Chez Albert is a French restaurant in Amherst where it is nearly impossible to get a table on the weekend. The atmosphere is classic bistro—very laid back, yet very accurate in the rendering of French food. On any given night, regulars can be seen in the dusky room with high ceilings and open kitchen, relaxing over traditional bistro fare. At a recent visit, morels were on the menu as well as Meyer lemons, preserved by the chef. You might as well be in Aix-en-Provence, without the plane trees. If you go to Amherst on a Friday night, this is what you get at Chez Albert.
If you go to the Amherst farmers' market the next morning, Missy Bahert, who, together with Casey Steinberg, owns Old Friends Farm, will be setting up her stand and chatting with customers. In the early part of the season, a massive array of delphiniums are on display and attracting a lot of attention. It is a time of the year when growers and customers get re-acquainted at the farmers' market. Missy's early morning crowd greets her and inquires about the mixed greens, arugula and oak-grown shitake mushrooms. Sometimes chefs pop by to check out the goods. Often Paul Hathaway comes across the street from Chez Albert to choose some flowers for the restaurant. Paul is owner and chef at Chez Albert.
The population of Amherst is around 38,000 if you count UMass. It encompasses the omnipresent college population and farms dotting the landscape not far from the town common. Chez Albert is roughly a quarter of a mile away from Old Friends Farm, where mixed baby greens, a baby lettuce mix and baby arugula together with other vegetables and flowers are grown in rows that are an array of color. The restaurant has a standing order for greens with Old Friends, but the farm is not mentioned on the menu.
"I just don't think it is such a big deal," says Paul. "In Boston, I think restaurants over-describe on their menus. When we talk to customers, we let them know we pride ourselves on working with culinary artisans and farmers. I don't think I need to flaunt it out there."
The buying of local greens is essential to French cuisine, according to Casey and Paul. "The key to French cooking is that it starts with good ingredients," he says. "Buying local is not a marketing thing for Chez Albert. In French restaurants, everything has to be fresh." Old Friends Farm sells to other restaurants, such as Circa, Green Street Cafe, Butternuts and Bistro Les Gras. The greens can be purchased locally at State Street Fruit Store, River Valley Market, Atkins Farms and Cornucopia.
There is a reason why baby greens are in high demand. They are finer, more flavorful and more delicate than a standard lettuce mix. Getting the combination right isn't easy. At Old Friends Farm, the planting and cutting are rotated so there will be plenty of produce to go around. Greens are seeded in succession and harvested by hand. The mixed baby greens are planted together in a separate plot from the lettuces and the arugula. They are not planted in a greenhouse. "All of the greens we produce, we plant in the field. We plant pre-frost and seed weekly. It is very labor-intensive," says Casey.
Back at Chez Albert, three dishes on the menu feature the farm's greens: the special salad, the chef's salad, and an arugula salad which is served with toasted almonds, pickled red cabbage and chevre from Goat Rising. "It is our own pickled cabbage," says Paul. "The nice thing about the mixed greens is, they have some kick." The combination of mustard greens, kale and other flavorful greens is an appealing one to chefs and diners. Recently at Chez Albert, the chef's salad consisted of spicy baby greens, haricots verts, dried cherry croutons, crispy duck confit and a shaved hard-boiled egg. The house salad was baby arugula, toasted almonds, pickled red cabbage and Goat Rising chevre. Of course it will be different when you go—but the greens will be from Old Friends.
The relationship between Old Friends Farm and Chez Albert started the year Chez Albert opened. Paul's order for greens runs from May, when the greens first come up, until November. Their close ties are an object lesson in French cooking.
