A community garden in Long Beach that grows fresh produce for the Peruvian restaurant Casa Chaskis is in need of volunteer help.
“We want this to become a community asset,” said Jeff Rowe of Project Business Lift. “That the community says that this is a part of who we are.”
Rowe put together Project Business Lift in 2020 to assist and advise small businesses on the Westside of Long Beach that were struggling during the pandemic. It has actively been helping to improve and beautify the Santa Fe Village neighborhood, where Casa Chaskis is located, since December 2020.
According to Rowe, the garden requires daily care. It needs to be weeded and fertilized, and the irrigation system needs to be repaired.
So far, all volunteer work has been provided by students in the UC Master Gardeners program as part of their studies, but more help is needed.
Once the garden has community volunteers to help care for it, they’ll be welcomed to take a few pieces of produce in return for their hard work, according to Rowe.
“The community building is sort of the prize to me at the end,” Rowe said. “And kind of getting more people to grow fruits and veggies so they live healthier.”
A 10-square-foot plot in the garden grew watermelons throughout the summer, and its winter crop is still to be decided. The garden also features a vegetable plot 30 feet wide and 20 feet long, a plot specifically for lettuce that’s 6 feet by 3 feet, and fruit trees, including a large calamansi tree that towers over the rest of the plants.
During the summer, gardeners were able to plant cabbage in the shadow of the calamansi tree even though it was out of season—the shade making it cool enough for the cabbage to survive the summer heat.
Volunteers with the UC Masters Gardeners program began planting the first crops in the community garden a little over five months ago.
Later on in the summer, the garden’s first crop was ready to be harvested, and included a lot of corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuces, zucchinis and pole beans.
“When you grow and you harvest and you use, it’s something magical,” Chef Agustin Romo said.
This first summer harvest inspired Romo to create a garden-to-table style menu, with dishes made from the freshly harvested crops often referred to as “de la chacra,” referring to the Andean word for garden or field.
The garden grows more food than Casa Chaskis can use, and the extra produce is distributed to the community.
“A lot of restaurants in the city do support local farms and stuff like that but they don’t grow their own stuff,” Romo said.
Casa Chaskis focuses on Criollo cuisine, which developed in the capital city of Lima, Peru and pulls from the cuisines of various ethnic groups residing in the country.
Around half of Casa Chaskis’ menu consists of seafood dishes. The Chinese and Japanese influences in Criollo cuisine can be seen in the stir fry and noodle-based dishes.
The garden has helped to offset some of the restaurant’s costs.
According to Romo, when the garden was growing tomatoes in the summer, he went a month and a half without having to purchase any for Casa Chaskis.
“I don’t have to buy any kale at all,” Romo said. “I’m still using the one that was planted there this year.”
One of Casa Chaskis’ signature dishes, its kale saltado, was only made possible through the fresh kale grown in the garden.
“I’m not tooting my own horn, but I would dare to say that I invented that dish just because I had kale,” Romo said. “I had kale so I’m like ‘What am I going to do with all this kale?'”
Multiple times throughout the day, Romo will send his staff to the back lot behind the restaurant to cut pieces of kale from one of the stocks growing in the garden.
“I’m happy that kale is perennial because people come back for it,” Romo said.
Its kale saltado is a reinterpretation of the popular Peruvian dish lomo saltado, a stir fry traditionally made with fries, tomatoes, white onions and a protein, served with white rice.
Kale saltado replaces the fries with kale to create a healthier option that’s been a big hit with Casa Chaskis’ customers.
According to Romo, the kale saltado is the restaurant’s “number one seller.”
Romo noted that the difference in taste between store-bought and freshly harvested produce is significant.
“You’ll notice it,” Romo said. “It’s totally different. My bell peppers tasted totally different. The kale here was much softer, it wasn’t so hard and stiff like you would get at markets.”
To volunteer to work in the community garden at 2380 Santa Fe Ave., contact Jeff Rowe by calling 562-343-3834 or by emailing jfrowe@rocketmail.com.