The Great Coltivare Kumquat Tree Heist

One of the hazards of having a street-facing 3,000-sq.-ft. garden adjacent to your restaurant’s back patio: plant theft. But Coltivare chef Ryan Pera tells Bloomberg reporter Kate Krader that the Heights restaurant has more to watch out for than your typical fruit-off-the-vine snatchings by grabby customers. Namely: 3 of the restaurant’s fruit trees have gone missing, including “a 6-ft.-tall kumquat tree, worth about $175.” Pera tells Krader he was “stunned and hurt, but more awed by the fact that it was obviously planned. I mean, someone had to come prepared with proper garden tools, a truck, and the know-how on how to steal a tree.

Photo of Coltivare, 3320 White Oak Dr.: Coltivare

Grand Theft Citrus Japonica

5 Comment

  • Great read in Bloomberg, though learning about a ‘duck press’ has ruined my appetite for some time to come.

  • That area has so much other dangerous crime – this is laughable! Within blocks there have been at least three people shot in the past few months! And that lady found in the wall of her house! So strange that it is all right near schools and parks but the City does not care.

  • i’m sick and tired of people always complaining about how such and such crime happened close to a school. schools are peppered throughout the city, so pretty much anywhere is “near a school”. find me a school-free area where i can do my shootings.

  • Gee now I know why both Revival and Coltivare are both ridiculously overpriced…

  • cm–you can get a fantastic pizza at coltivare for 14 bucks. How on earth is that “ridiculously overpriced”?Coltivare is the best value in town for the quality and flavor. Shrimp pasta at Coltivare is $18, while a shrimp pasta at freaking Olive Garden is 17. Come on.