Championing the farmer is the mantra for many, if not most, new kitchens these days. But the team at Peasants Feast — which occupies that glassy greenhouse in the heart of Solvang — is activating that mentality like few others: by volunteering on farms as part of their restaurant training, much like what Chef Michael Cherney experienced while working in the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) program.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into one carrot,” explains Cherney, who opened the restaurant with his wife, Sarah Cherney, on April 1. “If you drop it on the floor, you should feel it.”
That’s quite the opposite of what the chef witnessed while working for three years at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Las Vegas, the more casual, open-kitchen sister to one of the best restaurants in the country. Overall, it was a formative and relatively lucrative tenure, funding backpacking trips around the world on which Cherney connected with new cuisines and cultures. But there’s tremendous waste at that level of fine dining — just one piece of lettuce pulled from an entire head, or a slender filet pulled from an entire fish, or fresh sorrel leaves flown in three times a day from Los Angeles.