The Farm returns for the fall season
Monday, September 7th, 2009“Welcome Back!”
“Great to see you again.”
…Both phrases that will be echoed as here at The Farm over the next couple of days as we welcome back our fellow coworkers and other businesses, but most importantly we welcome you back to The Farm at South Mountain!
We’re ready to start the season with a new energy and a reenergized purpose. Like everyone else, the strain of the economy has been felt here on the Farm too. It’s been increasingly tough to compete with the myriad of restaurants offering a growing number of deals to drive traffic through their doors.
Just how does a restaurant like Quiessence justify paying a premium for organic, range grazed, local beef from a small family when the price on commodity beef from the big meatpackers can be so much more affordable?
Simple.
At Quiessence, we’ll never compromise our cuisine. We will never put profit ahead of our principles; Sourcing the best ingredients from a fair, sustainable, local food system combined with handcrafting our cuisine in house from these ingredients.
Last week, Time Magazine’s (August 31st, 2009) Cover Story was “The Real Cost of Cheap Food.” The article began, “He’s raised on grass and hay and lives happily on a pasture by the ocean. His Meat is free of antibiotics, but can we afford to eat it? We can’t afford not to.”
Food Inc., the movie released this summer, drove home the idea that there are major problems in the American food system that we see first hand on the evening news with food recalls, e coli contamination, etc. I encourage you all to take note of these problems and to consider where/how you choose to spend your food and dining dollars.
I promise you this; at Quiessence we will continue to work hard to serve you the best meal possible. We will continue to make all of our pasta in house, all of our salumi in house, bake bread out of our hearth oven, custom butcher all our meat in house, fly-in (overnight) safe sustainable seafood, and purchase the best seasonal, local, and organic produce we can get our hands on. While this is not the “cheap” route or an “economically savy” business decision it is the choice we make for quality. We do this for us, we do this for you, and we do this for our community.
Thank you for supporting us for another season. We look forward to seeing you down at The Farm and Quiessence soon!
Salut!
Chef Greg
(Serves 4 as appetizer)Squash blossoms are highly perishable, keeping two days at most in the fridge. For best results, cook them the day you buy them. They’re great as an appetizer with creamy store bought salad dressing like Ranch, homemade aioli or simple tomato sauce.
We may all get our fifteen minutes of fame, but few of us come from a family so influential that a major road has our surname on it. But that’s the scenario for Ron Power Jr. and his wife Trescia — who own Power Ranches in San Simon, AZ and think nothing of tooling down that major East Valley artery known as Power Road. Ron is a descendent of James Oliver Power, who began farming a 2,000-acre spread near Queen Creek in 1917. After World War II, the family began running cattle and later moved their farming and ranching operation to a remote spot in southeastern Arizona, where their cattle could graze on pristine pastures. These days, Ron and Trescia supply us with the 100% organic Limousin beef we offer at Quiessence, their commitment to quality evident in every juicy, ultra-flavorful bite. Check out their website (
