Friends: S&S Takeout

Embracing Our Interdependence With Nature

Friends: S&S Takeout

Not long ago in the article Sustainability: On Local Food and Community I wrote about the value of pursuing local food. There is a very cool new vibe in town that very much supports local family farms. S&S Takeout is a new restaurant in Downtown Fort Pierce that is embracing the concept of local food and that is not all. This restaurant has been put together and is being managed with sustainability in mind. Owners and locavores Gerrie and Adam Biegner are also doing their best to offer great value to their customers. Every day I get an email communication with that day’s menu of fresh culinary creations, and from 4:30pm to 6pm when they close all of the food from the menu that day is blown out at a discount.

On my first visit I came in at closing and surfed what was left for sale in the case. The restaurant is spotless, and although it is small it sports a few small tables, a drink cooler with some very interesting drink choices including locally bottled Natalie’s Orchid Island Lemonade, and an amazing root beer made from green tea and sweetened with cane sugar (now that’s what I’m talking about). and there are also lemon lime and orange flavor versions of green tea soda I haven’t tried yet. There was a sparkling water bottled in recycled glass in the case that has been produced in this country since the 1870’s, as well as a few other bottled drink choices. There were no plastic bottled drinking waters there. You know which ones I am talking about.. they are everywhere, but you won’t find them at S&S Takeout.

Adam and Gerrie are really making some important ecological choices in the administration of their restaurant. One wall of their storefront, graphics donated by Waste Pro, is a recycling station like you might see in one of those high end healthy food grocery stores, and the utensils that come with your responsibly packaged carry out are wooden so entirely degradable. Their drink straws are made of paper, not plastic. I have been throwing all of those into my compost. The least stained forks and spoons I hold out from the compost to use as plant markers for my next garden .

About the compost; Gerrie has been bringing the vegetable peelings, eggshells, and wooden cutlery wastes to Heathcote Botanical Garden’s Community Garden where we grow organic vegetables for one of the Sarah’s Kitchen Soup Kitchens. We compost their kitchen garbage. I pick up a bucket of kitchen wastes for my compost as well.

So how about the food? right? As you might imagine, a restaurant that is meticulous about its carbon footprint is not likely to spare the details when it comes to the cooking. Chef Adam Biegner’s cooking is awesome! The food I tried was absolutely delicious. It was of course very fresh, creatively combined, pleasantly spiced, had great textures and flavors without being too rich. That holds true of the desserts I tried too. I had a big 7 layer dessert bar that was excellent, but the mango cheese cake knocked me out, and the braided mango pie had a light crust that was as good to eat as the Champagne Mango baked inside. I am planning my next visit especially for dessert, and hopefully more of that cheese cake, and that is a big deal because I am not usually a great fan of cheese cake.

Every Saturday I see Gerrie at the Downtown Fort Pierce Farmer’s Market where she buys boxes of locally grown produce from family farms like Gibbons Organic Farm. She uses bison from a bison ranch in Okeechobee, locally grown beef, and pastured pork from a farm in Avon Park. All of these details and more can be found on the S&S Takeout website. I suggest you check it out, and definitely check out their awesome local food. Maybe I will see you there!

5 Responses

  1. Debbie Soesbe says:

    Right before Gerrie and Adam first opened S&S they offered free samples of food “Chef” had prepared. A few of us from work, curious about organic food, went to try out this new restaurant. Gerrie went over all the food selections (and explained their recycling effort). All we had to say was ooooh, look at that and it was on our plate. We licked our fingers, smacked our lips, rolled our eyes, and promised we’d be back. I’ve never been disappointed with the food, or the prices, especially the discount after 4:30 p.m. I hope more and more people patronize their restaurant.

  2. Sara says:

    Really cool and inspiring!

  3. Naomi says:

    Wow, cool to hear about people walking the walk and doing it well and not charging a mint for it! I wish there was a business like that here in Normal, Illinois!

  4. Trust me, the food is excellent.

  5. Lisa says:

    Gerrie and Adam are wonderful people. I have known Gerrie for years and everything Adam cooks is delicious. My family is a big fan of the chocolate chip cookies. Last week I tried the vegetarian stuffed peppers and they were terrific! I so appreciate having such a great restaurant in our downtown and I highly recommend it to anyone!

    I love your idea of using the forks for plant markers!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.