Eat at Joe's!

Community Supported Seafood

Last year I worked on a huge post about community supported agriculture programs and their ilk.  Alas, it never made it to publication, as I had a computer die, along with all my research.  Maybe that was when I first heard of DukeFish and their effort to start a local community supported fisheries program.  Apparently, it's gotten rolling: it's called Walking Fish.  You can sign up using this form (PDF alert), and mail it in along with a check for your desired share.  Seafood will come from near Beaufort, NC in Carteret County.  

Beaufort is also the home of the Duke Marine Lab, and probably has more than a few DukeFish people down there.  Neat how that works out.  :)

Edit: story in today's Herald-Sun.

We Get Links

For what it's worth, I so totally don't have anything to do with this.  I usually try to stay out of things that aren't food-related here, and I don't think I've ever owned anything more sophisticated than a rubber band gun.  But I do think it's kind of a shame for people to have to go to such lengths to complain about traffic in their neighborhood.  I also think it's misguided to characterize any of the activist folks I know in that neighborhood (and I know a lot of them) as violent enough to actually shoot paintballs at passing cars.  Other than signs in a traffic circle often used for creative expression, there's no evidence anyone has done or will do anything like shooting paintballs at cars. 

By the way, I don't live in Duke Park. 

Thanks for indulging me in this interruption.  We now return you to your previous sporadic stream of food-related posts. 

How Local Is Local?

Speaking of local food:  How do you know your "local" food is really local?  If you grow it yourself, you know.  If you buy it from a farmer, you know.  If you buy it through a CSA or at a farmers' market, you can feel pretty confident, I guess.  If you buy it at a grocery, you maybe can't be so confident.  And when you buy it at a restaurant — say someone says the asparagus or beef in their stir-fry is local — how do you know?  Eventually, you have to trust someone, but as the chain gets longer and longer, the web of trust extending from your mouth to the land — that local dirt — gets more and more tenuous.  If Frito-Lay buys potatoes from someone 300 miles from their factory, then ships their potato chips another 300 miles to you, is that local?

In my opinion, this is the organic problem all over again.  The "USDA Organic" definition has already been causing backlash for a while, and it's still going on.  It's probably resulted in more use of terms like "biodynamic," and maybe to a lesser extent in the interest in truly local food, and in the web of trust it implies.

Suggestions, O Gentle Readers?  Whom do you trust, and how do you do it?  Are we reduced to that supposed quotation from Stalin: "Trust, and verify"?  

Durham Central Market Memorial Day Potluck

Durham Central Market is having a potluck and fundraiser this Memorial Day (this coming Monday, 25 May 2009) from 5 to 8 pm.  It's at the Durham Farmers' Market pavilion in Durham Central Park.  Read more details at the event posting on the DCM blog.  

FWIW, DCM is at over 450 members.  They're shooting for at least 1200 before hopefully opening a co-op store sometime next year.  If you like, read about who they are, or look into joining.  They also have an RSS feed for the blog.  

Triangle Restaurant Week

Thank god someone is out there blogging.  If they weren't, I would never have found out from VarmintBites about Triangle Restaurant Week, which runs from May 11th through May 17th (2009).  While it looks like mostly Raleigh restaurants are involved, I see 5 front-line Durham restaurants participating:

• Four Square
• Papa's Grille 
• Piedmont 
• Pop's 
• Rue Cler   

Visit the Triangle Restaurant Week web site for more details.  
  

Durham Central Market Project Manager Hired

We got a press release yesterday that DCM has brought on a project manager.  They're still searching for locations, but a project manager is a nice step forward.  375 people so far have bought owner shares (including yours truly), which is good.  I really look forward to having a community-oriented grocery near central Durham.  Yay!

Wow, I really would love a quarter's worth of Spam squirted thru a little metal tube

http://gastromatic.net/

[Via Wine Authorities, after they clearly had too much to drink.  Dude.]

Well, That Was Nice

Given the huge number of people who showed up for WA's party yesterday, and the, um, somewhat extensive local blogosphere reaction, I'd say both the business and the party were good, with maybe the only problem being too many people coming.  :)  I wish I'd had my camera to take a picture of, say, the huge pile of empty wine bottles I saw at one point, or almost every bottle in the Enomatic being empty, with no one complaining, and everyone too busy to refill it.  :)

It's also clear I should give up with my pitiful attempt to remain anonymous, since I was recognized by people I don't think I've ever even met.  :)  Perhaps I'll persist a while longer.  My dad once said a trait of his family was "pig-headedness."  He was probably right.  Or maybe I can be like when KISS stayed in makeup until their career started sucking, then took it off.  Oh, then they put it back on again.  Never mind. 

