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All the News That's Fit to Eat Part II

Posted by Ed Levine, March 26, 2006 at 12:43 PM

New York Times food reporters Kim Severson and Julia Moskin (full disclosure here; I know both of them and the three of us have broken bread together) had a front-page story today detailing the growth of meal assembly centers around the country. People looking to save time and money and still put what can only loosely be called a "home-cooked meal" on their family table go to one of these centers and make "12 dinners for six in two hours for under $200." I wonder what Alice Waters, who has been saying for years that the disappearing "family meal" is one of the chief causes of the de-evolution of family life in this country, thinks about these centers, which use preassembled ingredients from mega-food suppliers like Sysco. I suppose it is a form of progress that people do sit down together at a family meal. But if they are serving pre-assembled meals (made of substandard ingredients) that are only technically homemade it seems to me these stressed out folks are only exchanging one problem for another. That is, they are eating pre-fab food assembled from lousy ingredients TOGETHER. What would be interesting to find out is whether there are centers where you can come and assemble meals made of locally sourced, responsibly grown foodstuffs to serve at home. That would truly represent progress. I think even Alice Waters would admit that. That kind of operation would probably cost more than $200 for the 12 dinners for six and would by definition segment the assembled meal market.

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Tags: Alice Waters, cooking, Julia Moskin, Kim Severson, New York Times, NYT, Sysco