As we approach the final couple of banner blogs, perfectly timed with their installation on the almighty grain elevator beginning on September 13, we begin another exciting unveiling of the amazing team of chefs who have come together to breathe life into the October 3 500-person dinner. This event is truly shaping up to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience of not only enjoying a five course meal next to an enormous piece of now obsolete agricultural infrastructure, but to be served food carefully deliberated and prepared by some of the most seasonally and locally dedicated chefs in the area and grown by folks equally as passionate about how they cultivate the elements of nourishment.
Which brings us to Chef and Farmer Blog #1, beginning in the neighboring city of Lincoln. Kevin Shinn, chef and co-owner of bread & cup continues to bring passion, insight, and wisdom to each of our chef meetings. After just a few encounters with Shinn, who is notably introspective and thoughtful about what he cooks and where what he cooks comes from, we spent many an hour on his equally as introspective blog to get a better idea of the man behind the elegantly simple Lincoln hotspot. Having just celebrated it’s third year, bread & cup has quickly built a reputation for putting attention on the food and letting it speak for itself. Of course, not without a highly refined selection process that focuses on seasonality and locality. A visit to bread & cup impressively greets one with a chalk board displaying of which local producer all of the restaurants pigs are coming from for the week. Our favorite entry from Shinns blog collection possibly sums up why Shinn has joined this epic 500- person dinner adventure:
More than just tying on the feedbag…
I spend a lot of time thinking through why I cook. It’s a common question thoughtful chefs ask. It’s important for us to understand the motive for why we spend such long hours in a profession that has an inordinate demand for inequitable compensation.
But there is also, I believe, reason for why people come to eat the food we enjoy preparing. And I would pose the question here; do you know why you eat?
Once you get past the “duh…because I’m hungry?!?” response, I invite you to go a little further. Sure we eat because our stomachs tell us to, but have you considered what the deeper parts of you are saying? Listen closer and you might be intrigued by what you hear.
We asked Kevin to answer one question: Why is cooking with local food important to you and why are you participating in this event? Here is what Kevin wrote:
There are multiple reasons I could list to explain why I get my food from local sources. I could describe the benefits for health, or how it helps support the small farming economy. I could list political reasons, of which there are many. I could wax on about environmental concerns, about the defense of sustainable agriculture, or how it helps reconnect a generation to its heritage and its connection to the land on which we live. I affirm and could write a defense about any of these, but instead, I can boil all these reasons down to one single word, one simple idea that makes it all worth it for me.
Pleasure.
It is far more pleasing to me to slice into a big, fat, juicy Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato that was grown on a vine 22 miles north of my restaurant and place it on a slice of our bread that was hand made and pulled out of our oven by our in-house baker at 7:20am that morning, along with a few slices of hickory smoked black pepper bacon that was made from the belly of a Berkshire hog raised on a small farm less than an hour south in the opposite direction.
One word.
I take more joy in knowing the man that raises the 18 Cornish-Rock chickens that he delivers to me each Thursday for use on my menu that weekend. And after roasting one of these fresh birds that have never been frozen, and serving it with the greens from the young couple who have started an family owned CSA and market garden, and then hearing the comment from the customer that told me, “That was the best chicken I have ever had…”
That’s why I serve local food.
We can’t wait to listen a little deeper after enjoying Kevin’s contribution to the dinner on October 3.
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August 28, 2010 - 11:47 pm
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