Editor’s Note - Fast eating
Our food editor has one big appetite for getting it right
Imagine coming on as Creative Loafing’s food editor with lots of expertise but very little time spent in Atlanta restaurants. Then, like a short-order cook, you’re asked to pour out a Beer Issue, grill up our Best of Atlanta Oral Pleasures section and dish out this week’s Food Issue — all while plating weekly reviews and editing our Food & Drink section.
Oh, sure, you’d get help from Grazing columnist Cliff Bostock and from Cheap Eats writer Florence Byrd. But it’d be up to your own teeth, taste and tummy to get to know every great dining spot in town, from Cantina La Casita to the Ritz-Carlton (most are listed in the Food Issue’s Restaurant Guide).
“I really loved it,” Besha Rodell says. “But it’s been overwhelming. Sometimes it’s wonderful just to eat at home.”
One thing that was particularly fun for Besha during her eat-a-thon was profiling four Atlanta chefs and a farmer who are at the forefront of Atlanta’s local, or “slow,” food movement. Besha, who worked in restaurants and as a food writer in New York and Raleigh-Durham before joining CL, had seen local organics transform the way people think about both dining and its relationship to the land surrounding those cities.
“It makes for better food,” she says. “It’s fresher. It’s better ingredients. And the process of having to rethink what you’re cooking every single day really keeps you on your toes, keeps you thinking. When chefs get stuck in their menus, that’s when they become old news.”
The movement toward local organic foods has been slow to come to Atlanta, but such chefs as Michael Tuohy, David Larkworthy, Linton Hopkins and Tony Seichrist are among a growing gaggle who are putting it on Atlanta’s menus.
“I do find it promising,” Besha says. “The issue now comes down to more growers — there’s a finite supply of local produce. Now, there’s more demand, so they need more farmers to produce.”
Besha’s stories will help you understand the slow-food movement. If you want to learn more about locally grown organic food, check out the listings on local resources.