Move Over Farm To Table: Rooftop-to-table Is The Latest Word In Eating Local
Sourced from the Toronto Star
Walking through the garden, I spot wild stinging nettle leaves, delicate yarrow tendrils and the tiny green shoots of what will become the season’s first garlic stretching out from the rich soil. The first signs of spring are popping up throughout southern Ontario, but what makes this bucolic scene different is that we’re two storeys up, on the roof of the brewery/restaurant Avling at the decidedly un-farm-like intersection of Queen and Pape in Leslieville.
The urban garden, which has been growing since Avling opened in 2019, supplies a varied abundance of produce, from carrots, green beans and tomatoes to snow peas, zucchini and beets, and all kinds of herbs. Some of this bounty makes it into the brewery’s storefront farmers’ market, started last summer and available seasonally, but most is used to keep the kitchen in the freshest ingredients possible. They even grow hops, though not nearly enough to provide for the brewery year-round.
Avling’s garden is part of the new rooftop-to-table movement taking root in innovative restaurants around the world, from Stedsans ØsterGRO in Copenhagen to Acre in Melbourne. Max Meighen, Avling’s owner, cites New York-based Brooklyn Grange, an 11-year-old company specializing in rooftop farming as an inspiration. That company is responsible for the world’s largest rooftop soil farms, covering more than 5.5 acres in and around New York and yielding in excess of 100,000 pounds of organically grown produce each year.
The Europeans are also embracing this atypically situated farmland. Last summer, French urban agricultural developer Agripolis opened Europe’s largest urban rooftop farm, in Paris. Measuring nearly 3.5 acres, the site grows more than 30 different plant species. The world’s largest urban rooftop farm, spanning a whopping 40 acres, the whole thing covered by greenhouse glass, belongs to Lufa Farms in Montreal.
