Dressing Room: A Homegrown Restaurant, (Westport, CT)  committed to serving local, natural and organic American food, today announces the promotion of Jon Vaast to head chef. The restaurant also dressing roomunveiled its new American tapas menu, featuring smaller portions to give guests the opportunity to “go-light” or “go-for-broke.”

The menu changes seasonally and features the best of local growers and producers. Early Summer offerings include 37 plates available in three sizes starting at $7. Vaast will steward relationships with local producers while taking the helm of Dressing Room’s new menu, which offers homegrown tastes in a more affordable format. For the click here for a downlodable pdf.

As Vaast, 24, takes over day-to-day operations at Dressing Room, owner Michel Nischan shifts roles from chef to restaurateur to focus on his nonprofit Wholesome Wave, founded in 2007 to make fresh, locally grown produce available in historically excluded neighborhoods throughout the country. Nischan will focus on growing Wholesome Wave’s lynchpin initiative, the Double Value Coupon Program (DVCP). The program harnesses relationships between government agencies, community-based organizations, educational institutions and residents of communities, to double the value of benefits provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) via Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) Food Stamps. The DVCP serves over 150 farmers markets in more than 15 states with over 25 participating partners, and was recently cited in the White House Childhood Obesity Task Forces Report as one of 70 policy recommendations.