What matters to you when dining?
As a patron of many of Portland’s best restaurants, I have come to expect menus to display information about where the meat and vegetables are sourced from. Portland has a great reputation for serving local organic food and being proud to advertise a ranch or farm on the menu. Painted Hills Beef. Oregon Country Beef. Sauvies Island Farms. and the like.
We visited a rather nice restaurant in Carver OR over the weekend called Stone Cliff Inn. Nestled above the Clackamas River, the restaurant affords amazing views of the Clackamas and surrounding area. Its a large log cabin style building serving what would be considered by most as NW Cuisine. They offered fresh fish, steaks, and pasta. Overall, the place is top notch. I would recommend it to anyone.
My challenge with the restaurant though is that no where on the menu did it display where they sourced thier meat and vegetables. When I queried the waitress about where they get thier steaks (as that was my order,) she didn’t know. Hmmm. I enjoyed the meal, but in the back of my mind, I asked - I wonder if the brocolli is from Chile or Kansas and the steak is from a feedlot in California. Hmmmm.
Is advertising that the food is local a gimmick, or trend or required to be in a certain class of restaurant? Is this a Portland thing? Should we care? Well, I know my answer for the last question - yes I do care. Thoughts?
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Well, I can tell you that I’ve eaten in many, many places in Maine and New York, the two states I vacillate between during the year as a student, and I have never heard of people sourcing ingredients. That may not seem strange for New York, but in maine I eat in several places that I know for a fact (it’s advertised in their write-ups) serve local foods, and they don’t mention it in the menus.
The higher the level of restaurant, the more the server should really know. If you go to a five star restaurant, a server will probably be able to tell you the name of the fella who shot the cow.
Honestly, I don’t care where my food comes from that much. I only care about quality. Obviously there are limits to that and I wouldn’t mind a more humane system of producing food. (See this article by George Will about compassionate conservatism for animals: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525632/site/newsweek/ )
With produce, local when its seasonal can matter a great deal. But I’ve had plenty of mediocre stuff from the farmer’s markets because it was picked too early or because it’s a poor variety or they’re just not very good at what they’re doing.
To a large extent it is just a marketing gimmick just as it is for restaurants that put non-local items on their menu, eg, New York restaurants advertising Copper River Salmon. It may or may not matter and something less known may be a better (and often cheaper) option.
It’s a gimmick, guaranteed to tack extra $ onto your dining bill. Frankly, I am completely uninterested where the food comes from. A good burger is a good burger, whether the cow came from North Dakota or Molalla.
See, I don’t think it’s always a gimmick - and I do think people care (some do, anyway.)
I like knowing that I’m helping support local businesses, who in turn value their local suppliers.
And I think it helps businesses when they tout their local connections - even those not trying to be all hoity-toity about it (think Burgerville as an example here.)
It might be a marketing gimmick. It might not ensure quality food. But oftentimes, I don’t think it’s just a gimmick - and I do think the promise of quality food holds true most of the time. Oregon strawberries are better than California strawberries, no question - right?
And eating food that hasn’t had to travel a gazillion miles to get here (and get loaded with preservatives in the process) has to be a better choice, if the quality of the food is equal and/or better, no?
I don’t agree that just because it’s *here*, that it’s automatically better. Most of the time it’s simply more expensive.
Burgerville’s gimmick may attract some people, but it lost a few (including me). I’m not willing to pay an extra buck or more for a burger simply because the cow lived down the road and the cheese came from Tillamook.
Frankly, the whole local-labeling thing is just another extension of Portland’s ¸ber-pretentiousness.
I don’t care where the food came from though it is nice to support local farmers and I will do so when fiscally responsible. The three things that matter most to me are is it a sustainable food, does it taste good, and is it organic (though there is some lousy organic food out there). Sustainable means a lot to me. I love Chilean sea bass, but I’m not gonna eat it because it is an endangered species. I think one has to take some personal responsibility. A restaurant giving us these details make us more informed consumers so that we can make these choices.
Of course I hope the food is local when available, but sometimes the local product isn’t as good as the imported item. If I’m paying a larger food bill, I want the best item. I eat at the Stone Cliff Inn in Carver, OR all the time. I know that they have great food and I’m sure it’s local when it can be and/or is in season. I don’t know if it’s still on the menu, but I’ve had Tillamook Cheddar scalloped potatoes there before because it was mentioned on the menu. If I had a question of where the products are purchased, I’d ask a manager or chef if the wait staff didn’t know. The wait staff usually doesn’t do purchasing, local or imported. Bottom line, I wouldn’t ever ask the question.
Is there something wrong with supporting non-local businesses? Do you really think the boutique Sauvie organic vegetable farmer, who drives a BMW and lives in the West Hills, needs the business more than the poor broccoli grower in Chile? I have never understood that attitude. Just because people don’t live in Oregon doesn’t mean they’re not people.
well Brett, I can’t sit by and not respond. one point about buying local is sustainability. why buy an apple that has been shipped from Chile when you can go down to the local orchard and pick one. that may sound simplistic, but that’s the point. if vegetables are not in season where you live (unless you live in the South or North Pole) why should we feel so priveledged to import them from elsewhere. why not try something else that is in season. shipping vegetables around the world to sate the needs of people who don’t have imagination is just plain wrong.
and you wonder why our gas prices are so high…..
High gas prices are not an effect of globalization - if anything, it obviously makes transportation easier.
Why buy an apple that’s been shipped from Chile? What if it’s the best and cheapest apple? And what if you want to support the economy of a struggling 3rd world country? Shipping vegetables around the world is not done “to sate the needs of people who don’t have imagination”. It’s done so that the people who grow the vegetables can make a better living.
