Tag Archives: local
Second Annual Detroit Holiday Food Bazaar
Don’t miss Detroit’s premier pop-up holiday marketplace featuring a variety of independent food vendors on Friday, December 9, 2011, from 5:00pm until 11:00pm.
In its second year of operation, the Detroit Holiday Food Bazaar has expanded and moved to the historic Eastern Market District. The list of vendors includes: Leopold’s Books, Love’s Custard Pie, Drought Juice, Detroit Institute of Bagels, Miette, Pete’s Chocolate Co., El Azteco, RG Distribution, Hugh, The Rogue Estate, Perkins Pickles, Beau Bien Fine Foods, Native Kitchen, Al Meida, Marvin Shaouni Photography, Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company, McClure’s Pickles, Simply Suzanne, Suddenly Sauer, Corridor Sausage Co., Gang of Pour, and Porktown Sausage.
Not only is this a good way to support local small businesses and startups, you’ll have the opportunity to purchase some of the most finely crafted food products available in our city.
Ink it on your calendar and RSVP to their facebook event page.
Second Annual Detroit Holiday Food Bazaar
Friday, December 9, 2011
5:00pm until 11:00pm
2448 Market Street Detroit (above Cost Plus Wines)
Meet Cool People, Drink Beer, Help Tashmoo Biergarten
Tashmoo Biergarten is a pop-up, European-style biergarten that will be serving fresh, local beer in Detroit’s West Village for five Sundays this autumn beginning on September 25th. The hours will run from 12pm – 9pm. Alongside the beer will be a small amount of food and non-alcoholic beverages from Great Lakes Coffee.
They’re looking for volunteers to help with several aspects of the project.
Bottling beer:
Have you ever been curious as to how tasty beer gets into a bottle? Here’s your chance to find out. Work a seven hour shift at MilkingIt in Royal Oak bottling beer for Tashmoo and not only will you gain a unique experience, FREE BEER will be provided as you work. Enough said, right?
Build the biergarten:
Tashmoo is also looking for folks to cut and drill lumber, assemble tables and benches, and assemble a pallet fence. Imagine bringing your friends to a session at the biergarten and setting your suds upon a table that you constructed with your own fortitude. You’ll be like the hero in a James Cameron film.
If interested in helping out, contact Tashmoo Volunteer Manager Matt
Clayson at
Tashmoo BierGarten
Quick, Easy Michigan Refrigerator Pickles
Cucumber season is upon us and there is nothing like crunchy Michigan pickles to munch on while drinking a six pack of Bell’s Lager of the Lakes. I like to can quarts of these tart and tasty tidbits for snacking through the winter but sometimes I like to do a small batch without having to break out the canning pot. The process is simple and quick and results in flavorsome pickles in only a day.
Ingredients:
- 4 pounds of pickling cucumbers
- Bunch fresh dill
- 5-10 garlic cloves, peeled
- 1-3 small hot chili peppers or ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
- 1-1/2 tablespoons pickling spice (McCormick is a good and easily available brand)
- 4 cups white vinegar
- 12 cups water
- 3/4-1 cup pickling salt
Instructions:
You should get around eight flowering heads from a bunch of dill weed. Remove them and place into the bottom of a non-reactive container that will hold all of the pickles and brine and fit into your refrigerator.
Wash and slice the cucumbers into 1/2” sections. This should allow the brine to permeate the flesh more quickly but still result in a nice hunk of crunchy pickle. I usually discard about 1/4″ of the flower end as it can sometimes be bitter. Place the cucumbers into the container over the dill.
Add peeled garlic cloves and chili peppers. Peppers have variable heat even among the same variety so use caution here. Alternately, a small amount of red pepper flakes will add some heat to your pickles.
Combine the liquids, salt, and pickling spice in a large pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for about ten to fifteen minutes. I don’t like my pickles aggressively salty so I will usually use only 3/4 cup of salt. This is personal preference. You can start with 3/4 cup and add more salt once that initial portion is dissolved if the brine isn’t quite salty enough for you.
