Fox Point Farms hospitality director Alex Carballo wipes a bit of plum juice from his chin. He’s snacking on just-picked local fruit as he and his team prepare to open the Encinitas agrihood’s new eatery and venue, Haven Farm + Table. Pick-and-eat is the modus operandi here, and Carballo is embodying the concept.
“Taste-test, from another farm,” Carballo explains, walking through Harvest Market, which comprises the venue’s breezy lower level and opens out onto a three-acre regenerative farm that supplies the kitchen from the soil below. The barn-like structure housing Haven and the market—with reclaimed teak, minimal ornamentation, and what seems like more windows than walls—is just the kind of place where eating farm-fresh veggies with a knife and fork seems apropos.
Out on the farm, chef de cuisine Kelston Moore, of Bad Boyz fame (the non-profit culinary venture, not the Sean Penn flick), plucks spicy-scented leaves from verdant crop rows and points out abundant, purple-skinned, bulging kohlrabi.
“I learned how to pickle this”—he grins—“to go with the chicken curry.” That’s how it works at Haven: If it’s growing here, it’s on the menu. Six different onsite lettuces make up the signature Foxy Greens salad, a menu staple.
And the age-old conundrum of what to do with all those summer tomatoes? Solved—tomato jam for the bison burger, of course. It appears on Haven’s debut menu, along with jerk pork belly in mole negro, a combination of Moore’s Caribbean roots and his summers spent cooking with abuelas in Baja California. It comes with carrot-ginger purée and a plantain tortilla.
Moore grew up in Barbados, where his father barbecued pig tails to feed the community. Later, while in the Navy, Moore embraced cooking for a living. Compared to grueling work he was doing on the USS Carl Vinson’s flight deck, making meals for 7,500 ship personnel sounded better. Moore sharpened his skills with a meal-prep operation in Stockton and then as a private chef on yachts, where he honed the zero-waste mentality that is essential at Haven.
“With every ingredient, I learned to use it all up rather than collect trash out on that boat,” he recalls.
Kitchen and farm scraps mingle in compost at the farm’s edge, where, according to Carballo, goats, chickens, and alpacas will soon join the family to chew on leftovers and contribute their, ahem, leavings as fertilizer. A “shroom room” is also forthcoming, bringing the freshest fungi to the table.
Across the garden path, Haven’s spacious balcony provides diners with a sweeping view of the plants that define Haven’s “veggie-forward” dishes: carrots al pastor, kohlrabi fries, shishito pesto, brilliantly pink radish carpaccio. Moore and the team try not to waste precious produce components.
“I feel bad when I see someone throwing away half the dish I made,” he says. “I wouldn’t want the farmers, my friends, to think I don’t value the whole plant that they grew.”
That ethos also infuses Haven’s mixology: general manager and beverage director Ricardo Zarate is exploring carrot shavings in a cocktail. Meanwhile, the team is devising a way for guests to watch while herbs are plucked right from the garden and brought in with “roots still dangling,” Zarate says, before the bartender crushes fragrant, tender leaves into your mule.
Or order a beer—featuring seasonal hops, spices, and herbs—from the taps at onsite Fox Point Brewery. Sit at the bar and admire the sky through the lofty glass ceiling, or take your drink fireside in the lounge and hear records spinning. Lean back in a cozy booth while resting your glass on the oversized lacquered table, inlaid with real preserved citrus slices and herbs. The farm is in the furniture.
Even the meat is veggie-forward: Moore’s steak and eggs dish features Santa Carota beef from a Kern County ranch where cows munch on juicy carrots left over from nearby farms.
Moore serves locally line-caught fish and picks up oysters on his way to work for his daily riff on shellfish. Servers are educated on ingredients’ origins, and Carballo plans to create QR codes to connect diners to food backstories. The menu will grow and change in tandem with the farm.
As for chef Moore’s next big idea? “A fish cake that will change everyone’s life.”
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