While at the Eco-Farm Conference last week, I picked up a copy of the brand-new Slow Food Guide to San Francisco.
Slow Food USA is an arm of the International Slow Food organization and is "dedicated to supporting and celebrating the food traditions of North America." This book highlights restaurants and food producers in the Bay Area who offer diverse foods or who otherwise contribute to the Slow Food movement by including sustainably grown or harvested ingredients. From the introduction by Eleanor Bertino, contributing editor:
Sustainably raised foods from local family farms have many benefits. First, they have delicious flavor. Next, the farms themselves provide a greenbelt for urban areas. And, most importantly, they promote individual and environmental health. To paraphrase Michael Pollan, when you purchase food, you are purchasing a landscape.
When I picked up this book and started skimming through it, the first thing I noticed was a snail icon next to some restaurants. This icon -- the Slow Food mascot -- is used to designate establishments "that go above and beyond in their support of the concepts of sustainability and biodiversity, from the producers they buy from through the foods they prepare and sell."
Restaurants that we all associate with this sustainability ethic are listed: Chez Panisse, Zuni Cafe, Pizzetta 211. And there are many restaurants that I wasn't aware of and am eager to explore: Burger Joint (Haight) which uses Niman Ranch beef for it's burgers, Casa Orinda (Orinda) which uses free-range, hormone free chicken and locally grown produce, and The Village Pub (Woodside) which has it's own 15-acre organic farm.