
The symbiotic relationship between chef and farmers.
On a chilly spring day, a handful of people, bundled up in sweaters and coats, march along the stalls to shop the display of seasonal fruits and vegetables. Honey, strawberries, citrus, potatoes, and greens are available, but not in normal quantities. Among the shoppers is Derek Sawyer, chef de cuisine at Allora, a regular at the Sunday Arden farmers’ market. The swinging weather patterns directly affected farmers and their crops this past winter and spring, but Sawyer adapts.

“We try to be as seasonal as possible. Preserving things helps us keep course,” he says later at Allora. Within the immaculately clean and efficiently designed kitchen, he shows off jars of preserved daikon radish, sugar kumquats, lemons, dill pickled onions, and fermented Thai chiles. He’d use lemons bathed in pink peppercorns, salt, sugar, lemon juice, and their rinds in two different pasta dishes on the spring menu.
At that time, he was already excitedly planning for the summer stone fruit season.

SOURCING INGREDIENTS DIRECTLY
Whatever he buys at the farmers’ markets or directly from his growers will eventually end up on the plates at Allora, the recently Michelin Guide recommended Cal-Italian kitchen in Sacramento. While at the market, Sawyer points to a tent and says, “Patrick’s farm is by far one of the best; I made a potato salad with hard chard calamari that was amazing.”
Moments later, he asks the vendor at Moua Farm, “What kind of flowers are these?” before buying a bunch of them. Even though they are flowers, Sawyer values taking every edible component from a plant for use in a dish. He loves buying brassicas — kale and broccoli — at the farmers’ market because they’re super hardy and can be pickled, braised, and hard roasted with salt.

Sawyer also bags a bunch of borage and snaps off a purple flower that tastes cucumber-sweet. He explains where all the assorted flavors come from in a dish and their unique roles in making up the whole. For instance, microgreens are something he can use year-round (the lemon balm, peppery nasturtiums, and tarragon he had in the garden room at Allora) and typically pack a punch of flavor that isn’t too overwhelming.
ALWAYS MADE FROM SCRATCH
In his early years, Sawyer grew up in Sacramento but a lot of his family lived in New Mexico, so he split his time between the two places. He remembers waking up to the smell of fried eggs and chiles as his grandmother worked in the kitchen from breakfast until dinner. She interacted with the rest of the family and, as Sawyer recalls, she “watched her soaps and ‘Jeopardy’ all day long.” When he got older, Sawyer became a tattoo apprentice and worked at the restaurant in Santa Fe’s Hotel St. Francis, first as a busser and later at the cold station.
During those years, he found that he didn’t have as much of a passion for tattooing as he did for cooking, so he returned to California to take part in its unique culinary vibe. In his late teens, he was back in the Sacramento area and got a job at Dominick’s Italian Market & Deli in Granite Bay. Dominick’s had a New Jersey meets Italian vibe with fun banter and camaraderie in the kitchen. The staff made everything fresh, which set a precedent for how Sawyer would build creative dishes later in his culinary career.

Even to this day, his favorite entrée to make is a classic pasta with a good butter sauce and aged balsamic. “I love making Italian food because it’s clean, simple, no gimmicks,” he says. “The people who I learned from always made things from scratch; I was never indoctrinated with using wholesale food distributors.”
Along with Dominick Bellizzi, Sawyer also credits Ed Lopez at Hawks Public House for giving him his survival skills in the kitchen and sharing with him an enthusiasm for food. “Ed Lopez would come to Hawks, and he would burst into the kitchen with a bushel of apples excitedly holding them like paraphernalia. And then we’re cutting into the first-of-the-year apple, and it’s just so delicious. Thinking of that passion, that feeling of eating the first-of-the-year apple, blackberry, or persimmon …” Sawyer trails off in a blissful nostalgia. He tries to relive that experience in his own dishes at Allora, bringing to the table compilations of flavors and artistry to those who will appreciate it.
MARRYING A BALANCE OF SEASONAL FLAVORS AT ALLORA
It’s a symbiotic relationship between what the farmers grow and what Allora sells, and Sawyer makes meals that are based on a foundation of local produce topped with layers of flavor. “[Cooking] is constantly thinking about what you have around you, adaptation of a chest,” Sawyer says. At Allora, the main course remains consistent but accompaniments like a different glaze, side dish, or small twist on a meal change, depending on what is in season.”

There’re a lot of different flowers, herbs, and weeds that grow that we can put in a really elevated dish. Something as simple as purslane, which is an invasive succulent, is incredible for pickling or to thicken sauces. A lot of cooking comes from part product, part knowledge, taking something really good and not doing a whole lot to it but trying to tell a story.”

Leaving the farmers’ market with flowers and borage in hand, Sawyer speaks highly of the vendors with whom he works. “The farmers and farmers’ markets are so important to how [Allora] runs. The weather is all over the place but a couple of months from now, I’ll be glowing. The passion I feel is elevated throughout time,” Sawyer says.