Oh, yeah? Well, LOCAL this!

Lately, ‘local’ & ‘sustainable’ have been called trends in dining (I hate trends) and since I have a restaurant called ‘Veritas – Local Fare’ I get asked a lot about what that’s exactly supposed to mean – where are the boundaries, what’s the difference and why should anybody care. So here I try to answer a few of the most popular questions (yeah, that’s right - FAQ’s):

Why eat locally?

The entire concept of eating locally is based on a philosophy, an experiment by bloggers and as a politicized benefit to many disparate systems – we’ve heard them listed and we’ve heard them referenced in terms of saving the world. Fine. Great. Jolly.

From the point of view of cook and restaurateur the immediate benefit is that I’m in direct contact with the people that produce the food – meaning that I can look them in the eye, ask them the tough questions (i.e. what methods do you use?; how do you treat the animals?; what are you feeding them?; what are you spraying?) and determine the integrity of the products. I can’t expect much more than ‘marketing speak’ when asking these questions from a distributor or a broker when the goods come from far away. A truly great chef is constantly looking for truly great ingredients. Local is a tactic that doesn’t limit what I use, but allows focus and control in purchasing by limiting ‘market speak’ and maximizing fact. So much of the world is out of our hands; why not exercise the little control we can by taking advantage of proximity!

Why eat sustainably?

This is where practical gets philosophical and political for me but it also strikes me as stunningly obvious: If you don’t get as much out of a process as you put in, then you’re a moron for perpetuating the process (or you are personally getting rich so you’re worse - a crooked weasel). Sustainable needs to be the ultimate test for any process – manufacturing, political philosophies and, yes, farming. Huge agribusiness was a necessary step and we’ve learned vast amounts of incredibly viable information and we’ve developed technologies that are vastly more practical than 100 years ago but what we grow, why we grow it and what we do with it has been broken for some time. Each and every food producing process needs to meet several tests that justify its existence and considers how the people, animals, soil and resources are treated, used and renewed.

Is the entire menu sustainable at Veritas?

There are no claims of supreme fanaticism or zealotry here – we buy our ingredients from as close to our front door as possible and then work outward from there. I am personally an active advocate for local, sustainable and organic but at Veritas we do our best to ascertain as much provenance as we can for each ingredient and then we just try to provide an entertaining, comfortable and quality based dining experience for our guests.

How specifically can you eat local/sustainable all year round in a place like Toronto?

Well it’s just not that hard – there are a few tips I can provide but for the most part I don’t advocate that you have to surrender your life and change everything you do. We have the best stuff when it’s in season, everyone owns a freezer – there’s one option. Canning and preserving aren’t exactly rocket science but it ain’t a short process either – I would just pray that people actively choose local and sustainable items when they are in season!

Are we not condemned to eating potatoes and root veggies for 5-6 months of the year?

Nope. I guess the world has forgotten that many vegetables actually fall into a category called “cold crops” (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, etc.) and while maligned as tasty food when compared with some crap chimmychonga that you can get down on the corner or some microwaveable tumor treat, I would suggest that knowing how to cook them properly makes them pretty fine fare. Plus I do suggest that balance requires that we strive to find local even in February while secretly enjoying some exotica from far away – I’ve never claimed to be a monk and I don’t expect others to be. I do beg that we all try a little harder to avoid pre-cooked, packaged, processed and mostly unidentifiable products as much as possible.

What local food recipes can you share?

Hello? I’m talking about ingredients – we can all buy more locally produced ingredients by simply asking more questions of the people we buy food from – yes, even large supermarkets have people responsible for managing the meat, fish, produce, dairy, etc. and they need to know where it comes from because you do . As for recipes using local, organic and sustainable ingredients – good news – pretty much all the recipes in the world apply.

Where exactly does one buy this type of food? Local farmer markets are not cheap in my experience?

I find this odd – anytime I have purchased any item at a farmers market that was in season it was cheaper than the same product from far away – and fresher and tastier. I do see expensive things at farmer’s markets but they are usually the proprietary things that are made artisanally in small quantities which large manufacturers can do more cheaply. I think that supporting local producers perpetuates supply which, in turn, lowers prices. I believe all standard economic laws apply. I should also point out that many farmers markets in the past were shams – they just bought stuff at the terminal and set up shop claiming local or organic and therefore charged a premium (see crooked weasels reference above) – this is why we now have certified farmers markets that guarantee that the people selling the stuff had to grow or produce the stuff. Legislation and regulation is still being developed around all of this since it’s just now coming out of the frontier stage after decades of wandering the hippy periphery (yes, we can thank the hippies for not giving up on this even though it’s been a long strange trip, man).

Now that we’re in a recession what do we do about food to protect ourselves?

To be truly recession proof you have to arm yourself with information and training so that you are prepared for the worst. Having some basic knowledge of ingredients, how to procure them and how to process them into foods for eating and storing would be a massive benefit to your pocketbook. To learn how to grow a few things would be an obvious benefit. To know who to ask for support or answers is another. I’d like to think that I offer some of these things to people on a regular basis and I know that Veritas is one place to find some shelter.

How do we know if something is sustainable? Are there a couple of specific guidelines you can look for on labels?

Local Food Plus certifies producers in Ontario as sustainable. The only other way, at the moment, to ascertain how something was produced is to know for yourself who produced it and where. That’s where question asking comes in. I highly recommend it!

Other resources for information on seasonality, organics and specific producers are easily found on the web but I recommend starting with Foodland Ontario or Savour Ontario.

Is there a web site where I can see the Veritas menu with this so-called local fare?

www.veritaslocalfare.com

Brad Long