Chefs from Savio Volpe/Pepino's and Hawksworth will cook at this summer's local stops

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Vancouver has long embraced farm-to-table cuisine, and we love our pop-up restaurants. Now coming back for its 19th year is the original table-to-farm dining experience.

Outstanding in the Field got started in 1999 as a travelling restaurant without walls that serves long-table dinners right at the source, where the food is grown and harvested.

On July 14 and 15, two of the city’s most respected chefs will take part, each outdoor meal in a location that’s as unique as it is spectacular.

Chef Mark Perrier, executive chef of Osteria Savio Volpe and the new Pepino’s, leads the culinary experience at Surrey’s Zaklan Heritage Farm on July 14.

Marta and Dragan Zaklan started Zaklan Farm in the 1920s when the area was isolated wilderness. Marta’s youngest son, George, who’s now in his 80s, still lives and works on the farm, while it’s now headed by Doug Zaklan and Gemma McNeill. The farm is home to eight acres of organic vegetable and fruit production, pastured livestock, and 95 laying hens.

Perrier, who previously worked at West Restaurant, CinCin, and London’s two Michelin-starred Le Gavroche, among other places, says that all of the produce he’ll be working with at the outdoor dinner will be picked fresh from the farm that day.

Among the dishes he’s planning to prepare are shaved zucchini, olives, basil, and Grana Padano; eggplant caponata with fresh Borlotti beans and sage; and hand-rolled pasta with cherry-tomato pomodoro and whipped ricotta. He will also likely serve iron-cross lamb that he’ll cook over a fire.

“I’ve been working closely with Zaklan Heritage Farm since our first summer at Savio Volpe,” Perrier says. “Doug and Gemma's commitment to sourcing and growing Italian heirlooms has really helped shape our menu. Produce this good makes my job easy.”

Farmers and producers share their stories at Outstanding in the Field dinners. OITF.

Hawksworth chef Stephanie Noel will lead the dinner on July 15 at Pemberton’s North Arm Farm, a 60-acre organic working farm started by Trish and Jordan Sturdy in 1995.

The Quebec native came to Vancouver in 2001 and began working at West Restaurant before moving to Europe, where she took on the role of sous chef at the two-Michelin star La Reserve de Beaulieu in Beaulieu sur Mer. Noel eventually made her way back to the West Coast, working at the West Coast Fishing Lodge on Haida Gwaii and Long Beach Lodge in Tofino, among other spots, before joining the Hawksworth Restaurant Group as development chef.

Outstanding in the Field got started in 1999 by artist/chef Jim Denevan as a “radical intervention to stale dining conventions”, according to a release. Just as important as the communal meal at a single dining table are the farmers’ stories, which are shared and celebrated.

Inspired by that original idea, the Outstanding in the Field culinary caravan has visited all 50 states in the U.S. and 15 countries around the globe, partnering with top regional chefs at each stop.

Over the years, the Outstanding in the Field has set tables at abalone farms and on docks and in date gardens and olive groves.

“Our mission is to get folks out to the places where the food comes from and honor the people whose good work brings nourishment to the table,” said Denevan, who creates large-scale drawings on sand, ice, and earth and whose artworks exist only for a few hours before being swept away by wind, water, and weather. “Our roving restaurant without walls may be located wherever good food comes from. There are no boundaries.”

See Outstanding in the Field for more info.