Marco Shaw, Chef/Owner, Fife Restaurant (left); Shari Sirkin, Co-owner, Dancing Roots Farm (right)

BACK OF THE HOUSE
Fife's Very Short Supply Chain
By Ivy Manning
Photos by Gregor Torrence
For Spring 2008

On a rainy day around noon, Shari Sirkin’s little red pickup truck pulls into the parking lot at Fife restaurant. The pixie-like farmer jumps onto the bed of the truck and lugs boxes of her just-picked, grown-to-order produce into the restaurant’s small kitchen.

Chef/owner Marco Shaw is there to greet her, eagerly digging through boxes like a kid at Christmas. Within seconds, he’s found a gaggle of pearly white turnips and begins lopping their greens off with a quick whack of his knife. The greens go tumbling into a bus tub. They’ll be braised with house-made pancetta later that night.

Sirkin opens a box, and picks up a head of burgundy-flecked castelfranco (an heirloom chicory). “Aren’t they amazing?” she says proudly. “They’re less bitter than last week’s, because of the cold.” The delivery is small — just four or five boxes of late-season squash, hearty greens, and root vegetables. But Shaw is patient. As the weather warms, he knows he will be receiving dozens more vegetables, produce he and Sirkin chose from seed catalogs during their annual January planting planning session.

As Chef Shaw sits down with sous chef Todd Matthews to write the daily menu, he laughingly says, “This is when you find out if you can really cook, in mid-winter to early spring when we’re down to two local purveyors. That’s when the mantra of local-seasonal changes. You won’t find me serving asparagus in February, but I could write a book on using kohlrabi, and Shari’s are the best. I think diners here understand what we’re doing and embrace it — they know we’re committed.”

Dancing Roots Farm, located in Troutdale, Oregon, provides produce for both Portland-area restaurants and individual households through their CSA program.

Fife Restaurant is located at 4440 NE Fremont, Portland, Oregon. Reservations are accepted: 971-222-3433.