Pulse Magazine
Spring 2017
Reuse. Reread. Recycle
Photo Courtesy of Mack Caldwell
By Mackenzie Caldwell
There’s a farm in the middle of Greenwich Village, but you’d never see it from the street.
Like all the best things in New York, the farm is hidden away from the predatory tourist, who is often starved by banality and armed with a camera.
Rosemary’s is an unconventionally traditional farm to table Italian restaurant with a roof full of herbs and vegetables just a staircase away from dining patrons.
It was the creation of Carlos Suerez, owner of the acclaimed West Village restaurant BOBO, and Chef Wade Moises, a tested Eataly veteran.
Like BOBO, Rosemary’s presents itself in organic radiance and rustic lockstep. With a rooftop garden, farm-to-table credo and Community Supported Agriculture grocery program, it’s a space that cries out, “natural!” in the center of a city where greenery is often confined to windowsills and locked parks.
Photo Courtesy of Mack Caldwell
The lush scent of leaves, moist soil and the strings of lights through peeling rafters; Rosemary’s is an old barn, a gem of isolated, organic peace hard to spot but always refreshing like most of the New York City’s green architecture which occasionally peeks out in the smoke-spitting metropolis.
Unlike other competitors like Blue Hill or Union Square Café, Rosemary’s boasts their CSA program; an innovative grocery service which allows customers to purchase produce from Suerez's farm in the Catskills.
Enzo Amenbola, a manager at Rosemary’s, pointed toward the rafters;
“The lights up here represent a starry sky and the lights of the village down in the valley.”
- Enzo Amenbola
Named after Suerez’s mother Rosemary, the West Village Italian restaurant takes inspiration from her rural Tuscany home. It is split into two components; the kitchen and dining room, all open and all in view. The kitchen is covered in tile but not overbearingly so. During dinner, cold meats and appetizers are prepared as patrons sip on wine at tall flat tables.
At breakfast there is no need to visit the kitchen. The restaurant isn’t flooded in the morning. You are seated in the dining room; an open and bright space, with each table a good distance from the next. Only a few customers; enough commotion to feel alive, but the volume is low enough to read a book or fall in love with the person you came with.
In large cities, green spaces are hard to come by. However, in 2010, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg enacted the NYC Green Infrastructure Plan to help curb the flow of sewage contaminating New York City waterways.
Green infrastructure takes a vast array of shapes and forms such as walls, farms, gardens, parks and, of course, rooftop farms. Two prominent examples are the living walls of Clifton Place Memorial Garden in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and the Lowline, an old train terminal converted into the world’s first underground park.
Photo Courtesy of Mack Caldwell
Farm-to-table made its chic and storm-like debut in cities across the country as consumers began to seek out freshly killed chickens and barn-like restaurants to replace that squishy bagged meat usually served, but rarely seen. Operations like The Brooklyn Grange, a close partner with Rosemary’s, have embarked on a mission to make green roofing accessible.
“We have been on many roofs that are definitely strong enough to hold a green roof. If we can come up with a model that can be replicated, then people in other cities around the country—even around the world—can hopefully follow suit,” said Ben Flanner, head farmer and co-founder of The Brooklyn Grange.
There won’t be a drunken farmer fitted in stained overalls to stumble down the stairs and liven your dinner at Rosemary’s by sprinkling oregano on your artisanal formaggi with his soil-covered hands. However, as a hungry patron, you can be assured that a basketful of rooftop-birthed produce gracefully descends from the garden routinely, providing the kitchen with fresh vegetables. It’s quite assuring that the garden is functional—and not simply in a bourgeois-accent-to-help-you-feel-appropriate-drinking-chardonnay-in-a-pork-pie-hat kind of way.
Rosemary’s doesn’t just provide you with a traditional Italian farm-to-table dining experience, but they provide bags of fresh produce and poultry to take home to your luxury Village apartment, slobbering greyhound and Columbia Law Degree. They also, thanks to their rooftop farm, are helping prevent raw sewage from flowing through Brooklyn.
Photo Courtesy of Mack Caldwell
Gallery
All Photos Courtesy of Mack Caldwell