Farm fresh food at The Grounds Café
Menu gets decided based on which crops are in their prime
We live in a world where you can order the ingredients for your supper over the internet and have them show up in a flash on your doorstep in a box. You can order a meal on your smartphone and track the delivery driver to the moment he pulls up at your door.
So the days of picking a carrot from the ground and eating it seem long gone, but the Murray family is working to bring people closer to the food they eat with their farm-to-fork restaurant, The Grounds Café.
The café is located inside Murray’s Garden Centre in Portugal Cove, and features produce grown just a few hundred feet away at Murray’s Meadow Farm.
“Certainly, the demand has been there,” says Evan Murray, sitting in the sunlit café for a rare break. Evan runs the café with his brother, Cameron.
“People seem to be interested in that kind of experience — understanding a bit about where the food comes from, and the story behind it.”
The family business started in 1980 when the brothers’ father, Michael Murray, started selling vegetables from a stand at the same location as the present-day Garden Centre.
The business soon grew to focus mostly on selling ornamental plants, nursery supplies and starter plants, as well as landscape work.
While that part of the business is as busy as ever, Murray wanted to reinvigorate the farming aspect of the business.
He and his partner, Brian Kowalski, launched Murray Meadows Farm in 2012, selling produce on site, at the St. John’s Farmer’s Market, and to area restaurants. Murray still manages the Garden Centre.
He wanted to fuse the various aspects of the business, and the café concept came to fruition in May 2017.
“Through the café venture, we use as much as we possibly can of our own produce produced on the farm here, and where we can’t obtain it from ourselves, we access other farmers in the region,” said Murray, adding, “One of the neat things about Portugal Cove is there is a wealth of farming activity in the community.”
The Murrays even feature local art as the café’s décor (much of which is for sale). Most recently, they were able to access local dried seaweed which they use in broths and Asianinspired dishes.
Nick Van Mele is head chef. He says working at a farm-to-table café changes the way he designs the menu. “We highlight the freshest produce available at the time, and sort of use that as a first stepping stone for coming up with new menu ideas.”
Murray says his goal is to make the café and Garden Centre a destination. To that end, he’s organized a variety of events, ranging from winter markets to rug-hooking classes. The café is partnering with local forager Shawn Dawson of Barking Kettle to organize forage and farm tours.
“I’d like to draw people towards the farm more and more, so part of their café experience is also visiting the farm in some capacity, or understanding the processes that go towards producing that food — that’s one of the big differentiating factors with the café, is that what we eat here is grown here.”