Rose O’Dell King wants to change how food tastes. She also wants to change how we, as consumers, taste food. Global conglomerates’ overly processed foods have ruined our taste buds, she believes, and she plans to reverse that, one palate at a time. “So many have lost touch with how food should taste,” she says.
King does not hesitate to speak frankly about the state of American farming and eating. She writes weekly newsletters to educate her community supported agriculture (CSA) members. But the owner of Rosy Tomorrows Heritage Farm in North Fort Myers is about more than just words. For eight years, she and her husband, Gary, have followed organic practices to raise heritage, grass-fed livestock. She also grows heirloom veggies, greens and herbs; scrapes salt off leaves in a secret mangrove stand in Matlacha Pass; and buys what she doesn’t grow and raise herself from local fishermen, shrimpers, fruit growers and beekeepers.
The French Culinary Institute-trained chef, King turns this bounty into sustainable culinary creations at her on-the-farm restaurant. “It starts because we’re connected to these hundred acres,” she says. “We are of this place. Everything we do is so everyone can experience that, here in our restaurant, in the moment.”
As a definitive farm-to-table operation, Rosy Tomorrows’ name reflects the hope King holds onto in these times, when large companies and their control over the food supply endangers small family farms and restaurants. After closing during the pandemic shutdown, she expanded her screened restaurant to accommodate social distancing and to offer more outdoor dining, while adding seating and fire pits for sipping wine and botanical cocktails. “People saw how fragile the food system was at the beginning of the pandemic and still is,” she says. The chef’s operation is community-supported even beyond its CSA program: Her 104-seat dining room is full almost every time it’s open (Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings and Sunday mornings)—a sign the regenerative farming she espouses is gaining traction locally. “The restaurant experience helps to reconnect them to the food of our ancestry,” she says of her loyal following. “Our mission is to bring people back to that way of unadulterated food.” —Chelle Koster Walton