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We Need More Sausage Makers and Fewer Investment Banker Cupcake Makers

Posted by Ed Levine, June 3, 2007 at 1:27 PM

I know I'm probably the only person in the world who read the Sunday New York Times stories on cupcake-making career-changers and the closing of Kurowycky, a beloved East Village butcher, and connected the two pieces in any way, but bear with me for a moment.

Serious Eaters, of course, had reported Kurowycky's closing well before it was in the Times, and I loved the outpouring of grief and rage I saw on the thread. But I was struck after reading the two stories back to back (though they were in different sections) that we live in a weird world that glorifies seemingly infinite numbers of cupcake bakeries owned by investment bankers and ignores a great, and I mean great, Polish-Ukrainian butcher.

Do we need more cupcake "concepts" coming to a mall near you while true food artisans like the Kurowycky family are forced for financial reasons to close up shop?

Don't get me wrong. I like a good cupcake as much as the next fella (though most cupcakes are too sweet, too dry, and lack flavor), but we as a culture seem all too willing to cast our lot with sweet fashion while simultaneously letting go of important things like artisanal sausage makers of all stripe, whether they're Italian or French or Polish-Ukrainian.

Many years ago I had lunch with Heritage Meats co-founder Patrick Martin, who was at the time the head of Slow Food USA. I told him then that if Slow Food wanted to do something really helpful it could adopt as its principal cause in the United States the saving of family-run artisanal food shops threatened with extinction, be they latticini or sausage makers or bread bakers. Those are the places in our culture worth saving, worth promoting, and worth calling to our attention.

That must have been five years ago, and every time I read about things like the proliferation of designer cupcake shops, I think of that conversation. Not much has changed. Slow Food USA still feels like an organization looking for an actionable cause to get behind as artisanal food makers continue to fall by the wayside, the victims of changing tastes, economic conditions, and an inability to adapt. We need more investment bankers becoming butchers and sausage makers. I think we have enough cupcake bakers in this country.

Every time we lose a sausage maker, a bread baker, or a mozzarella maker, we lose a little piece of our food heart and soul, our gustatory generosity of spirit. Those are precious commodities in our culture, and we should do everything we can to preserve them.

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