Fortunately we don’t get too many negative letters at Craigie Street Bistrot, but every once in a while we get one that is excruciatingly painful. I received one recently from a patron who felt that our quality had become uneven. After dining with us over 30 times, she was having second thoughts.

This is the letter every chef dreads—calmly written, from an articulate and loyal customer. Though I know that I/we pour our heart and soul into every plate that leaves our kitchen, our staff had to talk me down from the ledge. After all, consistency is key for a chef and restaurant. Just because I follow my principles and work with small growers, a guest’s meal should not be affected. It is my job to make sure the food on the plate is as intended — no excuses. Period.

However, some of our ingredients are different from conventional ones, and while we absolutely are open to feedback, I can’t change my deeply felt philosophy. At the risk of sounding self-serving, I do have a hunch as to why this concerned guest may have come to her conclusion: In the past few years, with endless hours of research and tasting, we have broadened our list of suppliers so that now virtually every drop of food we serve is organic, sustainably-raised, locally-grown and/or seasonal. As I said, this is what I believe in and it won’t change. But I know there are some tradeoffs.

1. By definition, variability is the very nature of organic and locally grown food. All cows, lambs, pigs, and heads of lettuce are not the same. Having different parents, surroundings and diets, some have more/less flavor, chew, fat, and volume than others. Of course, there’s a way to guarantee more standardization: it’s called non-organic, industrial-scale farming. That’s a tradeoff I’m personally not willing to make. I am gratified that our society is definitely becoming more aware, and opting for the sustainable choices.

2. Organic food is more expensive and, yes, our prices have increased to take this into account.

3. The letter-writing patron came into CSB in March. I am a passionate believer in locavorism but have to admit that March taxes every New England chef’s ability to dazzle. I myself am getting pretty sick of frisee and root vegetables, and am yearning for a nice tomato or asparagus. There’s a solution to that too: it’s called importing from Chile in a container. This is another tradeoff I’m personally not willing to make. This is a seasonal struggle I address every day.

4. Our menu changes almost daily so we can select and serve what’s best in the market that very day. By definition, it might not be the same as something you had on a previous visit that you loved. It really does change every day. At the risk of repetition, this is the third tradeoff I’m not willing to make.

The variations brought on by Mother Nature definitely make things interesting. Does this mean that I think we serve food that tastes different from day to day? Yes, it can happen. Sometimes that’s a joy, and sometimes it’s not. Of course I want to stand by my dishes even in the dark days of March. And, if food from one organic supplier isn’t as consistent as that from some others, it’s completely my responsibility to find the best one. But one person’s definition of “non-identical” is sometimes my definition of “interesting”. This is the exact reason we serve old-world wines - they are full of terroir, character, and variety and that doesn’t appeal to everyone either.

I will do everything I can to learn from what is obviously a sincere letter from a long standing patron. I am open to the possibility that I might learn something that is completely unrelated to the issues I have outlined above. And if I do, you can bet that we’ll do everything in our power to correct it. I may learn something that will lead me to think I have to go back to the drawing boards on some suppliers. But if it relates to our commitment to locally grown, organic food, I’m going to stick to my principles and hope most of our patrons agree I’ve made the right tradeoff. If not, I know I’ll hear from you.

I find the opinions on this blog to be really interesting but I have a confession to make: I often put my own personal convenience and needs ahead of such planetary concerns as sustainability, local farming, organic and biodynamic agriculture, and carbon footprint reduction. But, in my opinion, you don’t need to be uber committed to these principles to rail out - for a completely different reason - against a lot of the stuff now being sold/served in expensive restaurants and supermarkets. The reason NOT too eat some of these foods is a simple, non-ideological one - THEY HAVE NO TASTE! And the reason that they have no taste is even simpler - THEY ARE OUT OF SEASON.

Their tastelessness is all the more painful because they tease you by looking like their spring/summer cousins. My personal list of biggest teasers/offenders includes asparagus , tomatoes, and green beans - all widely available right now at supermarkets and on restaurant menus and, with apologies to Chilean agribusiness, all utterly tasteless. Yes, I, too, am getting pretty sick of beets and root vegetables and can’t wait for spring, but I’m not going to jump the gun for look-alike-but-no-taste-alike-vegis that have ripened in a container.

