May 6, 2010
Salt Leaf
Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2010 With its bubbly texture and thick-furled leaves, salt leaf looks pretty odd, but that hasn’t stopped organic co-op Kunitachi Farms from selling 50,000 packs of the stuff a month. This variety of ice plant, native to South Africa, literally drinks the salt from the soil, giving it a […]
By Metropolis
Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2010
Courtesy of Kunitachi Farms
With its bubbly texture and thick-furled leaves, salt leaf looks pretty odd, but that hasn’t stopped organic co-op Kunitachi Farms from selling 50,000 packs of the stuff a month. This variety of ice plant, native to South Africa, literally drinks the salt from the soil, giving it a naturally salty flavor. Eaten as-is or in a salad, the unusual green is high in both novelty and nutrients: salt leaf contains myo-inositol, a key fighter in the war against “metabo” (metabolic syndrome), as well as plenty of potassium and beta-carotene.
If you haven’t seen the plant on supermarket shelves, that’s because Kunitachi Farms are the first to market it—though salt leaf lookalikes are also starting to pop up. Ganari Takahashi, who founded Kunitachi and its sister restaurant chain Noka no Daidokoro (“Farm’s Kitchen”), first came across the plant in a magazine article describing its use at high-end French restaurants. The agriculturist-entrepreneur began to wonder if he could grow something similar in Japan, and experimented with cultivating the desert-dwelling green using hydroponics in greenhouses. After some trial and error, salt leaf made its domestic debut in spring 2008. All of Kunitachi’s plants are handpicked and each pack bears a QR code linking to a website for one of the five growing centers (in Hokkaido, Yamagata, Saitama and Ibaraki Prefectures), so you can see exactly where it’s coming from. Salt leaf is available at Precce and Miuraya supermarkets, the salad bar at Noka no Daidokoro restaurants, and from the Kunitachi Farms online store.
