Smartfood
I'm a little behind in my Atlantics, but I managed to read
this article from October's issue about Yale's Alice-Waters-sponsored/inspired program to serve good food in the dining halls. Or, at least one (Berkeley).
One of the twelve residential colleges at Yale University is trying to give students that kind of summertime epiphany at every meal, by serving dishes made from produce raised as close to New Haven as possible. In just two years the Yale Sustainable Food Project has launched two ambitious initiatives to bridge the distance from farm to table: the complete revamping of menus in Berkeley College's dining hall to respect seasonality and simplicity, and the conversion of an overgrown lot near campus to an Edenic organic garden. The garden does not supply the dining hall—it couldn't. Rather, it serves as a kind of Greenwich Mean Time, suggesting what is best to serve, and when, by illustrating what grows in the southern New England climate in any given week. The goal of the project is to sell students on the superior flavor of food raised locally in environmentally responsible (but not always organic) ways, so that they will seek it the rest of their lives.
Food comes from local farms, and the cooks have been retrained to peel garlic, chop onions and make simple, fresh (but not always organic) food. Students have been lining up outside the gates and faking Berkeley College ID's to get in. Plans are now in the works to spread the good cooking to the other residential colleges. It costs 1.5x more than frozen Aramark food, but somehow it's working. (There's some mention of an anonymous donor in the article.)
Here's a
Yale Herald article on the project and an
NPR story.
If this project is to become a revolution it won't be because of philosophical ideals -- it will simply be a matter of taste.
* Ray, 12/11/2004 01:56:00 AM
