- [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

(gentle music) Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit Georgia grown.com.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating, doing life is always better together, at GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

- The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

Let's hit the road here in Georgia and meet the farmers, producers, makers, and bakers who keep us all fed, and keep us coming back for more, straight ahead at, "A Fork in the Road".

(lively music) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - [David] Gerogia farmers, artisans, merchants and producers, we depend on these men and women every day of our lives through the choices we make in the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the end game remains the same, results.

(bright music) (lively music) Freshness and quality make a difference, no doubt about that.

And in recent years people seem to have started to care a little more about what they eat and where they're buying from.

In 2019, Kirk Halpern and his son Ben, along with the team at Farmers & Fishermen Purveyors saw an opportunity to bring the highest quality food they could find from both local farms and from family Farmers and Fishermen all around the world to some of greater Atlanta's top restaurants and independent operators.

Time to explore the world of Farmers and Fishermen.

(bright music) Kirk Halpern has been in this business of purveying most of his professional life.

He and his father grew Atlanta-based Buckhead Beef into one of the largest privately-owned meat purveyors in the country.

He then founded Halpern Steak and Seafood Company in 2005, a business that also found success and was sold in 2015.

So in 2019, Kirk had a different plan.

This time, aligned with his son, Ben, to create a more personal buying experience for partnering chefs and food service businesses, who get to enjoy some of the freshest and highest quality food around.

(bright music) - We launched Farmers & Fishermen with a very simple mission, and that was to connect wonderful farmers, wonderful fishermen, both nearby and close, and from the four corners of the world, with the Georgia restaurant and consuming community, so that we could tell their story, bring delicious and wonderful foods, so that it could be served here in Georgia.

The relationships that we have built over the decades with the chefs, the owner, operators, it's everything.

Gabby is our fresh seafood buyer.

Share with us what you got that came in today.

- Yes, beautiful and fresh American snapper, a beautiful mahi, some Florida pompano, some Carolina flounder, some yellowtails, some wild striped bass.

Beautiful steelhead Norway.

Beautiful Norwegian salmon kg, Chilean sea bass and some dorgans and delicious golden tile.

Whole king crab and whole black grouper.

My chefs are gonna be excited.

- Great.

- [David] For the Halpern's, it's all about relationship building, connecting the farmers and the fishermen to the East Georgia chefs and one way they do that is at their annual food, wine, and spirit show.

And this year's show was at Poolman Yards in the Kirkwood neighborhood of East Atlanta.

(bright music) - We're at the Farmers & Fishermen and RNDC Fine Wine & Spirits and Food Show.

This year's location is in the historic Coleman Yard in Atlanta, Georgia.

What we do is we take our small fishermen, farmers, the best owner operators that we find in North America and some from around the world, bring them here and then bring owners and operators, chefs, restaurateurs into this venue for a free flow of exchange and so that our customers in North Georgia can see some of these great items.

When I decided to launch Farmers and Fishermen with my son, Ben, we said what spoke to us and what we wanted to do was to have an impact.

A lot of these suppliers are third and fourth generation producers.

My ability to help them grow in sales gives them a future for their future generations.

We're showing to the restaurant floors some affordable opportunities that they'll be able to serve to their guests at reasonable prices.

So the menus of the future are in part decided by things that happen today here.

(bright music) - We've toured the home base, so now let's meet one of the family farms who delivered this great food.

And for that we hop on down to Hartsfield Jackson International Airport and take a plane to San Diego, then drive back east a couple of hours over rocky terrain to discover an oasis of farming and ranching just south of the Salton Sea and a few miles north of the Mexican border in El Centro, California.

And it's here we meet the Abatti family who deliver many Georgia Chefs, some of the highest quality meat in the world, Abatti family Ranch Wagyu.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - The cattle industry in the United States is one of the best in the world and we produce a really high grade product.

And so to step up another level and bring in wagyu beef in the United States and to bring it to the level to compete against Japanese wagyu is the next step what would to happen.

- [David] Why is it important for you to have partners like the Halpern Farmers and Fisher?

- [Alex] Well, they become the voice.

I mean, I can only be such a loud voice, but they can echo my voice and they can believe in the product.

They have the ability to go to the chefs, go to people, compare product, and once they taste it, once they get it on their tongue, the differentiation happens.

(bright music) - I know there's a lot of family history that you have on this land, on this ranch.

Would you be kind enough and share it with us?

- Well, it goes back to my roots in Italy.

And so my grandfather on my father's side came to the desert out here in 1911.

- [Kirk] What brought 'em out here?

- 40 acres of free ground and a shovel.

So they learn to do all types of things.

How to grow out here in the desert with the river water.

