Leather Storrs: Gourmet Dumpster Diving

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Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Leather Storrs, GoLocalPDX Contributor

“Farm to table” is one of those phrases that has been stretched and twisted to cliché. It must do well in focus groups, because it has joined the club of buzzwords for the ambitious modern restaurant. If I had a nickel for every “local, seasonal, sustainable, farm to table, regional food with global influences” Restaurant, I could put them in a sock and knock out a gorilla.

I’m not suggesting that these traits aren’t admirable, but I am saying that many of us don’t and can’t fulfill this credo. I use lemons every day and I have yet to see a citrus tree in Oregon. I’m also fairly certain that New England restaurants of this ilk are expanding their foraging to include parts of the world that are not currently enjoying an ice age.

Nevertheless, the shift towards cooking that respects seasons, health and carbon emissions is more than encouraging. Chefs and consumers are saying no to big farming and suspect meat, full of antibiotics and hormones. Still, the grocery store does a good job of disconnecting consumers from the seasons- we like pretty, same sized, blemish free jewels of the field twelve months a year.

Enter Dan Barber, the Chef of Blue Hill in New York and the maestro of its farm, Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Barber is the pied piper of Farm to Table and a vocal, engaged advocate for sustainable eating. He helped to shape how we understand the origin and path of our food. Now he is taking on a far more ambitious project: he wants to change our understanding of what food IS.

This month he is transforming his restaurant into a laboratory for foods that usually end up in the trash. “WastED” is the name and he’s not messing around. Perhaps you’d like to start with the “Dumpster Dive Vegetable Salad”, featuring damaged storage apples and pears? May I suggest the “Stew of Kale Ribs,” with pockmarked potatoes and shaved immature egg yolk? It’s perfect for the teenager at your table. You Madam look like the kind of person who would enjoy “Cured Cuts of Waste-Fed Pigs”- the reject carrot mustard is sublime. And I insist you get an order of “Dog Food” (unfit potatoes and gravy) for the table.  

In the words of the rapper Lil Jon- HaaaaWhaaaaaat?!?!

But Barber’s idea is this: just because a vegetable doesn’t meet the stringent specifications for size, color and uniformity doesn’t mean it’s garbage. He’s also suggesting that if you’re going to kill something, you might as well eat all of it: “Fried Skate Wing Cartilage with Tartar Sauce infused with smoked whitefish heads” should prove the point.

We’re squeamish. We don’t like heads or cartilage. But we like new and we really like hot and now. Barber has enlisted heavy hitters like Grant Achatz, Mario Batalli and Alain Ducasse to make his experiment irresistible. The people making reservations for these dinners are not dumpster divers, but they are clearly willing to submit to some pretty wacky food. Scarcity is the future and the job of a chef is to buy food, fix it up and sell it for a profit. If you can squeeze more food from your raw material you make more money and buy less food.

This is going to be good.

 

Leather Storrs is an Oregon native who has served 20 years in professional kitchens. He owns a piece of two area restaurants: Noble Rot and Nobleoni at Oregon College of Art and Craft, where he yells and waves arms. He quietly admits to having been a newspaper critic in Austin, Texas and Portland. 

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