At Trumpet Blossom Café in Iowa City, the menu changes seasonally, even daily, but it almost always features locally sourced ingredients. Chef and owner Katy Meyer is committed to taking care of the planet, serving high-quality food to her customers and participating in our region’s thriving local food system.
Meyer has relationships with several local farmers who provide fresh produce for her cafe’s plant-based dishes. She buys the bulk of her local ingredients from those producers directly. When there’s a gap in her local produce supply, Meyer may call on her local food hub: Field to Family. The Trumpet Blossom Café menu has featured sweet corn, apples and lettuce sourced through Field to Family within the last few seasons.
Meyer has been a professional chef and restaurant owner since 2005. Prior to opening Trumpet Blossom Café in 2012, she was co-owner of The Red Avocado for seven years.
Read our Q&A with Chef Meyer below to learn more about how and why she chooses local for Trumpet Blossom’s vegan menu!
F2F: How does Trumpet Blossom Café take care of the planet and the community?
Meyer: We try to take care of the environment and the community by providing our customers, and each other, with a safe and comfortable place to enjoy nourishing food that makes us feel good on a basic level and on a more symbiotic level. In an ideal world I would get everything locally/regionally but that is impossible given my current menu and location. I’ve toyed with the idea of eliminating things like tropical fruits and nuts, stuff that has to travel a long way to get here, but for me, for now, it’s more realistic to focus on sourcing as much as I can locally when the season allows and then cutting myself a little slack during the off season. “Cruelty-free” is an unattainable label even when you grow something organically in your backyard. But we believe that offering a 100% plant-based menu is doing far less harm than if we chose to include animal products in our food.
F2F: You source from farmers directly, as well as F2F. What are the benefits of both? Why are both necessary?
Meyer: It’s great to have relationships with local growers and producers so that you can get to know their products, and they can get to know your needs and preferences, and each party can adapt to the other’s ups and downs and meet in the middle whenever possible. Sometimes it’s difficult to source a certain product or to stay informed about all the community growers have to offer, and that’s when a place like Field to Family can help so much. We’re all part of a local food system that can sustain each contributor’s livelihood and hopefully even help them thrive when given the opportunities to connect and learn from each other.
It’s been great working with Field to Family. Everyone I’ve worked with at Field to Family has been easy to work with and very supportive of our efforts as a small business. I’ve always appreciated what Field to Family has done with regards to community outreach and support.
F2F: Do the growing practices of farmers you source from matter to you? If so, why? What do you like to see?
Meyer: I try to support farmers who use organic growing methods, free from chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides. I try to source things that are certified organic and/or non-GMO, but I understand that the certification process can be prohibitive for some growers. It seems that most small farmers in the area are utilizing processes that are more gentle on the environment. I think most folks who choose to grow plants for a living are respectful of the earth because they recognize its inherent beauty and fragility and also its great power.
F2F: Why do you care about the environmental impact of food? Was there an “Aha” moment or was it a slower journey?
Meyer: I believe that as a conscious being on this planet, to the best of my ability and circumstance at any given time, I owe it to the environment to at least not leave it worse than it was when I got here. As for “aha” moments, I definitely had a moment but it was more of a “what the bleep” moment when I realized the fields and fields of crops we grow in America’s heartland aren’t even suitable for our consumption in their raw forms and are mostly used to feed the animals who are conceived, raised, and killed for people to eat. There is a giant, idyllic filter placed over the landscape to make us think these beautiful, endless fields are feeding us with their abundance and when you strip away that filter and see the harms the reality of monoculture inflict on the environment, well that can be a big “aha”/”what the bleep” moment.
F2F: In terms of quality, how would you describe the difference between local and conventional produce ingredients?
I like to use the example of a tomato grown in fertile Iowa dirt during the peak of summer, tended to and harvested when it’s just right and placed gently in a crate, still warm and flecked with little bits of that soil, having ridden maybe a mile in a pickup truck to get to the restaurant, for us to rinse gently and slice into and use in a favorite dish — versus — a tomato in January grown thousands of miles away, maybe given the same attention and care, but not picked at the right time and not unique in its shape or hue, traveling on a semi for maybe even days, to sit in a warehouse and then a store and then we get it and sure, it tastes mostly like a tomato but does it taste like a tomato can, like it’s meant to? No. So that’s the difference.
F2F: Why should other restaurants source local? What would your advice be to a chef hoping to add more local to the menu?
Meyer: My answer to that question is why shouldn’t restaurants source locally? I recognize that sometimes a local ingredient costs more or the availability can fluctuate or it can take a little more digging to find it. And I’m definitely not perfect when it comes to sourcing locally, there’s always more I should be doing–it’s an ongoing process and it takes a few extra steps sometimes. But we have the option and we can keep our resources and energies local so why wouldn’t we do that? A good place to start is to think seasonally and to look at what can be grown and sourced locally at different times of the year and consider incorporating local ingredients when they’re around and also think about ways to preserve the local ingredients to be used throughout the year or look to folks in the community who are doing this already and utilize that resource. Of course reaching out to Field to Family and other similar organizations is a great idea too.