Recorded live at AS220 on October 13th, 2010
click here for mp3 file

Eat Locally, Think Globally! Chez Panisse and the fresh, local and slooow Food Revolution!

Farmer's Market's, community gardens, localvores, and California cuisine are in many ways the children of Alice Waters and her restaurant, Chez Panisee. Started in 1971 by Ms. Waters as an attempt to replicate her dining experiences of a recent trip to France, Chez Panisse created a market and a movement in cooking that emphasized the fresh and the local. Rather than franchising her restaurants like many celebrity chefs, Ms. Waters turned her attention to the quality of school lunch programs, founding the Edible Food Project in a Berkeley middle school. Just how possible is "eating local"? What. if anything. is wrong with internationalism in food? Why should local farming be protected if it isn't financially viable? What are some of the implications of the local food movement for our private and public health? There are just some of the questions that are addressed by our panelists: Thomas McNamee, author of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, Rolando Robledo, executive chef of Cambridge, Massachusetts localvore Clover Foods, Dr. Katherine Brown, director of Providence, Rhode Island's South Side Community Land Trust, and Dr. Christine Thompson, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, RI.
You can listen to Marc Levitt's interview with famed chef Alice Waters on our website!

Click here to see the images from live recording in AS220

Panelists:

Dr. Christine Thompson is Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Johnson & Wales University. Dr. earned a Ph.D. in Classics at the Ohio State University before attending Johnson & Wales en route to a twelve-year career as a chef and caterer. She later returned to Johnson & Wales to teach courses such as "Culture and Food" and "Food in Film and Literature" that combined her interest in food with her liberal arts background.

Thomas McNamee is the author of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution and four other books. His essays, poems, reporting and reviews have appeared in a wide range of magazines.

Rolando Robledo is the Executive Chef of Clover Food Lab, a Cambridge-based purveyor of food trucks specializing in local, seasonal, "just-cut," and organic food. Hailing from New London, Connecticut, he comes to Clover with a background that includes the The French Laundry, Lespinasse, Aquavit, and Emeril's. He recently spent seven years as a professor of culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University, and was named the 2010 FENI Chef Educator of the Year.

Dr. Katherine Brown is the Executive Director of Providence's Southside Community Land Trust, an organization dedicated to providing access to land, education and other resources so that people in greater Providence can grow food in environmentally sustainable ways and create community food systems where locally produced, affordable, and healthy food is available to all.

Bibliography

• Alice Waters Edible Schoolyard: Chronicle Book, 2008
  
• Eating History Columbia University; Andrew Smith: Columbia University Press, 2009
  
• Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: Penguin Books, 2007
  
• Near a Thousand Tables; Felipe Fernandez-Armesto: Free Press, 2002
  
• Eat Where You Live: How to Find and Enjoy Fantastic Local and Sustainable Food No Matter Where You Live; Lou Bendrick, Skipstone Press, 2008
  
• Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, And Fair; Carlo Petrini: Rizzoli, 2007
  
• Marion Nestle Food Politics University of California Press, 2002
  
• Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly; James E. McWilliams: Little Brown, 2009
  
• Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California; Julie Guthman: UC Press, 2004
  
• Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food Berkeley; Wendell Berry Counterpoint Press, 2009
  

Produced by AS220 with generous support from Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and Johnson and Wales University.

Host/Creative Director: Marc Levitt
Producer: Dr. Michael Siegel
Sound engineer and editor: James Moses