Locally Sourced | A Restaurant Totally Unique to Its Locale
Your Home & Lifestyle Magazine
Most restaurants start with a concept. Woodberry Kitchen started with a question: What is the best way to feed ourselves?
Born out of a desire for connection—to the ingredients he works with, to the place he’s spent most of his life, to the community he interacts with—James Beard Award–winning Chef Spike Gjerde started developing the plans for his Baltimore, Maryland restaurant just before the slow-food movement entered broader cultural awareness. By the time he opened Woodberry Kitchen in October 2007, farm-to-table cuisine was gaining popularity, but still lacked the circularity of Woodberry’s local relationships.
“The piece that farm-to-table leaves out is table-to-farm,” says Gjerde. Knowing the economic struggles that small farms tend to face, particularly those that engage with sustainable growing practices, “a big priority for us was to return as much value to the growers as we possibly could.” This ethos manifests prominently in the menu. For example, Gjerde foregoes citrus and finds acidity in locally sourced verjuice and vinegar, and opts for local seed oils, like canola or sunflower, over olive oil.
A discerning eye would also recognize hints of this guiding principle in the physical space the restaurant inhabits—from its 200-year-old building, to the millwork designed by neighbors, to the artisan-crafted light fixtures. Once he committed to local sourcing, Gjerde quickly realized that he couldn’t limit this perspective to the food alone.
“Woodberry is, at its roots, a community-based restaurant; and specifically, it’s based in a community of people that care about food,” he says. “Those are the people that grow the food, or are makers in various areas, and, crucially, it’s also a lot of people that care about where their food comes from, our diners.”
When guests come to Woodberry Kitchen, Gjerde wants them to feel like they’re stepping into a place that is both removed from time and has always been there. Exposed brick—weathered from three years when the building was missing a roof—serves as the backdrop. Below, oak flooring covers the tavern, while a white plaster floor connects the indoor and outdoor gathering spaces. He kept the base materials fairly simple, working with local woodworkers, glassworkers, and blacksmiths to build the bar and install custom steel-and-glass doors that close off the terrace on colder days.
As he began layering furniture and decor, Gjerde found ways to reuse materials he’d happened upon. “A lot of the tabletops here in the tavern were actually lumber that was taken out of the previous version of Woodberry and repurposed as tabletops by a local shop,” he says. Similarly, pink marble salvaged from another restaurant project now sits atop the bar and a server station. All of the area rugs came from a vendor at a nearby farmers’ market, and he purchased his bar chairs secondhand from Restaurant Nora (a token from the nation’s first certified organic restaurant that was in Washington, DC).
From the broader environment to the individual table settings, “it’s most important that it feels of a piece,” says Gjerde. “The design is meant to support the experience.” Once seated, guests can relax into that experience, lit by a small amber table lamp, locally letter-pressed menu in hand, and without a single screen visible from any seat in the space—a personal corner to relax, eat, and experience the fruits of a community. Perhaps here, he’s found the answer to his question: The best way to feed ourselves is with each other.
YHL/ Written by Alissa Schulman
Photography by Woodberry Kitchen, Julie Hove Andersen.