I should also do t-shirts.  Gosh, Carpe Durham has them.  Kevin has one for BCR, somewhere.  The 30Threads folks have one (picture from Barry at DE).  I need a less sucky logo, I guess: one that isn't simply stolen from GlassGiant's neon sign generator (maybe the three links to them off this page can serve as a partial mea culpa).  Maybe I could use my old logo:

Nah: it's not so "attractive" without the eye-bleeding badness of having the blink attribute set on individual characters.  :)

"a small piece of Polish sausage, lodged in the lining of my heart"

Geez!  I can't believe the kinds of things you people try to hide from me!  There's a Polish grocery in Durham:

Halgo's

I had to get out of there today before I blew my entire stack of cash on some bizarre Polish? Russian? smoked salami I've never had before.  I got a couple kinds of pierogi, a couple kinds of meat, some cheese....  And the people running the place kept feeding me: they'd just gotten a new slicer a few weeks ago, and they seemed to feel obligated to use it on anything in the place that could be sliced and that I might want to taste.  I forgot to get some bacon.  D'oh. 

This is the kind of place that, were it on Business 501, it would belong on the Ethnic Grocery Trail.  And just like many EGT stores, there's an additional business besides food.  For most EGT stores, it's movies; this place is also a florist.  Go figure. 

Go visit.  A small store with really nice folks running it.  Buy me a kielbasa t-shirt while you're there. 

[Thanks to M&N for the tip.  And for those of you wondering where I got the title of this post: you clearly haven't watched enough SNL.  Go buy some kielbasa and shut up already.  :)  ]

Extortion

"Customers have begun threatening to 'Yelp' the restaurant if their demands are not met. Cafe Rouge experienced this phenomenon twice within the past month when comps were demanded with the threat that a harsh review would follow on the Yelp website if we didn't comply."

Wow, that pretty much sucks. 

I know I'm largely busted in Durham, but really I'd prefer it if no one in the restaurant business locally knew I wrote this blog.  Then I'd know that any free glass of wine or the like I got was more due to my scintillating personality and winning ways than any chance I'd write up something positive for free.  And I'd like to think that I write up positive things or link to places because they have their own special positiveness, and not just because someone is buttering me up, so to speak. 

People should generally feel free to express their dislike with something -- true helpful negative feedback, especially on minor issues, is hard to elicit -- but this is just fucking blackmail.  I think if I owned a restaurant and someone blackmailed me like this, I'd comp their meal, then ask them never to come back. I guess that's why I don't own a restaurant. 

I used to have a boss who said that when he looked at shopping reports for a store -- where the company pays someone to anonymously shop the store and report on their experience -- he basically threw out the top and bottom two out of any ten reports, then looked at what was left.  Unfortunately, people just skimming Yelp or eGullet or even this blog aren't necessarily going to do that.  Of course, all my regular readers are much smarter and well-informed, right?  :)

Edit - Since I know that a few people who do work professionally in local restaurants read this blog: has the above ever happened to you or your restaurant? 

... or you can put the baby in some new bathwater....

Folks who've lived in Durham for a while may know we have a food co-op, originally called the "Peoples Intergalactic Food Conspiracy #1," IIRC.  Those of you who've had anything to do with the co-op may also have noticed that it's, well, moribund.  It used to be a lot less so when it was, oh, there instead of here, but I guess that's water underneath the cheese case now. 

Also, those of you who live in the area bounded by, say, Buchanan, I-85, 147, and 70 know your grocery buying was impaired quite a bit when the Northgate HT closed, and still more when the Avondale Plaza WD closed.  You know this because you were happy when the Compare at Avondale opened, or because you had to shop at Whole Foods more, or you were really pissed when the third incarnation of Fowler's closed, or perhaps just because you couldn't walk anywhere to buy groceries anymore. 

Happily, there have been some people working to bring another food co-op to Durham.  While there's no definite location yet, they're incorporated, with a working name of "Durham Central Market." I believe it's to be somewhere in the above-mentioned area.  Perhaps it'll be near downtown, even.

Three cheers for the Durham Central Market!

"Oh, my aching..."

Well, this looks like fun, for those who enjoy such things: 

"Have you ever thought about eating an order of bacon cheese fries and running 2 miles only to have to eat more food?"

Edit: Must... include trendy... Facebook event URL... get proper street cred....

To Every Thing There Is a Season

Six Plates, which did have their day off as Tuesday, has moved it to Sunday.  I.e., they're closed then.  :)

Edit: The "Lamby Joes" have tenure!  Excellent! 

South of the Border III: Damn The Man

Xiloa Restaurant, RIP. 

I believe they've been closed for several weeks, but I only got confirmation from our Latin American correspondent a couple days ago.  Congratulations to Bill Fields for running yet another business off Ninth Street.  I don't know if the business owner is going to re-open elsewhere or not.

[Picture stolen w/o permission from Xiloa's MySpace page, linked to above.]

Eat and Learn

Parker and Otis, together with Communities in Schools - Durham, is having a wine and chocolate tasting today (Thursday, November 29th, from 4:30 to 6:30 pm) at Parker and Otis's store at Peabody Place here in Durham.  A ticket to the event is $5.  Parker and Otis is donating part of the proceeds to CIS Durham, who (among other things) try to help feed schoolkids in Durham.   I'm not personally familiar with the program, other than hearing about it in the media, but feeding people is always good, right?  :)

Additional links:

• CIS Durham story in N&O about Food Backpack Program
• North Carolina CIS
• CIS USA
• Peabody Place on Google Maps

Other posts:

• Bull City Rising

Edit: Corporate sponsors for "Food Backpack" program:

• Bayer CropScience
• Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC