Restaurant grows its salads on its walls

(18 Feb 2018) LEADIN  
The concept of 'farm to plate' is nothing new - but what about 'wall to plate'?
A restaurant in Berlin is now growing its salads on its walls and harvesting them in front of customers before plating them up.
STORYLINE
In the centre of Berlin sits Good Bank: a small restaurant serving tourists and people working in nearby offices.
But it doesn't have to rely on external farms or suppliers for its salads - they're grown inside the restaurant, on the walls!
Hydroponic green houses cover the walls. Twice a day the salads growing in them are "harvested" and served directly to customers. The process removes the need for long cold chains, transportation and packaging.
It's part of an urban gardening trend gaining more and more in popularity around the world.
The hydroponic vertical farm was installed by Infarm, a Berlin hybrid research lab for vertical farming.
"We both felt the need, that we need to change something in the food industry. Concretely we are both fascinated about restaurants but saw that many concepts became dull or obsolete. So we needed to somehow trigger food for a new generation of eaters. People who believe in real food," says Ema Paulin, co owner of Good Bank.
Good Bank does not grow all the food that is served, only the salads that are mainly destined for its salad bowls. Four different kinds of greens are grown in this vertical farm: Baby kale and three kinds of lettuce, Salanova Butterhead, Yacht and Chocolate Oak.
The "harvesting" is done in front of the clients, giving a sense of transparency to where the food comes from and how it grew.
Good Bank does not use any pesticides and the salads produced are fresh, since they are literally taken from the wall and served onto the plate a few minutes or hours later. According to owners Ema Paulin and Leonadro Vergari, their salads contain more nutrients than those farmed using conventional agricultural methods because the salads are picked with their roots on and they're only cut just before being put in the serving bowl.
According to the company's website the rest of the fruits and vegetables are procured from regional suppliers.
Food production, and the food industry in general are topics which often generate heated debates. Pesticides and genetically modified plants among others are a source of confusion for consumers around the world. It's hoped growing what a customer will eat in front of them will help build trust.
"It definitely is a mission to bring farming to the city," says Leandro Vergani, co-owner of good bank. "Particularly in a time were we have a lot of misinformation, regarding not only the countryside but more largely food and the origin of our food."
Producing vegetables inside the city presents its challenges but is also very interesting for Vergani, who is in charge of the farming element of the company.
"One is able basically to replicate the conditions of nature in the sense you replace the sun with an LED light or you replace the soil with a substrate, a substrate as we have here, and then create that connection between whatever is the land and the countryside as we know it and the idea of it and the adaptation of it within the city," he says.
Clients who flock in everyday for their lunch appreciate the from wall to plate concept.
"Yeah, it's I mean, it's definitely like in the city you have to assume a lot of the produce is brought in from far away. So it's nice to know that its coming from just off the wall," says Jojo Moynihan a tourist from the United States.
In the urban environment this is not always easy.

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