Steve Johnson is the chef and owner at Rendezvous, the bistro-style restaurant in Central Square, Cambridge I’ve written about in The Gloucester Times. (Steve came to my house last winter to make a video – toasted orrechiete with pork and veal meatballs, a dish my family and I devoured in one long mmmmmm that night.)
The number one fact about Rendezvous is the food: it’s great. – Southern France-hearty, North African-interesting, and American-hip without ever striking a flat note, or being empty-trendy. Serious food with roots and integrity.
A second interesting fact, and it’s old news but we all love to mention it: Rendezvous is housed in an old Burger King. I’ve said it before but will point out the pure Cambridgian moment here: A bistro-inspired restaurant succeeds where a fast food joint can’t. Fast-schmast.
The irony goes on: On top of that ole’ Burger King now grows one of the lushest roof-top gardens I’ve ever seen, irrigated with nothing but the restaurant’s dripping air-conditioner unit.
Steve grows serious produce – not just a couple of pots of thyme – for his restaurant while keeping his customers cool – an interesting deviation from the water cycle: Hot customers enter restaurant. Air conditioner cools them, producing a water run-off in the process. Run-off irrigates food which customers have come in to eat.
Steve plants everything in cardboard boxes set in flimsy wooden packing crates. He brings in soil, but also has a composter up on the roof for restaurant scraps. He fills the cardboard boxes with soil, and they fit perfectly into the wooden crate. The boxes sit on the roof around the air-conditioning unit which is constantly dripping water, so the boxes are sitting in about a 1/2 inch of puddled water all the time. The soft cardboard wicks up the water, while the wooden crate holds everything together, because the cardboard will gradually decompose. I tucked my finger down into the soil of one of the crates and it was perfectly cool and moist five inches down.
With fifty-five of these boxes on the roof, a composter and a hand-built cold frame in which he winters-over plants, Steve grows mint, chives, purslane, sage, cutting celery, arugula, beautiful French radishes, potatoes, and the most vibrantly healthy rosemary I’ve ever seen. These rosemary plants are small trees. They couldn’t be healthier or happier in a Provencal potager.
Maybe the aroma of all that “garbure” being served below is being vented over the rosemary, and they think they are in Provence? Or maybe this chunk of Central Square just has some Languedoc karma, but, as the bistro thrives, so does the rosemary. – and everything else.
Still a good song; still a good place to be – when this ole’ world starts getting you down…
