The surprises came fast when Jeffrey Jew left Washington, D.C., and started cooking on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Jew, once a contestant on Top Chef, had gotten used to a steady supply of fruits and vegetables from Amish farmers in Pennsylvania. It was a different game in Florida, where he moved when his partner, Jim Steiner, took a community banking job nine years ago.
“It’s so tough,” Jew says. “You’ve got only four or five months when you get good produce, then it gets too hot.”
He learned to
