Eating Locally

by Travis Hill

Damn you, Chili’s. Damn you and your 2-for-1s at the bar and never-ending selection of fried things. Damn you and your convenience, always being open during lunch and dinner and willing to wash dishes.

There are tons of people out there like me: We know there is a great benefit to eating food produced in and around St. Augustine. It would help the local economy, take some strain off the environment (some studies show that food at large chains travels an average of 1,500 miles), save you money and just plain make you feel better.

Because of places like Chili’s, we say we want to do it … and end up with a plate of Citrus Fire Chicken & Shrimp Fajitas.

After crying into too many Chipotle Blue Cheese Bacon Burgers, I made a stand: For one week, I would eat ONLY locally grown products or at locally owned restaurants that try to do the same.

What follows is a frightening, frustrating and ultimately rewarding culinary journey through St. Augustine:

MONDAY
The first thing I did was call Richard “Cheech” Villadoniga, St. Augustine’s voice for local food. Villadoniga helped start the St. Augustine chapter of Slow Food, an international organization that promotes local products and eating traditions [Editor’s note: See below story for more information on Slow Food].

“We’re trying to foster greater understanding of the benefits of eating local, healthy food,” Villadoniga said, as the reality of having to cook my own food or die started to set in. “Eating locally grown food is great. You support the community, it tastes better and, hey, you even get to know what’s in your food.”

He then rattled off a list of local establishments that would help me in my mission. I was scared. It was obvious that Cheech and I had completely different definitions of the term, “value meal.”

I began by going out to the heart of St. Augustine’s local food scene: Currie Bros. Market. Patrick and George Currie run a produce store on Ponce de Leon Boulevard, just north of the old city gates. They have been in the same place for 15 years and with Jeffrey’s Bakery and Kyle’s Seafood Market right next door, it’s the best place in town to get the widest range of local products.

I still yearned for McNuggets.

It’s important to note that Patrick Currie is a happy guy, who doesn’t really see himself as David in a life-and-death struggle against the fast-food Goliaths. In fact, he had eaten at McDonald’s earlier that day as he brought another shipment of tomatoes back from the farms of Hastings.

“Tomatoes are our main thing,” he said. “In all our time here, we have never sold one tomato that has been gassed or brought in from out of the country.”

He told me big companies will pick produce while it’s still green at say, a farm in Hastings. Then they’ll “gas” the veggies – freeze them with chemicals – and ship them to say … Pennsylvania. Currie also informed me that most of those big chains discard odd-looking fruits and veggies; hence every pepper looks the same in most produce aisles.

Currie Bros. welcomes the oddballs. Because they still taste good. He pointed down to a basket overflowing with softball-sized tomatoes, “Those were picked two days ago.”

The sweet smell of freshness overpowered my McNugget pangs. I went on a buying spree as I loaded up for the terrifying prospect of cooking my own food. I bounced from Currie Bros., to Jeffrey’s Bakery to Kyle’s Seafood and instead of dropping $10 for lunch and $15 on dinner, I spent $20 and had meals for days.

For the first time in my mission, I was actually looking forward to eating.

TUESDAY
I showed up to work satisfied. After my Currie’s run, I stopped off at Stewart’s Market, a locally owned store that has more of the everyday essentials I needed. It also has a huge selection of home-made datil sauces. They even make their own sausage.

With my ammunition in hand, I was able to drive right past Chili’s and create a surprisingly good dinner of cooked veggies over pasta. It’s a dopey cliché, but I could really taste the difference in how fresh the veggies were.

I’m a big bring-lunch-to-work guy. Saves money, and brown-baggin’ it will always be cool as hell. I have never been a bring-a-salad-to-work guy. But with a fridge full of veggies, I had to give it a shot. And despite the French-fry alarm ringing in my head, I managed to make it through the day.

For dinner, I cooked up some trigger fish I bought from Kyle’s. They get their fish mostly out of Mayport, and you know it’s fresh when they yank it right out of the ice they used to bring it to the store.

Dinners cooked: Two. Kitchen Fires: Zero.

WEDNESDAY
As a reward for surviving the first two days of eating locally, I decided to reward myself with lunch at one of my favorite restaurants. Pesky’s Baja Grill not only has some of the best Mexican food on the beach, it also uses local sources for its fish.

As I devoured my fish tacos, I silently thanked Cheech. Who knew he’d be right about his wacky, “food tastes better” theory?

Fresh sausage, some datil sauce, veggies and rice for dinner. Somebody call the Food Network.

THURSDAY
Big test. The Present Moment Café (review, pg. 41) is a restaurant providing “delicious, live, vegan, organic and unprocessed food.” Yeah well, I’m a carnivore. But if I was ever going to try Present Moment, this was the time.

Who knew? My Land and Sea Salad plate and Magic Drink were outstanding. I chuckled at the thought of Ruby Tuesday’s adding “Magic Drink” to its menu.

Dinner at Saltwater Cowboys was classic. It’s about as old-school North Florida as you can get, right down to the “Florida Cracker Combo” of frog legs, alligator tail and cooter (Get your mind out of the gutter – cooter is soft-shell turtle).

FRIDAY
Brown-baggin it rules. I wondered if Cheech would give me eating-local extra credit for lunching on leftovers.

For dinner, I capped off the week in style. No longer craving things like sodium bicarbonate, partially hydrogenated soybean oil and tricalcium phosphate, I actually looked forward to some grouper from Kyle’s, sourdough bread from Jeffrey’s and some green beans from Currie’s. With a whole freakin’ bottle of Vintner’s White from the San Sebastian Winery.

Oh, the joy of eating AND drinking locally.

***

If you are interested in Slow Food, please contact Richard Villadoniga at: rvilladoniga@yahoo.com. Or go to slowfoodusa.org.