A bit late with the cross-post, but I blogged for Farm Aid‘s Homegrown.org about my experience at the Brooklyn Food Conference. Here’s a taste:
I attended “Our Sustainable Restaurants: A Roundtable of NYC Chefs,” led by Leonard Lopate of WNYC public radio. On the panel were Dan Barber; Peter Hoffman of Savoy and Back Forty; Bill Telepan of Telepan; David Shea of Applewood; and John Tucker of Rose Water.
A very popular panel, the discussion ranged from the chef as instrumental in changing food attitudes to seed sharing, and even tackling the accusation that choosing to eat sustainably is an elitist idea. Barber and Shea explained how chefs, first and foremost, care about taste — and food grown sustainably and responsibly, especially locally, simply tastes better. The chefs agreed that sustainable food’s higher prices, which could be seen as elitism by some, is really just a reflection of the true cost of food; Americans have been accustomed to artificially cheap food for far too long and the higher prices are a correction. As one of them noted, many consumers are learning to say, “Food is where I want to spend my money — on what I put into my body, not what I hang off of it.”
My favorite verbal nugget of the session? Telepan quipped, “If we are what we eat, then we’re fast, cheap, and easy.”
Read the rest of the post here.
