Bon Appétit

Why Bon Appétit Chefs Believe in Going Nose to Tail

Executive Chef David Anderson demonstrates how to separate the ham and loin in his hog butchery demo

Bon Appétit Executive Chef David Anderson from the Stanford Graduate School of Business believes that an animal’s life is worth more than two pork tenderloins. After the recent Northern California Chefs' Exchange focusing on butchery at Cisco - San Jose, in San Jose, CA, he had this to say about how we use animals in our cooking:

I take no joy out of the death of an animal. As one who's chosen to eat and prepare animals for consumption, I feel an obligation to reduce the waste as much as possible. Working with local ranchers such as Rani Douglas of Douglas Ranch, who provided the hog for the Northern California Chefs’ Exchange, has taught me a lot about what it takes to bring meat to the plate. And learning more about butchery and use of underutilized cuts has expanded what I offer on menus.” 

Consider this: A 200-pound pig supplies only two 16-ounce tenderloins, which is what most chefs want. So what happens to the rest of the animal? After the ribs, belly (bacon), and butt roasts, there are still shanks, picnic shoulder roast, and trotters. Shanks and other braising cuts may be less familiar to cooks than steaks and chops, but they can lend rich flavor and toothsome texture to slow-simmered soups and stews. This type of cooking—in which meat is a supporting player and not the main event—is the kind of low carbon, low waste cooking that Bon Appétit chefs take pride in preparing.

Besides the goals of lowering waste and reducing meat consumption overall, another reason we utilize the whole animal is to support small farmers, who may otherwise have a difficult time selling the less desirable cuts. For chefs, doing so requires skill and creativity and is a great example of sustainability in practice. By highlighting the less familiar, less popular cuts of meat, Bon Appétit chefs hope we inspire customers to do the same thing in their own kitchens.

 The chefs came together to share the food created from the Douglas Ranch hog and Passmore Ranch fish.

Advice for Young Farmers from Swanton Berry Owners

By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Management Company

In a recent talk for Seattle Arts & Lectures, Wendell Berry told aspiring young farmers to “listen to the old-timers.” I’m taking the revered American poet, philosopher, and farmer up on his recommendation, and I’m especially interested in veteran farmers’ views on farm labor practices, one of agriculture’s more sensitive issues.

Everyone – eaters and businesses included – has a role to play for farmworker rights. Farmers, however, have the added responsibility and challenge of trying to treat workers fairly within a system that demands cheap, industrial food. I do believe, however, that the combination of experienced farmers and the emerging crop of young farmers known as Greenhorns has the potential both to revitalize agriculture and instill fairness in the fields.

I know at least one veteran farmer who is successfully navigating the tricky topic of farm labor, so I decided to pay him a visit. Jim Cochran (photo, left) of Swanton Berry Farm is one of Bon Appétit Management Company’s 1,000-plus Farm to Fork partners who we're immensely proud to support. The recipient of a prestigious Growing Green Award for Food Producer this year from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Jim rebels against the assembly-line approach to growing food, and his definition of sustainability goes far beyond just environmentally friendly practices. Not only does Swanton Berry Farm grow some of the most delicious strawberries I’ve ever tasted, it’s the poster-child of the fair food movement.

“Safe” Food Isn’t Our Real Problem, Says CEO Fedele Bauccio

Fedele Bauccio, CEO and founder, was so angered by an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that he wrote this: 

Peter Coclanis argued recently in the Journal that “American food is much safer than you think,” and by American food, he means our “much maligned ‘industrial’ food system.” He is right in that that system only (italics mine) kills eight people a day on average, and that they are the weak members of our herd: babies, the elderly, the sick. He seems to think some human suffering is an acceptable price of doing business. Too bad it’s one that the food industry doesn’t actually pay, nor does it pay the hospitalization costs for the 128,000 people sickened by salmonella or E. coli. (The Centers for Disease Control actually puts that figure at 385,000, by the way.) The food industry doesn't pay for other companies' lost worker productivity, either.

Professor Coclanis opens with a jibe about how the E. coli outbreak traced to organic sprouts from Germany didn’t result in calls for “draconian regulations on organics” the way the salmonella outbreak in Iowa’s eggs inspired outraged calls for crackdowns on industrial eggs last year. There’s a reason for that: the E. coli didn’t come from the sprouts. It came from farm animals, most likely in the manure of industrial dairy operations. The salmonella in last year's outbreak, meanwhile, were a direct resut of unsanitary conditions at Jack DeCoster’s Iowa chicken operations—yet Wright County Eggs wasn’t shut down by the FDA until after the bad bacteria had sickened thousands.

From Frigid Fjord to Fork: Adventures in Alaskan Seafood

Helene York, Bon Appétit's director of strategic initiatives, recently visited Alaska, where she was speaking at Global Food Alaska’s biennial summit of producers from all parts of the food supply chain. Being Helene, she turned the trip into a jam-packed opportunity to learn all she could about the Alaskan seafood industry.

Tuesday, Day 1: I arrived in Anchorage. Even though I personally consume about a ton of Alaskan seafood each year, and part of my day job is to secure excellent seafood for our chefs, I have never been to Alaska. I agreed to speak under the “condition” that someone create an itinerary for me. I admit, I’ve been intimidated by Alaska’s vast geography, and I wanted to ensure that I made the most of a few days.  

Jim Browning, former Fish & Game marine biologist and now director of the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, met me at the airport and graciously drove me down the Sterling Highway to the Kenai Peninsula. AFDF is a nonprofit that promotes full utilization of fisheries resources (another way of saying “use the whole fish”). On the way we stopped briefly, and I saw my first glacier and glacial silt lake (photo, right). It was blue! (What was I expecting?) In three-plus hours on the road, and while gawking at gorgeous snow-covered mountains, I learned more about the Alaskan fishing industry and its attendant politics than I had picked up in six years of reading and thinking I knew something.

