I've been traveling to Cabo for years with my mom and step-dad and every time we go, it seems, there are more restaurants touting their locally-grown, organic produce. Not only that, there are now at least three organic farms in the arroyo outside of San Jose that have restaurants. I write about these on-farm restaurants for the May issue of Food & Wine. (Available with a digital or print subscription here.)
Here's a tease:
It’s dusk and I’m sitting with my husband on a lush 16-acre organic farm, sipping a glass of cabernet when I notice that the tree brushing up against my arm is festooned with pomegranates. It’s only 5:30PM but already the open-air bar to my right is spilling over with glamorously-dressed Californians and Canadians nursing carrot margaritas and watermelon-mint-basil juleps served in Mason jars and a band on a stage made of hay bales is belting out Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. Rows of arugula, beets, carrots, collards, and mizuna line the field behind us, foreshadowing the unforgettable meal we’re about to consume.
I’m not in my agriculturally-rich home state of Oregon. I’m at Flora Farms in San José del Cabo, Mexico. When I first started coming to Los Cabos 18 years ago, it was impossible to find organic produce anywhere, let alone on restaurant menus. The Cape of Baja, home to both Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo, is arid and desert-like—I’d assumed it was inhospitable for farming.
Little did I know that in 1996, Gloria and Patrick Greene, expats from California, had quietly started growing organic vegetables on an estuary hidden behind the colonial town of San José. Back then, there was no marina and few people lived in the rural villages of Animas Bajas and La Choya; certainly no tourists drove out there. In fact, when it rained, the arroyo would flood, making these two villages—and the Greene’s yurt and farm—inaccessible. “When the arroyo used to run every summer, we’d be cut off for two to three days,” says Greene, laughing. (This was before the San José Marina—or the bridge to it—was built.)
Today, as we tour the farm with chef Guillermo Tellez, I marvel at how the whole Flora Farm enterprise has expanded since I first visited in 2012. The old growth mango grove, a magical spot for weddings and other events, now has its very own kitchen and a brand-new open-air rotisserie for grilling chickens. (Beets, wrapped in tinfoil, are roasted in the embers and served in a fabulous salad at dinner.) Owners of one of 10 culinary cottages— luxury straw bale homes—have access to a beautiful lap pool and hot tub, as well as unlimited organic vegetables and herbs. There’s even an on-site microbrewery, two clothing boutiques, and a brand-new spa and yoga center, complete with a barber shop and juice bar. “We are like our own little village,” says Tellez, whose hoop earrings and pointy salt-and-pepper goatee lend him a pirate-like vibe.
Wine glass in hand, I follow Tellez as he leads us past a wedding—the guests are mingling over cocktails in the mango grove—into his tiny meat cellar, where various cuts of heritage pigs dangle from strings. He’s justifiably proud of the kitchen’s ambitious charcuterie program, which yields dry-cured coppa, sopressata, and culatello (leg cut cured in a pig’s bladder). The cellar will soon double in size, he tells us, and a cheese cave is in the works. Right now, the staff milks six cows and makes their own butter, ricotta, and burrata. (The cave will allow Tellez to make cotija and other aged cheeses.)
Gloria’s motivation to start farming twenty years ago was simple: she had opened an organic restaurant in San José, and needed a ready supply of pesticide-free produce. The 10-acre plot of land that she and Patrick owned came with a mango orchard and a well. Though the soil wasn’t ideal for farming, the Greenes built it up with compost and cover-cropping. Within a few years, their flavor-packed vegetables were turning heads. Chef Charlie Trotter requested tomatoes and herbs for his restaurant at the One & Only Palmilla. Eventually, Trotter gave Gloria a wish list of heirloom varieties to grow: Black Krim and German pink tomatoes, Broad Windsor favas, nero di Toscana kale. Soon other area chefs were placing their orders.
Gloria had been hosting a farmers market and cooking classes on her property for years. In 2009, she began working with a local rancher to raise Spanish hogs, chickens, goats, and rabbits on a nearby ranch. She and Patrick opened Flora’s Field Kitchen the following year. The marina bridge, built that same year, made the journey to the farm easier, but it was still circuitous, via a steep, pothole-pocked dirt road. Nonetheless, guests arrived in droves. Even the likes of Thomas Keller and George Clooney were showing up for dinner. Today, the restaurant is so busy—they do breakfast, lunch, and dinner—that chef Tellez reserves all the farm’s produce, herbs, eggs, and meat for its own meal service, farm store, private events, and two markets.
Just-picked winter root vegetables for sale at Flora Farms
Flora’s Field Kitchen seems to have started a trend. A few miles to the west, chef-farmer Enrique Silva has been farming organically at Los Tamarindos since 2002, and opened an on-farm restaurant in 2011. And last year, Cameron Watt and Stuart McPherson, expats from Vancouver, B.C. snapped up a 25-acre site between Los Tamarindos and Flora Farms. But the farm-to-table ethos has also caught on throughout Los Cabos. All the best resort restaurants along the corridor—from brand-new Comal at Chileno Bay Resort to the restaurants at the One & Only Palmilla—source their produce from local farms and ranches. And every Saturday morning, San José’s boisterous Mercado Orgánico attracts locals and travelers who come for its farm-fresh eggs and produce, live music, yoga classes, and tasty Mexican fare like Tlacoyos and tamales.
the beet salad at Flora Farms