Once the brine has simmered, remove it from the heat and immediately pour over the cucumbers. The brine should cover the cucumbers, if it doesn’t you can heat up a smaller amount of brine (sans pickling spice) using the same proportions as the initial recipe.
Let the pickles come to room temperature on the counter and then refrigerate overnight. They’ll be ready to eat the next day. Keep them refrigerated. They’ll get even better as the flavors integrate over days — if they last that long.
Where Detroit Meets the South China Sea
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Duck at Liang’s Oriental BBQ
Every major metropolitan area has its ethnic neighborhoods and Detroit is no different. Places like Southwest Detroit, Dearborn and Hamtramck all contain multiple restaurants, food markets, and retail stores that offer a small piece of home for their various immigrant populations. Hidden in plain sight is the vibrant Southeast Asian community in Madison Heights. Though sprawling and interspersed with typical suburban strip mall establishments, there are numerous places where one can grab a hearty bowl of pho, a banh mi sandwich, a bag of dried rice noodles, or a crunchy, shrimp-flavored snack.
Start your tour on the west side of John R. Road between 11 and 12 Mile Roads, Thang Long makes a good pho. And what’s not to like about a massive bowl of rich, slow developed meat broth flavored with spices and filled with rice vermicelli noodles and beef? But we are truly into their combo vermicelli with shrimp, crab and pork crispy roll (bun cha gio tom cua). It’s a bowl of those same rice noodles with the addition of cucumber, fresh cabbage, daikon, pickle, carrot, fried garlic and mint. Instead of broth, you’ll get a small bowl of garlic fish sauce dressing to pour over the works. It’s an uncomplicated dish, yet deeply satisfying.
Spicy with chile, lemongrass and shrimp paste, we order a cup of Thang Long’s hue soup every time we dine there. It’s nasal-clearing and belly-filling with chunks of tender beef. Hangovers will run and hide. Other good dishes are the lemongrass beef or chicken. Try quail roasted in five spice with a lime, salt, and pepper dipping sauce as an appetizer. With all the quality Vietnamese dishes on the menu we never find the urge to order from the Thai section.
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Thang Long
Two doors up is Chinatown Market where the shelves are stocked with a variety of food from frozen dim sum to fresh, whole duck. Chinatown Market caters to a general Asian clientele and is where we shop for noodles. Ramen, soba, udon, egg, flat rice, rice vermicelli, bean thread (aka glass noodle, aka cellophane noodle) and more, the noodle aisle is like natural history display of Asian food.
Farther north on John R. near 13 Mile is another strip mall restaurant and market pairing. Many claim that Thuy Trang serves the best Vietnamese food in the area. Frankly, we believe that all of these places have their strengths and weaknesses. Find out for yourself. A few doors up, Saigon Market is a good place to purchase prepared foods and drinks. They make an excellent banh mi and many times you can find multi-colored steamed rice cakes (banh bo hap) that come with a sweet and salty coconut dipping sauce ideal as a light dessert.
Across the street, Que Huong is said to have the ultimate banh mi. Filled with shredded pork skin and the other requisite goodies, their sandwich is quite good, though we prefer the chewy texture of a fresh bun vs. the toasted one we received here. But add Que Huong to your pho tour of Detroit and be sure to order the avocado smoothie that is the perfect balance of creamy, sweet and refreshing.
Head east to the intersection of 13 Mile Road and Dequindre Road. This little strip mall corner of Madison Heights has it all. We love banh mi from Pho Hang restaurant if only because they give you the fresh ingredients, cucumber, cilantro, hot peppers, pickled carrot and daikon, in a small bag to add at your convenience. This is another spot to hit on the pho tour.
Next door, Kim Nhung Super Foods sells everything you need to make an authentic Vietnamese meal in your own kitchen along with numerous frozen and specialty products from items as mundane as tapioca flour to exotic canned grasshopper. Stop by on a Saturday and you’ll find Styrofoam coolers full of live frogs, snails, oysters and other surprises.
