Obama dines on local produce

WASILLA — When President Barack Obama dined at a private home in Anchorage last month, he got a taste of the best the Mat-Su Valley has to offer.

According to chef Rob Kineen, most of the produce used in the dinner came from Mat-Su farms.

“I think a lot of (the dinner) was really highlighting the food infrastructure of Alaska,” Kineen said in an interview last week.

Among the menu items at the dinner held at the home of Alaska Dispatch News publisher Alice Rogoff were a harvest green salad, roasted potatoes and root vegetables; and a rhubarb cobbler. All of those items used produce picked from Mat-Su farms.

Kineen — who also cooks at the Tap Root in Anchorage — said he routinely gets his fresh produce from Valley suppliers like Alex Davis of A.D. Farms and Kyla Byers of Arctic Harvest Deliveries. Davis run a family farm on Lazy Mountain and Byers is a distributior who sells Mat-Su produce directly to chefs and private individuals.

Davis said he’s been supplying food – mostly root vegetables – to Kineen for more than a decade.

“He and I have been working together since I started the farm 11 years ago,” he said.

Davis said the idea that some of his spuds were eaten by the president is “pretty cool.”

“I always like having stuff going to people where it’s appreciated,” he said.

Rogoff declined to comment for this story.

Davis grows about 50 different types of vegetables at his farm and also raises pigs with his wife Kathy and their four children. He’s been able to grow the business into an all-year enterprise.

“We do farmers markets year round,” he said.

Davis didn’t specifically pick any vegetables for the presidential dinner. Instead, he simply filled Kineen’s regular order. However, he did say he had an inkling some of his food – beets, chard, multicolored carrots – might have been used in the feast.

“That does not surprise me,” he said. “He’s buying from me every week.”

Likewise, Byers said she didn’t take any special preparation steps when supplying potatoes and rhubarb for the event.

“I’m glad he got a taste of some of our local produce,” she said.

Byers is in her first year as a produce distributor, and has been working with chefs and a few individuals through a CSA program that delivers produce directly to consumers for $35 per bag. Byers said most of the veggies she delivered this summer reached dinner plates within a day or two of being in the ground.

“It’s better product, better quality,” than people can get at the grocery store, she said.

Byers said she’s excited that the presidential dinner can help shed light on the local food movement, which she said is a growing trend in Alaska. More people are becoming conscious of where their produce is grown, she said, which is driving the industry forward.

“I think it’s a really awesome time to be in the local food movement,” she said.

Kineen said he makes a point of using as many Alaska grown ingredients in his dishes as possible.

“We just make it our business to use local products,” he said.

The presidential dinner itself was a bit different from a normal catering event, he said. Rather than being able to give a speech about his ingredients, Kineen said he was instructed to “put the food down and walk away” he said. However, that didn’t dull the luster of cooking for a sitting U.S. President.

“He was very gracious,” Kineen said.

Kineen said he hopes the dinner will help shed light on the fact that Mat-Su farmers are still a thriving and vital part of the local economy. And he said he’d definitely cook for the president again if he ever got the chance.

“It was a blast,” he said.

Contact editor Matt Tunseth at 352-2268 or matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com