Lento Restaurant and its Locally Grown Commitment

"Lento" means "slow-paced," and from day one, this restaurant committed to the farm to table, slow food philosophy. This article was published in the August/September 2018 issue of The Wedge newspaper. 

In 1986, McDonald’s opened its largest restaurant to that date, in Rome on the popular Piazza di Spagna, one block from the historic Spanish Steps. Romans—and Italians—were outraged. To a culture so interwoven with its revered familial culinary heritage, the brash arrival of the world’s epitome of cheap, fast, mass-produced meals was a stunning wake-up call.

Italian activist and journalist Carlo Petrini organized a movement to protest this trend and, in a nutshell, promote and preserve traditional farming, crops, livestock, preparation methods, and recipes. This was the Slow Food movement which made its way throughout the world.

Around this same time in the United States, a chef/restaurateur named Alice Waters became one of the first American chefs to seek out, use, and promote locally grown, organic produce and meats.  Her restaurant, Chez Panisse in Berkeley, led this trend, which eventually morphed into what is now “farm to table” and “farm to fork.”  Google this in Rochester, NY, and several choices will pop up. One of those is Lento at Village Gate.

Art Rogers, owner/chef, Lento Restaurant

Art Rogers, Lento chef/owner, says that 11 years ago when he opened the restaurant, he was all-in with the local food movement and applying it to his business. After studying Hospitality Management at the University of New Hampshire, he went to Maine to see a restaurant called Primo. This was a “full farm restaurant” where everything from herbs to livestock was grown on the premises and provided the restaurant fare, in effect, a restaurant on a farm. Anything the farm didn’t produce was purchased from nearby farmers and purveyors. Rogers was enchanted, spent the next three years at Primo, then returned to Rochester to open Lento.

He began by connecting with farmers, but many didn’t want to work with restaurants, finding them too demanding. Now, Rogers says farmers are calling him, which gives him a wider range of ingredients (meats and greens in particular,) gives the farmer a steady income stream, and gives the diners better quality and more choices on the menu.

The influx of locally sourced food keeps Rogers and his staff inspired, too. With area farmers making use of greenhouses to extend the growing season, he can design the menu with what is available on any given week, but also plan ahead for fresh items coming. For instance, he likes working with root vegetables, potatoes, and onions, and those are available locally all year.

“We get to change it up all the time,” Rogers says. “Especially when you know the new stuff is coming, like corn about this time of year. That first hit is really special. Or the first batch of cherry tomatoes. I feel like I have to get my hands on them right away. It’s better when you’ve waited for it.”

Critics of the farm-to-table movement say that it is pretentious and caters to the wealthy class. From this perspective luxe farm dinners with high price tags have become trendy, rather than making “real food” more accessible to those in need. In fact, one downstate restaurant charges a non-refundable, advance payment of $258 per person for a meal at their own farm, with wine pairing an additional $168.

Rogers doesn’t agree with the criticism but says it is a “grey area.” Because he works with individual farmers and fresh, high quality foods, his costs are higher than if he were to order from a distributor buying large quantities from industrial agriculture companies.

Currently 100 percent of Lento’s meat is sourced locally all year, as are their salad greens. In July through October, at least 95 percent of the remaining menu ingredients are local, but in March and April the selections are understandably limited. Rogers lists Lento’s farmers and purveyors on the website, www.LentoRestaurant.com, so customers can see the local names and places behind their meals.

“Restaurants will post a sign that says, ‘We use local when available.’ That’s a clue that it’s not really local,” he explains. “If people were really educated on the food system, they would want to eat like this [farm-to-table.] But now costs are costs, and people don’t always care where their food comes from. The food system is broken. We eat too much meat, but it’s cheaper than produce. It’s upside down. Farm-to-table and Slow Food shouldn’t be ‘a movement.’ It’s the way people should be eating.”

In 2015, Lento Restaurant was nominated for a James Beard Award, the only restaurant in Rochester to achieve this. Lento is located at 274 N. Goodman St. For reservations or more information, call (585) 271-3470 or visit www.lentorestaurant.com.

Article and all photos by Glynis Valenti