- [David] People always say you are what you eat, but you believe it's also you are what you drink when it comes to the cattle.

Tell me about the water sourcing here.

- These cattle at after 1,000 pounds, they'll feed between 20, 25 pounds of feed a day and they'll consume over 200 pounds of water per day.

The water source goes all the way back to Japan.

When I was selling feeding Japan, they would always speak of how the spring water was critical in their wagyu cattle and that basically the United States was unable to emulate that.

Cattle here are fed on Colorado River water that snowpack river water.

And so we're fortunate just because of location we receive that and then how we take care of the water resource basically coming into our feed yard so we have the right stuff to make it happen.

- Just like Kirk's relationship with his son Ben, Alex is running this ranch with his daughter Daniela or Danny.

- My family as a our cultural family all the way back to the 1911.

And you know, doing this a generation at a time, being a farming family has been something that we wanna pass on to our generations and make it more like an impact on their lives.

So my parents made an impact on my life and I wanna make an impact on my children's lives and so on so forth because really what keeps us alive is agriculture.

(bright music) - The Abatti family then invited us all to join him and his extended family for dinner at the ranch.

And lucky for us, we came prepared with a top-notch Georgia chef who we've actually featured on "A Fork in the Road".

Chef Madeline or the blonde chef, now works with the Farmers and Fishermen team and knew just what to do with her fresh Abatti family Ranch Wagyu.

(bright music) Tell me what we got going here.

- We've got beautiful, Abatti family Ranch Wagyu, flat meat, like other thin meats, flank steak.

It's a great incredible value that Farmers and Fishermen gets to bring to all of our great customers in Georgia.

Absolutely love being able to offer this to my customers because it's a superior quality meat and we have some really value cuts that we can bring to our market.

And after walking the farm today, it's absolutely phenomenal and you can see it in every step that they take to care for the cattle.

(gentle music) - You know, as a generational business father and son, the reality is this all is an extension of our family.

And to break bread with the farmers, to be able to put in the hard work and build a program and be able to connect our farmers and our fishermen with the leading restaurateurs as well as our home delivery customers in an approachable way, it works.

It's beautiful and I'm just happy to be here and be a part of it.

- [David] Let's now make our way back to Georgia to a downtown Gainesville restaurant that teams with Farmers and Fishermen to deliver the Abatti family Ranch Wagyu to the people of a town where chickens rule the roost.

(bright music) - [Roland] We are in Historic Gainesville, it's a really pretty area.

It's got a lot of just local shops, bars, restaurants, boutiques.

- [David] Tell me about the stag, why this is special and what you serve here.

- So the Stag is a really great restaurant.

This is my restaurant, this is my baby because we do steaks, chops, seafood, we have great craft cocktails and amazing wine list.

We make everything from scratch.

All of our beef is primed, which we actually get from Farmers and Fishermen.

They get the best product shipped in from all over the world and we get it delivered five, sometimes six days a week.

So it's always fresh, it's always constant and it's always coming in nice and clean.

Kirk Halpern is the founder and owner of Farmers and Fishermen and he's been such a great resource.

I'm 28 years old, just a small restaurateur and he's someone that you can call and get on the phone and if you have any kind of advice or business advice, he's been very successful in the food industry.

So it's a really great resource, really nice guy, great team.

Their sales team is amazing, their distribution team's all very kind and friendly.

They're always on time.

So I just can't speak highly enough about 'em.

- [David] And you're cooking something special today here.

- We are.

So we actually are gonna have an Abatti wagyu tomahawk.

- I absolutely love what Farmers and Fishermen brings to all these Georgia communities.

I love the relationship.

You have this presentation.

Now this is bringing incredible food presented in an incomparable fashion.

I don't think I've ever been as excited about eating something as this.

And it's gone.

Melts in the mouth.

- Yeah, it is good.

It's the Wagyu man.

- [David] Man, thank you so much.

- Absolutely.

- The stag chop house.

I'll be back guarantee that.

(lively music) We will follow up with Roland in an episode later this season, but for now, let's journey down to the Georgia Coast to reintroduce a longtime Georgia fisherman who delivers high quality Georgia fish, oysters and even clams to chefs in Georgia and beyond.

He is known in these parts as the man with the clams, many clams, in fact, captain Charlie Phillips and the hardworking team of Sapelo Sea Farms have been raising and harvesting little neck clams for years.

Along these ever-changing tides of Macintosh County, Georgia.

His fan boat skimmed the top of this nutrient rich water, sometimes even sliding over land that was several feet underwater just hours prior.

The old sacks are harvested with mature clams inside as fresh juvenile clams are carefully laid to begin their cycle of life.

- These are called hard clams.

We got 'em started back in around '97, '98 UGA marine extension came and asked a friend of mine and we wanted to grow some clams and we said sure.

