WHO knew the garden of Eden was alive and well in Hell’s Kitchen.
“I bought this apartment for the rooftop space,” says Daniel Orr, describing the West Side home he shares with a “rather short platinum blonde” named Colette, his Burmese cat.
Now, when Guastavino’s executive chef wants to perk up dishes at the lofty restaurant under the Queensboro Bridge, he doesn’t have to wait around for purveyors to provide new and exciting plants – he can grow his own on his rooftop terrace.
In this tiny urban paradise within eyeshot of the Empire State Building, he’s surrounded by 30 kinds of herbs – seven types of basil alone – along with zucchini, tomatoes, strawberries and okra.
And for the roommate, there’s catnip.
The 3-year-old garden is getting a late start this year because of the weather, but the chilies are “doing great.” He’s already had one batch of heirloom tomatoes and a second batch of purple plum tomatoes. “They’re a really nice kind of dark purple and really, really sweet,” he says.
“Every day, I take in a little bag of herbs and we use it at the restaurant.”
Right now, he’s doing a new take on the Italian bread salad panzanella. “We made it into a soup, so we take the tomato water and we put the heirloom tomatoes in it, garnish it with the peppers and sprinkle it with croutons.” He calls it “really great.”
At work, he also uses the herbs in marinated fish dishes, “like crudos and things like that,” because they’re so pungent.
“I do salmon belly with the mountain mint and some chilies,” he says. “I love the sorrel with chilled poached salmon.”
Marigolds don’t just add a burst of jubilant color to the garden – Orr puts them in Guastavino’s chilled yellow lentil soup, calling them a “West Indian confetti.”
He mostly grows herbs he can’t find elsewhere, “except for things like chives and basil – you know you just have to have basil around so you can throw that on a BLT or whatever you’re making.”
There’s lemony Vietnamese cilantro, which he plans on wrapping with rice noodles in a piece of rice paper with some shrimp. It’s also used raw to cleanse the palate after rich and fatty roast pork.
The Mexican coriander he got from his Mexican dishwasher smells very pungent and is used for the same purpose. He detects “almost a little bit of a kerosene kind of aroma to it.”
Then there’s epazote, an herb Mexicans cook with beans to eliminate the legumes’ gassiness, and more perfume-y ones, such as bronze fennel, for tea.
Orr has green genes. He grew up in Indiana, where his grandfather had a 1,000-acre farm, and his parents are avid gardeners.
“They’re children of the ’60s,” he explains. “They still make their own soap and their own wine. Both of them really love gardening, and during the summer, pretty much all they do is buy their beef, their poultry and their fish, and everything else comes from home.”
In Manhattan, things are a little different. Because gardens are above ground, they tend to dry out, so they have to be watered constantly.
“But you’re also more in control,” he says. “I don’t have any weeds. When you’re out in the country, there are weeds everywhere and you’re spending half your time pulling them.”
Another plus is that everything’s in pots, and it’s easy to move them around to vary sun exposure.
“That’s important when you have all these buildings around,” he notes. “If you have an area that’s getting blocked by the sun, you can move your pots somewhere else.”
While most of the herbs are for the restaurant, the moonflowers he planted are just for him. The big, bright-white blooms open only at night, which is when he’s usually home.
Sometimes he throws a party when they’re about to open. For that, he’s had a big zinc-topped table built and a dry bar for his glasses, plates and platters.
Then he can turn his friends on to the many flavors of herbs – like lemon basil, orange basil, true basil, licorice basil, Thai basil and bush basil.
“You know, you just have to have basil.”