Growing, foraging entrepreneur helps plant seed for downtown market
Talk about suffering for your cause. Kerry Clasby’s family was hit by a parasite similar to giardia, and as a result, Las Vegas residents and visitors have access to some of the best fruits and vegetables in the country.
Well, OK, it didn’t happen quite that directly, so we’ll start by backing up a few years.
Clasby, a Cambridge, Mass., native, found herself living in Southern California because of her husband’s work in the hotel business. Life was good until the family, which included two sons, got the parasite, which was traced to leafy greens and strawberries. When Clasby realized food was the issue, she wanted to do something about it.
“I wanted to feed my family the best,” she said.
Growing had been something of a family tradition; both of her grandfathers were farmers. And so she started growing her own fruits and vegetables, but not quite the way her grandfathers had. Wary of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, Clasby got into organic, biodynamic gardening.
At one point she had a bumper crop of heirloom tomatoes, more than her family could use. So she took them and the bumper crop of avocados that another grower had, and sold them at a farmers market. She also started foraging wild mushrooms and selling them at farmers markets.
The seed had been planted, so to speak. Clasby started a farmers market in Moorpark, Calif. She started getting to know local chefs.
And her knowledge prompted her to branch out.
“I knew that English peas get starchy in Southern California” because of the heat, she said. So she started picking things up in San Francisco and making deliveries.
“So that’s how this began,” Clasby said. “The inspiration was my family, and a desire for wholesome eating.”
“This” was the Downtown 3rd Farmers Market, where Clasby was sitting for an interview between talking to growers. The market, she said, had drawn 35 farmers that week, all of them from the region but six or seven of them local. (Another downtown market is being added, at The Commissary on Third Street, on Saturdays.)
And she credits chefs, big-name and small, with giving Las Vegans access to top-shelf produce, not only in their restaurants but also through the farmers market.
“If it weren’t for the chefs, we couldn’t do it,” she said. “It means we can carry this rarefied stuff, all of these varieties that are not commonplace.”
But first we’ll back up a bit more.
A farmer had given Clasby a truck and she had started to deliver produce to Southern California restaurants, including Michael Mina’s in Laguna Beach. One day, Clasby said, Mina told her, “I want you to be my forager.”
Mina remembers those days with enthusiasm.
“Kerry is one of the best at finding the most pristine produce, whether it’s the best carrot you’ve ever tasted or something truly exotic,” Mina said in an email. “When I first started working with her, there were only a few of us really utilizing her product. She was like our secret weapon. I remember this one time Kerry was able to get hold of buckets of rare, rose-scented geraniums at the last minute for me. You can be sure that each time Kerry brings you her foraged finds, you are bound to see it in a whole new light.”
Soon, Mario Batali heard about Clasby’s products, and asked her whether it would be possible to get them in Las Vegas. The Batali group had a warehouse on Dean Martin Drive where they cured meats, and it sort of spontaneously turned into a farmers market.
“In 2008, we fully connected with Kerry,” said Doug Taylor, who as pastry chef at the time for B&B Hospitality in Las Vegas became a leader of the farm-to-table movement locally.
There had long been several farmers markets in the valley, but they were outdoors and so tended to operate seasonally, and they mostly carried fairly conventional (though fresh and often organic) produce from farms primarily in Southern California. The Dean Martin Drive market would be indoors, and ongoing. And at first it was very much under the radar.
“At the beginning, it was only geared toward the industry and chefs,” Taylor said. “We never intended it to be for the public. We were just the chefs looking at trying to find better-quality products, a wider range of things and a higher quality.”
And that’s what they found with Clasby.
“That’s what she offered in her products,” he said. “She was bringing heirloom, small quantities of things, whether it was potatoes or beans or greens or whatever. We were able for the first time to get our hands on some things that were truly interesting and unique to us. These chefs were literally the only ones in the city that would have some heirloom variety of an apple or an orange.”
There also were stone fruits, he said, including products from California’s celebrated Frog Hollow Farm, which also grows organic citrus.
“She was bringing citrus, but she would bring 20 varieties of oranges,” he said. “Those varieties weren’t coming into Vegas at all through any of the major companies. When you can get, in season, Arkansas Black apples compared to just having a Fuji, that makes all the difference in the world. Now people have started to expand their systems. She was one of the first.”
The warehouse on Dean Martin Drive had never been intended as a permanent market, and the group had to move on. They re-established first at Bet on the Farm at the Springs Preserve (which has since closed) and, in February 2012, in the old bus-transfer terminal on Casino Center Boulevard downtown, the Downtown 3rd Farmers Market. Clasby said the building was loaned to them for free by Seth Schorr, CEO of the Downtown Grand and Fifth Street Gaming.
Schorr said it was a no-brainer for him.
“We had a desire to create a farmers market in downtown Las Vegas,” Schorr said. “Through our research we were introduced to Kerry.”
And their working relationship hasn’t dimmed his opinion of her.
“Kerry is the best farmers market operator around,” Schorr said. “I’ve been to every farmers market, not only in Las Vegas but also in California, and honestly, until I tried her produce, I was missing out. As an operator she’s very hands-on. She actually goes and procures the fruits and vegetables in California, drives them out every week. I’ve had many business partners. She’s one of the best.”
Today, Clasby has homes in Las Vegas and California. She’s here twice a week, delivering to chefs on the Strip. Her customers include Tom Colicchio’s Craftsteak and Heritage Steak; Shawn McClain’s Sage and Five50 Pizza Bar; Mario Batali’s and Joe Bastianich’s restaurants B&B, Carnevino and Otto Enoteca; Michael Mina’s Michael Mina Bellagio, American Fish, Stripsteak and Pub 1842; Mizumi; Wing Lei; and Sirio Ristorante.
“When Colicchio opened Heritage, he said, ‘Kerry, bring the truck,’” she remembers.
Clasby said the market is a losing proposition for her financially, but it’s a labor of love.
“I’ve been doing it because it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “These chefs I sell to are special. They’re doing the right thing,” by buying not only offbeat products but supporting local growers and small farmers and helping to perpetuate heirloom varieties.
“This market has been an incredible thing,” she said.
Schorr said he sees the market, and his continuing efforts to keep it downtown, as “part of a bigger, holistic trilogy focusing on healthy living and all the things that make us unique.”
But then he waxes a little less philosophical.
“She’s a shrewd businessperson,” he said. “Don’t let her fool you, Kerry’s a smart one.”
For Taylor, though, it’s all about the food.
“The biggest thing she offers to Las Vegas,” he said, “is bringing the bar up on the quality of food, and bringing the small farmer from California to the Las Vegas Strip in a way that hadn’t been done before.”
Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474.