And we learned how to kill a lot of clams first and then after that we learned how to get 'em to live.

So that's how we got started.

- [David] Sapelo Sea Farms grows and harvests the majority of clams coming out of the Georgia Coast.

They're growing in land most people never knew was even here.

(somber music) - Where we are right now is Four Mile Island and it's a kings grant deed.

It's the only way you can own marsh in Georgia.

And it takes me about six months to get 'em up to a grow out clam, which is a clam about the size of your fingernail.

And then I put 'em in another bag with a nine millimeter hole and they stay in that bag for about 18 months.

So my clams are roughly two years old by the time I harvest them.

- [David] Charlie Sapelo Sea Farm clams are a hit with chefs all over the US and up into Canada.

But there's more to this man than these sacks of clams.

Captain Charlie loves his boats and adores the open sea.

Let's take a journey on his 42 foot Duffy, known as the Beagle, to learn more about Charlie Phillips, his operation and what it takes to be a fisherman in this day and age.

(bright music) Heading to some underwater banks, about 25 miles out, the fog quickly cleared and the water began popping a vibrant hue of blue.

Our target fish today, red snapper, one of the most popular menu items in the world.

So harvest season is short and Charlie's limit on what he catches is not what it used to be.

- We've got a short red snapper season, so we're gonna try to catch our limit of red snappers, which basically is about 75 pounds.

We might pick a black sea bass or two, maybe a turtle fish, maybe we'll troll for a king mackerel or something on the way in.

(bright music) Is that grouper?

Yeah, grouper.

- [Charlie] Wow.

Whoo.

That's a gag.

That's a good fish.

- [David] There we go.

And a snare, then he found the spot, what's the gag gotta be.

- I think he's gotta be 24 and he is just, he's 25.

- [David] Yeah.

- Yeah, he's just legal.

Yeah, we'd probably get about two more fish and then we going to, we better quit so we don't go over the limit.

- [David] What's it mean to you to be a fisherman out here off the coast of Georgia?

- It's what you do.

It is not a job per se.

On a good day, there's not a better office in the world and on a bad day there's really not a worse office in the world.

Being able to pull the natural resources and share 'em, you know it's important.

And teaching people what you can do with our resources and how to fish 'em sustainably.

And most fishermen are environmentalists, 'cause they don't want to catch all the fish in the sea.

They want their kids to catch 'em and things like that.

Caught some fish, caught some mackerel.

Good weather.

Probably gonna get rained on before we get to the dock, so it'll wash the boat off.

It's just hard to beat this.

It really is.

- [David] Thanks for having me out.

(bright music) So clams are Charlie's bread and butter, but his beautiful boats, his crew, this sea and this life on the open water is what he loves most.

- Driving with the foot (laughs), end of a good day.

I have practiced driving with my feet for many years.

- [David] It's impressive.

(gentle music) (lively music) So now that we've met the fishermen, ranchers and farmers, let's see a few more Georgia chefs in action.

And for that we journey to a highly acclaimed restaurant in Buckhead, known as Ecco, to see the magic of this Farmers and Fishermen Purveyor partnership.

(bright music) Enter the small refrigerated trucks personally delivering these unique family farm products to the chefs.

Mark Jeffers is the vice president of culinary operations at Fifth Group Restaurants who run Ecco along with many other top-notch, greater Atlanta area hotspots.

- Guests are pretty informed these days and there's some really great restaurants doing some great things.

So it's really important to us that we're leading the pack in terms of sourcing and quality and integrity.

So working with purveyors, it's important to us to find a company that holds a lot of our same values.

Farmers and Fishermen does that exceptionally well.

We're locally owned.

We're in Georgia.

We've got nine restaurants and a catering company and we're servicing our friends and neighbors in our backyard.

And so whenever we get a chance to bring in product that's sourced from those people that are supporting our community, it's by far and away just a big win in our first choice.

Having someone like Farmers and Fishermen who goes outta their way to find you special, interesting cuts, interesting products, seasonal products that are not only fresh, but because it's coming right out of the water or off of the farm, it comes across as a value.

We're able to serve that in unique and interesting ways and then pass it on to our guests.

- [David] It's gotta be exciting for your patrons to see this wreckfish from Georgia, when many haven't even heard of wreckfish, much less, it's from the state that they're eating in right here.

- [Mark] Yeah, the fish that we're getting in our restaurants hasn't been outta water for more than a day.

They get it to our back door so our chefs can have fun with it.

(bright music) - So we broke down that big old wreckfish.

So typically whenever I filet a wreckfish, I go for this natural separation here.

That way I can come in and separate it.