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Smoothie with tapioca pearls at QQ Bakery
Further down, QQ Bakery is a tiny gem that offers everything from bubble tea to curry pastries but they really shine with a simple sponge cake. Airy, moist and lightly sweetened, each bite is a delicate morsel that practically dissolves on the tongue.Try it flavored with pandan, a mildly nutty tropical screwpine leaf, and rolled Swiss-style around a thin layer of cream. We often see diners that were sitting near us at one of the restaurants chose to hit QQ for dessert. Finally, for a quick, hot portion of juicy, roasted pork or duck to go, visit Liang’s Oriental BBQ. While you’re there amongst the hanging, roasted animals you might imagine you stepped into a wormhole and landed square in a Hong Kong side street.
There are nearly twenty ways to order pho at Pho Viet at the corner of 13 Mile Road and Ryan. Most are some combination of proteins — rare beef, well-done flank, brisket, tendon, tripe, beef meatballs, or all of the above. With a depth of flavor from long simmered bones and a delicate hand with the spices, the broth really is the star in this dish. A plate of bean sprouts, Thai basil, fresh hot pepper slices, lime and culantro (a large leaf herb that tastes similar to cilantro) accompanies the soup. Also, try a sweet, sour, salty and refreshing soda made with preserved lime (chanh muoi). Needless to say, this is another requisite stop on the pho tour.
Rarely do these small, independent ethnic markets and restaurants see the type of media buzz that upscale or downtown establishments generate. Yet most of them see steady trade throughout the week and will likely survive whether or not they are revealed to a non-immigrant population. Indeed, even after years of eating and shopping in this area, we’re still discovering places to explore and new foods to sample. We certainly don’t intend for this list to be all-inclusive of what the community has to offer. In fact, we just recently discovered the Filipino flavors of New Lutong Pinoy.
At most, a few open-minded visits to this neighborhood can permanently alter the worldview of an individual that has been long sheltered from the culture of their immigrant neighbors. At least, a tasty smoothie and a glance into the melting pot that is Detroit is half of an hour well spent.
All photos courtesy of Marvin Shaouni Photography.
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Fragaria Perfecta (or, “Damn, That Works”)
Suz asked me to make her a drink with the tasty, local strawberries we had. I figured that if I was going to make a drink, I might as well make it a pretty fucking awesome drink.
Fragaria Perfecta
1.5 oz gin
.75 oz lemon juice
.5 oz green chartreuse
.25 oz simple syrup
4-5 fresh, in season strawberries
rosemary
I muddled the berries, rosemary, and simple together in the shaker, then added my other ingredients and shook with ice. Always double strain given the amount of debris in the cocktail. Served up. Be sure to take a moment to enjoy the intensely rich red color before sucking it down. Drink one after dinner. Or before dinner. Or with your pancakes.
I ran out of rosemary, so I couldn’t try this, but I think this would be a great addition to garnish with a small, fresh sprig across the rim of glass. I might also try this with a rosemary-infused gin to start with rather than muddling it in. Next time.
Eating in Season
My family likes salad as much as anybody. Give us a plateful dressed in tangy vinaigrette and we’ll devour it in minutes. Whether as a side, or a complete meal, we’ll munch a fresh salad every day of the week when the ingredients are in season. But what’s up with the local produce at Eastern Market? You’d think we could get a couple of Michigan grown cucumbers and tomatoes to go with those tasty Brother Nature greens to make a proper salad. We are a premier agriculture state, I’m told.
The truth is, we are so used to seeing the same fruits and vegetables year round in the grocery store most of us don’t even know what is in season anymore. Unless we tend our own vegetable garden, or buy directly from local farmers, how do we know that Michigan lettuce is ripe for picking while most Michigan tomato vines aren’t even flowering yet?
It’s not exactly rocket surgery. Certain plants fruit at different times of the year and in different places based on climate. But it is an idea that’s distorted by our appetite for choice in the marketplace. Perceived choice, that is.
