Picked this morning
Glebe Farm is the organic market garden in Kilsallaghan, Co. Dublin, supplying Pacinos, The Blind Pig and The Little Pig. A few fields, a couple of polytunnels, and a short journey into the city each day.
Most restaurant vegetables pass through depots, cold stores and several pairs of hands before they reach the kitchen. Ours don’t.
Just 15 km north of the city, in the fields of Kilsallaghan, today’s vegetables were picked only hours before service.
Our chefs plan the menu around what’s growing, and we plan the growing around the menu. That means you’ll find varieties wholesalers rarely stock such as San Marzano tomatoes for our sauces, puntarelle for winter salads, cima di rapa, heritage chicories, spinach, and pumpkins grown from seed we’ve saved ourselves for our ravioli.
Whatever is picked in the morning is cooked that evening. When a crop finishes, it comes off the menu.
That’s not a limitation. That’s the point.
The sauce tomato. First trusses ripening now — the kitchen takes every kilo.
Our staple mix, cut on the morning of delivery — from bed to bowl in hours, never a bag.
Pulled young and sweet, tops still on. No cold store between us and you.
Lifted and hanging in braids. This crop seasons the kitchen until spring.
The Roman winter salad, seeded now for the cold months ahead.
Lifted fresh while they’re at their best, floury and thin-skinned. All our fries are made from our potatoes in house. When was the last time you had an organically grown chip?! Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
Picked leaf by leaf — if you've had the kale crisps, this is where they started.
Picked small and often — the flowers barely last a day off the plant, so they go straight to the kitchen.
The start of nearly every sauce in the kitchen — lifted in late summer, stored for the year.
Cut by the handful on delivery mornings — parsley and chives for finishing, rosemary and thyme for the pot.
Glebe Farm is certified organic by the Irish Organic Association. That means no synthetic sprays or artificial fertilisers — just compost, seaweed, crop rotation, netting and a healthy amount of patience.
The land has been farmed organically since 1996, with nearly thirty years free from synthetic inputs. The market garden came later, with the first vegetable beds planted in 2025. Wherever possible, we save our own seed, especially Italian heritage varieties that are difficult to find in Ireland.
It’s slower. It’s more work. It also tastes like something. If you’re reading this at the table, you’ve probably already noticed.
Certified by the Irish Organic Association
Licence no. 4418
Michael Martin grew up on this land when it was just home to cattle and sheep. After years running Pacinos, and later opening The Blind Pig and The Little Pig cocktail bars, he returned to the family farm with a simple ambition — to make the land work for the restaurant and bars, and to grow exceptional organic vegetables exclusively for his own kitchens.
"Learning to grow them meant starting from scratch. There were plenty of lessons along the way, but nothing compares to harvesting something in the morning and seeing it enjoyed on a guest’s plate that same evening."
Michael and the farm were featured in Best of Ireland — "From the Ground Up."
Two beds were lifted before the rain arrived. The shed smells incredible — the garlic hangs in braids until the skins turn to paper, before heading to the kitchens in crates.
Garlic tells you when it’s ready. As the lower leaves yellow and die back, it’s time to lift. Leave it too long and the bulbs begin to split in the ground — fine for next week’s dinner, but no good for storing through winter.
We had a two-day window before the rain, so both beds came up in one long harvest. Every bulb is lifted with a fork, never pulled, then laid out with the stalk attached while it cures.
The garlic is hung in loose braids where the air can circulate. For the first week the shed smells like the inside of a bruschetta — one of the best moments of the farming year. As the weeks pass, the skins dry, the necks tighten, and the crop is ready to store until spring.
From there it travels to the kitchens a crate at a time. If you’ve enjoyed garlic with your meal tonight — and in an Italian kitchen, that’s a safe assumption — it almost certainly spent time hanging in that shed first.
The polytunnel had some unwelcome guests on the tomato seedlings this spring. What worked? Humidity, a predatory mite, seaweed feeds and refusing to panic. What didn’t? Almost everything else.
Spider mites are tiny, and by the time you notice the damage they’re usually well established. They found our San Marzano seedlings after a run of cold nights had already weakened the plants. We lost some trays — there’s no point pretending otherwise.
Being certified organic, reaching for a chemical spray wasn’t an option. Instead, we changed the conditions. Spider mites thrive in hot, dry air, so we raised the humidity with regular misting, damped down the paths and kept the tunnel moist without losing airflow.
Then we brought in reinforcements. We released Phytoseiulus persimilis, a predatory mite that eats spider mites and nothing else. Once established among the plants it hunts the colonies down for you — no spray, no residue, just one mite seeing off another. It’s slower than a chemical fix, but it’s precise, and it doesn’t leave anything behind on a crop bound for the kitchen.
The final part of the solution was helping the plants recover. Regular seaweed feeds strengthened the seedlings and encouraged fresh growth. Healthy plants stand a much better chance.
We resowed what we’d lost, and once the warmer weather arrived the new plants quickly caught up. The San Marzano tomatoes ripening in the tunnel now — the ones destined for our sauce — are the survivors. We’d say they’ve earned their place on the menu.
A Roman market vegetable, an Irish field, and a kitchen that asked for it by name. On growing the chicory almost nobody here has heard of.
Puntarelle is a variety of chicory that’s a winter favourite in Rome. Its crisp, hollow shoots are sliced thin, curled in iced water and dressed simply with anchovy, garlic and good olive oil. It’s bitter in the best possible way — and worth seeking out when it’s in season.
You won’t find much of it in Ireland. It doesn’t travel well, so it rarely appears in a wholesaler’s catalogue. That’s exactly why we grow it. When your only customers are your own kitchens, the question isn’t “What can we buy?” but “What belongs on the menu?” Our chefs wanted puntarelle, so we made room for it in the field.
It’s a patient crop. The seed goes in during midsummer, the plants grow through autumn, and the real reward comes in winter when the shoots begin to appear. A touch of cold actually improves the flavour, softening the bitterness into something beautifully balanced.