FARMERS FISHERS BAKERS, MARY SCHMITT

BoomerPDX spotlight: Georgetown’s Farmers Fishers Bakers.

What happens when you’re late for breakfast and the place you want is shifting to lunch?

When the place is Georgetown’s Farmers Fishers Bakers, and Pastry Chef Mary Schmitt asks you to come back in an hour, you come back in an hour.

Most of the time you find another restaurant up the street, but not this time.

Since it came recommended all the way from Knoxville, Tennessee, you wait an hour.

Besides, it’s Georgetown, it’s history a couple of blocks away, but more on that later.

If you look back after you leave you see an ownership sign in front of your new lunch stop and read the fine print.

North Dakota Farmers Union? In Washington, D.C.? Things just got more interesting.

When is a lunch break more than just food?

If you’ve got committed people mixing with customers, the story gets better.

Mary Schmitt is one of the committed people.

An hour after she invited us back, she broke down the difference between Farmers Fishers Bakers and everyone else in town.

What did we do for an hour? Walked up the street to the canal, of course. It was right there.

Nothing like an unexpected National Park in the neighborhood.

Who wouldn’t want to live on the banks here?

It’s deep history on the doorstep.

It looks like a European vision.

England and France have canals dug all through them.

Major shipping happened on canals.

Things have slowed some since the airplane was invented.

And hour later we’re back at Farmers Fishers Bakers with Mary Schmitt.

She didn’t know it, but Mary was about to get the story of Polyface Farms and Joel Salatin.

My wife and I explained how important it is to visit Polyface Farms and get a close-up of the farm part of Farm To Table.

We asked Mary if she know anyplace in Washington that does business with Polyface Farms.

Turns out there’s more than one:

Washington, D.C.

• Barrel Restaurant – 613 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Washington, DC  20003 -202-543-3622 – RABBIT, PORK, EGGS
• DGS Deli, 1317 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC  20036
• Green Bee Cafe, 1129  20th St., NW, Washington, DC  20036 – PORK, EGGS
• Little Red Fox – 5035 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC -202-248-6346 – PORK, BEEF, EGGS
• Three Little Pigs – 5111 Georgia Avenue, NW, Washington, DC  20011 – 202-726-0102 – PORK, BEEF

Lunch at Farmers Fishers Bakers included Poke Salad w/ cilantro, crab dip, key lime pie, and perfect beignets.

Our server asked if I’d like a beer, to pick one, and she’d tell me which one I chose. And she read my mind.

If a beer called Flying Dog Raging Bitch is on the menu, you’ve got to try it twice to be sure it was as good as the first one.

Because we came back, and what hungry couple late for breakfast would come back an hour later for lunch, we got a table that few get unless they wait an hour.

The place filled up with a mix of suits and vacation people, but no one got the bar table and the sweet company of Ms Schmitt, just a nice couple from Portland, Oregon raving about Polyface Farms and Joel Salatin and the joy of meeting people who do important things.

Adding the right people to your day is a recipe for happiness, and we left Farmers Fishers Bakers full of joy, and Mary Schmitt’s beignets.

Thanks Mary,

David and Elaine Gillaspie