It’s a shame because food eaten in season not only tastes better, it is more satisfying. Isn’t a steaming creamy bowl of Butternut squash soup vastly more agreeable slurped on a chill day in October than on a sun-soaked patio in July? That’s an easy one.
Eating in season goes far beyond the hedonistic value of the food. There is no question that local fruits and vegetables are higher in nutrients than produce that has spent days traveling to a distributor before ever being placed for sale in a bin. Hybrid grocery store produce is designed to withstand long journeys and still look good, never mind the taste or nutritional value. Many times it is even picked prematurely and then artificially ripened.
By aligning our consumption with the seasons, we will be getting a range of nutrients simply through the variety of locally grown food available. Nutrients likely more in tune with our bodies current needs. Eating such a variety might even help avoid food allergies and intolerances.
How about the environment? Before we even account for non-organic growing practices, imagine the cost in fuel and the pollution generated to ship out of season fruits and vegetables to Michigan compared to what’s grown here, sometimes from countries that might have issues feeding their own population.
What’s more, it’s generally no huge agriculture conglomerate that is prospering when we eat in season. It is the local economy that retains most of our dough. In our case, farmers we know, and the businesses that support locally grown produce.
We don’t have to get militant about it either. We do treat ourselves to the occasional pineapple, mango or avocado from time to time. Yet we also know that committing to locally grown and seasonal produce is a big leap in the right direction.
Now we make our salads with mostly what is fresh and available from our trusted farmers at the market. Who knew that Brother Nature greens tasted just as good with radishes, peas, sunflower sprouts, asparagus and spring onion? We’re getting back to our roots (so to speak). Our ancestors ate in season. They ate what they could grow or trade for. They ate in season out of necessity. We do it for health – the Earth, the local economy, and our own.
The Dirt on Farmer’s Market Vegetables
Fresh, locally grown vegetables are beginning to fill the tables at your local farmer’s market. That gray-brown stuff all over them isn’t dirt. It’s soil. It’s earth. It’s the medium that conveys the nutrients that plants need to flourish and grow. But as any kid who has dropped his popsicle at the park will tell you, you probably don’t want to eat it. It feels kind of weird on your teeth.
Buying locally grown produce means lots of things. One of them is soil on your unpackaged vegetables. Most of us are probably used to the convenience of buying pre-washed salad in bags and string beans in cans. We’ve been told we can’t afford the time it takes to handle our own food except from fork to mouth. How did we manage before the food processing industry?
You don’t need to be intimidated when you bring home that bounty of produce. Of course it won’t be perfectly clean; it was recently harvested from fertile Michigan soil. Sometimes hours before it arrived at the market. But where to start?
Once a vegetable is detached from its roots or plucked from a vine it slowly begins to deteriorate. Establishing how much a certain vegetable will breathe, so to speak, is basic to deciding what you should do with it once you get it home. Thin, tender greens might last only a few days. Fat butternut squash might last six months or more when stored properly.
In my house berries usually don’t last fifteen minutes. In fact, they rarely make it farther than a quick soak in the sink before we’re gulping them with abandon. If you have more resolve than us you can transfer yours, after picking out any bad ones, directly to the fridge, covered. Rinse them off in a colander right before you use them within two to three days.
Thick-skinned produce, like potatoes, squash, melons and apples, get chucked into a cool and dark corner while we’re still munching berries. No need to wash now. Use a vegetable scrubber to clean them up before they’re cut. Also, if they’re dry, onions and garlic need no washing at all before use and are just as happy in that shady nook reserved for the spuds.
Broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and turnips get bagged loose and go into the vegetable drawer, again getting washed before using. See, this is easy. Our cats might do it if they had opposable thumbs. Probably not. They seem to prefer that weird crunchy fish flavored kibble anyway.
Then we plug the kitchen sink and fill it with cool water before making a drink and digging into the back of the cupboard for the lettuce spinner. If you don’t have one of these yet, it’s okay. You can get it after you’ve finished reading. You’ll want one to remove as much water from the washed vegetables as you can. Bagging them wet is going to reduce their lives considerably. What’s more, when is the last time you chopped soggy cilantro? What a mess.
