“The Ecology Center nestled in the serene landscape of San Juan Capistrano, California continues its renowned Community Table dinner series for the summer 2024 season, taking place every Friday, now through August. Guests are invited to indulge in an unforgettable dining experience under the stars where the dialogue between farm, chef and community comes alive on a plate. Each dinner showcases the vibrant seasonal produce from the center’s sustainable farm, transforming it into memorable conversations. Inspired by the season's bounty, each chef composes an eco-conscious menu that harmonizes with the vibrant palette of fruits, vegetables, herbs and berries grown and cultivated on the farm.”
“With an intimate setting for 80 guests per dinner, these gatherings promise an authentic farm-to-table experience. The evening unfolds with a convivial happy hour in the picturesque courtyard, followed by an enlightening farm tour where guests can pluck seasonal produce straight from the vine. Culminating in a sumptuous multicourse meal, meticulously crafted by the region's culinary luminaries, each dish promises to be a testament to its unique culinary vision, ensuring an unforgettable dining experience for all.”
“Tickets for each dinner are priced at $160-$175 per person, offering a fixed course, family-style menu that captures the essence of the season. Dinners commence at 6 p.m. and conclude at 10 p.m. To reserve a seat at the table and explore the lineup of participating chefs, please visit, TheEcologyCenter.org/Community-Table.”
The Ecology Centers Director of Impact & Partnerships, Jonathan Zaidman, joins us to share the bountiful harvest of the Community Table dinner series.
Hi, I'm Sherry Yard, the Los Angeles advisory board for Korea's Recollinary Arts program. When I want the absolute best in food 411, I listen to the SoCal restaurant show right here on AM830KLAA. And welcome back and thanks for joining us. It is the SoCal restaurant show, and we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10 AM until 12 noon right here on AM830KLAA. The home of Angels Baseball 2024, and you can also catch us on the AM830 Angels app. I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show, and we're enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats. I stumbled upon the Ecology Center in San Juan, Capistrano a number of years ago, and I've been really impressed by their growth over the years and their continued outreach. And of course, at the heart of it, we are a food and restaurant program. So I was really delighted when they started what is now the community table dinner series that is every Friday in the summer where guest chefs come in and cook alfresco for a group of very 80 lucky guests using a lot of the ingredients that are actually grown on the farm at the Ecology Center. And every summer, we definitely like to get the Ecology Center on the show to talk about what's coming up. Also the history of the Ecology Center and all their new programs, because fortunately they're food offerings there other than the Friday evening community table dinner series during the summer, and representing the Ecology Center for us this morning is Jonathan Ziedman, who has a very fancy title. He is the director of Impact and Partnerships. Jonathan, good morning and welcome to the show. Good morning Andy. How are you doing today? I am doing well Jonathan. Jonathan, first of all, I think it would be great if you would share with our audience exactly what your duties are because, boy, director of Impact and Partnerships, that seems to be all-encompassing. Well, you're right Andy, it is a fancy title, but I have to tell you, all I do is meet the community. So my job is to figure out how we can open our doors every single day through educational programs, experiences, dinners, and various different things that people can really get involved in at the farm and show them a good time. Really our goal at the Ecology Center is to shift culture and shift behavior through beautiful, delicious, fun experiences. Hey Jonathan, works for me. Jonathan, let's back up a little bit and give our listeners a brief overview of the founding of the Ecology Center because initially it was pretty modest in terms of what facilities you had available and what the aspirations were. It was really founded on a grassroots basis and, boy, things have enhanced, expanded, and exchanged or in really grown sense then. So give us a little overview because I still think, Jonathan, a lot of us know about the Ecology Center in San Juan, Capostrano, and certainly the chess community knows about it. But in terms of the general public, I think in certain areas, you're still a little bit of an open secret. Yeah, and we like that, honestly, we enjoy the opportunity to surprise and delight by welcoming guests through whatever channel it is that they get excited about either educational programs or dinner or the cafe or the farm stand. But to start it from the top, we began in 2008, so 16 years ago, this year, on One Acre, on what was a historic farmhouse and a dirt lot that the city of San Juan, Capistrano, had purchased from a farm family in the early '90s. So for the first 10 years of the Ecology Center, our mission and really our effort was really around modeling and demonstrating what we call ecological living. It's a fancy way of saying either sustainability or really just building health through a variety of different educational programs like field trips, workshops, we would do film screenings or book signings. And then pretty early on, really, we started the outdoor, formed a table, quote unquote, dinners. And the hope there was, as we call it, community table, bringing people to the table to sit together with one another, field relationship to their source, where did their food come from, their chef who's preparing it, and one another. And we really simply felt that by opening that door, we can turn on the light bulb and get people excited about that conversation. And Jonathan is someone that has attended at least one community table, dinner series, for at least the last five or six years. I would definitely agree with that. He is always a very pleasurable evening. And of course, great thanks to, goes out to a chef