This big center loin with some nice skin that we can get crisp up is gonna have super nice, delicate texture to it and be super meaty.

It's already super, super bubbly and crispy.

I'm just gonna hit it with some salt.

Now that the fish is starting to develop some nice golden brown coloring on the bottom and becoming white, I'm gonna go ahead and throw it in the oven right now to let it finish cooking all the way on this skin side until it's cooked all the way through.

So now we have this beautiful seared wreckfish.

You can come underneath the skin, give it a nice turn, and you can just see how crispy that skin is over the top.

So we're gonna start our tomato broth for this fish set.

A little bit of oven roasted fennel here, and a couple of fingerling potatoes.

I like to add just a little bit of olive oil to this now that it's getting warm.

This is a tomato broth of charred onions, celery, and tomatoes.

We also like to add a little pinch of salt.

Something else you can do with fish like this, add a nice knob of butter, a little bay leaf and thyme, and just base it over the top of the fish, just to kind of get that nice golden brown color all the way on top.

So now that the fish is done, you don't wanna leave it in a hot pan, so just set it aside until you're ready to plate the rest of your dish.

Alright, so plating our wreckfish.

We just use this tomato broth, kind of spread everything out among the bowl.

We're gonna make a nice little fresh fennel shallot salad.

It's gonna have the tops of the fennel and some parsley as well.

We just garnished that with a little bit of olive oil, straight that right over the side, and serve it with some nice toast.

(bright music) - These are the Jurgielewicz duck legs.

Cured them with a little bit of soy and honey, smoked 'em for about an hour over hickory and black peppercorns.

Gonna cool this down, chop it up.

And this is gonna be the start of our ravioli filling.

These are 10 of the wood mushrooms.

Those are just cooked down.

Lot of shallot, garlic, a little bit of white miso.

And that's gonna give us a lot of depth, a lot of really, really beautiful umami.

And again, we're trying to find that balance between filling the condiment and the pasta itself.

Just giving a light mist and that's gonna make sure our dough is just moist enough to seal.

Alright, so we're gonna try putting this pasta together.

First thing we're gonna do is fry up these cauliflower leaves.

A lot of times they get thrown away, but I actually really like to eat them.

Gonna shake 'em off, put 'em in our landing pad, grated pecorino.

I'm gonna finish that off in the pan.

I'm gonna use that pasta water kind of as the beginning of our sauce, right, now as that's going and warming.

I've got cold butter here just cubed up.

I want it to be smooth and shiny and enrobe our pasta.

If this boils we're done for, I don't wanna overthink it, but it is always nice for our pastas facing up but not upside down.

This is essentially the stock that we poached those duck thighs in, reduced all the way down with just a really beautiful balsamic vinegar.

And I'm just gonna let that do its thing.

These are little shavings of cauliflower.

They've been marinating in rendered duck fat, a little bit of champagne vinegar and some orange zest.

Those citrus notes from the orange zest will work beautifully with the juniper in the stock from the duck.

And just take our fried cauliflower leaves.

That's our dish.

A smoked duck cappelletti.

(bright music) - Cooking off our Sapelo island clams.

Just wanna get this pot nice and hot first.

We're basically gonna steam them for the pizza that we're gonna make later.

We want to pop them open, add a little bit of flavor to them, but ultimately we're gonna add them to a little pot of olive oil with some herbs and aromatics just so that they're almost like a little conserve of clams to go over top of our pizza.

It's gonna be our clam pie base, similar to a bechamel, some carrots and onions and celery.

Once we have a nice coating of that, we're gonna add a little bit of hard-done bacon lardon.

And we're gonna add a Pecorino and Parmesan mix over the top.

We're gonna go over to our oven.

Our clams are nice and warm now.

We don't want to overcook these.

Remember we already cooked them all.

So we're gonna let this rest for just a moment.

So we have those beautiful clams.

Super delicate, but it's a clam pizza, so you want to eat some clams when you're having this.

And we just have a bunch of beautiful fresh chive batons that we're just gonna finish this guy off with.

We're gonna slide it right onto the plate and enjoy it.

(bright music) - [David] Be it Charlie's Sapelo island clams or a healthy portion of wreckfish, a fish I bet many of you have never had.

Or a stunning cut of Abatti family Ranch Wagyu, or bone marrow.

The quality is undeniably incredible.

This is a special situation for Georgia Chefs to have a local company like Farmers and Fishermen, purveyors, delivering the best of small family farms from all over the world to the people of Georgia.

I'm David Zelski, See you at the next "A Fork in the Road".

(bright music) A fork in the road was brought to you by.

(gentle music) - [Speaker] Community learning, working, playing, celebrating.

Doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything, from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

(bright music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local.

Taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit Georgia grown.com.