Chicago’s Green City Market is known as one of the nation’s premier farmers market. The Market’s big annual public celebration is its Chef BBQ, which is coming up next week on Thursday, July 21. The event is kind of a foodie fantasy camp, but there is also an important social mission. Green City Market executive director Melissa Flynn discusses in the latest installment of our “Farm to Table: Keeping It Real” series.
Urban agriculture in on the rise, in many cases providing jobs, opportunities and access to Good Food for residents of underserved communities. But the farm Jen Rosenthal manages on Chicago’s South Side has particular social significance: It is on a site once occupied by apartment towers of The Robert Taylor Homes, which had grown so troubled-plagued that its residents were relocated and the buildings torn down.
Here’s the best Good Food news we’ve read this week. Enjoy! Midwest Good Food To meet booming tofu demand, Edgewater-based Phoenix Bean plans $1.7 million expansion (Phoenix Bean is a graduate of FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Business Accelerator), Chicago Tribune A Tale of Ten Acres – UNFI’s Agrarian Journey of Soil health, UNFI City Farm Chicago Aspires Read more about Weekly Link Roundup – July 8[…]
Cleetus Friedman, the executive chef of Chicago’s Caffè Baci restaurants, began his food journey busing tables in his native Baltimore about 30 years ago, when he was in his teens. Yet the road leading to his place at the cutting edge of the local and sustainable food movement had some twists and turns.
Jenny Yang and her Phoenix Tofu company in Chicago are shining examples of how FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Business Accelerator helps food and farm entrepreneurs build their businesses. Yang is launching a major expansion in response to fast-rising demand, which was the subject of a recent profile in the Chicago Tribune. We have republished an article we wrote about her and Phoenix Tofu last year, with a link to the Tribune story.
Here’s the best Good Food news we’ve read this week. Have a safe and happy Fourth of July holiday! Midwest Good Food Impact Engine raises $10 million fund, ends accelerator, Chicago Tribune New tool by SPINS and IRI to give natural channel retailers ‘unprecedented advantage’, Food Navigator How consumer demand is resurrecting ancient grains Read more about Weekly Link Roundup – July 1[…]
There are few people in the restaurant business who have kept farm to table real better — or longer — than Chicago’s Helen and Mike Cameron. They opened Uncommon Ground in 1991 and ever since have been blazing trails in providing diners with locally and sustainable produced food. Read about their ahead-of-the-curve experiences and their 25th anniversary events in the latest installment of our “Farm to Table: Keeping It Real” series.
The U.S. Senate may act this week on a GMO labeling bill that would impose a federal labeling standard less transparent than the Vermont right to know law — scheduled to take effect Friday (July 1) — that anti-labeling advocates have been seeking to block. Sustainable Food News provides the details in this article, re-published with permission.
Here’s the best Good Food news we’ve read this week. Enjoy! Midwest Good Food Thanks to MightyVine, You Can Have Local Tomatoes, 365 Days a Year, Modern Farmer Organic, healthy baby food, Crain’s Chicago Restaurant, Kankakee Farm, Fooditor The Chewing Podcast, Episode 10: GMO Yo or No, Soundcloud A Sustainable Farm Rises from the Read more about Weekly Link Roundup – June 24[…]
Rob Levitt has been one of Chicago’s leading butchers for several years, and his store, The Butcher & Larder, has gained an even higher profile since moving from its tiny original shop to the Local Foods retail store that opened last June. Customer service and information is part of the store’s stock in trade — so it was not surprising when the news broke Thursday that fans voted The Butcher & Larder as Best Butcher Shop in Chicago in an online poll.
“Minimizing food waste is the next round of work that we have to do, both in the farm to table movement and in our food culture generally,” says Abra Berens, chef of Stock Cafe at the innovative Local Foods market in Chicago. Read about her devotion to locally and sustainably sourced food, and to not letting any of it go to waste, in the latest installment of our “Farm to Table: Keeping It Real” series.
Here’s the best Good Food news we’ve read this week. Enjoy! FamilyFarmed in the News ConAgra’s new Chicago headquarters is getting final touches before move starts June 23, Omaha.com Midwest Good Food ‘Locally Laid’: A Humorous Memoir To Cure You Of Farming Fantasies, NPR How Chicago preps vacant land for farms, Chicago Farm Report Read more about Weekly Link Roundup – June 17[…]
It might sound somewhat surprising that Rick Bayless, a pioneering advocate for the Chicago region’s local farmers and a master of regional Mexican cuisine, recently converted to using imported corn for his tortillas.
But this isn’t just any corn. It is dried heirloom corn from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where some historians believe the cultivation of maize began. And it underscores the fact that in a diverse and increasingly interconnected food culture, authentic farm to table restaurants may take their search for the best ingredients way beyond their local areas…. and sometimes to a different part of the world.
The Mayan Café presents traditional cuisine of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that since 2007 has delighted diners (and reviewers) in the restaurant row in Louisville’s East Market District, a.k.a. NuLu. And they have done so in part by going all in on sourcing ingredients as locally as possible, a decision that made them a farm-to-table front-runner in Kentucky’s most populous city. Good Food on Every Table is pleased to present a q-and-a with Shadle and Ucan as our first out-of-Chicago article in our “Farm to Table: Keeping It Real” series.
Here’s the best Good Food news we’ve read this week. Enjoy! FamilyFarmed in the News Kitchen to Grocery Store: What Makes a Food Startup Work?, Wharton University Farming in Flux – Family farms are disappearing, even as restaurants look to source better ingredients. Can agriculture and foodservice help save each other?, QSR Magazine Midwest Read more about Weekly Link Roundup – June 10[…]
Sourcing locally is a commitment that is both rewarding and frustrating for a chef. But metro Chicago’s White Oak Gourmet
is committed, even if it means chasing chickens (okay, chicken delivery trucks) around the city. Read Chef Tom Leavitt’s reflections on building relationships with farmers in this contributed column.
The Kitchen was founded in Boulder, Colorado in 2004 and features delicious food with a strong focus on local and sustainable sourcing at its restaurants. And The Kitchen goes beyond the core Good Food principles with its strong social mission, embodied in its school learning gardens program. Johnny Anderes, head chef of the The Kitchen location in Chicago, discussed the restaurant’s Good Food practices.
Paul Kahan, a winner of a James Beard Foundation Outstanding Chef of the Year award, has built his career around his dedication to sourcing sustainably produced ingredients, as locally as possible, for his restaurants’ kitchens. Family Farmed and Good Food on Every Table are pleased to present this profile and q-and-a with Kahan to kick off our new “Farm to Table: Keeping It Real” series.
The Good Food movement has made tremendous strides during recent years, but this progress is fresh and fragile. Among the biggest challenges is ensuring consumers that the Good Food claims made by people in the industry are legit. So FamilyFarmed’s Good Food on Every Table is launching the new chef-driven series, “Farm to Table: Keeping It Real.”
We’ve started a new feature here at Good Food On Every Table- the Weekly Link Roundup! We’ll list the best Good Food news we’ve read this week. Enjoy! FamilyFarmed in the News Impact Entrepreneurship is Thriving in Chicago (Good Food Business Accelerator mentioned), Impact Engine Midwest Good Food Why Chicago Is Becoming The Country’s Read more about Weekly Link Roundup – June 3[…]