March 24, 2007 - Orlando Sentinel
Slow Food makes case for local taste
To explain the concept of slow food it is somewhat easier to list the things it is not. It is not the notion that a meal should last two hours nor does it have anything to do with chewing your food more slowly.
It is not about consuming only foods that took several hours to prepare, and it isn’t a reference to lackadaisical servers.
But perhaps the most specific definition of what slow food is, is that it is not fast food. And to understand that, you have to know that proponents of slow food see fast food as being about more than just burgers and fried foods. In fact, slow food can be burgers and fried food. There are as many aspects to slow food as there are ingredients in a good stew.
The Slow Food movement traces its roots to 1986 when an Italian named Carlo Petrini railed against a McDonald’s, the proliferation of industrial food outlets and what he viewed as the standardization of taste: the annihilation of food varieties, including local produce and even some breeds of animals, and the loss of local foodways and dining customs that he saw as collateral casualties. Petrini gathered some like-minded friends and the movement was born. Today there are Slow Food organizations in 50 countries with more than 80,000 members.
Slow Food U.S.A., headquartered in Brooklyn, has given approval for a Central Florida chapter, or convivium. The local organization is being championed by people such as John Gabrovic, owner of Harmoni Market in College Park. He says the Orlando convivium will work as a conduit between restaurants such as his and local food producers such as Olde Hearth Bread Company in Casselberry, which produces artisan breads.
Julie Norris, owner of Dandelion Communitea Cafe in Orlando, says whenever she has a choice between a Florida product and one from another country, she’ll choose the local produce, even if it costs more. She says it isn’t always possible. “With produce, some things just don’t grow in this climate,” she says. But her cafe recently featured a menu of locally grown tomatoes, and Florida avocados are becoming available. Florida avocados have a different taste than the Haas variety found in supermarkets, but part of Slow Food’s mission is to preserve the tastes that are fading away. The organization has an Ark of Taste, a list of endangered food products that include such things as American artisanal cider and Florida cracker cattle. Foods that, in the words of the organization’s description, “have all ‘boarded’ the Ark to escape their most certain demise under the flood of industrial agriculture.” They are foods that are not completely gone and which the group hopes will not be forgotten.
Gabrovic says, “A secondary objective is to educate youth about the origins of their food.” He cites Fast Food Nation, the nonfiction book by Eric Schlosser, as an insight into the unseen consequences of mass-produced food. A movie based on the book was released in 2006. Schlosser will speak on the subject at 10 a.m. today at the Enzian Theater as part of the Florida Film Festival’s focus on slow food.
The movie Fast Food Nation, which is not being shown at the film festival, decries not only the issues of diet and nutrition that are associated with fast food products but also the consequences of mass-producing those foods in great volumes. This includes the sometimes inhumane treatment and production-line slaughter of animals, and the use of undocumented and untrained workers that can lead to unsafe working conditions and contaminated food.
But don’t assume slow food is synonymous with vegetarian or vegan, although, according to Rebecca Reis, another founding member of Orlando’s convivium, there will likely be many supporters of the movement from those communities. Instead it’s about “fair” food and what Slow Food U.S.A.’s slogan refers to as “the honest pleasures of food.”
Reis says another goal of the convivium will be to preserve the local food culture, which in Orlando means the culinary traditions represented by the Vietnamese, Hispanic and African-American communities.
The charter members of Central Florida’s Slow Food convivium realize there will be challenges. Gabrovic says the network of local suppliers doesn’t exist yet, and it would not be feasible for most Orlando restaurants to operate using only products that meet the Slow Food criteria. “And you don’t have the groundswell of locals demanding the product,” he says. But they plan to compile a list of local purveyors, farmers and artisans and then put them in touch with the restaurants that want to use their products.
Letting the dining public know it has a choice will hopefully create the demand. Supporters will know they’ve been successful when all fast food is slow food. Scott Joseph - Sentinel restaurant critic
