What's that, you ask? First person: if you grew it, found it, caught it or shot it yourself, there's no intermediary. If you know the person who did, no more than one degree of separation, that qualifies. In an urban environment, you really can't do better.
Michael Pollan's reading at Elliott Bay Books last week.
Nature writer Michael Pollan's new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, sets up the challenge: at the end of the industrial food-chain (corn fields, feed lots, chicken factories) is nothing more than an industrial eater with a diet of "amalgamated, irradiated, barcoded fecal spam." The solution: eat local.
Belltown's concrete doesn't present a problem. There's water at our feet, agricultural Bainbridge and Vashon islands a ferry ride away, and a few surviving family farms to the north, south and east. Not always easy for most of us to go that far to pick up dinner, true. So who better to introduce us about first-person food than restaurant chefs?
Shall we get to work on a cookbook concept? "First Person Food: How urban Seattle chefs are teaching us to think globally, eat locally and vote with our forks."
Who'd you like to see in that group? Have a few Belltown candidates, would welcome your suggestions.
