Last Updated on June 6, 2024
I was looking forward to my meal at Cork Fire Kitchen in the Temecula Valley with great anticipation. Cork Fire Kitchen is a sustainably minded, farm-to-table restaurant, and the signature eatery at Temecula Creek Inn, also a popular golf resort.
Being an old environmentalist who spent my formative years fundraising for Greenpeace International, I was curious about the extensive golf course’s ethos. I was skeptical at first, to be sure.
Before dinner, I toured the chef and butterfly gardens just outside the back of the restaurant with a group and entered into a verdant sea of rolling golf course greens. I spotted a burst of dusty pinks, reds, and yellows in a patch at the top right corner of the grounds and wondered how these small organic garden plots fit in with the larger setting.
Was the golf course maintained in a business-as-usual fashion, in other words, with substantial chemical fertilizer and water use? Or was there a more interesting story at play here?
Attracting Beneficials with Chefs and Butterfly Gardens
Marketing Director Ciaran Murray led us down a pathway where we met Chef Ben Diaz to explore and learn about these lovely gardens. Tall stalks of sunflowers, colorful dahlias, and marigolds were growing among the beds of vegetables and lettuce greens; small fruit trees added to the mix.
Chef Diaz talked about how this bounty feeds into every dish he creates and the importance the butterfly garden plays in attracting insects beneficial to the ecosystem for pollination. As we wandered through the plot, we were impressed with how thoughtfully Murray and Diaz approached the gardens. It was quickly apparent that these weren’t just something on the side or a token gesture.
Chef Diaz’s vision is to ensure the restaurant operations fit into the broader ecosystem’s health and functioning.
I was taken with the Chef and Murray’s shared passion and pride. We continued the fascinating conversation over a sumptuous dinner served on a long, rustic wooden table. The quality and freshness of each dish were a testament to the care placed into sourcing their ingredients.
Meats, cheese, grains, vegetables and fruits all come from local purveyors or the Inn’s onsite garden. Murray shared important details about the golf course’s conservation measures—such as working with Tribal neighbors to preserve the on-course oak trees.
I was keen to hear more.
First, We Eat
Every detail of dining my experience was deliberate, from the rough-hewed tables to the gorgeous, heavy earthenware and bespoke ingredients of each cocktail and dish.
The smoked cherrywood old-fashioned at the start hit just right, while the cheese and fruit plate featured pickled carrots and cauliflower. These paired beautifully with the local wine and made for an incredibly tasty palate cleanser.
Next, a sumptuous saffron rouille graced the lightly charred Spanish Octopus, surrounded by crispy Coppa ham and peewee potatoes and a citrus jam.
My Braised Lumina Lamb Shank in a Vadouvan red wine reduction, one of the chef’s specials, was fall-off-the-bone tender. A delicious change from a usual polenta, the light honey nut squash puree added a touch of sweetness, accented by savory, sweet pearl onions and a tomato confit.
Golfing with Monarchs
Temecula Creek Inn is a proud Monarchs in the Rough member, an initiative spawned by Audubon International and the Environmental Defense Fund. The program focuses on out-of-play areas of golf courses, working with superintendents and other golf course staff, to create, manage and maintain monarch butterfly habitat projects. This brings otherwise underutilized course acreage into the service of monarch conservation, adding the essential butterfly habitat when planted with regionally appropriate milkweed and wildflowers.
By taking part and making this commitment to monarchs and broader sustainability measures, the course makes a statement about what is possible when humans think creatively and are willing to work together.
Learning about Monarchs in the Rough started to change my perception of how golf clubs can exist more harmoniously within their surrounding environment. The Temecula Creek sits on 300 acres, making the impact quite significant.
Key Sustainability Measures
Temecula Creek Inn employs a cross-departmental Green Team to strategize and lead its ongoing sustainability efforts. It’s simply good business. I was pleasantly surprised at how much hotel and golf course sustainability measures have advanced when the desire and will is there. It’s a pleasure to spread the word to give the Inn recognition and to encourage more hotels and resorts to follow suit.
The Inn’s measures are broad, covering Food & Beverage, Hotel & Housekeeping, Engineering and Golf & Golf Course Management departments. Common sense items like reducing pollutants through the use of biodegradable products and eco-friendly practices in day-to-day operations start the list. Water refill stations are a wonderful touch. Waste reduction includes recycling all the property’s plastic, paper, glass and aluminum products.
Cork Fire Kitchen prides itself on ethical sourcing by using regenerative farming in its gardens—a growing practice that prioritizes saving and regenerating healthy topsoil rich in nutrients, insects and fungi. Healthy, rich soil acts as a carbon sink, reducing CO2 emissions, supporting biodiversity and plant health and facilitating water drainage.
On the engineering side of the equation, the Inn has implemented glass and bulb recycling, battery recycling, low-flow toilets and eco-flow showerheads (both big water savers). They’ve also switched out all lights on their property to LED.
Sustainable Golf Course Management
This topic lit the most significant lightbulb for me in terms of learning just how much can be done to make a golf course more sustainable and beautiful. In addition to the butterfly habitat and restoration, the Inn has refreshed the hotel’s landscape with drought-tolerant plants requiring much less water. Turf and irrigation reduction conserve thousands of gallons of water each day.
Oaktree preservation plays a cultural and ecological role with local tribal partners, who work with the Inn to gather and plant acorns, prune and tend tree limbs and reduce potential fire hazards around the vast property.
Finally, plant growth regulators are chemical and hormone sprays that impact plant development and growth throughout their life cycle. Employing them is another way to reduce water usage and the reliance on fertilizers and pesticides. It is another important growing practice within the sustainable agriculture movement.
Temecula Creek Inn is where guests can feel good about their stay, knowing that the staff, management, and owners are all committed to providing a positive experience and setting an example for the entire hotel and golf industry.
