Restaurants that utilize the whole animal, in the European tradition of eating everything but the “oink,” have grown common in the United States.

Now, however, chefs have turned their eye toward produce, finding scrappy new ways to utilize every bit of a vegetable — roots, tops, peels, seeds and all. These days, even composting is getting trashed as a wasteful act.

“An acre of land covered with corn, fava beans and tomatoes is going to produce a huge amount of caloric energy that’s going to feed a lot of people,” said Aaron London, the new chef de cuisine at Ubuntu, a Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant in Napa. “But 70 percent of that matter goes into the garbage can.”

At Ubuntu, the kitchen has always used blanched carrot tops and other veggie tops to make pestos and purees. Now London has gone a step beyond, taking organic veggie peels and stems and treating them like Chinese tea.

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Few vegetarian restaurants have garnered as much favorable publicity as has Ubuntu in downtown Napa. It not only serves food but also is a yoga studio. Although that may seem like a strange combination, the food and the decor are stylish and chic.

Under Jeremy Fox the restaurant soared; now it remains in the stratosphere with Aaron London at the helm. While the menu is somewhat different, the bean soup has been served since the restaurant opened a little less than three years ago.

The soup is updated seasonally and cries out for embellishment. Recently, the blend included nettles, but it’s now served with slow-cooked black kale.

by Michael Bauer

Few restaurants have received such favorable national publicity as Ubuntu, thanks to the initial husband-and-wife chef team of Jeremy and Deanie Fox.

A few months ago, however, they split and ended up leaving the restaurant. Deanie Fox is back working at Manresa, and Jeremy Fox is helping Daniel Patterson to open Plum, his new place in Oakland.

It seemed that Ubuntu might be in free fall because even with such positive publicity a vegetable-based restaurant in a yoga studio in downtown Napa is a hard sell.

To head the kitchen, owner Sandy Lawrence hired Aaron London, who cooked with Jeremy Fox but left briefly to gain front-of-the-house experience at Bottega in Yountville. He is well grounded in the Ubuntu style but has changed the menu significantly - and raised the intimidation factor.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/02/DDS91DNID8.DTL#ixzz0poGfiFAU

When Ubuntu opened its doors in downtown Napa in the summer of 2007, not even owner Sandy Lawrence expected the new wine country dining destination to strike such a responsive chord around the nation.

Before Ubuntu was a year old, it had received rave reviews from foodies and critics alike, with the New York Times ranking it at number two on the list of the 10 best new restaurants opening in the United States that year.  Continue to link above.

by Lorna Sass

If you are a very lucky person, you occasionally have food placed before you whose beauty makes you wide-eyed in amazement and whose taste makes you eat as slowly as possible to savor every nuance.
I was recently a very lucky person when The Sweetie and I had dinner at Ubuntu in Napa.  All of my food colleagues had recommended going there, and within the first few minutes I understood why:  Dinner at Ubuntu was one of the most memorable meals of my life.  (It has already receive 1 Michelin star!)
To call Ubuntu a vegetarian restaurant would like calling Stephen Sondheim a Broadway tunesmith:  the label just doesn’t reveal the astonishing complexity. In the case of Ubuntu, the culinary music is made by celebrating the freshest, most beautiful vegetables I’ve ever seen in a restaurant.  Each is prepared and presented in an artful way that focuses on the unique looks, tastes, and textures of the particular vegetable–many of them heirloom varieties that are difficult to experience unless you grow your own–which the restaurant does in its own bio-dynamic garden on the property of restaurant owner, Sandy Lawrence, only a few miles away.  Indeed, most of the vegetables you eat at Ubuntu were still growing a few hours before they are set on the plate. 

(see more, including videos, at the link above)

NAPA, CA—February 22, 2010 – Ubuntu Restaurant Owner Sandy Lawrence and Chef/Partner Jeremy Fox announce Fox’s resignation to pursue other interests. Aaron London, Chef Fox’s former Executive Sous Chef will assume the position of Chef de Cuisine.
“We have been delighted to work with Jeremy on the creation of this great restaurant,” says Ubuntu Owner Sandy Lawrence. “Jeremy was instrumental in opening and creating the foundation for Ubuntu which helped establish the restaurant as a leading Northern California destination, we wish him all the best in his future endeavors. We look forward to Chef Aaron London ushering the restaurant into its next chapter.”

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Purple radishes with mushroom “caviar”…asparagus with creamy slices of chèvre and nori “mayonnaise”…and would you believe a sumptuous carrot-based mac and cheese? Dorothy Allison (who never met a vegetarian meal she didn’t want to chase down with a burger) visits a Napa Valley restaurant where the cooking is so seductive, so full of surprises, it could change the way we all think about food.

At 9 a.m. on a sauna-warm October Friday, Ubuntu’s executive chef/partner Jeremy Fox examines produce in the middle of a two-acre vegetable garden and orchard. Plumes of magenta amaranth nod over him. Cape gooseberries beckon plumply from leafy bushes. Swiss chard springs from the ground in rainbow stalks with bonnets of ruffled leaves. Ripe bronze Seckel pears hang like Christmas ornaments from low trees. More than 30 types of heirloom tomatoes add their distinctive pungent scent to the fragrant dirt-sweetened air.

Magazine Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Scouting Rising Culinary Stars
Two from Chicago, Two Women & Chef at a Vegetarian Restaurant Win

Who are America’s next superstar chefs? Food & Wine Editor in Chief Dana Cowin today announced the magazine’s highest honor, the Food & Wine Best New Chef award, for 2008. This highly coveted award, launched in 1988, identifies up-and-coming chefs in America who are innovators with a distinct culinary style and vision creating exceptionally delicious food. The 2008 winners will be featured on the cover in the July issue and profiled as part of a 20th-anniversary package on foodandwine.com.

Next weekend kicks off tourism season in Napa Valley, a 30-mile-long patch of California Eden. Home to more than 400 wineries, the Valley draws some five million visitors each year, many of whom are there to swirl, sip and spit.
But for all but the most passionate oenophile—and especially for vacationers with minors or nondrinkers in tow—the allure of discovering the chewy tobacco undertones in French-oak-fermented Syrah is likely to fade after the first few winery stops.

It’s both a yoga studio and restaurant, and the groundbreaking all-vegetable menu created by Jeremy Fox makes this the most significant vegetarian restaurant to open since Greens nearly 30 years ago. Owner Sandy Lawrence’s studio can be seen on the mezzanine behind translucent panels framed by handsome rock walls and windows overlooking Main Street in downtown Napa.

Where’s the brown rice?” asked my friend Jennifer as we studied the menu.
We didn’t spot a grain of it.
“And the tofu?” she wondered.
None of that, either.
What we saw instead were marcona almonds dusted with sea salt (no shock) and lavender sugar (big surprise). We ordered some to take the edge off our hunger as we sipped pinot noir and chardonnay from a list that emphasizes biodynamic vineyards and does justice to the restaurant’s location in the heart of American wine country.

A few things unite Jeremy Fox and Deanie Hickox Fox:
They share top kitchen duties at Ubuntu, the new Napa sensation, where he’s the chef and she’s the pastry chef.
Both like to play with their vegetables, using different textures, flavors and contrasts to bring out the best in the seasonal produce harvested from the restaurant’s garden.

It’s surprising that with all the amazing produce at our back door there aren’t more vegetarian restaurants that meticulously respect that bounty. Too many places end up taking great products and diminishing them.

But the newly opened Ubuntu in Napa, which calls itself a vegetable restaurant rather than a vegetarian one , seems to get the idea. It may sound like merely nomenclature, but it makes a difference.