Babelonstoren - The Promised Land

A garden of utter abundance. Rows of fig trees, olive tree orchards, bright orange pumpkin patches and golden, sweet fruit dangling from the branches.  A garden overflowing with milk and honey.  Babelonstoren must be what God meant when he spoke of The Promised Land.

A recent day spent in the kitchen at Babel Restaurant left me in awe of their striking gardens.  The morning started with obtaining our ingredients.  I got handed a basket and sent into the eight acres of lush, green gardens to harvest for the day’s needs. 

In previous restaurants you just asked ‘Did the deliveries come in yet?”

On our morning harvest I was handed a plum. With the first bite of breaking into that skin to expose the bright yellow flesh, I was grinning from ear to ear.  Soon I had the sweetest plum juices dripping down my face.  This is how we were meant to eat. 

I don’t think the Greek gods ever intended for us to push a cold metal trolley, impassively placing fruit in a plastic bag and handing it to a poker-faced cashier, paying through your neck, getting stuck in traffic and eventually placing your fruit in the veg compartment of the refrigerator to ‘enjoy at leisure’.

Perhaps Babel got it right?  You move through the gardens in the morning, find what in the vegetable patch is ready – perfectly ripe – and use that.  A menu dictated by the garden.  What the garden is ready to give you.

I distinctly remember getting my hands dirty as I gathered some beetroot, a humbling experience that made me treat my produce throughout the day with much more respect.  A concept I think the Babel team fully grasp.

What is put on your plate isn’t bashed or pounded.  It isn’t cut up into mind bogglingly precise blocks.  They maintain the integrity of the product, letting it speak for itself.

Walking through the gardens is humbling.  It makes one realise how far the human race has wondered off the path onto the well travelled road of consumerism. I hate myself for sheepishly following the herd.

An occasional breath of fresh air from the lush, green gardens is needed, if only to remind you of how it was designed to be enjoyed.

Babelonstoren might just be the gift from God in this wearisome age of consumerism.  The Promised Land of the twenty first century.

Lady Liezl