurant industry, having transitioned from working as a chef in local Moscow restaurant Birch and Barley to becoming the executive saucier of Irish Spike’s Unique Hot Sauces and a key player in the making of Moscow’s signature Vandal Pepper Sauces.
As a saucier, Connelly has several responsibilities when it comes to how his sauces are produced and distributed.
“Creating the sauces and making sure that they are at the top quality, that’s number one, making sure that everything is that process is correct is the most important thing,” Connelly said. “They’re (restaurant staffers) bottling pepper sauce right now and I just was going in and checking things out and making sure that everything is exactly as it’s supposed to be.”
Quality checks for the sauce include monitoring the temperature of the ingredients throughout the bottling process, inverting the bottle after it is capped to make sure that the sauce is sterilized, and checking for correct acidity and pH of the sauce, among other procedures.
“We have the exact right amounts- it’s so different than it was as a chef, when something is off, you can make an adjustment to it. You can’t do that in this business. Everything is we do is FDA approved and we have to make sure that we are in line with everything,” Connelly said.
Connelly also has the most autonomy on the more creative side of producing the sauces.
“I always come up with the concept of a sauce, and this is where sustainability really comes into play. The concept of a sauce is always grander than the reality is going to let allow it to be,” Connelly said. “For example, I would love to be able to use fresh herbs more often than I do. But fresh herbs are going to take a lot longer to be able to use, we can only do them at certain times of the year, or else we have to get them from outside the area. There are so many more things that change that.”
To remedy this, Connelly takes a two-pronged approach with his sauces, producing sauces that can be available year-round and producing seasonal sauces that have more room for nuance in the ingredients. However, this can result in challenges.
“Peppers in the Northwest don’t grow regularly in a way that we can just have the same pepper all year round. If I want, say, locally-sourced Serranos, they’re only going to grow certain times a year. I could get them dried but that’s not a fresh pepper,” Connelly said. “If I get it any other time of the year in winter, it’s going to be from outside the area, and then the quality will change. You don’t want different quality, you want the same quality year-round.”
Connelly attempts to make his locally-sourced sauces as beneficial for the community as possible when he is able to produce them, focusing specifically on “benefit sauces” that are associated with a charitable cause, in this case, donating $5.00 with every bottle purchased to Fare Idaho, an organization that represents independent farms and restaurants in Idaho.
“We actually were able to source garbanzos in it, and we sourced that from the KW farmers Co- Op. We got our Serranos from Pressing Arrow Farm,” Connelly said.
Lemons and honey used in the sauce were sourced from the Co-Op and Woodland Honey as well.
“It was a great sauce, and those kinds of sauces are something that I want to be able to lean on. I think of it in terms of, we have our kind of ‘rom-com’ sauces … to fulfill the need to see a movie, and then we’ve got our Oscar-winners, and those are all our short-run sauces where I spent all the extra time getting the ingredients locally,” Connelly said.
Another important aspect of Connelly’s products is his packaging and design. Although he himself creates the designs for the bottle labels, Connelly has sourced creative help internationally for his product labels and promotion.
“I contract with artists all over, and I take it on as my responsibility. I’ve got this kind of dream of walking into a grocery store, and instead of seeing the labels that you see as just labels … trying to grab your attention, it’s more like walking into a gallery where there’s actual art there that you can view,” Connelly said.
He also makes a point to credit artists on the label of the bottle, providing contact information as a form of promotion and support.
When distributing the sauces locally and throughout the Pacific Northwest, Connelly prioritizes environmentally-aware transport whenever possible, whether it be walking products to participating businesses on foot, shipping in bulk to reduce the amount of commutes, or using flat-rate shipping to farther locations through U.S.P.S and U.S Foods.
As for the locations and businesses that Connelly chooses to distribute to, it often comes down to personal connection.
“Being in the restaurant business for so many years, I honestly just know a lot of those people. I also have an affinity for just kitchens in general, so I’ve gotten to know a lot of people over the years,” Connelly said. “Honestly, as long as it’s one of those things where as long as I’m working hard to do it on my on my side, at least I know I’m contributing something of that to their business. I know at least that (sustainability) is happening on my end, and if I’m adding to their business, I’m bringing them more in that direction. So that’s a plus seven.”
Looking to the future, Connelly hopes to secure his own bottling facility outside of the Breakfast Club and wishes to expand connections and partnerships with other local businesses.
Cafes, restaurants and local distributors have made active efforts to achieve a more sustainable, future-thinking establishment for their patrons and valued customers. As locally-owned and operated businesses, it is important to set an admirable example as to what is best for all of us, for everyone who loves food- those who distribute it, prepare it, serve it, and best of all, see it on their plate.