Toulouse Lautrec (José Ferrer), Jane Avril (Zsa Zsa Gabor) and Maurice Joyant (Lee Montague) in "Moulin Rouge" (1952)


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IN THIS ISSUE
THE FARM TO TABLE FARCE 
By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
LA GAMELLE 
By John Mariani


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THE FARM TO TABLE FARCE 
By John Mariani

                                                                                 "Gleaners" (1857) by Jean-Francois Millet
   
    When was the last time you dined out in Paris, London, Rome, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Mumbai or Hong Kong where the chef or waiter came over to assure you that the food was fresh?  Or that the ingredients came from two miles away?  Or that they refuse to serve anything unless it was grown in the province?  For them it’s a matter of self-respect not to need to utter such banalities, and they would be insulted if a guest asked them such questions.
    In good restaurants outside the U.S. the chefs most certainly pride themselves on the sources of their finest ingredients, so that a French chef may list “poulet de Bresse” (left) on his menu or a London chef say the cheeses are from British and Irish farms. Otherwise a guest can safely assume that the basil in a pesto in Liguria came from a nearby garden or that the squid at a restaurant in Santorini swam in local waters that morning.  Fine and dandy for those particular, easily available seasonal ingredients.
    Why, then, do American chefs and media insist on putting words like “fresh” next to their vegetables and seafood and use the awkwardly embarrassing phrase “farm to table”?  If it once had a meaning at all, it might date back to the 1970s, when Alice Waters began sourcing her provender from local farms in Northern California, like the now-famous Chino Ranch (below).  Listing one’s sources lends a certain credibility and seriousness to a restaurant as well as a nod of cordiality towards the growers and producers.  But, if all tomatoes grow from soil on farms, as do bananas, kumquats, and zucchini,  and, if lamb and steers and chickens all come from farms, what else would you expect?
    Nevertheless, the phrase is trotted out every time a food writer  or p.r. agent needs an easy cliché to describe a chef who proclaims he buys most of  his ingredients within a certain radius outside his restaurant—it could be ten miles, fifty miles, or a hundred miles.  In the case of the highly publicized and very talented Sean Brock (left), chef of two Husk restaurants, in Charleston and Nashville, the idea gets a bit precious:  Brock insists, “If it doesn’t come from the South, it’s not coming through the door.” He even banned olive oil from his kitchens and makes his own salt on the roof of his restaurants. It should be noted, however, that Brock goes way off his self-imposed reservation by selling European and California wines, when he could hunker down and ferret out good quality wines from Virginia, Georgia, and even Texas.
    This begs two questions: Which states actually qualify as “Southern,” especially since the oft-cited Mason-Dixon Line merely resolved a pre-Revolutionary War dispute  involving three Mid-Atlantic colonies—Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware—but never divided the country into North and South.  Does Brock mean any state that joined the Confederacy?  Is Texas a Southern state? (As they say in Louisiana, "The South starts north of here.")  It’s all just a geographical fantasy.  Second, what makes any ingredient from a designated region the best available, which is what good chefs are supposedly really after, not just tomatoes grown in Minnesota or melons grown in Alaska?
    The term "locavorism" was coined in 2005 during the World Environmental Day in San Francisco by Jessica Prentice, Jen Maiser, Sage Van Wing and DeDe Sampson, who insisted that buying and consuming food not obtained locally is a process that imperils "our environment, our health, our communities, and out taste buds." Their goal was "to eat from a 100 mile radius of San Francisco of our homes.  Failing that, we will attempt to eat foods that come from within our state, or are purchased directly from small scale farmers elsewhere in the world," which makes the original intent meaningless.  
       But given the miracle of FedEx and DHL, why shouldn’t a chef in Georgia sell Maine lobsters or one in Boston sell Florida stone crabs just because they aren’t local?  Is a chef committed to “farm to table” going to serve second-rate artichokes or third-rate farm-raised seafood solely because it comes from a specific local region?     
     Yet, despite the hype about what has become a hackneyed phrase, Travel & Leisure magazine recently published an article on America’s best farm-to-table restaurants, researched by asking local food critics which they’d choose.   

