Riot Hospitality Group started Farm & Craft with three simple concepts in mind: Food, Affection and Community. They have displayed their affection for the community in a number of ways, including donating $20,000 to Folds of Honor. And every day at Farm & Craft they are focused on healthy and sustainable food in a community-style atmosphere.
For Executive Chef Josh Swider, considerable time and effort is spent on the careful selection of ingredients for their Wellness Menu. “The Wellness Menu is a way of catering your diet to increase your probiotic levels, your anti-inflammatory antioxidants and reduce your overall stress.”
The response to the menu and to the bright, airy atmosphere of Farm & Craft has been overwhelmingly positive. So much so that a second location was opened in Uptown Phoenix. “The response has been very good within the community. People eat here because it’s healthy food and we don’t use a whole lot of oils and butter and they can trust us to cook what we say we’re going to cook and how we cook it.”
There are a number of healthy and delicious choices on the menu but for Mr. Swider, breakfast is king. “We have a pancake dish which is lights out. We don’t serve a maple syrup with it. It’s a coconut sugar with agave nectar. But for some reason it works really well with the granola and the fruit.”
“The creative process is relatively simple,” Mr. Swider said about his work. “We don’t do a lot to the food. We try to get the best ingredients we can from wherever we can get it.”
Fresh fruits and vegetables color the interior of the restaurant and provide the eclectic dishes with their rich and healthful flavor. “We have a lot of vegetarians and a lot of vegans, so we try to do some stuff that they’d really want and can’t get anywhere else.”
“The secret to making healthy food taste good,” he says, “is to cook what you love.” For Farm & Craft that simple formula is working.
