Chews Wise

Channeling Woody Allen at the Farm

In this youtube video, first seen via Megnut a few days ago, Chef Dan Barber related a hilarious story about his stud pig that has, well, shot its wad.

The question: What to do with Boris?

In this talk at the Taste3 conference (which we actually don't know much about), he relates all the various answers he got from the staff at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture (where he has a restaurant), and, in a neurotic, New York kind of way, ends up channelling a bit of Woody Allen.

The Boris saga actually begins with another story about a carrot that appeared in the New York Times magazine recently. So if you're time-pressed, and want to hear about poor Boris, jump to 6:15 into the clip and hit play. It lasts another 15 minutes but is well worth it. Click on the picture to view it.

How to Sell a Carrot

Chefs and farmers wax poetic about their food, farms, and dishes, but let's face it: what sometimes works best is a little marketing magic. Customers want it. They consume it. And images can be as easily manufactured in the kitchen as in Tinseltown.

Dan Barber, chef and owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, comes clean about how this works in an interesting New York Times piece about carrots - specifically, carrots that he attempted to infuse with the scent of almonds by sprinkling some of their nutty dust in his greenhouse garden.

He then marketed prodigiously, spreading the word that his almond carrots would be harvested and served at dinner one evening in a salad. What happened next is pretty hilarious, but it just goes to show you, as any Madison Avenue guru would tell you, it's the sizzle that sells.

Perhaps coincidentally, the title of this essay, "The Great Carrot Caper," was the name given to another incident in 1988 - when workers in California were photographed putting conventional carrots into bags marked organic. This was outright fraud.

Barber's antics are more innocent, but still a disguise, and one that customers end up rating with four stars.

I'd give Barber four stars too, having eaten at his restaurants, but - full disclosure - he also blurbed my book.

- Samuel Fromartz