Do you know where your favorite restaurant gets its food? Combining your desire to eat local with a desire to eat out can be a challenge, but the folks of Slow Food Orlando, a local chapter of Slow Food USA, want to help. Eat Local Week in Orlando, January 25-31, 2010, brings together local food service establishments, farmers and artisans to showcase the availability of sustainable, local food sources, and prove that eating local is not only possible, but delicious.
Farmers, ranchers and artisans within 200 miles of Orlando have partnered with more than 25 local food establishments to create special menus for the week-long celebration of connection, community, culture and cuisine. The hope is Eat Local Week will reinforce the relationships between consumers, restaurateurs and farmers, helping businesses grow and giving us, the diners, more options.
Restaurants will offer special two-course lunch and three-course pre-fixe dinner menus showcasing the fresh, local ingredients. Menus range from $9 to $50 dollars for three courses and feature dishes like braised beef short ribs braised in Orlando Brewing’s Blackwater Dry Porter with sautéed swiss chard, applewood smoked bacon, and brioche bits. Or maybe you’d be interested in the local flounder, fresh spinach, with a pomegranate-Florida citrus vinaigrette and hazelnut?
Eat Local Week kicked off January 23rd at a “Meet the Farmers” dinner featuring a four-course meal with each course introduced by the producer of its star ingredient. The only way you can get more connected to the food you eat is to grow it yourself, but that’s for another post.
Slow Food Orlando promotes a movement to slow down and savor our food and the people it’s shared with, and the idea that eating less industrialized, homogenized, trucked-across-the-country food is good for you, the environment and the economy. Eat Local Week asks Orlandoans to put their money where their mouth is… literally — to spend dollars at businesses who reinvest those dollars in local food sources, and then maybe eating out and eating local won’t come together for just one special week a year. For more information about the Slow Food Movement, Slow Food Orlando, and Eat Local Week, visit
www.slowfoodorlando.org.
