Abra Berens, “the return of a chef”
By Madeleine Hill Vedel
Sun contributor
You may remember Abra Berens as farmer chef at Bare Knuckle Farm in Northport, the farm she co-founded in 2009 with farmer partner Jesse Piskor on two acres beside his family’s cherry orchards. During the summers of her last two years at the farm, a lucky few enjoyed Abra’s five-course, reservation-only farm dinners featuring vegetables harvested that day in the fields. Concurrently as food columnist for the Traverse City Record-Eagle she shared her veggie passion with a wider audience. During winters spent in Chicago, full time after her departure from Northport, she collaborated with farmers and chefs who prize the fresh and local, including chef Paul Virant of the restaurant Vie outside of Chicago, a stint opening and helming the Stock Café at Local Foods in Chicago, and since her return to Michigan in 2017, in the role of resident chef at Granor Farm in Three Oaks, creating menus for farm dinners and recipes to share with the farm’s CSA shareholders.
This fall we celebrate her return to Leelanau County, eager to share her culinary vision at the recently opened Farm Club, located on South Lake Leelanau Drive (aka County Road 641) right beside the Leelanau trail.
“I’m excited to get to be a part of Farm Club,” says Abra at her new professional abode, surrounded by piles of freshly harvested fall-bright orange squash, vibrant red cabbage, slender green beans and blue-green broccoli tips. “I’ve known Nic and Sara [Theisen of Loma Farm] for a long time. We’ve been talking about this project ever since I moved back to Michigan in 2017 … I started helping from afar in the middle of July. I now go back and forth between Three Oaks [Granor Farm] and Traverse City every week. I am maintaining both positions. Both are more than traditional chef positions. [I am] culinary director in both places.”
In the past year Abra’s reputation has grown through her acclaimed cook book, Roughage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables. The New York Times and Bon Appétit magazine called this book celebrating plant-based and waste-free cooking one of the best cookbooks for spring, leading to interviews on morning shows and culinary collaborations from New York to Seattle. In it she shares her knowledge of vegetables in alphabetical order, with tips for choosing, preparing, storing, canning and more, rethinking the role of vegetables on the plate, and in the pantry.
At Farm Club Abra hopes to bridge the similarities between the two agricultural businesses: food production and food preparation, linking them together, all the while encouraging awareness for Michigan agriculture (the most diverse in the United States after California). Farm Club’s structure will allow for many teaching opportunities, and perhaps lure more chefs into this style of cooking.
“The most inspiring thing is the collaboration between a farm and a restaurant. It’s a real gamble—partners Nic and Sara, Gary and Allison [Jonas] (who also own The Little Fleet in Traverse City). They understand how a traditional restaurant operates … that it will be a stretch to do a higher volume with these local ingredients. We have to be comfortable with running out of things, be transparent. [Farm Club is] primarily a farm that has a restaurant, market, and brewery on it.”
Abra, daughter of farmers, canners, and cooks, at first thought she’d pursue epidemiology and maybe work for the United Nations. However, while earning her degree at the University of Michigan in English and History, a part-time job at Zingerman’s Deli led to cooking school at Ireland’s famed Ballymaloe Cookery School, Organic Farm & Gardens, leading her to pursue the many alchemical possibilities the kitchen (when nourished by the garden) promises, as well as the rich conversations every aspect of the food world germinates.
“There are so many ways to interact with these agricultural products.” Abra explains as we sit down at a small table, illuminated by the late afternoon light streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. “There’s nothing we ingest that doesn’t have some connection with what has been grown. ‘Come in and have a beer and a snack, or a full menu, or get your groceries and a six-pack to go.’ Let’s break down the barriers between the regional food movement and daily consumption.”
Abra reminds me that 100 years ago, 30% of our population farmed; today barely 3% do. Most people have never visited a farm, have no sense of where their food comes from. She wants visitors and diners, families, passing bicyclists, cross-country skiers, and more to come see how they farm, to comprehend that each place is unique, its own ‘terroir.’ The north Midwest is its own region, she affirms, if rarely recognized as such.
“Look out over the hills and get a sense of Leelanau County, how connected to the land, the area, the region, the state we all are. It all affects our lives in so many ways. Our menu will showcase this place and those people so often hidden.” This might appear as a pasty, in homage to the Upper Peninsula, or a Ukrainian or Polish specialty honoring immigrant populations that call Michigan home.
Elaborating on her process, Abra says, “It always starts with the ingredients. Every week I do a farm walk with Nic to see what’s coming up, what there’s an abundance of, or what there’s a small amount of for just a few special plates. The more stable items are the proteins. They are less seasonal, and easier to obtain in a higher volume to move through the year. But everything around them will change. Right now there is a Chicken Dinner on the menu with crispy potatoes, herbed butter, and a green salad. The chicken will stay consistent, but the vegetable options will move out.”
Though starting a new food-focused business during a pandemic has its anxiety-provoking moments, the team behind Farm Club has thought through the concept carefully. They are set up for year-round dining, shopping, and sipping, with tables spaced far apart, high ceilings, plentiful outdoor seating, outdoor heaters and fire pits to warm cold weather visitors. As long as you’ve got the ‘right clothes’, delicious food and beverages will be there to nourish you. And if you’re quick, you might be able to sample Abra’s special onion rings, made with Alisa Craig sweet onions, freshly harvested. You might think of an onion as omnipresent and never-changing, but Abra will change your mind. Once this stash of onions have been consumed, they’ll move out for the next vegetal option. I for one, can’t wait to find out.
