Every chef worth their salt relishes the chance to work with the freshest local produce available. For La Cantina’s head chef Glenn Laurie, garden-fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables are right at his kitchen door. The Italian restaurant is based on the grounds of regenerative agriculture farm and social enterprise, Common Ground Project, in Freshwater Creek on Victoria’s Surf Coast.
“We have the opportunity that not many chefs have, to have food growing literally 30 metres from us,” Laurie says. “We change the menu completely every week, and it all depends on what’s in the garden. It makes you think a little more about what you’re cooking.”
There are also chickens to provide eggs for the restaurant’s handmade pasta, and goats and alpacas that make short work of any leftover kitchen scraps. Anything that can’t be sourced from the farm comes from other nearby growers and producers; those who work with nature and respect that producing quality food takes time, just as people in Italy have done for generations.
“People take the time to grow