 Writes the article’s editor in an attempt to resuscitate the phrase: “The farm-to-table movement may be decades old, but recent heightened attention towards issues like climate change and health has given rise to a new generation of chefs who are redefining what that oft-abused phrase means. In an era where fast food chains are hawking the farm-to-table trend, consumers are left feeling that every restaurant is green to some degree. These 50 establishments—plus Washington D.C.—stand out from the pack by not only creating exciting innovative cuisine with a locally sourced menu, but also by applying that same eco-minded culinary philosophy to every aspect of the operation. He goes on: “Considering that the average food item in America has traveled 1,500 miles from the farm to your plate, according to Worldwatch Institute, eating local—for your health, the environment, and your taste buds—is only logical.”
    Let’s skip over the dubious statements that foods shipped in from less than 1,500 miles away are more healthful and not damaging to the environment, although the  best locally grown food may have certain nutritious advantages over lower quality foods grown far away.  Let’s look at a few of the restaurants T&L praises for their commitment to locavorism--without implying in any way that the chef is not serving wonderful  food.
     At Trio’s in Little Rock, Arkansas, the menu lists crab cakes and Gulf shrimp, despite the Gulf being more than 400 miles away. They also insist their tortillas are made with “local flour” yet serve French Brie with a mango chutney.
    Back Forty (left) in Greenwich, Connecticut, prints a creed that notably claims, “We receive pasture raised whole animals from practicing organic or Certified Organic local farms and butcher them ourselves. . . .  We only buy in season organic produce from local farms,” then says their organic spices, dried herbs and teas are from Mountain Rose Herbs in Eugene, Oregon, and “We use only Himalayan Pink Salt.” (Of course, many of these restaurants boast of stereotypical decors using reclaimed local barn wood.)
    The oddly named a(Muse) in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, serves foie gras from the Hudson Valley, bacon from Tennessee and pork from the Berkshires—all pretty remote places from Rehoboth to claim as local. Miami’s LoKal (below) insists, “Owner Matthew Kuscher’s commitment to quality is unmatched as he will be tapping Floridian farmers, dairies and brewers in order to highlight the bounty of products, goods and ingredients available in the Sunshine State. In plain English, LoKal will be as local as local gets.”  So that’s why they use Gruyère and Monterey Jack cheese and import Scottish salmon?
    Luna in Grand Rapids, Michigan, cooks up Hawaiian ono;  Birchwood Café in Minneapolis serves tilapia in its Indonesian stew. The problem is it's nearly impossible to obtain U.S. bred tilapia, a tropical fish whose supply is almost entirely coming in either frozen from China or farm bred in Central America.
     Persimmon in Providence, Rhode Island, serves Spanish octopus and royal white sturgeon caviar from California.  And The Dabney in Washington DC, which just made Food & Wine's list of Best New Restaurants 2016, for sourcing "100% of its ingredients from the mid-Atlantic," which somehow include Anson Mills grits from South Carolina, Rainey's Dream Camembert from North Carolina, Whistle Pig Farm pork loin from Vermont, and, on their current wine list, not a single bottle from the mid-Atlantic.  
    Not for a moment am I calling into question the commitment, quality and serious cooking being done at any of these restaurants. But to aggrandize oneself as being noble about serving farmed catfish rather than wild sea bass strikes me as the wrong field to plow.  The real irony is that the most hyped chef of the past decade, David Chang, couldn’t care less about locavorism, as long as he’s getting the quality he wants. At his award-winning Ko in NYC he serves caviar from Idaho, bee pollen from Connecticut, green-tea matcha from Japan, lamb from Pennsylvania and Calabrian chilies. 
    If one of these chefs were asked to be general manager of, say, the Chicago Symphony, would he hire only musicians from the Windy City?  Or if he became owner of the NY Yankees, would he hire only players born and bred in NYC, with as many as possible from the Bronx?  Somehow I doubt it.  So, too, there’s nothing wrong about locavorism that stepping back from it won’t make better.  Mileage does not define quality, and a greenhouse is not always the place to find the best of anything.

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