Two hundred well-suited people are gathered at Jasper Whites Summer Shack in Cambridge to enjoy whats being billed as a six-course Yankee Feast. Cameras flash, guests swill wine, and hosts kiss-kiss their way around the room.
Four hours later, the attendees whove each paid $65 before wine roll out, having worked their way through the culinary stunt of a meal, which included thin strips of four-hour Yankee pot roast, cheddar pie, and a smoked haddock whose recipe was last published in the original 1896 edition of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.
On the face of things, the suits, glitz, and quickly drained glasses look like ingredients at your basic up-market fte. But in fact, this is an event celebrating an international culinary movement Slow Food that comes as close to foodie socialism as anything can.
Slow Food is an ever-growing international community that champions the causes of the historic, the local, and the unhurried as they relate to cuisine. The movement got started 15 years ago, when an Italian activist formed the organization to protest the opening of a McDonalds in Rome. His contrarian society aimed to provide a tasty alternative to McEverything, while sustaining local culinary traditions.
Not surprisingly, its proved an appealing line to bite. Since its arrival in the United States in the late 1990s, the movement has grown tremendously, both nationally and here in New England. Today, Slow Food is a darling of both the media and aesthetically inclined urbanites who gravitate toward farm stands and organic greens. It has a guru: George Ritzer, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and author of The McDonaldization of Society (Pine Forge Press, 2000). It has its champions: most food critics. It has an emblem: a snail. It has a slick Web site: www.slowfood.com. It has a journal: Slow, a reverent ode to all things worth eating. It has rallying cries: "Its the movement of this decade," professes Patrick Martins, the president of Slow Food USA, based in New York.
And now it has a challenge. Slow Food, which has been called everything from a political movement to a philosophical mission, seems to have reached a fork in the road. Having grown steadily since coming to these shores, having met and surpassed membership goals, and having successfully branded itself as the anti-McDonalds, the organization now must determine what it is actually going to do. On one side is rhetoric; on the other is real action. On one side are lavish dinner parties such as the Yankee Feast; on the other are advocacy efforts that forge bonds among local artisans, farmers, and consumers. One side is "slow"; the other, well, isnt.
OVER IN BRA, Italy, Slow Foods international office keeps 100 people busy working on a wide range of efforts from educating individuals about making wise choices at the grocery store to advocacy initiatives, from conferences on cheese to an upcoming short film festival dedicated to the love of food. Slow Food Editore, the organizations publishing company, has put out 40 books; it also produces the journal Slow, which includes articles about food, cuisine, and farming techniques.
Its no surprise that the movement got started in Italy, where eating is considered an art form almost on par with cooking. Whats truly remarkable is just how hungry Americans have become for a taste of foodie activism. Today, Slow Food counts 70,000 members internationally; 6000 of those are in the US. Membership in Slow Food USA has doubled in the past 18 months. Today, 31 states are represented among more than 70 chapters, called "convivia." Boston, a relatively young convivium, is one of the fastest-growing chapters, now rivaling those in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, and Portland, Oregon. The Boston outpost has grown to around 300 active members.
(Despite the steady growth, though, membership numbers are still relatively small compared with older food-related organizations. The circulation of Gourmet, Americas first food-and-wine magazine, is just south of a million. Weight-loss company Weight Watchers claims 25 million women in 30 countries as members, one million of whom live in the US.)
The way organizers explain it, participating in the Slow Food movement can be as simple as making spaghetti sauce from scratch at home or as involved as farming food products that have become extinct in their indigenous areas. The group calls one of its main advocacy efforts the Ark. A shout-out to Noahs biblical animal-preservation efforts, Slow Foods Ark identifies local foods in danger of becoming extinct and places them "on the Ark." Published as a list, the Ark is circulated to Slow Foods members to promote support.
In the United States, there are currently 14 products on the Ark, from New Mexicos native chili peppers to Louisianas Creole cream cheese. To be nominated for the Ark, a product must be unique, of the highest quality, at risk of disappearing, and taste wonderful. New Englands contribution to the Ark is Vermonts Green Mountain potato, a lumpy, square-shaped baking potato whose place on the dinner table has been usurped by the prettier Idaho russet.
Nationally, the movement has undertaken a noble effort to preserve endangered turkeys including the Narragansett, the Bourbon Red, the Jersey Buff, and the American Bronze by linking up farmers who breed the meat birds with buyers and suppliers. Come next Thanksgiving, says Slow Food USA president Patrick Martins, buyers will be able to place orders for the birds on the organizations Web site. "Slow Food is going after rural artisans, people having trouble keeping alive on very small production quantities and methods," explains Corby Kummer, a senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly and author of an upcoming book about the movement, The Pleasures of Slow Food (Chronicle Books, November 2002), which will include recipes and historical information. "Slow Food helps people find each other and sustain them."
