the growhaus' seeds of change

The saying goes, "If you build it, they will come." But what happens when a disadvantaged community has a justified skepticism toward outsiders, a history of interactions with do-gooders who never finished what they began? "When I started [at The GrowHaus] five years ago, we didn’t have community trust," explains Executive Director Kayla Birdsong. "I’ve watched it develop in real time, and a huge part of that has been promoting dialogue with the community and asking them what they need, rather than assuming you already know the answer."

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adaptation: the elegant ascent of emma bengtsson

Over the past few months, La Colombe Coffee Roasters commissioned me to develop a series of blog articles about influential chefs who are shaping the future of the restaurant industry. This excerpt comes from the first of those articles - stay tuned for more inspiring stories!

"Innovative. Ambitious. Genre-defying. As the former Pastry Chef and current Executive Chef at Aquavit in New York City, Emma Bengtsson has earned all these adjectives and more. Yet rather than a dominant, aggressive personality, it’s her calm, centered persistence that has earned her a spot at the top of the culinary food chain."

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terroir 2.0: rethinking the taste of place

"Terroir’s etymological roots literally hail from the earth (“la terre” in French), implying that soil is somehow involved in the flavor-making process. In the case of plants, this connection is obvious; with animals and their by-products, it suggests a second-degree grazing on local herbs, fruits, nuts or grasses. With time and the official codification of regional food products, the notion of terroir has also expanded to include the influence of human savoir-faire (literally, “know how”), developed over centuries of producing such gourmet goods...

Yet in today’s world, we are no longer required to travel to the source in search of this “taste of place.” Cooks who prefer the rich flavors of Bresse chicken, Parmigiano cheese or Carolina golden rice can now have those products shipped anywhere in the world. In fact, the original intention of terroir seems to have been tipped on its head, as the very notion of these delicacies’ superiority and specificity has bred an increased consumption and exportation of these products—separate from any sense of seasonality, biodiversity, sustainability, or other locavore virtues."

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