We cut and separate all the lettuce, greens and herbs and plunge them into the sink to remove all the soil. After a quick rinse and a twirl in the lettuce spinner they go into unsealed containers with a small square of paper towel to absorb the last bit of topical moisture. They’ll last in the fridge for most of the week.
Of course you can pack the greens and such into bags and wash before using just like the rest of the veggies, some authorities even recommend it, but why take the fun in such small doses?
The day my family brings home all of our fresh vegetables is a special one. Everyone gets involved. Cleaning is part of the experience. We know that the gritty stuff on the radishes is not just any old dirt. It’s soil, trophy soil that represents our commitment to local food and the farmers that grow it. We celebrate it as we wash it away.
Do you have tips on washing fresh, locally produced vegetables? Post them here.
Serious as a Cart Attack: A Look at Mark’s Carts
Delicious food has been available from mobile eateries for a while now in Michigan, and Detroit has long had its share of taco trucks. But ask anyone who’s had a little dumpling filled with fresh octopus or a bowl of impossibly good vegan stew from a cart no larger than a large hatchback automobile: There’s more to the current nationwide food cart trend than well-prepared Mexican snacks.
Japanese. Spanish. Vegan. Pork. Korean. Burgers. Brisket. Fish and chips. Every cuisine has a cart somewhere in the U.S. — a little restaurant with no building, low overhead, and plenty of hungry customers. All of this is true of Mark’s Carts in Ann Arbor, which opened earlier this month.
Standalone carts have been common elsewhere for a long time, and the concept of a place that serves cheap, crave-worthy food curbside is an inspiringly simple brand of genius.
But why stop there? Portland has been bragging about its diverse, courtyard-style approach for a few years now. I’ve seen the concept at work in Austin, and now it’s in Ann Arbor, satiating that quintessential American desire for choice.
Each of the carts has its own focus, and there are over a half dozen options. I would have written about Mark’s at opening, but given the variety, there’s simply too much food to sample for a single visit.
Among my first selections was a “headcheese hoagie” from the Humble Hogs cart. The proprietor is Keith Ewing, recently back in Ann Arbor from Houston. As I discovered in a brief conversation with him, he’s obsessed with pigs – history, farming, culinary uses, and everything in between. His passion is evident in his use of pasture raised animals and in the sheer deliciousness of the rich heritage pork in the hoagie, which is less a sandwich than a pile of moist, loose headcheese on a single piece of Zingerman’s Pullman Toast and slathered in onions and peppers. It’s an expensive plate for $6, but it’s delicious, the pigs are sourced well, and speaking from experience, it’s much more filling than it appears at first glance.
Taking a notably less carnivorous approach is The Lunch Room, a larger, well-organized vegan operation. Where Humble Hogs’ staff stands next to a pushcart barely larger than a beer cooler, the Lunch Room duo is tucked inside a small wooden hut that happens to have wheels, nicely outfitted and smartly covered in interchangeable menus, literature, and ads for branded goods like shirts and buttons.
On one trip, I ate the BBQ tofu sandwich, served on a whole grain bun, which was tasty but not as delectable as it looked. I found myself thinking, “This tastes pretty good for something so healthy” rather than “This tastes so damn good I’d beat that old man next to me to get the last one.” Still, I’m not a vegan, and I’d certainly eat that sandwich again, perhaps even aspiring to that level of quality in my own experiments with vegan cooking. Their slaw is also quite tasty, priced as a combo with the tofu at $5. And one can add a very well-made (and never cloying) cookie for only a dollar or a smoothie for only a few. Suck on that, McDonald’s Value Menu.
Immediately next to The Lunch Room is one of the newest additions to Mark’s Carts, an Asian-themed eatery called San Street tied to the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses. If you’re not familiar, Zingerman’s empowers its staff with viable, interesting business ideas to leverage the Zingerman’s name and to work with them to create these new companies based on their passions. In this case, said passion is Asian street food.
