A new kind of restaurant that’s been years in the making is finally taking root in Ferguson Township.
It’s called the RE Farm Café, and it promises to combine the best aspects of a restaurant, a farmer’s market, and a classroom.
For the last two years, Duke and Monica Gastiger, owners of a popular pair of State College landmarks, the Rathskeller and Spat’s Café, have been hard at work to make their unique vision a reality.
“Farm cafes are a relatively new concept,” Duke Gastiger says. “Vermont has several, and you have the whole-farm movement out in California, but everywhere in between municipalities have had a tough time introducing diverse agricultural income-producing business.”
Ferguson Township made history this week when the board of supervisors gave the RE Farm Café a thumbs up, unanimously approving a new zoning ordinance to allow the restaurant on agricultural land.
“This is a great idea, and I’m glad there’s been a group pushing this forward,” supervisor Elliot Killian said at Monday’s board meeting. “It’s great that this has the interest of the community.”
Gastiger says the idea for the farm café is actually pretty simple. Once construction on the RE Farm Café is finished next year, it will be a fully-fledged restaurant based on the J.L. Farm. That’s located along Shingletown Road (Route 45) not far from West College Avenue.
The chefs will also tend the fields and work the farms, using products grown onsite to prepare a wide variety of dishes. Anything they need that they don’t pick themselves will come straight from other farms in central Pennsylvania.
“It’s truly farm to fork,” Gastiger says.
But that’s not all. Pennsylvanian farmers will also sell some of their produce on site, giving State College a new alternative to the grocery store. Gastiger even envisions cooking classes and educational programming about food production so customers can make more informed choices about what they eat.
The building itself will even conform to what Gastiger calls the “living building challenge,” by using solar panels, onsite water and other sustainable construction initiatives.
Gastiger says the restaurant is a win-win-win: it gives State College a delicious new dining option; it will foster a greater appreciation for local agriculture; and it will give small farmers a new way to generate revenue.
Gasitger originally wanted to be waist-deep in construction by now, but it took longer than planned to draft and pass the necessary ordinance. Despite that minor setback, he is thrilled to break ground on the RE Farm Café in the coming months.
“This is the culmination of my career,” Gastiger says. “It forces me and my staff to come up with a new style of cooking, but we’re looking forward to reinventing the wheel.”
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