Penn Chefs Tour Local Farms and Markets

By Tatianna Losk, Marketing Manager and Valerie McHugh, Executive Chef

Bon Appétit at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has been steadily increasing its purchases from local farmers ever since taking over the Penn account in 2009. But the busy chefs don’t always have the opportunity to venture outside of their kitchens and visit the producers. To provide chefs with a unique farmers’ perspective, as well as inspiration to purchase locally, Hill House Executive Chef Valerie McHugh (right) has begun taking members of the Penn team on visits to local farms during school breaks.

Just before the start of the school year, Valerie and a group of chefs and managers visited a local produce auction market in Leola, PA. Fifth-generation farmers stood shoulder to shoulder with brand new farmers to sell their crops to wholesale buyers. Buyers came from as near as the local grocery store to as far away as New England.


After the auction market, the team headed to Cedar Meadow Farm, also in Lancaster County, to meet a third-generation farmer who grows sweet corn, pumpkins, and 26 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. While discussing the characteristics of the different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, the farmer explained how the hand-grafting he does for each tomato plant increases disease resistance.

For Spring Break, the team visited Basciani Mushroom Farms in Kennett Square, PA, just over 50 miles from the Penn campus. Known as the “Mushroom Capital of the World,” Kennett Square produces more than a million pounds of mushrooms per year. Basciani farm is a fourth-generation, family owned operation. They grow, pack, and ship many, many pounds of mushrooms per week, from white mushrooms to exotics. On the tour, the family personally guided the Bon Appétiters through the mushroom houses, showed them the different stages of mushroom growth, and open up their packing facility as well.

The Bon Appétit staff loved seeing firsthand where all the incredible ingredients they get to cook with actually come from.

Above left: Cedar Meadow Farm's high tunnel for growing in the colder months

 

Farming Without Soil: Hydro Harvest Farms' Hydroponic Story

By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation

Have you ever seen a farm grow produce using minerals, nutrients, and water, but no soil? Farmer John Lawson is doing just that—and growing about six times more produce than the typical farm in the process, he says!

As part of our Farm to Fork program, begun in 1999, Bon Appétit Management Company purchases fresh, seasonal produce from small, local farmers around the country. We recently celebrated the milestone of 1,000 such vendors. As a Fellow for Bon Appétit, I get to travel to these different farms and learn about the joys and challenges farmers today face, and capture them on video. Below, John Lawson gives me a tour of Hydro Harvest Farms and shares some of the benefits (would you believe less water?) and challenges of his soilless style of farming.

  

Oberlin Team Puts Together Local-Food Feast in Ohio -- in March!

By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation

Every year around February I begin impatiently anticipating the time when DC Farmers Markets will fill up with produce again, and I’ll receive that wonderful email announcing the start up of my CSA after its winter hiatus. As of May, the waiting was over—I’m finally getting to enjoy so many fresh, local greens (which are plentifully in season right now!) that I don’t want to look at another leafy anything for quite a while… That said, I’m relishing the moment, and even if I do envy those spoiled Californians for getting to enjoy fresh, local produce year-round, I’m grateful at least that I don’t live any farther north!

I was reminded of the challenges that our neighbors in colder parts of the country experience when it comes to eating locally during a March event the Bon Appétit team at Oberlin College (in Ohio—read: cold!) helped put on. In the fall, a group of student-activists and I had started coordinating Oberlin’s first-ever Food Week to raise awareness about problems in our current food system and create a space for different activists to network and come to new solutions. To kick off the week, the students asked Bon Appétit to host a Local Foods Banquet.

Let me repeat: they wanted to have a local foods banquet. In Ohio. In March.

What the USDA and Bon Appétit Now Have in Common

By Terri Brownlee MPH, RD, LDN, Regional Director of Nutrition

Simple foods are often the most delicious — think of a cool watermelon on a hot summer day, pasta tossed with olive oil and fresh basil, or grilled fish with a squeeze of lemon — and they also happen to be the most nutritious.

At Bon Appétit, we’ve let the powerful union of simplicity, taste, and nutrition guide our menus for a long time. So we were pleased to see that yesterday the U.S. Department of Agriculture replaced its complicated Food Guide Pyramid with a new, elegantly simple “My Plate” graphic. This new icon boils down what many consumers felt were complicated scientific messages into a clear snapshot of what your dinner plate should look like for good nutrition: more than half your plate should be filled with vegetables and fruit, and the other half with grains (mostly whole) and protein.

We applaud this move because we understand the value of simple messages. A commitment to fresh, whole, local foods prepared with care is what we’re all about! And we’ve been using the idea of a “balanced plate” as part of our nutrition message since 2003. Through our Circle of Responsibility program, our chefs were encouraged to build complete meal options that were “In Balance”: consisting of half the plate filled with fruits and vegetables, a quarter filled with lean protein, and a quarter filled with whole grains. Sound familiar?

In 2007, “In Balance” plates became a required menu option for all of our cafés. They’re often the most popular meals we serve. Our menu items that carry the “In Balance” icon, such as  “Grilled Seafood Salad with Citrus-Rosemary Whole-Wheat Cous Cous and Grilled Vegetables” or “Roasted Garlic and Avocado Hummus with Tabbouleh and Cherry Tomato Salad,” will both satisfy your hunger and nourish your body.

With Bon Appétit’s and the USDA’s balanced-plate guidance, your nutrition plan is now much easier to follow — whether when eating with us or in your own kitchen.

 

World peas, anyone? A plate of fresh, healthy vegetarian food from a Bon Appétit café