In the 35 years I’ve been working in restaurants, I have seen more than enough to scare a person out of the business. I’ve seen fires, near-fires, and explosive fire suppression systems. I�...
All restaurants, from the small-town diner to the Michelin 3-star, carry a touch of a mystique to them. People who are not in the industry usually have fairly romanticized views of what it take...
https://civileats.com/2013/12/30/documentary-explores-restaurants-and-the-power-of-conviviality/
What is the one thing that gets in the way of almost every great idea? Money–or the lack of it. Whenever anyone says “it’s not about the money,” it’s probably about the money. Almost ...
https://civileats.com/2013/08/28/want-to-fund-your-sustainable-food-business-idea-start-here/
For years people and organizations from Frances Moore Lappé to Slow Food have sought to repair and restore our broken food system, making noticeable but still negligible progress. Surely more ...
https://civileats.com/2013/04/18/an-instruction-manual-for-fixing-the-food-system/
W.H. Auden once said of legendary food writer MFK Fisher “I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose.” This is how I feel about Elissa Altman. I am far from the firs...
https://civileats.com/2013/02/25/the-last-word-poor-mans-feast-by-elissa-altman/
They’ll tell you not to judge a book by its cover, but in this case perhaps you should make an exception. In A Girl and Her Pig: Recipes and Stories, April Bloomfield delivers exactly what th...
https://civileats.com/2013/01/25/book-review-a-girl-and-her-pig-by-april-bloomfield/
We have our pantheon of deities in the Food Movement–the people and organizations who have had the most impact on our culinary landscape. We have discernible cuisines in this country, certainly...
When I was an intern in Santa Fe, New Mexico a thousand years ago, my mother sent me a three-page letter (yes, a letter. It was that long ago). Worried that her underpaid intern son might be s...
https://civileats.com/2011/11/21/channeling-mfk-fisher-an-everlasting-meal/
Very few people in Iowa have had a greater impact on the movement to protect real food than Diane Ott Whealy. Co-founder of Decorah’s Seed Savers Exchange, she is the author of a new memoir det...
https://civileats.com/2011/08/19/a-memoir-of-a-life-saving-seeds/
First let’s get one persistent canard out of the way. Yes, the tomato is technically a fruit, not a vegetable, but for purposes of economics the USDA classifies it as a vegetable, and as such i...
https://civileats.com/2011/05/17/why-the-modern-tomato-is-flawed-a-review-of-tomatoland/