Let’s turn it on its head. If you’re the Sauvie organic farmer, don’t you want to be able to ship your produce to other places? What if those places say no thanks, we prefer things grown in California, or Chile. Doesn’t that hurt the organic farmer?
i don’t think i’m making my point. while i agree with you that supporting a farmer is noble no matter where they are located, that wasn’t my point.
what i am thinking about is fresh and local vs. fresh and non-local. in the winter, we don’t harvest tomatos in Oregon because it isn’t thier season. why then should i expect fresh tomatoes in the winter. maybe i should be eating some greens instead. or take fruit - blueberries are not in season year around in Oregon, so why should i expect to eat blueberries year around.
my point is, here in America, we have the priveledge to eat what ever we want when ever we want. there’s a downside to that though. it means transporting not-in-season vegetables to locations where plenty of in-season vegetables are available.
i’m just wondering if we can shift our mentality to think locally. don’t buy the chilean apple in december. buy something grown local that is in season.
You’re quite right that it costs something to ship an apple from Chile to here, and to ship a strawberry from here to Chile.
My point (and the point of globalization writ large) is that the benefits to the farmer in both cases outweigh the costs. I don’t understand the isolationist, wall-building mentality of saying “Thou shalt only buy from and sell to people in Oregon.” What you’re effectively saying is that no one outside the state of Oregon matters. It’s not so much nobility as it is economics, both for the buyer and the seller.
> blueberries are not in season year around in Oregon, so why should i expect to eat blueberries year around
Well, it’s not warm in Oregon year-round, so why should you expect to be warm year-round? It’s not dry year-round, so why should you expect to be dry? Because you can be, thanks to civilization and technology. Similarly, if you can eat tomatoes in the winter, why not do so? You’re supporting someone’s business somewhere else by doing that. Why do people act as if buying something from out of state is some kind of economic treason?
> don’t buy the chilean apple in december. buy something grown local that is in season.
What if you want an apple in December? Should we all adjust our tastes to match up with what can be grown at that particular time in that particular place? What if you like pineapple? When can you eat that?
Building an economic wall around the city and the state, and retreating behind it, would be absolutely disastrous, both for us and for the people that sell us food from afar. We should be encouraging those who grow apples in December, not boycotting them.
There are already planes going back and forth carrying people to and from Chile. (Is that bad too?) It does not cost much more to throw some cargo into that plane. The cost of doing so is minute compared to the benefit to the farmer — now he has 300 million people to sell to instead of 300. That is the entire point of the global economic system, which replaced something far, far, far more exploitative and cruel. Let’s go forward, not backwards.
FoodDude:
Go ahead and eat that Chilean Sea Bass. It’s largely a myth that it’s endangered. There is a problem with controlling the poaching problem, but it’s a sustainable fishery. You could say the same thing about salmon to a large extent.
See here:
http://www.state.gov/g/oes/rls/fs/2002/8989.htm
Brett, I’m with you here. I’ll take all this talk of eating local seriously by Portlanders when they stop drinking coffee. ;-)
Really, there are many economic reasons why not eating local may be better in every way. People forget to that more efficiency issues than transportation have to be calculated. eg, those in Wyoming may not be able to grow produce at all and it would be ridiculous to expect them to eat their own produce. Someone in Oregon can grow many, many more apples per acre using fewer resources than someone in Wyoming. But that person in Wyoming may have land that can’t be used for much else than raising cattle. So we trade.
And I really do think that the nationalism/localism that has entered food production under the guise of environmentalism is shameful, just as it was when it had to do with radios, cars, clothes, or shoes. It’s bad enough that it would have such terrible economic effects to go back to the mercantilism that Adam Smith challenged, but just as bad is the hypocisy that is so often present from people who try to shame us for not giving these people a handout while not allowing us to give them a job.
But but but…(I can’t help but play devil’s advocate here)…what about the taste? The product itself?
See, those Oregon strawberries taste great. But they’re also not shippable fresh, for the most part - they have a short shelf life (which is why they’re used out-of-area commercially for ice cream or other frozen products.) And I daresay the same might be true for those Sauvie Island organic greens - unless the Sauvie Island people want to get into more advanced preservation methods and tack the cost of rush distribution onto their product.
The strawberry market’s been hit hard in recent years - chancy weather coupled with foreign markets able to supply strawberries at lower prices has local strawberry farmers reeling, with some bailing.
So for me, if buying local means I can help support a superior product that also helps employ local people and benefits our local economy - well, it’s a win-win for everyone, no?
Am I an absolute purist? Nope - my kids like bananas and grapes out of season, as do I. But while I drink coffee, it’s from Stumptown, damnit - a superior brew produced by a local company.
And if I can get better products from a locally-owned or managed company - why not? And why shouldn’t they tout that in their marketing efforts to grow their customer base?
Right, Betsy, but that “if” in there makes a big difference. I buy local all the time *if* the product is superior. But am I going to avoid oranges just because they can’t be grown in Oregon? No. Do I think it’s wrong to eat oranges as an Oregonian? No. Do I think I think it’s wrong to drink a superior wine from France because there are Oregon alternatives? No. Do I think it’s wrong to drink a cheaper wine from Chile because there are Oregon alternatives? No.
Further, I also recognize that many people can’t afford (or don’t care about) the quality food I can. They’re shopping at Wal-Mart because they need that $50/month that they save and we should thank our lucky stars that South America grows bananas cheap enough they can buy. (And in return, those South Americans can hopefully move beyond subsistence farming.)
Amen. I eat tons of local stuff, if I like it. I eat what I like and can afford, regardless of where it’s from. Good mercantilism reference - the same thought occurred to me.