From the fields of St David’s to Southampton and into your lunch container — a container which is your own, preferably — Nonna’s Kitchen on Bermudiana Road has brought the ‘field-to-plate’ concept to Bermuda.

With her hair bound in her trademark scarf and exuding glowing health and fitness, the restaurant’s owner and its principal chef Norma Thomson somehow does fit the notion of ‘Nonna’ — which is her nickname and means grandmother in Italian — and yet, at the same time, not at all.

Sitting outside her market garden-themed restaurant in the late afternoon sunshine as the last customers were leaving with cups of steaming coffee and wedges of gluten-free banana bread, she explained the field to plate concept has become popular in the US where the emphasis is on building sustainable farms which in turn provide fresh produce to local restaurants.

Ms Thomson is passionate about providing healthy, locally grown, home-made food in her restaurant — and this passion translates into the rapidly-growing economic trend of small businesses supporting one another as the economy begins to clamber out of the recession.

She sources the fresh products she offers in her restaurant from farmers like Marta Olander, J&J Produce, Wadson’s Farm — “and I have bean sprouts and broccoli sprouts from Bermuda Green”, she said, describing in mouth-watering detail how these vegetables improve a salad.

“I’m working with our farmers — whatever they can supply and whatever makes financial sense to me, I use. It is more work because you have to call all of them to see what they have. But as much as I can use, I do, and now the majority of my stuff is local. It’s organic, and supporting the local economy,” she said.

In addition, Ms Thomson said: “We make all the food ourselves. So it really is homemade.”

“This is what people love. There are no fillers in my food and all natural. I make my potato salad with fresh potatoes,” she said, explaining the taste is discernibly sweeter. “If the world was perfect, I would use everything fresh.

“We are especially renowned for our cornbread and chilli; those are our signature dishes. The chilli and cornbread do have a little bit of butter in them, but at the end of the day it is home-made and tastes ‘well’,” she said.

Coffee is an important draw at Nonna’s, and the distinctive, chocolate notes of the Guatemalan beans she uses to make her brew wafts along Bermudiana Road, luring customers inside.

Demand for healthier options is pushing the economic trend, she said. “With people’s health being on the brink of disaster because of the rate of obesity, more people are going in this direction and restaurants have to adapt.

“In today’s world there is a lot of sitting and a lot less exercise. We have changed our palates to crave sugary sugars and saltier salts — for example, when something says ‘grapefruit’ it isn’t really grapefruit — it’s got high fructose syrup in it and it’s terrible for you.”

Man once hunted and farmed his own food, she pointed out. “I think it’s a circle, and things are returning to the way we once did them. And it’s a win-win — I support the farmer, people love the concept, and we are healthier. Anything is better than what people were doing before — eating all those high fructose products. Allergies and ADHD have become a huge problem (and are linked to poor diets,)” she said.

“Now we are seeing people eat more fresh fruits, vegetables and lean meats. That’s all we need to do — cut out wheat and eat grains in real moderation.”

After one year and one month in business, Ms Thomson is about to hire the restaurant’s third staff member, joining her team of Maurice Whitehurst, who is “the best at customer service I’ve ever seen”, and Kim ‘Pinky’ Tacklyn, “an absolutely wonderful baker”, proving the success of the concept. “The staff is a huge part of a successful business,” she said.

She had opened the restaurant as the Island was continuing to confront its most difficult economic period in decades. But she said: “I had confidence in the One Bermuda Alliance, and I loved it when Premier Craig Cannonier did the ribbon cutting at our opening — I wanted to show that everything would be OK,” she said.

“Now, there is a buzz in Hamilton — you can really feel it,” she said.

Ms Thomson noted that Bermudiana Road had been quiet in the past few years, but a number of new businesses have opened in recent months, including her neighbour, which is a yoghurt shop. “We really have brought life to this street,” she said.

Among her driving principles, along with healthy, home-cooked food produced from locally sourced foods, is the reduction of the carbon footprint.

“My mantra is to reduce our carbon footprint — I have no use for a lot of waste,” she said. “My biggest challenge is to convince people not to eat out of plastic containers.”

While she does provide containers in the restaurant, she said that she encourages people to bring their own to the restaurant, which are weighed ahead of time, and then customers can fill them with their breakfast or lunch choices. “It’s baby steps to changing the mentality,” she said.

“I recycle everything — including what I put in my soups. I use the stock from cooking the broccoli, for example, in my soup. That’s where the vitamins are, and it’s so good.”

She also keeps a set of core values at the heart of her restaurant: “Friendliness, cleanliness and quality,” she said.

In her bid to offer healthy foods that can be tolerated by everyone, she bakes gluten free and dairy free breads such as pumpkin bread and banana bread. “And my soups are gluten free,” she said. “I am very aware of some of my customers intolerances — I have one customer who goes into depression if he has even a little bit of gluten, so one of the most important things is that the bar is clean, and all gluten products are kept away from it. There are no nuts on the bar either — they are packaged separately — that is part of the portion control.”

Nonna’s is already the winner of the The Bermudian Magazine’s Best of Bermuda Award for gluten-free offerings.

“It’s encouraging people to eat right,” she explained. “Today, for example, I had a black bean and lentil soup, which was almost 100 percent fat free — it had lentils, beans, celery, garlic and onions. I don’t believe in processed foods — so I have no processed foods.

“I believe in very high quality — I haven’t even advertised yet and I have a huge following.

“I find it is the younger generation, the 20- to 40-year-olds, who are driving this. The movement is that they don’t want to eat all the unhealthy, deep fried stuff — it is easily available and probably cheap, but it can cause diabetes, heart disease and obesity. So this concept has taken off — it’s all about eating healthfully.”

She said that the demographics have also changed in terms of the percentage of men she has coming to the restaurant. “It was about 70 percent women — now it’s almost half and half with some people coming for both breakfast and lunch.”

Ms Thomson said many customers come to her because of the great word-of-mouth promotion that Nonna’s receives, and she realises that ferry personnel and taxi drivers, who are regular customers, frequently recommend the restaurant to the visitors with whom they interact.

Like many small business owners, the main ingredients she brought to her new business were energy and belief, along with love and innate knowledge of cooking. She explained: “Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson said, ‘When someone gives you an opportunity, accept it and figure it out later’. I had this dream from many years ago — I wanted to run a soup and salad bar.”

Now that her children are away at college, she said: “I needed someone to cook for! It’s funny, I visualised this restaurant right next door to where I am now — and I have opened here.

“They do say to be careful what you wish for!”