Their weekly offerings will change, according to the proprietors, but the other week, they were serving up pork buns, a la David Chang. The pork belly is tender but crispy on the outside, and it’s wrapped inside a nicely prepared steamed bun with sweet-and-sour pickles, some sort of relish, and optional siracha. Each sells for $4, so as with Humble Hogs, patrons are paying for the quality (and, let’s be honest, the omnipresent Ann Arbor mark-up), but I’ll certainly be back to try their other buns.
Interestingly, both San Street and The Lunch Room conduct all their business from iPads, using a small attachment to the top of the device to run credit cards and process all their transactions. While cash is handy (and, I would imagine, appreciated), it’s hardly necessary.
Visitors may also head to the far back to stand in some of the longer lines (thus far, at least) to eat from Darcy’s Cart, which seems to be doing a fair amount of business with its traditional cart fare: meat and kimchi tacos. But they also sell a breakfast burrito and a host of other options, each using local ingredients.
In fact, many of the carts, including Darcy’s, publish a list of their local food sources. Among some of the names one might see on any given day are Zingerman’s, Calder’s, Black Oak Farms, and The Brinery.
Another outfit with a similar approach is Debajo del Sol, for which the flagship menu item is paella. They describe their menu as tapas, and that’s somewhat accurate in terms of the small plates and heavy Spanish influence, though I don’t think anyone would mistake their smoky chorizo corn dogs for traditional tapas. Hand-ground and hand-seasoned, the chorizo is definitely a treat, and the corn dog batter is exceptionally rich. One crunchy, fluffy bite will leave your lips coated in grease.
The other cart at which I’ve had a chance to sample is Eat, which has been a staple of the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market in Kerrytown for some time. They’ve recently been preparing their classic pork and beef sandwiches, the latter of which is covered in Brinery kimchi, though the lamb “Sloppy Joe” with aggressive spicing – I want to say North African flavors – was a new treat to me.
The Mark’s Carts model isn’t without its flaws – namely higher prices than similar ventures I’ve seen in New York or Austin and a cramped space without much shade from Michigan summer heat, let alone the snowy eventuality of winter.
Shutting down for the colder months aside, the other problems are hardly insurmountable: Quality and sourcing of the food is justification enough for the extra cost. Why not pay $9 for three small, healthy, interesting items instead of paying $7 for a plate of frozen french fries and a mediocre Reuben? And the mediocre environs are only a problem when it’s exceptionally crowded or hot, and neither people nor the summer sun makes pork belly taste bad.
On the whole, it’s definitely a success. And as much as I think many people would have predicted a positive outcome, it’s actually a bit surprising considering the regional history with food carts.
As cited in a recent NPR story about food trucks and carts across the Midwest, Mark’s Carts is one of the few success stories near the Great Lakes. (Of course, not mentioned in the story is the fact that Mark’s also hosts a commercial kitchen next door for food prep, presumably to overcome the requirements of local laws.) Chicago has a twenty-year-old law that forbids the production of food on trucks. Even hot dog stands are subject to the rule. And Detroiters are certainly familiar with the battles fought by mobile and community eateries like Pink FlaminGO and Neighborhood Noodle in order to get their operations running within the confines of the city’s regulations.
Still, this was inevitable in Michigan. Like sushi a couple decades ago or natural wine over the last five years or craft cocktails this year, it’s one of those fashionable concepts that apparently takes a while to permeate our heartland sensibilities.
Indeed, trends tend to reach the Midwest pretty late. Overlaid on a map, any food trend might look a bit like an epidemic sweeping down the well-travelled, heavily populated coasts before converging inward, like a big national race to Dubuque.
Some people think these food fashions die out over time, but that’s never really true. The hype is what dies while the food lingers in our local cultures in its own way. The best trends – sushi, craft beer, good coffee, cocktail bars – all continue past the initial shock and awe inherent to their newness.
So it will be with high end food carts – at least if the early success of Mark’s Carts is any indication.
