Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I find a lot of the anti-Slow Food rhetoric cranky and overwrought. We risk wasting a lot of energy by being too sloppy and arbitrary in identifying who our opponents are supposed to be. Slow Food is not against any of the things the commenters here (and Ed) are proponents of; on the contrary, it's vociferously in favor of them. Even without being a member, I can tell you that the long-term aim of the outfit is not just to swell its own membership rolls--the world isn't going to become a better place simply because a lot of people join a particular organization. What it's about is ideas, values, standards, all of which are stridently, pervasively democratic. "Elitist," "effete," and such labels--which get so facilely applied to Slow Food--are generally not terms that come to mind when one is talking about such folks as Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, and Winona LaDuke. And yet those very people are Slow Food's heroes, all present at the San Francisco event! My plea is, please don't conjure up enemies and animosities where they simply don't exist and have no reason to. There's way too much work to do!

I am once again knocked out by the level of discourse on this thread. Andy in Charlotte, it sounds like your Slow Food chapter is doing great work, as I'm sure most if not all of the local chapters are doing. One of the points I was trying to make is that Slow Food needs to really dig into food communities all over the country and try to perpetuate local food traditions, even if they involve bakeries or pizzerias not using organic flour or barbecue joints not using heritage pigs. Many a pitmaster I know is scared of scaring off his or her regular customer base by raising the price of a barbecue sandwich a dollar (or even less) to pay for the more expensive designer pork. Do we penalize them for that or should we just acknowledge that they're trying to do the right thing and cook food the "slow" way.

Ed, I hope SFN does inspire more folks to seek out and support slow food businesses, whether local or national or international at their core. I would add two other challenges to the list. From the folks I've spoken to - whether farmers/ranchers or the folks who run shops like Marone's - one of the biggest problems is the distribution system (or lack thereof) to support smaller, call it niche, operations. Many refer to it as "Sysco Disease." The other is awareness or maybe in more classic real estate terms, poor location.

Thanks for writing this Ed, many of us have been saying & thinking the same thing for awhile now.

Kim @ apizza scholls

Don Luis, your comment, IMO, is misguided, in that my experience has been that, by and large, it's the small food artisans that rely most heavily on "good, clean, and fair" food. The fact is that many people still don't have time to cook, to plant gardens, to make "slow food" an integral part of their life, but there is a small but growing bunch, even those who are not among the elite, who will support independent restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, etc. who they know source their food from farms and purveyors who do represent what slow food is all about. The two - the artisan baker and the movement to get people to learn more about where their food comes from and how it is produced -- are often inextricably linked.

ciordia9 makes some excellent points, but to me, it seems like Slow Food seems to rely very heavily on high-end events to bring in resources. I realize that this is just the beginning of a movement, but once you get that elitist tag, it's hard to shake.