Best Food Writing 2013 by Holly Hughes Page A

high-quality, humanely kept animals could save her daughter, it might save many other lives by preventing those ailments from occurring in the first place. Boland asks if I’ve ever eaten her meats. I say I have, twice—a lamb shoulder at Vermilion, in Old Town, and a lamb sausage at Haute Dogs & Fries, in Purcellville.
    â€œâ€˜Cause I won’t sell to most chefs,” she says.
    Why is that?
    Boland goes silent and tells me she fears she’d get in trouble if she spoke her mind. Then, having resolved her inner contradiction, she sighs and says, “A lot of ‘em, they buy just enough to use your name on their menu. I don’t want somebody ordering two or three chickens off of me and a couple of chuck roasts and putting my name on their menu. When they’re probably running 300, 400 dinners a week? You have to be supplementing it with someone else.”
    I ask how she decides whom she’ll sell to and whom she won’t.
    She laughs ruefully. “I had to learn. I had to learn who was honest and dedicated to this. I learned the hard way.”
    Today, if a chef expresses interest in featuring her meats, she invites him or her out to the farm along with the kitchen staff. What would appear to be an innocuous meet-and-greet is, in fact, a rigorous screening process, a way for Boland to assess a chef’s “level of engagement in talking about whole animal, head to hoof, their love of organ meats, their interest in buying whole animals. There are very few chefs who do that, buy the whole animal. Very few can make the off-product sell, because they really can cook. They’ll say to me, ‘We don’t have to stick to a set menu. We’ll figure out how to use the product—don’t worry.’”
    The screening helps her figure out who is interested in a legitimate relationship, with its give-and-take and dependency, and who is merely interested in taking on a new supplier—or worse, acquiring a bit of fashionable window dressing.
    â€œI don’t want to be used,” she says, sounding like a twice-jilted lover.
    Deep Throat Speaks
    A trusted source within the industry, a man I’ve come to refer to as Deep Throat for the reliable gossip he feeds me, said the practice thatElaine Boland describes is “more common than you think,” adding: “Truth in advertising is one of the biggest issues with this.”
    Every one of the insiders I spoke with talked about local as doing the right thing, citing its importance for our bodies, our land, our communities, our economies, our farmers. But over the months, I came to distinguish among them as I listened.
    Here, for instance, are my notes from a conversation with a young, locally minded restaurateur with a small chain of restaurants:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  “It’s always been a big part of our mission and strategy, and it’s really exciting to see it start to become a standard in the food space.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Putting the farmers’ names on that board like we do. It’s all about transparency.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  “We shouldn’t get so obsessed with the stricter definitions. That’s not the über thing.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  “That’s what it’s all about for us—emotional connection. When our customers see a picture of a farmer and they learn that story. It’s about making people feel good about their decision at every touch point.”
    Now listen to Spike Gjerde, chef and owner of Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore.
    Asked to define “local,” he says the word is the basis “for asking some very important questions.” Namely: “What are the farmer’s practices and what are the impacts on the environment of those practices?”
    Gjerde