What else is particularly awful this time of year? Help me (and others) avoid it and save me some money that I will gladly donate to worthy causes like sustainability and locavorism.

February 2008

Elegant phrases from the culinary writer MFK Fisher often open the pages of cookbooks. This is the only place I had encountered her writing until a few short weeks ago, when my mother-in-law passed me a copy of The Gastronomical Me. Immediately, I was transported. Perhaps regrettably, Fischer’s lyricism had me considering giving up all efforts made with a pen (or keyboard) as her way with language seemed so effortless and perfect. When you stumble on a writer who seems to say everything you wish you had, it is both exhilarating and grossly disheartening.

MFK Fisher was raised in southern California, but her culinary awakening came when she accompanied her first husband to Dijon in 1929. There she discovered the cuisine of Lyon, and in it her muse. But plenty of people can write about a particularly splendid meal or two in an evocative way. What Fisher brought to the page was a lovely certainty that when you were talking about food, you were speaking of so much more. Indeed, the most important matters of life were at hand at the table. She wrote an answer to the question “Why do you write about food?” in the foreword of Gastronomical Me: “when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.”

Fisher remained in France and later Switzerland during the interwar period, right up until 1939, when she and her second husband had to pack up their home and flee the coming catastrophe. She injects into these tightly historic years a sense of quiet grandeur. And she also takes the time to describe her gustatory adventures: the slight curl of a fresher than fresh filet of sole, cooked in hot brown butter, cuts of meat infused in herbs and napped by cream, round buttery cakes and an accompanying glass of sherry. It’s the kind of writing that makes you hungry for food as well as new horizons. I found I digested the book a bit better, a bit more sympathetically, if I had a piece of good bread, a smear of goat cheese and a glass of red wine by my side.

All of this sensual rememberance aside, as MFK packed up and fled Europe, a food revolution was brewing in the chemistry labs of the West. Part of what won the war for the Allies was a great leap forward in petrochemical technologies. The laboratory synthesis that made destruction on a mass scale possible for the first time in history also gave us manufactured “nutrients” to boost the growth and production of plants. Previously the nitrogen and potassium inputs employed by farmers in the US came from mined potash, or guano imported from Chile. The ability to produce these substances as a byproduct of petroleum reduced their cost enormously, and created a revolution for intensified inputs for farms. In short, the agro-industrial era was born. The argument of “green revolution” supporters was that with chemical enhancements we were suddenly supposed to be able to produce enough food to nourish the world. Hunger and famine would be eradicated and plenty would abound. Even the most distracted observer of the last 60 years of history can see that this did not transpire. While currently one fifth of the world’s population is chronically undernourished, another fifth is chronically overnourished. Disparities are still the order of the day. And in the meantime, the byproduct of our nitrogen fueled system of food production is a dangerously compromised earth and deeply toxified streams of health.

There is a lot of bleak news coming out about how we are not addressing our current food crisis. We’ve recently had a farm bill that isn’t full of reform, a massive recall of meat from downer cows (much of which went to school lunch programs) and recalls of alfalfa sprouts infected with e-coli. These and other concerns are starting to feel routine rather than calamitous. So perhaps, by reading MFK, I sought to return to the halcyon days when producing food could be revered and certainly less fraught. But is this sort of culinary-literary escapism really so unwarranted or unrealistic? Whenever I feel fed up with my observations of our current system, I remind myself that agriculture has been a human practice for ten thousand years. And industrial agriculture has been the order of the day for only about sixty. See? Isn’t that refreshing? So perhaps a deep, spiritual reinvestment in the way things used to be done is not so radical, but rather is the ultimate conservatism.

Given that I can neither travel through time nor space to the France where Fischer really learned to eat anytime soon, I would like to remind readers that experiences like hers can be had at Craigie Street Bistrot. Chef Tony Maws brings the intensity and craft of bistrot moderne to the American palate. In Amanda Dates’ Thanksgiving post about the kitchens in which he tested his mettle, we are reminded of this tremendously rich tradition. Lovelier still then, that it is on offer both in spirit and in presentation, on a plate in Cambridge.