Minding the Source

When you consider the food on your plate at a restaurant, ingredient sourcing is generally not top of mind. But consider this: At Grove Lakewood Ranch, that meal took immense planning, time, and physical energy. Each whole ingredient that makes up the carefully crafted cuisine was researched, sourced, procured, and prepped by Executive Chef Greg Campbell and his team.

This process didn’t come lightly. After 30 years of experience in food procurement, Campbell says it seems to get more challenging by the day.

“A lot of what is out there in kitchens today is mostly premade, and it’s taken away from the restaurant’s entrepreneurial spirit,” says Campbell, who also runs Bradenton’s Pier 22. “Premade everything exists.”

But keeping processed food out of his kitchens was an easy decision.

“We could either go heavy on the cost of prepared food or invest in the people.” He and restaurant owner and business partner Hugh Miller chose the latter. “My philosophy is, I’d rather pay another human being in our industry than cut labor and buy processed.”

The Grove menu is loaded with whole foods crafted and prepared fresh and in innovative ways. The sauces are scratch-made. The bread, buns, and pastries are baked in-house. And the Grove/Pier 22 team buys whole seafood and meat and cuts it under refrigeration. This allows them to source and inspect the freshest ingredients at the back door.

“Determined quality has to come from us, not from someone else,” says Campbell. “We buy food as close to its original product as possible,” he says. “With a whole fresh fish, you can judge how long it has been out of the water. You can look at the smokiness of the eyes, and you can look at the oiliness of the skin. You can’t do that with a filet that has already been cut.

Along with that comes an increased awareness of sustainability. The Grove chefs use as much of the product as possible, leaving little to waste. When they buy a whole, fresh grouper, they cut out the filets, then they pick the carcass clean and use that for another product like fish stock.

Although the Grove team does its best to source from their backyard, a limited supply chain has made that difficult, and it’s further complicated when you are tasked with supplying meals for large numbers of people daily. Grove’s restaurant and ballroom accommodate hundreds of people in one sitting.

“Do we support local farms? 100 percent," says Campbell, who has been a longtime client of Sutter Farms and Dakin Dairy. “If I can get the product from the [local] farm to me and I can utilize it the best I can, I’ll do it all day long,” he says.

But overall, Campbell has had to shift his idea of “local” from the farm down the street to sticking with ingredients from the U.S. and Canada. He researches and works with many specialty purveyors and growers that operate beyond the Florida state line but that have been carefully vetted for farming and growing practices, and that deliver on his promise to customers that his restaurants offer the freshest food possible. For example, the salmon—unavailable in local waters—comes from the Northeast. It’s called Jail Island salmon, and it’s fresh-farmed.

“It’s a little bit more in price, but we know the guys raising it,” says Campbell. “We can put it on the menu at a reasonable price, and we know we are giving our customers quality salmon.”

And one of the most notable items on the Grove menu is the calamari. Campbell says while 90 percent of calamari is sourced from outside the U.S. and delivered frozen, Grove offers fresh calamari straight from Point Judith, Rhode Island.

“People think it’s odd that the menu states ‘fresh’ calamari, but the truth is ‘fresh’ is not common,” says Campbell. “We are getting it two days out of the water.”

Campbell and his team are fully committed to strategic sourcing, which sometimes means what is fresh and available.

“We look at sourcing as a balance,” he says. “You can’t always just stick to normal proteins. You have to get creative and defer to quality.”

Take Grove and Pier 22 menu mainstay Pork Osso Bucco. When an ordering mistake left a vendor sitting on cases of quality pork shank, Campbell got creative with its preparation. Pork is not traditionally prepared as osso bucco, but Campbell was willing to give it a try. It worked. What started as a special sold like crazy, earning it a beloved spot on the menu.

“The texture is like pulled pork, but it’s super tender, slathered in the braising-liquid gravy, and served with mashed potatoes,” he says. “We serve it in a bowl because the gravy is so good you want extra.”

As an independent restaurant group, maintaining focus on sourcing and preparation in addition to customer feedback has also allowed Grove and Pier 22 to pivot when needed.

“It’s about listening,” he says. “You go to the community and build the restaurant based on the community, not on what you want to serve the community.”

> Grove: 10670 Boardwalk Loop, Lakewood Ranch; 941-893-4321; grovelwr.com