CELEBRATING FRESH & LOCAL
Chef Ype Von Hengst at Parker Farms in Maryland.
CELEBRATING FRESH & LOCAL
After 15 years, farm-to-table cuisine remains a stalwart at Silver Diner.
Seven days a week before 8 a.m., a box of bread gets delivered through the back door and into the busy kitchen of Silver Diner. It’s an artisanal bounty—buns, ciabattas, sourdough, wheat, rye—baked that very morning by French-born baker Didier Rosada, of Uptown Bakers in nearby Hyattsville, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. And for more than a decade now, his old-world, just-out-of-the-oven loaves have made all the difference for Chef Ype Von Hengst, as part of his ongoing commitment to providing guests with the best food possible.
“There’s nothing better than bread that’s fresh,” says Von Hengst, “and that’s true for many of the ingredients we work with.”
This ethos began in earnest 15 years ago, in 2010, when Silver Diner introduced a reinvented menu, newly focused on fresh, local, and farm-to-table. At the time, the American public was in the midst of a major shift toward healthy and homemade ingredients. Suddenly diners wanted to know not only what was in their food, but also where it came from, with more and more options for gluten-free, vegetarian, and even vegan beginning to crop up nationwide. Let’s be honest: avocado toast was likely the best-selling dish of the early aughts.
Of course, Silver Diner had always placed emphasis on healthy eating, with its very first menu, circa 1989, featuring little heart symbols to indicate dishes low in salt, cholesterol, and fat. And paying close attention to the appetites of his guests—which then and now from children to grandparents—Von Hengst was quick to pick up on their ever-evolving wants and needs. By the early aughts, with a resurgence of the 1970s farm-to-table movement reaching a new zenith, Chipotle became one of the first restaurant chains if not the first entirely—to start purchasing pork then produce from local farmers. Silver Diner was right on their heels.
The bread came first, followed by goat’s cheese from Firefly Farms in the Allegheny Mountains of Western Maryland, which remains on the menu to this day, from salads and pastas to the huevos rancheros. And over the years, many others followed, with more than two dozen local purveyors now involved in the restaurant’s dishes. Think milk from Lehigh Valley Dairy Farms, or mushrooms from Basciani Foods, or eggs from Barnyard’s Best, all from Pennsylvania. Not to mention chorizo from Logan’s Sausage Company in Virginia.
Hauling the goat’s milk at Firefly Farms.
Summer in Sardinia and Green Goddess Lobster Salad featuring Firefly Farms goat cheese.
“The beauty of a diner is that, within its four walls, you can do almost anything,” says Von Hengst, recalling multiple guest surveys completed back then. In the Great Recession, “It was a tough time in the economy, and we wanted to not only survive but thrive, especially with our younger guests. Of course, being a multi-location, morning-to-night restaurant, that’s easier said than done. But we said, let’s get to work.”
Chef Ype and his culinary crew did exactly that. They reached out to local and regional farmers, bakers, and makers. They found Creekstone Farms online, with its herds of certified-Black Angus beef, and also teamed up with an area farmers market consultant for the ‘in’ on folks even closer to home. For a period of time, they even hosted a weekend farmers market outside of multiple Silver Diner locations.
One of the biggest hurdles was getting big-name distributors like Sysco on board. At the time, those wholesalers had few organic options, let alone local ones.
“Basically, you took whatever items they had on their shelves, rather than asking for what you wanted, so I had to change the philosophy,” says Von Hengst, who started inquiring with his reps about sourcing options, seeking more healthy, seasonal, and sustainable ingredients, from whole grains, like quinoa and farro, to nitrate-free bacon and Beyond Meat. “And actually, it worked well. Because, at one point, I got a call from one of the presidents at Sysco, who said, ‘You know, you’re really onto something. This is not here today, gone tomorrow, and we’re starting to get more calls about this, so we have to change our ways.’ And ultimately, it changed everything.”
There were learning curves in the kitchen, too. Local ingredients don’t have to travel the same distances as food grown in California, Mexico, or farther afield, which makes them more nutritious and flavorful. But typically grown on smaller scales, and without the preservatives and processing of more mass-made products, these items often also arrive in more limited batches and have a shorter shelf life.
“When you buy and eat local food, there’s a real ripple effect, and that’s really gratifying, having an impact on the community that’s all around you.”
“We had to train our staff—order less, more often—but it was worth it for the taste,” says Von Hengst. “Unfortunately, we don’t live on the West Coast, where we could buy certain produce locally year-round, but we get in as much as possible from here in the Mid-Atlantic and on the East Coast, especially in the summertime. All the watermelon, the kale, the broccoli. Just before fall, we’ll try out Chesapeake blue catfish, too.”
In the end, Silver Diner’s emphasis on farm-to-table has been a mutually beneficial relationship, with the farmers, bakers, and makers supplying the restaurants with fresh food, and the restaurants providing those purveyors with a stable source of income, ultimately supporting not only those individuals, families, and businesses, but also feeding back into the local economy.
“In the end, our purveyors have become invaluable to us, and we’ve become invaluable to them,” says Von Hengst. “When you buy and eat local food, there’s a real ripple effect, and that’s really gratifying, having an impact on the community that’s all around you.”
Firefly Farms in Accident, Maryland.
LOCAL SPOTLIGHT
Over the coming year, keep an eye on Silver Diner’s social media—find us at @silver_diner on Instagram, Facebook, and X—as we offer a special behind-the-scenes spotlight on our local purveyors. Just recently, we featured the cheesemakers behind Firefly Farms, who work with Amish farmers within 40 miles of Accident, Maryland, to create some of the best curds in the country. Best of all, it includes viral-worthy videos of goats (and one especially adorable kitten).