Farm to Fable

Interesting report
http://www.tampabay.com/news/farm-to-fa ... ne/2273052

There's a restaurant across the street from my office, and I've often seen the farm van pull up and the guy carry a small pig over his shoulder into Harpers. I think they're pretty upfront. But I've certainly had doubts about supposed local vegetables at some places in NYC when season seemed doubtful

Excellent well-researched investigation!

Have to confess my naiveté. Had no idea the problem was so pervasive...almost universal.

My view has always been that stores/restaurants that make the loudest claims about local/organic/whatever are usually the ones that are the least interesting, because clearly they are doing it as a marketing/branding strategy.

I generally try to seek out the places with intelligent high-quality food, and they inadvertently end up being local/organic/whatever.

I feel pretty confident in the local restaurants that have farm to table claims- their menus change constantly (blues and shad roe at appropriate times, ramps and fiddleheads in spring, etc), sources are local and disclosed (and Hudson Valley Duck, Blue Hill, and others know that menu proclaims they are vendors), etc. I've acted as a squash blossom courier before.

And the Hastings market has vendors who are quite public re sources (and Pascale the manager is pretty strict). Fish is from Long Island. All of the produce, meat, cheese etc is local (Hudson Valley, except one pork/chicken vendor has grass fed beef from eastern PA). There are some local vendors of prepared foods (chutneys, peanut butter, pies, breads, etc) that obviously use ingredients that aren't local, but foods are. There is an olive oil producer who brings in bulk from her family in Greece and bottles in Larchmont , but no one is trying to pretend these are Westchester olives. Outside of market around Westchesrer there are smaller one operator "farm stands" that sell things they clearly don't grow (avocados, citrus, bananas) not sure how NY regulates that.

[Jenise]

What a fantastic, well-written article. Thanks, Dale.

I've suspected some project creep must be occurring, but it's actually pretty shocking to see how many restaurants use the actual names of providers who don't even sell to them. (And if it's happening in Tampa, it's everywhere.) Must be especially disturbing to those providers--that's identity theft, of a sort. How do you combat that if you're them?