The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - Two chefs on exclusivity and accessibility in the gourmet food context

Episode Date: January 13, 2015

This is a short excerpt of The Ruminant's interview with Okanagan Chefs Cameron Smith and Dana Ewart of Joy Road Catering in BC's Okanagan Valley. Herein, Cam and Dana talk about the role chefs play in influencing food culture, and their response to the criticism that the work they do as high-end chefs is elitist. Part 1 of our full conversation can be found here. Part 2 of our full conversation can be found here. Access The Ruminant Podcast at theruminant.ca, iTunes, and other fine podcast directories.

Okay, so look, I want to finish on one last topic. I would love to talk about the role that you chefs play in the food culture. But more specifically, there is an attitude that certainly exists that, you know, growers like me who supply chefs, we're just feeding rich people and it's this this super elitist thing and what you do in a sense is elitist and that sort of thing and i'm just wondering i imagine you must have opinions on that and i'm just so i guess it's a two-part question what rule do you think you you play in the food culture in in general but but also how do you feel about what's your reaction to that potential criticism

that, that in supplying you, I'm just, I'm just participating in an elite kind of activity and, and you're, can I start with the first question? Yep. I think that chefs are underappreciated in the, I know that sounds kind of rich for me, in the relationship between farmers and consumers. You know, if I think back to when I first started out in the cooking industry, you know, we had these beautiful little salad greens that were all like cute and looked awesome on a plate and you couldn't buy those in the grocery store yet you know now you can buy the little bags of spring mix everywhere that was a trend that started with farmers to restaurants and has expanded into a

you know billion dollar a year business or something like that you know things like heirloom tomatoes heirloom vegetables in general um yeah that stuff has always been available at a farmer's market um but i mean the big consumers of that stuff and the big drivers of that stuff to get that stuff out to the public we're chefs we're we're restaurants you know that's who was buying it that's who was pushing it i think that the chefs are have always been integral in trying to dig up new ingredients and find new markets for things that maybe didn't exist before. And I think that that has gone a long way to fuel this local movement, which a lot of small-scale farmers are now recipients of at farmer's

markets and stuff like that, because consumers are going out and saying, hey, you know, I had this vegetable the other day at restaurant W. Where can I get that from? Oh, you get it at the farmer's market. Go down and talk to... I'm not saying that the farmer's market thing or heirloom vegetables didn't exist before restaurants did. But I think that they've really gone a long way towards bringing this stuff into the mainstream. And towards maybe supplying a living for those people who are now judging the farmer who sells to a restaurant.

I think that being a farmer and being a chef are not that dissimilar in that we're all activists in a way. And we're all involved with, we're the gatekeepers, man. We're encouraging everyday people to eat eat well and whatever your income bracket is like like look it's i look i agree with you i typically don't make any apologies for the pork the large portion of my business that depends on these high-end chefs that are thankfully willing to pay me good prices for my produce. As far as the high-end question goes, I've dealt with this a lot because you know when you deal with a

certain segment of the population, the farmers in particular, a lot of them don't make a ton of money and they look look at a lot of, you know, maybe the dinners that I host or the restaurants that you supply as being very expensive. And a lot of farmers and food safety activists are concerned with feeding their people as they absolutely should be. I think that that's a crucial part of this is to have some sort of food security where everybody can afford or where everybody has access to healthy ingredients. But I don't think that the access to healthy ingredients, the burden of that should be borne by the farmers. I disagree with that, that we need to, you know, make sure that we can all get tomatoes at 50 cents a pound. That we keep our prices low enough, yeah. Because that's all I can afford.

Yeah. You know, and we just recently went on a trip to Europe, and I mean, in Italy, the economy's not doing terribly well right now. You know, that's not breaking news for anybody. But they still put a real priority on eating well. At the expense of other... At the expense of other... Other luxuries in their life, yeah.

You know, you look at all the things that we've piled on in our lives in the last 20 years, cell phone bills, cable bills, internet bills, you know, that's a hundred dollars a month for most people. Europeans will average well over 30% of their disposable income spent on food. North America last time I looked, I think it was like a 12 or something like that right yeah so i think that there's a real confusion between the fact that i am charging a fair price for what i do and the most people who pay it tend to be wealthy because yes we have a lot of wealthy clients but we also have a lot of clients who have saved up for this important day or for this vacation in their lives or whatever, who have chosen to make

this a priority over having a golden dress or, you know, whatever it is. People, people spend a lot of money on a lot of different things. And I think it's a question of what your priorities are more than, hey, that's for rich people. I think that there's definitely a danger sometimes that some farmers are taking advantage of the local movement and being in the city at a certain farmer's market and charging a lot of money for stuff. Cherries are a good example of that you know i can i can get some decent organic cherries around here for 250 a pound if i'm buying in bulk go to the farmers market in vancouver it's five bucks a pound more sometimes go to the farmers market in calgary i hear stories of nine ten bucks a pound for organic cherries you know obviously there's there's travel costs and everything else but there's just a lot more competition here and i think the prices remain.

Maybe $2.50 isn't enough. Maybe $5 is too much. I'm not going to judge that, but what I am going to say is that it's important that the farmer stay in business and be able to make a living. It's important that the chef be able to stay in business and make a living. Be able to stay in business and make a living. Because if you're not in business, you can't make the choices to support certain farmers or certain suppliers and to try to educate certain clients. Yeah. So I think it's important to run a sustainable business.

And that means, you know, being able to pay your people and being able to make a living and being able to support growers and suppliers that you want to support. I think if you want to go for that 1% segment of the population. And I have to imagine that leaving aside celebrity chefs who might do very well, one reflection of all of this is that, like farmers, the average chef is not getting rich off of oh god no off of no off of preparing this wonderful food definitely not nope but we're food professionals and it's it's our responsibility to get i yeah i'll say it again it's i really feel like it's our responsibility to share that with people, have people eat. That's our mission anyway at Joy Road is to have people eat well.

Well, you do well. And so with that, Cam and Dana of Joy Road Catering, thanks a lot for coming on the podcast. No problem. Thanks for having us.