Chef Tom Douglas and his wife, Jackie Cross, bring a taste of their Prosser farm to Seattle diners
With six restaurants, private event space and catering operations, Tom Douglas and his wife, Jackie Cross, oversee a staff of hundreds that collectively feeds about 2,500 people each day. They’re powerhouse managers, planners and multi-taskers, which has gotten them far in the crazy world that is the restaurant business.
But that still didn’t prepare them for the rabbits.
New ventures for Douglas and Cross usually involve the familiar territory of contractors, inspections, new plumbing, staff training and menu development. Their latest venture, however, has proven to be a complete change of scenery with a whole new set of challenges.
After the first plantings went in at their small Prosser farm plot east of the Cascades a few years ago, neither of them had considered that the local rabbit population was going to have such a hunger for what they grew. The critters pretty much decimated the garden that first year. Undaunted, they installed a rabbit fence in advance of season two. Then came a load of compost that was a little too “hot,” so it toasted many of the plants from the roots up, providing a lesson in finesse of soil management. Finally last summer the pieces fell into place and they had the first round of good production from their latest endeavor: Prosser Farm.
The Learning Curve
Adding “farm owners” to their resume hasn’t come without a few bumps, but the learning curve is beginning to level out and this coming growing season is sure to make a bigger showing at the five restaurants in the Tom Douglas group: Dahlia Lounge, Etta’s, Palace Kitchen, Lola, and Serious Pie, plus Dahlia Bakery.
It has meant a bit of lifestyle change. Jackie Cross has been the garden guru these first few years, making twice-weekly trips to Prosser during the height of growing season, to manage the garden care and also harvest produce for transport back to Seattle. It meant giving up her zippy little car in exchange for a VW Touareg, large enough to haul produce and with imperative air conditioning to keep things cool in that eastern Washington heat.
The garden currently covers one-half acre at the top of the knoll rising from the banks of the Yakima River. Last summer it supplied the restaurants with a bounty of basil, chiles, eggplant, potatoes, green beans and tomatoes, among other crops. But that bounty goes only so far with five hungry restaurants to feed. One trip might reap a 250-pound load of tomatoes, but Lola uses that much in a day, so the scale is far from making a sizeable dip in the produce needs of all the Douglas restaurants.
So this spring the growing operation is moving a couple hundred yards to the east, where it will occupy about 3 acres. In the new digs, the garden will capitalize on crops that have proven best suited to this land and climate. No more lettuces that veritably scorch in the desert heat. Nor perhaps cucumbers, which were the picture of perfection but had an oddly bitter flavor.
But even with increased output from the larger space, Tom Douglas and Jackie Cross harbor no visions of Prosser Farms production leaving their family of restaurants. “We spend $100,000 per year just stocking our kitchens with produce,” Douglas points out. The farm will slowly increase the dent in supply, but it will be quite a while before the garden output exceeds the appetite of their ever-hungry diners.
Of Relishes, Chow-Chows and Moscato
With just a couple of exceptions, produce from the farm is equally shared among the restaurants. All the eggplant goes to Lola, since that matches the Mediterranean-influenced style of the restaurant best. And one variety of tomato they grow is a “paste” type, ideal for making the sauces for those addictive pizzas at Serious Pie. Otherwise it’s a pretty democratic distribution, showing up in items such as Prosser Farm Summer Squash Bruschetta with Bagna Cauda, which was served at Serious Pie last summer.
They’re benefitting, too, from some old fruit trees that came with the property. In the midst of the large lawn that spreads out from the backside of the house (where Jackie’s father and stepmother live) are two apricot trees that produced about 500 pounds of apricots each last summer.
This has them thinking ‘jam,’ so there may be a small line of custom confitures and jams coming down the line, likely to be sold only at the bakery given the small production. And Douglas is interested in creating some savory items as well, perhaps a few relishes and chow-chows.
The soon-to-be-vacated site of the original garden will likely be transformed into a small vineyard growing Moscato grapes. The intention is to craft a slightly sweet effervescent after-dinner wine, Moscato de Prosser, surely with the help of close friends and Prosser neighbors Kay Simon and Clay Mackey, owners of Chinook Winery.
Douglas shrugs off the notion that what they’re doing with Prosser Farm is a prime example of farm-to-table dining. “What we’re doing is not ideal in the farm-to-table context,” Tom says. “Ideally that means literally a table at the farm, right there. It may be something we pursue down the line.”
For now, members of their wine club and staff have had occasion to visit the farm, cook together and eat there. It has already proven a setting conducive for people to gather and celebrate the pleasures of eating food right at the source.
Given their learning curves (those darn rabbits!), logging many miles of transport time and hours devoted to tending the garden, I ask if there have been any regrets about tackling the new farm in addition to their already-full plates.
“Absolutely not,” Cross quickly replies. “I love being over there.” Those cross-Cascade trips give her an opportunity to visit her father, and often her sister, too, who lives in the area and works as tasting room manager at Kiona winery on nearby Red Mountain. And as the garden grows, they’ll bring on a fulltime gardener and her load will lessen a bit.
So clearly this new garden business that Tom Douglas and Jackie Cross have undertaken serves up a whole host of positives for them, from pragmatic budget considerations to the more visceral pleasure of the process. Cultivating, nurturing, sustaining. The couple has been doing so for two decades now, by way of the dining experiences we have in their restaurants.
Perhaps, then, it’s little surprise that they’re now cultivating their own garden to add a little more richness—and farm-fresh flavor—to those experiences.
Written by Cynthia Nims