About Malibu Farm

Hi! I’m Helene. I started Malibu Farm a few years ago, doing cooking classes, and farm dinners out of my home and in my back yard. I now have a casual counter service cafe at the end of the Malibu Pier and a full service restaurant and bar at the beginning of the pier

We are not a big corporation or funded by investors, we are a locally owned small business. Our food is super simply prepared, there are no secret ingredients, and many of you have been to my home picking produce and cooked the very same recipes we use at the cafe.

I use mostly whole wheat flours and whole grains. Lots of veggies, and fruits, I love arugula and I totally believe there is no such a thing as too much lemon. We use no fake food. Margarine, veggie butter, sugar substitutes? What is that stuff? If you don’t know how to make it, or where it comes from, don’t eat it. don’t buy it.

I don’t use non fat products, cause nothing makes you fatter than eating fat free. This is a fact. Eat the real thing, or don’t eat it at all.

I grew up fishing, so I love seafood. But lets not deplete our treasures from the sea! Our portions are small, and we work hard to offer sustainable seafood only.

At my home we raise free range, fancy, feather-footed chickens, who all have names. We still eat chicken, just really super small portions of it.

We have a pig named Arnold too, who is super cute, super hungry, and super fat. We still eat pork, but shh, don’t tell him.

I don’t have any cows and I don’t eat red meat. But we have been known to grill a steak or grass-fed-beef burgers for our guests.

In our early days operating out of my back yard, our mission of local, organic and fresh was easy. We even raised our own sheep that we served for a farm dinner and used produce exclusively grown on my property for farm events.

Once I opened the cafe I hoped to continue using small farmers only, and supply from my own back yard farm. The first few months we used oranges and lemons exclusively from my own trees, and the eggs were from my chickens. I get about 30 eggs per day from my flock, which now is a drop in the bucket compared to the 200 eggs per day we use at the cafe. However, if you are lucky, that egg you are eating, may be one of mine!

We still strive to offer as much local and small farm as we can. From our own farm we have eggs, persimmons, figs, lemons, pomegranates, apricots, asian pears, carrots, beets, asparagus, and fresh herbs.

We buy from Larry Thorne, strawberries, oranges, kale, chard, basil, tomatoes and whatever else he has available. From Mike Zacha at Malibu organic lemons, we get lemons and oranges year round. All our our potatoes and carrots are from Weiser farms. Tomatoes in addition from Larry Thorne come from Tutti Fruitti farms. All our arugula and lettuces come from Maggie’s farm.

We shop every week at the Santa Monica farmers market, and seek to get the best products available at any given time. We also receive produce from World Wide and Natures produce, who both pick up our Farmers market orders, and supply us from their warehouses, when we can not source all locally.

We order everything organic, but none of our local small farmers are certified, and our big suppliers, do not deliver 100% organic 100 % of the time. I naively thought when I opened on the pier, that organics were easy for restaurant to source – it is not. It is a daily and challenging struggle.

However we are proud of the products that we serve and believe we put the best possible produce available on every dish served.

Our other providers are as follows – for information about their products please contact the vendors directly.

• All breads are Local
  • La Brea bakery for sandwich breads
  • Rockenwagner bakery for brioche buns
  • Raising hearts bakery for gluten free bread and buns.
• Coffee -Caffe Luxxe
• Tea – Charles and Company, kosher and organic
• Chicken
  • Mary’s organic – all chicken served for lunch.
  • Jidori – which is a LOCAL Los angeles brand and not a style of preparation – all chicken served for dinner.
• Beef – is grass fed, not organic. We wish we could get both – alas not currently available by our vendors
• Fish – salmon alternates between wild and “organic” farmed
• Eggs – are free range organic Farmers Hen House certified humanely raised
• Milk – from Horizon organic
• Cheese is De Stefano – Los Angeles, Pomona, local
• Yogurt, Tofu and Lavash is from Trader Joe’s, as none of our suppliers have a firm organic tofu or whole milk organic yogurt.

– Helene

PS: If you would like to make a dinner reservation, please visit our Reservations Page