Making Good Food Work
Conferences are generally about listening. At good conferences, one listens and learns. At bad conferences, one listens a bit and then watches the person one seat away play Angry Birds. Either way, “participants” are largely passive, absorbing knowledge through digesting lectures, presentations, and panel discussions.
Making Good Food Work was different.
Designed as a participatory conference, hosted in Detroit on April 19 through April 21, and organized by Neighborhood Noodle founder and Michigan State University Ph.D. student Jess Daniel, Making Good Food Work (MGFW) brought together food entrepreneurs, business owners, farmers, and other experts to work on projects and ideas that could shape the future of regional food systems.
While participants came from all over the country, not just Michigan, MGFW still felt like a Detroit event: After all, only in our uncommonly small, familiar community could an amateur like me learn about an event this specialized and actually attend alongside practitioners with interesting ideas for viable food alternatives.
The conference was purported on its website to be “a creative incubation laboratory, designed for doers.” After three days of working, talking, typing, thinking, collaborating, researching, and writing, I was exhausted. No Angry Birds, no checking email during lectures, no sitting in the back of the room bored. Just work.
Designed for doers, indeed.
Projects & Personalities
Things began in the ballroom of Detroit’s Atheneum Hotel exactly as one might expect: Introductory remarks, a few well-orchestrated exercises designed to break the ice, and plenty of hotel coffee. Where things began to diverge from the norm was when we really dug into this “incubation laboratory” concept.
Thirteen team leaders – all who previously had submitted business concepts, ideas for white papers, and projects of all sorts – took to the stage to pitch their initiatives. Each hoped his or her project would resonate with the right people, drawing them to participate in actually developing those initiatives over the next two days.
The 200 attendees split themselves into these teams to begin work. There were a set of teams dedicated to issues – creating toolkits for general use across the country, for example – but among the seven teams working on defined businesses, hubs, and co-ops were:
- COLORS of Detroit, a soon-to-be worker-owned restaurant in Harmonie Park that’s an extension of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC), which helps train restaurant workers for better positions in the industry. The restaurant will be both a training environment and a working restaurant featuring local foods.
- Delridge Produce Cooperative, a neighborhood food co-op that provides fresh, locally sourced, sustainable food to under-served, generally lower income residents in southwest Seattle
- The Arcadia Center, an effort to bring local, sustainably raised food to people via a mobile market near D.C in Alexandria
- Colorado Schools Food Hub, a project in which healthy, local food ends up in school lunches
As a newcomer to food systems discussions but a seasoned practitioner of the black art known as marketing, I chose to work with COLORS since they were looking to draw customers and attention to their restaurant, due to open this fall.
Brief introductions were all I needed to see I’d be working with an interesting team: Angela Newsom from Detroit Evolution was experienced in the local food market and insightful with regards to the Detroit customer base. Channon Mondoux of the Eclectic Kitchen in Kalamazoo was a chef, educator, and businessperson. Brother Barry Crumbley served as a farmer, activist, and food policy advisor. Kathe Piede worked at a co-op outside New York. Add to that another half dozen event planners, community organizers, and community garden workers.
Led by Minsu Longiaru, the project leader, and Cheryl Danley from Michigan State, our team facilitator, we had a great group. I didn’t get much exposure to other teams, but if they were anywhere near as diverse and brilliant as the folks I met, I’m sure every project leader went home with a suitcase full of ideas.
Before we really started to discuss the project and our team leader’s goals, though, we were treated to lunch – and a few guest speakers.
Dr. Kathleen Merrigan is the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and as one of the keynotes, she talked generally about the importance of local food systems and some of the challenges the effort faces. She has been the person behind “Know your Farmer, Know your Food,” which illustrated to me a sad truth about our government and our food. Merrigan clearly has been an advocate for alternative food systems, but she also noted – mostly when answering pointed questions from an expert audience – that there are times when the USDA is obligated to allow certain foods (e.g., genetically modified alfalfa) to market unless it meets very strict legal criteria.
What went unsaid was that none of those problems will ever change until the massive amounts of money invested by companies ranging from Monsanto to McDonald’s gets out of government.
