Danny Bortnick
Executive chef and general manager, Firefly in Washington, D.C.
Danny Bortnick always wanted to grow his own food but didn’t have enough land to be a serious gardener. Then in 2007, he moved into a Bethesda home complete with a 1,000-square-foot garden and an irrigation system.
First he planted blueberry bushes, grapevines, two fig trees and an asparagus bed. He quickly learned that “there’s a huge learning curve, just about what plants like, conditions, what likes to be near each other.
“When to plant is hugely important,” says Bortnick, 34, who has been executive chef for four years at Firefly, a contemporary American restaurant in the Dupont Circle area. “There’s a lot of trial and error.”
For instance, “two years ago I didn’t have a whole lot of success with blackberries,” Bortnick says, “but last year we learned to net them because birds would eat them.”
Early on, he sought tips from some of the farmers who supply Firefly with produce. “The asparagus guy who supplies for the restaurant taught me about asparagus, and said, ‘Don’t cut it for the first two years,’” Bortnick says, “so last year was my first harvest.”
Today Bortnick’s garden includes 10 kinds of fruit, 18 types of vegetables, eight varieties of tomatoes and 19 different herbs. The summer harvest includes squash, tomatoes, corn, beans, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, basil and grapes. Bortnick uses some of the summer produce to make jam, or pickles items to use throughout the year. Some spring plants—cauliflower, arugula and spinach—can be harvested again during summer’s peak. And the apple trees bloom in the fall.
He takes some of his homegrown produce—mainly herbs—to Firefly. But the garden’s major contribution to the restaurant is inspiration.
“I think a lot of what we do in the restaurant comes from visual stimulation, so seeing a lot of things and having a lot of something we say, ‘OK, let’s come up with a dish to use this because it’s peak season,’” he says.
Getting his two kids, ages 2 and 5, to be less picky about what they eat is another perk.
“It’s easier to get them to eat because they’re involved in the process, picking weeds and stuff,” Bortnick says, “so when they see it on the plate, it’s not intimidating.”
Jeff Heineman
Chef-owner, Grapeseed American Bistro & Wine Bar and Freddy’s Lobster & Clams
It was a sweet deal. Grapeseed’s Jeff Heineman could use a plot of land in Woodbine, about an hour north of Bethesda. All he had to do in return was leave the landowner—father of Grapeseed’s assistant manager, Samantha Keefer—“a bag of tomatoes every now and then.”
Taking the man up on that offer last year was a no-brainer. “Using local stuff that was ripe, as opposed to stuff that came in a truck, just seemed better,” says Heineman, 45, who has owned the Bethesda restaurant for 11 years and recently opened Freddy’s Lobster & Clams next door. “The flavors are just there tenfold.”
The landowner had the equipment to till the half-acre plot, and Heineman tested and fortified the soil with calcium and other nutrients. He sought advice from a friend who owns a farm as well, but problems—such as balancing soil nutrients and eradicating weeds—were inevitable.
“This year I feel like I have a leg up,” Heineman says. Last year “I just didn’t recognize some of the problems, and lost a lot [of plants] from that.”
Among the tricks he has learned: “You have to keep calcium in the soil,” he says, “so I would take eggshells from brunch [at the restaurant] and put them in there.”
In deciding what to plant, Heineman chooses produce he knows he can use and looks for some vegetables—such as beets—that have a longer shelf life. This season, he planted 350 tomato plants, cucumbers, beans, beets, carrots, turnips, chilies and herbs, which will be put to use in his restaurant. What Heineman doesn’t grow himself, he gets from a market in Jessup that he has frequented for years.
Heineman plants most of the vegetables at the end of April and the beginning of May so he can begin harvesting them in early June. His rosemary and thyme bloom in late spring, the basil in summer.
He plants tomatoes in May to avoid a late frost and uses a type that can grow and ripen all season until they are picked or die, rather than hybrid plants that ripen all at once. Tomatoes are a particular favorite—he uses 60 pounds of them a day—because of their versatility.
“I can cut them up and use them raw in salads, and I can use them in sauces and soups,” he says.
One thing he won’t be harvesting this year: cantaloupe. “They looked perfect and shiny and they cut nicely, but they had no taste,” he says of last year’s cantaloupe crop.
Heineman enjoys creating a restaurant dish from the ground up. “Knowing I grew it from scratch,” he says, brings with it a certain pride. “It started out as a seedling,” he says, “and now it’s on the menu.”
Dana Cetrone was a Bethesda Magazine intern, and is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland.
