Your table runneth over: The future of sustainable food in Chicago
Bayless dives right in.
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Last week, nearly 200 chefs, food distributors, farmers, and other food professionals converged first at Kendall College, then at Green City Market, for a two-day summit called "Bringing Sustainability To The Table." The summit attendees met to discuss sustainable seafood, how to better promote and support local produce, and most importantly, how to get the local grub to diners. The A.V. Club was in attendance to listen in on the conversations, dine, and learn a thing or two.
Lesson 1: Sustainable food is pretty tasty—especially when prepared by Top chefs.
Rick Bayless is busy. The Top Chef Masters winner just opened XOCO but found the time to appear at the closing luncheon of the Chefs Collaborative Summit. He carried out plates, graciously warned everyone that the habañero sauce was spicy (no lie), and generally radiated a Zen-like calm that settled over the room like a soothing fairy dust. Bayless' dish, a variation of the cochinita pibil that appears on the menu at XOCO, was one of the highlights of a meal designed to showcase local produce. However, it wasn't the only delicious dish, and he wasn't the only all-star chef present. Paul Kahan (Blackbird, Avec, Publican, and a soon-to-open taco spot) prepared a tender grilled sirloin served with peaches; Mark Mendez (Carnivale) served pork shoulder; and Carrie Nahabedian (NAHA), who yesterday joined Bayless as one of the chefs immortalized in the Chicago Culinary Museum's Chefs' Hall Of Fame, delivered an exquisitely creamy Iroquois white corn polenta with crisp prosciutto and wood-grilled vegetables that could have been eaten by the bowlful. Eating locally has its perks.
Lesson 2: Farmers markets are key
While the luncheon might have been the highlight, it was merely the coda to the summit portion of the weekend—a day spent at Green City Market sipping Intelligentsia Coffee and listening to impressive people wax poetic: University Of Chicago grad-turned-farmer David Cleverdon; Gary Nabhan, author of Coming Home To Eat: The Pleasures And Politics Of Local Foods; and Poppy Tooker, chef and founder of Slow Food's New Orleans branch. Tooker coined, or at least popularized, sustainability motto, "Eat it to save it." She casually dropped the word "abattoir" into a sentence in her Bayou lilt and discussed getting New Orleans farmers' market-goers excited about "Creole Cream Cheese," something you can apparently make at home if you're okay with leaving a dairy product out on your counter for 24 hours. All three speakers focused on the importance of farmers' markets and of fostering relationships between farmers and chefs with the idea that where chefs lead, diners will follow.
Lesson 3: Put the Chilean seabass down; step away slowly
The first day of the conference emphasized sustainable seafood, with good reason: Many fish populations are depleted to the point of being endangered, and fish farms produce their own set of environmental concerns, not to mention an often inferior product. It can be confusing for chefs, let alone your average (and concerned) diner, to figure out which fish are okay to eat. Two break-out sessions and a few roundtable discussions attempted to clarify the issue. Bill Palicki, of Chicago's own Fortune Fish Company—a major distributor of seafood to restaurants in the city—got to the center of the problem: Chefs can serve under-used fish, but how do you get people to order fish they've never heard of? (Sheepshead or buffalo fish, anyone?) The closest they came to a conclusion: actually attempt to make it.
Lesson 4: Drink locally
No doubt, attendees were meant to spend time hanging out with the fish at the Shedd Aquarium Sustainable Seafood Reception, held the first night of the conference. But the event also offered a look at how local breweries are faring in all this sustainability talk. The Arcadia Brewing Company served up tall glasses of its "Hopmouth" double IPA (with the sole aim of making the world a better place); smooth caramel notes, the "generous white head", and prominent, but non-abrasive hops make for a damned tasty IPA. Death's Door Spirits, out of Door County, Wis., was sampling its new white whiskey, called such because it's only aged in the barrel for 72 hours. It's surprisingly smooth for such a young liquor, and while it may have lacked the more complex flavor profile of a longer-aged whiskey, it mixed very nicely into the blueberry concoction the bartender whipped up. It may have been the effect of the whiskey (and gin and beer), but it was hard not to feel positive about the future of sustainable food.
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