Take a walk around Atlanta during the spring, summer and fall, and you might notice ripe fruit, squashed onto sidewalks and crushed beneath your feet. It’s a bounty that often goes unnoticed. This verdant “City in the Trees” is home to thousands of fruit trees and bushes, many of which grow untended on residential lots and in public spaces.
The founders of Concrete Jungle saw an obvious solution for the wasted fruit: Why not harvest it to feed the city’s hungry and homeless? Since the organization was established in 2009, they’ve donated more than 60,000 pounds of produce from neglected trees in the city and throughout North Georgia (as well as what's grown on their own small farm) to Atlantans in need.
Their ingenuity is worthy cause for celebration, and on Sunday, November 5th, lucky diners will have the chance to do just that. Local chefs Philip Meeker of Bright Seed, Ryan Smith of Staplehouse and Sarah Dodge of 8arm are working together to serve the Finders Keepers dinner, a 10+ course dinner featuring preserved fruits foraged by Concrete Jungle throughout the year. The meal will also be complemented by wine, beer and cocktails prepared by Julian Goglia of The Mercury and The Pinewood.
To learn a little more about the inspiration behind the event, we spoke with Chef Philip Meeker.
The Seed & Plate: What do you enjoy most about cooking with foraged fruits?
Philip Meeker: They have a taste that's different than the fruits you find in supermarkets. The flavor is not always better or worse; it's just different. It's always interesting to find those different flavors. Even on the same tree you get so many different flavors from one kind of fruit. It's interesting to play around with that because you can draw out subtle differences that you don't get from regular mass-produced fruits. For this dinner, the idea is to express the individuality of the fruits as much as possible in each dish.
S & P: What drew you to work in collaboration with Concrete Jungle?
Meeker: I think the work they do is so cool. They not only try to make all of thsee old fruit trees around town an important part of the landscape; they also use them to help feed people who need food. It's food that would otherwise go to waste. I hate to see food wasted, and it's great to see people taking food that would otherwise just be laying on the ground and rerouting it to people who need it.
S & P: Is there a particular dish you can’t wait to serve at the dinner?
Meeker: Not really! I look at the dinner more holistically, and I'm just excited about telling the story about this year's fruit harvest through the fruits collectively. But each fruit will be expressed individually within its own dish. I'm excited about each fruit and the way I've preserved each of them.
S & P: When did you begin preserving fruits for the dinner?
Meeker: Either May or April... I started getting serviceberries right around then and started to preserve those in different ways. Every now and again when a new fruit comes in, Craig (who sits on the board) will give me a call and I'll pick up a different bag of goodies from him or from Katherine, who runs Concrete Jungle.
S & P: Do you hope that people will leave inspired?
Meeker: I hope that the sparks people's imagination to think about what we can achieve through maintaining a diverse food system. I think food diversity is really important, and garnering support for the idea of having more varieties of fruits and other foods in the marketplace is important. Each one of these different varieties has a different genetic code that enables it to survive and thrive under certain conditions. Especially as weather patterns become less predictable, having these different varieties available to us for agriculture and for creating food — I think it'll be way more important.
S & P: How did preparing for this event challenge your creativity?
Meeker: I think one thing that's interesting about all the fruits that I've preserved for the dinner is that I haven't made any jams so far in preserving them. Instead I've opted to use salt and vinegar fermentations. So they'll be a subtlety with the fruit that is interesting and uncommon and perhaps unfamiliar to some people.
S & P: How do the values of Concrete Jungle align with those of Bright Seed, your own business of personal chef services, cooking classes and edible garden planning?
Meeker: I've always valued local food, especially when it's been grown in a responsible way, and I try to use it in my work as much as possible. Most of these fruits, they just grow on their own and they're thriving with little human intervention. I think being a good chef is about highlighting that beauty just as much as it is coming up with inventive preparations.
Tickets for the Finders Keepers dinner are $120 and can be purchased here. A $20 discount is offered to Concrete Jungle members.
Story by Jodi Cash
Photos by Dessa Lohrey