Best Restaurants 2011: Backyard to Table

Lucky's Café

777 Starkweather Ave., Cleveland,
216-622-7773, luckyscafe.com

Ty Fun Thai Bistro

815 Jefferson Ave., Cleveland,
216-664-1000, tyfunthaibistro.com

AMP 150

4277 W. 150th St., Cleveland,
216-706-8787, amp150.com

GARDEN

Four raised, 4-foot-by-12-foot beds on the patio

A 4-foot-by-12-foot plot adjacent to the restaurant

A quarter acre out back, plus six plots in the parking lot, and a potted herb garden

MOTIVATION

"We decided, Let's go for it," Haviland says. "We got funding from a number of different organizations." Donors supplied wood for beds, compost and even money for scholarships that pay neighborhood kids to help out.

"It's organic and it's much more fresh, [with] more aroma," explains chef and owner Sunny Ting. Plus, he says of gardening, "I love it. It's therapy — meditate and relax."

"It's the basis of a lot of the food we do here," says chef Ellis Cooley, who started the grass-roots garden last year, "taking really good local ingredients that are really easy to do and just letting them speak for themselves."

WHAT'S GROWING

Heirloom tomatoes for canning, romaine lettuce for salads and peppers for hot sauce. She also rotates new items in and out. Last year, she grew the flowers that graced Lucky's tables.

Thai cuisine staples such as Thai sweet basil and chili pepper, mint, tomatoes, scallions and string beans

Heirloom tomatoes, varieties of eggplant and squash, peas, beans and root crops

ON THE MENU

Penne pesto pasta ($12.95). "That's basil from our garden and little cherry tomatoes from the garden," Haviland says. "And people just freak out about it."

Kra prow ($17) with sauteed chicken, veggies and basil leaves tossed in chili garlic sauce. The homegrown Thai basil is the star of the show.

Everywhere. "We're definitely going to have sliced tomatoes with salt, pepper and olive oil," Cooley says. "I get really excited about each vegetable as it comes up. We haven't had tomatoes on the menu since last year."