The Underground Farm Delivering Rare Herbs to New York’s Top Chefs

Farm Manager Tom Rubino harvests marigolds at Farm.one. ALL PHOTOS: SARAH BLESENER

Bespoke greens and flowers are grown-to-order in Manhattan.

By John Washington
Atlas Obscura
Feb. 14, 2018

Excerpt:

The sprouts and flowers are as recherché as they are delicious: nepitella, wood sorrel, papalo, micro cressida, afilia pea shoots. While diners may see garnish as little more than a sprig of green to fork aside, chefs see garnish in multiple dimensions—hue, flavor, texture, scent—and have exacting requirements in each. Meeting those requirements, which for millennia depended on the turn of the season or the whimsy of the weather, is now achieved in a Manhattan basement.

Farm.one is a blossoming underground vertical farm in the heart of Tribeca. Inside, farmers grow rare, bespoke, and chef-tailored micro-greens, herbs, and edible flowers for some of the most celebrated kitchens in New York. Several days a week, my job is to slalom through the city’s sidewalk traffic, turtle-backed with bags of the day’s harvest, and hand-deliver the morning’s pickings. (Consider this an official disclosure.) Besides herbally gratifying chefs cloistered in the steam and aluminum of famous kitchens—and occasionally being gifted with the most delicious nibbles of my life—I’ve gotten a peek into what may well be the future of urban farming.

Read the complete article here.