 
follow my grandmother around and see all the relationships she had with every farmer and every purveyor there.” Her grandmother, a natural cook with no care for recipes or cookbooks, lived across the road from a farmer’s cornfield; on summer nights she would boil a pot of water and run across the road to pick the corn. Everything was fresh and from a place she knew. “That was her style,” says Reusing — and it’s her style, too. “Yes, except I pay for the corn.” Reusing, who is on Grist’s list of fifteen green chefs of the world and whose Chapel Hill restaurant, Lantern, is ranked among Gourmet’s top fifty in the United States, heads up Slow Food International’s burgeoning North Carolina Triangle convivium, one of the most active in the South, straddling Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh. A self-described eater with a visceral relationship to food, she walks and talks the platform of this old-school yet hip food movement. “I have always loved to eat. I plan my next meal while I am eating. That is my thing. I love food that has a point of view, that is interesting, and I love to experience different flavors and talk to people about how they grow or make their food.” These days Reusing doesn’t shop at the local farmers’ markets as often as she would like. Her old red Mercedes, converted to run on Lantern’s recycled vegetable oil, couldn’t hold the volume of produce she needs for her restaurant. But when she does go to market, she reconnects to the essence of what food means to her: people, place, and community. She finds inspiration in the one farmer who comes to the market only when he has chestnuts, or the farmer with the winter honey or the wild berry, and when she visits the farms from which she buys meat and cheeses. “That is everything to me,” Reusing says. “When you consume food it is a very intimate act, and it is richer and more rewarding if you consume food grown by people you know and love. And the closer you can get to that, the better the experience is. The last thing we have tethering us to the earth is the food we eat. It is the last thing that connects us to being animals ourselves.” The Fight for Pleasure The seeds for the birth of Slow Food International were planted in the mid-1980s, on the occasion of the opening of the first McDonald’s in Italy, in an old palazzo near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Italian intellectual, journalist, and epicurean Carlo Petrini, who, in the face of the nefarious epidemic of fast food, had long been a prominent and vocal defender of traditional local gastronomy, was so horrified by the fast food king’s brazen move so close to home that he organized street protests with people brandishing plates of penne as weapons. From there came the concept for Slow Food, an oppositional movement to safeguard the leisurely enjoyment of food and the pleasures and riches of local culinary traditions. “Slow Food,” says its Italian manifesto, “promotes the right to pleasure — at the table and beyond… [But it is] an association that has made of culinary pleasure a political act because behind every good plate there are choices made in fields, waterways, vineyards, in schools, and in governments. And every choice has a different taste.” Since then, Slow Food International has become a worldwide movement of more than one hundred thousand members, with more than seven hundred chapters in one hundred and thirty countries and an increasingly broad set of principles: eco-gastronomy; the rejection of agribusinesses and the genetic manipulation of foods; and advocacy for economic and agricultural choices that support good, diverse, healthy local foods. These are the concepts that have found a wide and receptive audience in the South, particularly North Carolina. The Triangle chapter of Slow Food, founded by North Carolina State University professor and food writer David Auerbach in the late 1990s, was one of the first in the country, primarily concerned with promoting the small organic farmers in the area. Fueled by a long agricultural tradition and a wealth of old, small farms, the philosophy of Slow Food has seeped into the local consciousness and become, for many, a way of life. At a time when discussions of food provenance and purity are nearly unavoidable, Reusing has watched the chapter grow into one of the most active in the country. “Slow Food is an extension of what we do at the restaurant but with a more understandable community component,” says Reusing. “To me it’s really all about the relationship of people to those who grow their food. It’s not about words like local or organic, or phrases like hormone free. It’s about the whole picture.” Farm to Table At the heart of Slow Food’s Triangle chapter are dozens of farmers’ markets, including the Carrboro Farmers’ Market, one of the most successful in the United States. Started thirty years ago by a doctor-turned-farmer who thought that providing good food was the best way to affect people’s health, Carrboro is a growers-controlled market that offers produce, meat, and flowers from more than eighty farms all located within a fifty-mile radius of town. Fed by a great interest in food and local growers, local chefs and hundreds of home cooks come seeking the seasonal jewel — be it post-frost persimmons, fresh picked strawberries, or heirloom tomatoes. The strong farm and market presence in the area has spun an astonishing number of exceptional farm-to-table restaurants. In Chapel Hill and Carrboro, in addition to Reusing’s Lantern, are Crook’s Corner, Elaine’s, Bonne Soiree, Sandwhich, the Weaver Street Market, and Panzanella. Their chefs shop at the market, give cooking demonstrations with produce of the season, and visit with the farmers, each of whom has his or her specialty: German Johnson tomatoes from Ken Dawson’s Maple Spring Gardens; bell peppers from Peregrine Farm; arugula from Eco Farm; radicchio and fennel from Bill Dow’s Ayrshire Farm; speckled butterbeans and lady peas from Brinkley Farms; and turnips and celeriac from Perry-winkle Farm. In Durham, just ten miles down the road, the burgeoning restaurant scene, also fueled by the local growers-controlled farmers’ market, includes Piedmont, Rue Cler, and Alicia’s, as well as Four Square and Magnolia Grill, a regular on national best restaurant lists. Hillsborough also has its own small market that serves its new downtown, chef-owned bistros Panciuto and Gulf Rim Café. Around them, food obsession has become something akin to religious fervor, and discussions on the subject are lively and sometimes contentious. An appearance by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the bible of sustainable agriculture, rivaled a rock star’s, and Alice Waters’ cookbooks sell as well as Julia Child’s. And now the movement has anointed Reusing, a passionate, driven food enthusiast recognized for good works as chef, farmers’ friend, and organizational leader. “She has certainly raised the profile of the Slow Food movement in our area,” says Ben Bergmann, owner, with Noah Ranells, of Fickle Creek Farm, in nearby Efland. “She seeks us out, she comes to the farm … She has been a tireless force, constantly supporting the cause.” A Fortuitous Move A native of the North, Reusing moved to North Carolina a decade ago from New York after falling in love with rock musician and Merge Records owner Mac McCaughan, who grew up in Durham. With no formal training, she was recruited to open a new eatery owned by a Raleigh architect and a wine retailer. The venture, Enoteca Vin, quickly became the toast of the town and Reusing was soon ready to open her own place. Homesick for the foods of Chinatown, the redheaded chef envisioned a restaurant that offered authentic Asian flavors cooked with care. The result, Lantern, was an instant hit. For the entire story, please subscribe to Garden & Gun. |
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