FEBRUARY 2021 79I can start to feel disconnected from the source
of my food,” says Julia Sullivan, owner of Nash-
ville’s Henrietta Red and 2018 F&W Best New
Chef, reflecting back on her first year of tending
a home garden.
It is hard to believe a chef of Sullivan’s cali-
ber, one who trained at the Culinary Institute
of America and with acclaimed, agriculturally
focused chefs Dan Barber and Thomas Keller,
could ever feel alienated from the farmers and
purveyors whose ingredients populate her menus.
But the breakneck pace of running her restaurant
kitchen made it hard to pause and make that con-
nection, she explains. “There have been years,
like when we first opened Henrietta Red, that
we were so busy, an entire summer passed and
I realized that I hadn’t stopped to eat a whole,
ripe tomato.” A desire to close that distance ulti-
mately drove Sullivan to seek out Sara Gasbarra
of Verdura Design, which specializes in installing
culinary gardens for restaurants, to help her plan
a garden for her Nashville home.
Intentions set, Gasbarra and Sullivan hatched a
plan inspired by gardens in France and California,
featuring raised beds and trellises for climbing
plants like tomatoes and peas. They selected a
space at the back of her property—an open, flat,
grassy area with just enough shade to protect the
vegetables from the intense Southern summer
sun. They sourced cedar boards from a local mill
for the beds and had an irrigation line installed
to provide water to the garden. Sullivan made a
wish list of heirloom vegetables from a stack of
seed catalogs.“If I’m not in
the middle of a
vegetable bed
every day,
Then, in early March 2020, when they’d hoped
to start planting, a tornado tore through the
neighborhood, tossing trees and roofs in every
direction. Cleanup was still underway when the
COVID-19 pandemic reached Tennessee. Progress
on the garden stalled as Sullivan and Gasbarra
struggled to keep their businesses afloat.
It was late spring when they were finally able
to turn back to Sullivan’s garden. They installed
the beds and transplanted their first seedlings. By
midsummer, the trellises hung heavy with Black
Cherry tomatoes, pepper bushes were brimming
with shishitos, and Centercut squash vines had
sneaked through the fence and made a home in
her neighbor’s yard. Sullivan found herself head-
ing to the garden every morning, a new rhythm of
life taking hold. “If we hadn’t been in the middle
of the pandemic, if I hadn’t had the ability to be so
attentive, I don’t know that I would have realized
I needed to treat gardening like a discipline, to be
present and take the time,” she says. The world
had slowed down, and with it, Sullivan.
As she did in her restaurant kitchen, she had to
think on her feet, as the garden threw challenges
her way. “All of a sudden the weather heated up,
and my lettuce bolted,” she recalls. “It was leggy,
fibrous, and bitter, like chicory, with a core as
thick as salsify root.” Her solution? Pull up the
entire head and grill it until it was charred in
spots, mellowing the bitter core and turning it
juicy and tender. Sauced with her Caesar dress-
ing (recipe p. 84), the bolted lettuce—in any other
garden bound for the compost heap—became a
go-to base for grilled chicken. In answer to bum-
per crops, she infused Chardonnay with tomatoes
and basil for vinegar (recipe p. 86), cooked cherry
tomatoes with garlic and greens for a polenta
ragout (recipe p. 82), and blended bunches of
herbs into a verdant simple syrup (recipe p. 87).
(If nothing else, Sullivan exhorts curious garden-
ers to plant herbs: “When you grow your own
herbs, it improves your cooking immediately.”)
Thinking back on her first year with the gar-
den, from its imperfect beginnings through its
first summer, Sullivan is philosophical. “At first, I
wanted to set up the garden quickly and perfectly,
but it has to be a process,” she notes. “I think
learning to garden is kind of like holding a baby
for the first time; you’re just so afraid you’re going
to hurt it. I’ve learned so much from Sara. Watch-
ing how fearlessly she plants, tends, harvests, and
deals with issues like pests, I think now I feel much
less pressure to be perfect. It became less about
having it always be super beautiful and more about
making sure that nothing grown was wasted.”
As for what’s next? Sullivan and Gasbarra are
already thinking ahead to next season. “I love
opening my mailbox in January, when it is burst-
ing with seed catalogs,” Gasbarra exclaims. “It
is the best feeling because it brings this sense of
hope. Now it’s time to plan again!”