leader in the Orange County area being rich mead because he was really one of the first chefs that embraced this concept, brought along his friends and got the program up and running. And generally, he kicks the season off or at least does a community table dinner fairly early in each summer season. So, you know, Chef Rich is kind of a secret weapon for you folks. Well, you know, Rich, as you said, has been our partner and friend for 15 years at Farmhouse. He's really been telling the story that we are for quite a while. And that's really ultimately the culture that we're trying to create, which is, yes, you know, the Michelin star restaurants are amazing. And ultimately, at the end of the day, they're playing a game based off of precision and excellent, and that's a lot of fun and very interesting, but we're actually trying to tell a whole different story, which is about quality and sourcing and health. And by the way, I believe you can do both of those at the same time and Rich is a great advocate for that. And just like him, there's, you know, a few dozen other chefs that we work with. I'd like to tell that story. And the list grows every year. And what's really kind of fun, Jonathan, is, and I don't think a lot of people realize this. There is a lot going on in San Juan, Capistrano these days, particularly in the restaurant and food business. It's kind of not this sleepy little town that a lot of people remember. So, you know, you're getting some very high-profile chefs that are coming in to San Juan, Capistrano and opening restaurants, one of which you have coming in in a few weeks, which we'll talk about in a bit, but, you know, a brand new, very ambitious restaurant that comes from a restaurant group out of Santa Barbara, by the way. And you know, there's some pretty good eating, Jonathan, up in Santa Barbara. To further explain what you do, Jonathan, can you give us kind of a layman's explanation of what, you know, for your farm, you are a regenerative, organic-certified farm. Can you kind of explain what that means? Because these are words we hear a lot, but when it comes to really understanding what they mean, it may be something a little different. Sure. Thank you. You have a few hours here, right, Andy? We've got a few minutes. So, I mentioned the history of the Ecology Center starting humbly on one acre. In 2019, we were able to take over the surrounding 28-acre farm. Yes indeed. That was a working commercial organic farm. And what we did is we transitioned that commercial farm into, as you mentioned, what's called the regenerative organic farm, and that's a certification, and I'll talk a little bit about what that means. But really, the primary focus that we intended to and continue to aspire to is to build a bioregional relationship to our foodway. So everything that we grow goes out our front door, and it goes through our farm stand, our cafe, our dinners, our pantry products, or to food insecure families. And the hope is that, like the Ecology Center, just like where we've all come from, you know, one or two or three generations back, there's a hub, a community farm at the core of every village, town, city that people can actually go and build a relationship to. To answer your question briefly, regenerative organic is a certification that is the new gold standard, or high bar, in agriculture, as we've all heard of organic. We've been building that movement for the past 75 years to pull some of the toxins out of our food system. Farm organic also includes a few extra elements, like caring for soil, caring for animals and caring for farm workers. But some of the standards that we have to meet to get this certification to feel of approval are our soil practices, as I mentioned, how we care for animals and farm worker well-being like paying a living wage and offering full-time work and health benefits. So that's a wow, and mentioning the worker benefits, you actually have farmers that come to the Ecology Center and, in turn, they're sort of a mentorship program. Before we take our break and come back and talk more about the community table, tell us a little bit about that, Jonathan, because that's absolutely fascinating. Well, as I mentioned, our goal really ultimately is more farms, more farmers, more food. And it's not all under the Ecology Center. We have to grow this movement, the rising tide, list of all those here. And one of the things in our geography, at least that really doesn't exist, is that literacy in farming. And most of us didn't grow up on farms and didn't get that intergenerational knowledge transfer. So what we started four years ago is a farm apprenticeship program, where we bring in four farm apprentices from Southern California, and we teach them how to do this work so that they can then replicate it and scale it and grow that throughout various different communities around here. And something that we're proud of through philanthropy and partnerships is that we're able to pay our farm apprentices. Most of us aren't able to take off a year unpaid to learn a new trade, but we pay them while they're learning to do this work. And then the hope is that we get to incubate and then help foster their next generation of agribusinesses. Jonathan, absolutely wonderful, and we should mention at this point, in terms of the general public, there are many ways you can support the ecology center, not the least of which is supporting the farm stand, the community table, dinner series, and so forth. But they also have a membership program. It's a very reasonable yearly membership. I recently have rejoined. I was a member a couple of years ago. But this is an organization that is definitely worth supporting. They do a lot with a little, and I think that's important, as I'm sure Jonathan wouldn't agree. Jonathan, we're going to take a short pause here. We're going to come back and pick this up on the other side. We are speaking with Jonathan Zeidman, who is the chief cook and bottle washer for the ecology center, but goes by the title of impact and partnerships. This guy gets his hands dirty. There's definitely no doubt about that. You are listening to the SoCal restaurant show. We're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats. We'll be back.
