Bulleen’s Heide Art Museum donates veggies and herbs to Lentil As Anything Thornbury while cafe closed
With its cafe closed, a Manningham art museum has come up with a handy solution to put its kitchen garden goodies to use helping a popular restaurant during lockdown.
East
Don't miss out on the headlines from East . Followed categories will be added to My News.
A Melbourne art museum is donating homegrown food to help a community restaurant feed the needy during the coronavirus outbreak.
Staff at Bulleen’s Heide Museum of Modern Art normally use produce from its two kitchen gardens at its cafe, which has been closed since mid-March.
But to ensure it all doesn’t go to waste, gardeners have been donating herbs and vegetables grown on site to Thornbury’s Lentil As Anything.
The restaurant, one of four in Melbourne, is operated by volunteers and allows diners to pay-what-they-feel for meals.
It has been serving up 500 vegan-friendly takeaway meals per week during the virus outbreak and is using kitchen space to make another 1100 meals which it gives to food agencies to distribute around Melbourne.
The Thornbury restaurant also has a small grocery store which it is using to assist hungry and cash-strapped international students living in Melbourne.
Heide gardener Alice Crowe said she and team had been delivering two to three crates of items from its gardens to Lentil As Anything each week.
She said the crates included bunches of seasonal produce including silverbeet, broccoli, leeks, spring onions and lettuce.
MORE: GIANT HEALING GARDEN COMING TO BULLEEN
COUNCIL SPENDS 170K ON WHITE ROAD
MANNINGHAM SCHOOLS’ BACK TO SCHOOL PLANS
“Normally we supply the cafe on site and when that shut down our garden was turned on its head for planning crops,” Ms Crowe said.
“It seemed silly to let all this organic produce go to waste, and the garden here is really productive.
“It’s been really nice and quite purposeful for me that the food is going somewhere where its really needed and appreciated.”
Lentil As Anything’s Frida Komesaroff said Heide’s donations had allowed chefs to add in new flavours to its meals with items such as lemongrass and pineapple sage.
“One thing that’s important for us is they (diners) enjoy their food regardless of their situation,” she said.
“The food is such good quality, there’s beautiful fresh greens and herbs and it lets us put flavours in the meals which we haven’t used before.
”The fact they don’t want it to go to waste and they can give it to us to make an impact is really amazing.”
Meals can be ordered online at lentilasanything.com/thornbury