Perspectives on regenerative agriculture: Chef Mollie Engelhart

Mollie Engelhart is the co-owner of Sage Regenerative Kitchen & Brewery (formerly Sage Vegan Bistro) in Echo Park and Pasadena and the regenerative Sovereignty Ranch in Bandera, Texas. With her extensive background as a chef and organic farmer, she has become a prominent voice in the regenerative agriculture movement. 

Sage has long featured Groundwork Coffee in their cafe, so it was a no-brainer to update their menu with our new line of Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) coffees this year. I was lucky enough to speak to Mollie about her perspective on the importance of the consumer in this movement. 

Chef Mollie with her husband and co-founder Chef Elias Sosa

Sage pivoted from Vegan Bistro to Regenerative Kitchen to make a greater impact.

Internet commentary has been loud and divided about Mollie’s brave decision to expand Sage’s vegan menu to offer regenerative animal products this year. Sage is now LA’s first regenerative kitchen. Its menu still features famous vegan dishes like fried cauliflower and The Brazilian bowl, now alongside dishes like Wild Harvested Antelope Curry and Grazed Bison Smashed Tacos.

Although veganism is a good environmental decision, the diet alone sets no standards for the sustainability, health, and social impacts of plant-based ingredients. However, most regenerative ingredients do meet strict standards on those fronts. Importantly, regenerative and vegan diets are not mutually exclusive. 

Ultimately, Mollie (who was vegan for many years) realized that she can make a greater impact through regenerative versus exclusively-vegan restaurants:

“We need to have a radical shift towards how we're growing our food away from chemicals and towards microbiology.” Mollie says. “Wherever you're growing, whatever the crops are, it's important that we make soil microbiology at the forefront of farming because it’s the foundation of all life.” 

Cauliflower wings platter

Sage Regenerative Kitchen promotes resilient food systems that forge deeper connections with the soil, plants, animals, and farmers. 

With a nutritious, chemical-free and traceable menu, Sage gives customers and employees the opportunity to not only nourish their bodies but connect with how their food is grown, Mollie says. 

Sage ingredients highlight the range of regenerative and permaculture practices that create a circular ecosystem, starting with healthy soil:

• No-till practices to maintain soil organic matter and structure
• Intercropping and cover-cropping to increase ecosystem diversity and water retention
• Composting and vermicomposting to increase nutrient availability in the soil 
• Effective microorganisms to protect the soil
• Algae as bio-fertilizers
• Holistic planned grazing of cows, sheep and goats on expansive grasslands
• Never using any harmful inputs like chemical fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics 

The “What's Possible Burger” exemplifies Sage’s direct-trade, traceable, thoughtfully-sourced approach to ingredients. The completely regenerative burger is made from grassland-grazed bison, topped with A2 raw cheddar, and veggies, all in between a bun made from Oatman's Farms ROC flour. Mollie says there is no other restaurant serving anything like it.

What's Possible Burger

“The idea of the What's Possible Burger is to poke at the Impossible Burger and say what is possible with man and animal and God together is pretty extraordinary,” Mollie says. 

The possibilities of a regenerative food system are indeed extraordinary; regenerative crops and livestock have far greater nutrient density than their conventionally-grown counterparts. Furthermore, regenerative systems produce plants with more phenolic compounds and meat with improved fatty acid profiles. On the other hand, conventional food is laden with chemicals that cause systemic inflammation in the body and harm reproductive organs. 

Sage sources from both certified (like ROC) and uncertified regenerative farms – the requirement being that Sage has direct relationships with the farmers and can assure their practices contribute to a resilient food system. Sage pays farmers directly, meaning fewer middlemen are taking a cut of the profit. 

“The producers are having a more abundant life,” Mollie says. 

Wrangling consumer support for the Regenerative Kitchen hasn’t been light work.

For many restaurant goers, the value of the Regenerative Kitchen seems to be overshadowed by Sage’s menu prices and the disappointment of its most ardent vegan customer base. Without community support, the benefits of regenerative food systems won’t come to full fruition, Mollie laments. 

A gap in both consumers' understanding and priorities around healthy food systems may be to blame – plus the relentlessly tough economy. With the predominant American mentality that “food is food,” many people choose a cheap McDonald's hamburger over a $24 organic one at Sage, Mollie says. 

Herein lies a knowledge gap in which “nobody knows what the real cost of their food is,” Mollie explains. This gap is widened by social and political factors including government subsidies of commodity agricultural products that favor large scale conventional agriculture and lack of education around the social and environmental costs of food consumption. 

“I feel sad that the consumer seems barely not phased by chemicals that can turn boy frogs into girl frogs and are making us completely infertile,” Mollie says, referring to the thoroughly-studied effects of various chemicals dumped into conventional food systems on animal and human health.

Mollie wants the world to be a place in which her children can eat food that is healthy and free of agricultural poisons, so she’s dedicated her life to that. Mollie wakes up at 5:30 every morning to herd livestock and tend to her crops before tending to the restaurant-end of business. She just wishes that consumers realized that they are just as vital to a healthy planet as a farmer like herself. 

Bison tacos

Consumers are the driving force of change needed in the regenerative movement.  

Regenerative farmers have taken on the risk of transitioning their practices, but that will be all in vain if consumers don’t join them. Mollie believes that when you create something that genuinely serves your community, the community will in turn support it. This is capitalism in its true form, in which the responsibility of the consumer to do the right thing cannot be overstated.  

“If you don't commit to using your purchasing power in a positive way, those positive ways will go away,” Mollie explains. 

She reminds us that, while we can only vote for president every four years, we can vote with our dollars every day and shift our consumer patterns to reflect our values. 

“Wherever you spend your dollars in your community, that's what's going to show up more,” Mollie says. “If you want more farmers in your community, then buy from local farmers.”  

All of us consumers who want a healthier planet must make the effort to trade convenience for resilience of our soil – and our future. One powerful way to do so is eating locally-made food instead of ordering from online marketplaces and chain restaurants. Another way is to eat and drink regenerative.