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Group sets chefs and farmers up on a date

Carly Summers, right, agriculture resource educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension in Essex County, talks to a person at an event about CCE and Adirondack Harvest. (Photo provided)

LAKE PLACID — Carly Summers is playing the role of matchmaker. As the agriculture resource educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension in Essex County, she’s trying to get chefs and food/drink producers together.

Sponsored by Adirondack Harvest, a program of CCE, the Farm to Chef Meet & Greet event will be held from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday, May 1, inside the Big Slide Brewery and Public House on Cascade Road in Lake Placid. The idea is to bring together farms and chefs to get more local food in area restaurants. But it’s not just for farmers.

“I’m going to try to keep promoting it to different audiences,” Summers said. “Some people might think, ‘Oh, only farms.’ And we actually could have breweries and distilleries there. And one of the flower farms around here said, ‘Do you think I could come?’ And I said, ‘Yes! That’s a great idea.'”

Farmers and food producers have the opportunity to set up tables with displays, printed material — including product sheets with pricing — and taste tests. Most of the two-hour event will be set aside for networking and tastings, but there will also be a chef-sharing session — a panel with different restaurants that have a lot of experience with buying local food and drinks for their restaurants.

“They’re going to share about their experience and what works well for them and how they market their products with local food and how they feature farms on their menus,” Summers said. “That way, chefs that aren’t experienced with this and might feel a little overwhelmed and they don’t know where to start, they have a change to interface with a few different chefs that do this and hear their perspective of what works for them.”

Wynde Kate Reese, co-owner of Green Goddess Natural Foods in Lake Placid (Enterprise photo — Andy Flynn)

The panel will include chef Greg Sherman of Big Slide Brewery and Wynde Kate Reese, co-owner of Green Goddess Natural Foods in Lake Placid.

The small farm-direct market movement continues to grow and get stronger every year in northern New York.

“I think chefs are continuing to explore local food options,” Summers said. “I’m hoping that even more restaurants are going to see how accessible it is and how they can use the Adirondack Harvest website that is pretty new to locate new foods.”

The event is free and open to food/drink producers and chefs, not the general public. To register, visit online at https://pub.cce.cornell.edu/event_registration/main/events_landing.cfm?event=farm_to_chef_215.

For more information, call the Adirondack Harvest office at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County at 518-962-4810.

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