Danny Meyer is a SHAM

I wish my smartphone wasn't dead. I saw the most terrible thing the other day en route to work.

On a Wednesday, I'm walking west on West 16th street from Union Square. It's 7:45am. As I pass Union Square Cafe, I see a delivery coming in.

It's about 20 gallons of TUSCAN milk (I don't think they are reading the AMAZON reviews.). It's WEDNESDAY. RONNYBROOK is about 100 yards away.

When you're charging $4 for a cappuccino, you can afford local, well-cared for Milk. Meyer is a sham.

I sent a letter. let's see what they have to say.

localvore in California

quick observations...

though hard to find, in between Starbucks and Peet's, there are some great local cafes throughout the Bay Area making exquisite coffee.

What's interesting is that the few I visited all use a local, organic milk. For some reason, that's pretty rare on in New York. I can only think of Cafe Grumpy going to the length to use Ronnybrook milk.

Localvore goes non-local & eats well

So we took a trip to the Bay Area and to Chez Panisse.

A couple observations:

• I love that Chez Panisse only serves purified city water - flat and sparkling. I love, even more, that they don't charge for the water. The restaurant recognizes the environmental destruction of sending glass-enclosed water from Italy to California.
• I don't love that they sell grape juice from Italy though. You're telling me that Chez Panisse, all of 100 miles from the finest winemakers in the US, can't get a California grape juice?
• Only a certain type of restaurant can list MILK on the menu right below the dessert wines and sell it. We had to order a second serving because the girls loved it so much.
• And only a certain type of restaurant can serve a $7.50 serve listed as "A Frog Hollow Farm Warren pear with new crop Barhi dates, and Black Mission figs." I would guess most people would not order this. It's too easy right. Well, we did order it and I don't know where these dates come from but without even offering them to my wife or children, I finished them. AMAZING.

Overall the experience felt very local and lovely. we order 8 items and, aside from one, they all tasted of a well-made Bay Area meal.

Vegetarian is the new prius

I read an interesting post by Kathy Freston. Raising livestock has an incredibly caustic impact on the environment. But haven't humans hunted and eaten land animals from the beginning of time? Yes, but that image is nowhere near the reality of animal production in 2007. Fast Food Nation will give you a quick documentary on the differences.

Using statistics and compelling logic, Kathy argues that removing meat from your diet does significantly more for the environment than driving a Prius, or even not driving at all.

What about the middle ground; eating only locally-raised, free-range meat. Then all the energy in creating and delivering hormones/antibiotics and subsequently transporting meat is removed.

month ends and what did we learn

We learned that eating local in the summer is easy EXCEPT for a few things.

You probably don't realize how much you stop and "get something" quick, like a muffin. You probably don't realize how few cafes use local, organic milk. And you definitely didn't realize how hard it is to find starch with local ingredients.

at least I didn't.

But I did learn that August in Brooklyn does NOT require any non-local vegetables, fruits, meat or seafood.

And we learned that bread made from 100% whole wheat flour is dense.