After Merrigan finished her interactions with the crowd, Senator Debbie Stabenow delivered a thoroughly generic address and left without taking any questions. It was nice of her to show support for real food, but as it turned out, the extra half hour would have been helpful in working on our projects.
We closed the first day defining some parameters for our project with COLORS, including the need to create a marketing plan.
Getting to Work
Obviously, one of the advantages of being a marketing guy was that I had a few consulting documents and marketing plans I could use as templates. I pulled one out and started re-writing it with COLORS in mind, incorporating the ideas generated by my teammates as I went along. 10 pages, 20 pages, 30 pages. We were machines.
Something that should have been immediately obvious eventually struck me as the discussion evolved: We all shared a love of good, honest, real food. Admittedly, my interests have been rooted in hedonism and an intellectual love of the historical and cultural aspects of cuisine, tea, wine, beer, et cetera. And theirs were rooted more in economics, social justice, policy, agriculture, and business.
Nonetheless, that shared love should elicit smiles from anyone interested in food – because it illustrates something that I think a lot of people don’t understand about food as a hobby or even as a profession.
Specifically, being a “foodie” isn’t just about watching Iron Chef; it’s about understanding and intellectualizing something vital to our existence. I might be more interested in reading about famed bartender Jerry Thomas than I am about the particulars of what House resolution is up for a vote or what the latest heirloom seed protected by the government might be, but at the core, it’s more or less all the same. It’s recognizing that there’s more to food than swinging through a drive-thru and shoveling fries into one’s face.
Hobbies and jobs are ways of focusing our minds, challenging ourselves. Food is a necessity. And a business. And a hobby. And an area of public debate. And a key component of every culture. It touches everything around us. So in many respects, is there any more interesting, holistic hobby? Is it any surprise that being a “foodie” has become so popular?
From the most basic cooks to those with a library of historical food texts, anyone can relate to some component of food.
So working with the COLORS team became a real pleasure as we dug into not merely our task but our shared passion. I learned a lot, and the second night, a big group of us went to Slows BBQ to hang out.
But mostly, we worked.
Some of us left the group for an hour or two to chat with experts or to attend workshops on topics like packaging, food hub start-ups, and finding capital for new food businesses. But more or less, we dug in around a table, talking, thinking, and typing. Two days later, we had a 30-page marketing plan, an event planning guide, a concept for empowering workers to promote COLORS via social media, and a host of other ideas.
Winning: The COLORS of Money
What some of us didn’t realize was that there were financial awards available. Our facilitator, Cheryl, did a fantastic job of guiding some answers to questions that would be judged by a panel on the third day, and Minsu worked with the team on a presentation that highlighted our accomplishments.
We were thrilled to see the results: COLORS won second place among the judges and also won the “people’s choice” award, the combined total for which nearly doubled Minsu’s initial marketing budget.
Obviously, I was pleased to see such tangible results for the project we worked on – but there were other amazing ideas presented that day.
The Delridge Produce Co-op mentioned earlier elected to move to a stand-based concept to lower costs and put together a plan to make it happen for the residents of southwest Seattle. The Farm to School Hub in Colorado is launching two pilot projects aimed at 14 school districts and over 100,000 children served real food. The Village Marketplace in Los Angeles (pictured below) learned how to scale their business up and clearly received very practical advice regarding equipment and processes to make the expansion sustainable while paying a very decent living wage to their soon-to-be new employees.
So here was my big takeaway: Living up to it’s name, the conference proved that it is indeed possible to make good food work.
As a society, we may be limited by the bureaucracy and lobbyist-fueled big agro machine that wants us to eat genetically engineered corn-fed beef burgers on corn-based bread and wash it down with a corn syrup laden drink. But as individuals, we all have interests and ideas. And we have the power to choose to act on those interests and ideas. Not everyone can open a community kitchen or a food hub or a stand at a farmer’s market. But anyone can shop at one, volunteer for one, support one.
So make good food work for you. It’s not always simple, but it’s never all that hard.
