Farm living inspires a chef
SOUTH NATICK - Evan Percoco is one lucky locavore. He tastes a spoonful of the butternut squash soup he has just simmered and decides that fresh sage will make a better garnish than the rosemary he had planned. He walks a few yards outside his kitchen door and picks all he needs from a greenhouse at Belkin Family Lookout Farm.
By living on a working farm, Percoco, executive chef and partner at Bokx 109 American Prime steakhouse in Newton, has an all-access pass to the freshest produce around. If he needs inspiration for his menu, he can stroll the 180 acres of apples, pumpkins, grapes, and dozens of other crops. Even after the frost, greenhouses continue growing lettuce, chard, and herbs.
"When you pick what you eat, there's nothing better than that," he says, as he nimbly weaves his way between rows of purple-veined Swiss chard leaves and tall stalks of kale in the greenhouses. Percoco and his wife, Lori, and their cat, Lola, moved into their house, which they are renting, a few weeks before Bokx 109 opened in June. They consider the spot a great find. "When we wake up in the morning and look out the windows, we get a great view of the foliage and the orchards. It's beautiful," he says.
The bucolic setting helps Percoco relax after what can sometimes be an 18-hour workday. He and his wife like to feed dandelion greens to the farm's donkey. Late at night, they occasionally stroll through a greenhouse to pick a few of the thumb-size blackberries from the bushes that grow around its edge.
New England is a welcome change of pace for the chef. "It's all right here - the farm, the dairies, the sea. I've never lived in a city where you could start downtown, drive for 10 miles, and be on a farm," he says. He grew up on Long Island and cooked at the Hard Rock Hotels in Las Vegas and in Orlando. Percoco met his Bokx 109 business partner, Lou Carrier, in 1989 and the two have worked together on various projects since then.
These days, Percoco is likely to start his day by getting a fresh doughnut from the farmstand. Spinach, Saturn peaches, and apples from the farm have all found their way onto the restaurant menu.
For menu planning and ideas - at least while the harvest lasts - he need only look outside his back door. 