The week that was (20 July 2016)

The Omnivore's Dilemma turned ten last month. There is quite a bit floating around from Pollen speculating on what has changed since it was first published. The cost of food is a big issue and so I thought this was particularly interesting: "My hope is that people will start to revalue food as something worth spending more money on when possible. After all, a remarkable number of us—a majority—got comfortable in very short order paying hundreds of dollars a month for a second telephone account, and for television (which once was free!). I think a significant slice of the consuming public is getting used to the idea that food produced in alignment with their values costs more and is worth more. But of course, there remain people who won’t be able to afford the higher prices of sustainable food, and that’s where the difficulty arises. How do we make this food available to them? That, I think, is the big challenge of the food movement: to democratize sustainably and ethically produced food." Hear, hear.
 
- FoodService have relaunched their mag with a posse of contributors from around the industry. Among them is Huckstep, giving a little rant on his thoughts behind why a review is appropriate in the first few weeks. You know my take on it. 
 
- I am endlessly fascinated with better ways to connect producers/farmers and chefs/cooks and so I find the community supported agriculture model interesting (essentially it's a subscription model paid in advance to the farmer). "The goal was for C.S.A. farmers and members to build a mutually supportive long-term relationship. Members would get straight-from-the-farm produce from a farmer they knew and trusted, and farmers would get financial stability." It's been a mainstay in the US for a while now and according to the NY Times is now somewhat being bastardised by big business (which kind of misses the whole point of connecting the farmer to the consumer). We have examples of this model being successful here - Jonai Farms in Vic is one that springs to mind - they are fully subscribed with a waiting list that extends for years. Are there any NSW models??

- Another favourite soapbox topic - food and art. This week, Pete Wells reviewed In Situ at the San Fran Museum of Modern Art, where Chef Corey Lee's restaurant is taking that to the next level. More art installation than restaurant, Lee and his chefs are faithfully replicating the dishes of other chefs around the globe to create a curated (fair use of that word here) menu of the world's greats. It is a collaborative work, with the dishes' originators closely consulted to ensure accuracy. "One thing In Situ proves, just by existing, is that certain chefs are now cultural figures in a sense that once applied only to practitioners of what used to be called high culture: literature, concert music, avant-garde painting. A Redzepi dish can be visited in an art museum in 2016, and nobody finds this very strange." Like I said, next level. 

- Spinning food and art in another direction, there are two food related plays debuting next week and both of them are taking the piss. In Adelaide, Schmidt takes aim at the "insidious" thinspo culture (“The idea that some forms of eating are clean and better might be somewhat true or it might not, but it’s when turns into a sort of moral statement that I disagree.“), while in Sydney we will get Eddie Perfect's The Beast (a “confronting, disturbing and hilarious play that gleefully tears apart middle-class trends, social climbers, foodies, wine-snobs, helicopter parents, self-serving do-gooders and self-righteous snobs”).