To better understand where our food comes from and how it's grown, we leased a 12-acre farm in Orange County, New York. (In the vein of walking the talk, our resident farmer Larry Tse rocks an amazing beet tattoo.) Through a fortunate twist of geological fate, our farm lies on some of North America’s most fertile soil—known as the “Black Dirt” region.

From the air, you can see the iconic smears of dark earth at the foothills of the Catskill mountains. We pulled 31 different crops and over 21,000 pounds of produce from the sulfur and nitrogen-rich soil in 2017, serving them at our restaurants within 48 hours of harvest. We’ve since added a greenhouse, and are on track to quintuple our production this year.