Jay Veregge - Executive Chef, Big Water Grille

by Jacob Burton, Sous Chef Big Water Grille

I received a phone call at the restaurant yesterday from a journalist inquiring about our organic options for a story she is doing for the Fox News Reno website. It’s not something that Chef Jay and I wear as a badge and advertise, because after all, saying you support organic farming and sustainable agriculture is like saying you don’t litter or pour motor oil down your storm drains. Supporting organic foods and sustainable farming is something that decent people do, it’s not something to be bragged about.

But after the conversation I had with the journalist, I was inspired to write a post about how Big Water Grille is doing it’s part.

Chef Jay, as some of you may know, spent years in the San Francisco Bay Area and the surrounding wine country before moving to Tahoe and taking over as Executive Chef of Big Water Grille. During those years he fostered relationships with many high end organic purveyors, and when he moved to Tahoe, he brought those relationships with him. In return for his loyalty, all of the purveyors that supply Big Water, whether it be meat, fish, or produce, make sure that he gets the highest quality and best tasting products available.

“But what does this have to do with organic food and sustainable agriculture?”

Because quite simply, organic products and food sources acquired from farmers who are practicing sustainable agriculture just tastes better. Sure it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside that we’re doing our part not to pillage our planet of it’s natural resources or pollute it with chemical fertilizers. But quite frankly, as chefs, we would have a much harder time swallowing the “organic pill” if it tasted worse than non organic.

The fact of the matter is, wild arugula taste better than farmed. Organic frisee taste better than non organic. And farm raised salmon not only taste horrific, but is raised in such rank filth that I wouldn’t feed the stuff to my dog much less a customer paying good money for an entree.

Instead of serving farm raised salmon, we serve Loch Duart. Named for the massive bay where the salmon are raised, the salmon has plenty of room to move and exercise, and are fed real food, instead of the pink pellets that most farm raised salmon consume.

Normally, a salmon’s natural diet consists of shrimp and other crustaceans which is why their flesh is a pinkish-orange. When salmon are farm raised, they aren’t able to feed on their natural diet. To counter this, salmon farmers feed the fish pink pellets, which dye their flesh pink.

Our support of sustainable agriculture also inspires some of our more “adventurous” menu items. When I told my mom about the head cheese we recently made with pig’s head, she was appalled. “I don’t know how my sweet son who’s such an animal lover can cook something like pig’s head!”

“To the contrary,” I replied “there is nothing more cruel than killing an animal and only serving it’s tenderloin or rib rack. Using the ‘economy’ cuts of an animal is not only challenging and ultimately more fulfilling, but it shows respect for the animal who’s life ended so you could eat dinner.”

At the Big Water, Chef Jay and myself take a lot of pride in utilizing every part of the animal. When we order ducks, we order them in whole and break them down ourselves into their individual parts. The breast is served on the menu as an entree. The legs become duck rillette or confit. The hearts, livers, and gizzards become pate. The skin is rendered down and the fat is used in any number of ways, and the left over bones are roasted and made into stock.

What it really comes down to is supporting local purveyors, organic products, and sustainable agriculture is necessary not only for our personal health, but ultimately the health of our planet.