From Farm to Chef to Table.

In a microwavable world, UNION is a champion of the farm fresh, eat local movement.

With Farmer’s Markets cropping up everywhere, more and more city folk are rediscovering the full-flavoured freshness of locally grown produce.

And if it's organic, all the better.

On early mornings you may see our chef at one, stocking up for the evening meal. Or at the 100 Mile market in Meaford, picking out fresh greens and country kitchen preserves. Fresh beef from the renowned Scotch Mountain Farms in Grey County is aged to our liking and delivered in quarters to be craft-cut right here in our kitchen. Tender pork and grass-fed elk also come from the County, as do plump and tasty, range-fed Heritage chickens, the kind our “chicken lady” says, “only have one bad day in their lives”.

You won’t find garlic from far-flung lands that takes weeks to get here either. Or onions, radishes and tomatoes. A lot of what’s on your table is grown and fresh-picked from local farms.

Up in Grey County. we built a smokehouse out of fresh pine, and slow burn only apple and plum wood to give salmon and meats a unique sweet-smoked flavour.

Eating seasonally the way our forbearers did; fresh strawberries in June, corn and tomatoes in August and Butternut squash and turnips in winter, it’s remarkable how much you savour each offering and look forward to the next.

Who knows, we may just regain some of the serenity they had. Farm fresh goodness costs a bit more (about an 8% average premium according to our comparison-shopping in supermarkets) but what a difference.