The Curious Pear Meet the Fat Radish

In

In
our humble five weeks in New York, we’ve heard the phrase
‘farm to table’ thrown around a lot. We hear it in bars, read it on
menus, and see it up and down the aisles of every organic deli-mart
the city has to offer. The Big Apple is famous for its food fads,
but this one is particularly noticeable, with chalkboards across
the city proudly proclaiming their partnered farm and their
vegetable of the season for all to see.

So when did this latest (and seemingly unwavering) trend begin?
The Fat Radish, which opened its doors in 2010, has long been noted
as the pioneering restaurant of New York’s ‘farm to table’
movement. The Lower East Side’s gastronomic star is the brainchild
of best friends Phil Winser and Ben Towill. Together they also run
the design agency Silkstone, as well as two newer restaurant
projects, The East Pole and The Leadbelly (the latter serves
exceptional cocktails and oysters, right across the street from The
Radish). The two seem to have been bound for creative partnership
from the beginning. “We have a very similar philosophy about most
things,” Phil tells us, “so when it came to both food and design
this outcome was the most natural one.” Together they put their
passion for sustainable, hands-on food into creating a restaurant
that serves fresh, healthy fare in a warm and inviting environment.
“Growing up in the English countryside, it was always about food in
my family,” says Phil, “and not only the food itself but the
occasion of coming together and eating.”

Though the rise of the Radish seemed to coincide with an
anti-fast food mania in the New York food world, setting a trend
was never Ben and Phil’s intention, and a label is the last thing
they want. “We don’t call ourselves a ‘farm to table’ restaurant”
Phil tells us, “we don’t call ourselves an ‘organic’ restaurant
either. We don’t do it to be fashionable, we don’t talk about it;
we just do it.”

We headed to The Fat Radish on Orchard Street, where a horde of
restaurants, coffee shops and bars have sprung up in the last
couple of years. The interior, much like the food, is all about the
beautiful and the basic, awash with white brick walls, sturdy metal
framing and a scattering of greenery. We sampled the vegetable
green curry with coconut milk and brown rice, and The Fat Radish
Bowl; a macrobiotic vegetable dish with adzuki beans, carrot-ginger
and tahini. We also chatted to Phil Winser (Ben Towill was off
hand-picking herbs in some upstate farm, we can only assume) about
spearheading the most wholesome eating trend in recent times,
whether he likes it or not…