locavore

Carrot soup with chamomile at Nobelhart & Schmutzig in Berlin. (Photo: Caroline Prange Photography.) On a nearly desolate street, behind a gold-plated doorbell marked “Bitte Klingeln,” you’ll find Berlin’s hottest restaurant: Nobelhart & Schmutzig. If the gritty location seems a bit bizarre — local food blogger Per Meurling called it “what quite possibly could be…

It's a Thursday night in Bordeaux's old town, but it's a young crowd gathering inside the glass-fronted restaurant Belle Campagne. This bi-level spot, started a year ago by two friends from catering school, has earned raves not only in the city but around the country, partially for its lively atmosphere and crowd-pleasing menu but largely…

Gone are the days of President Clinton’s fast food glorification. Now the White House is dabbling in home brews, Ann Romney is baking homemade Welsh cakes for the press and Food Republic’s own Marcus Samuelsson served avocado banana smoothies to exhausted RNC-goers. The national obsession with all things culinary hasn’t left politics untouched, and as…

There comes a point in every food-loving life when you have to face hard questions. Has your passion for seasonality taken a dark turn? Is your commitment to local produce alienating friends and loved ones? Do vendors at your local farmers’ market avoid eye contact when you approach? If so, you may be suffering from…

Foraging, it’s a popular topic. Some love it. Some call it the new F-word! And many are still trying to figure out what it is — and how it applies to both home-cooking and restaurant experiences. Foragers City Table, located in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, is the city's first restaurant devoted full-time to the subject.…

If you’re an avid farmers market shopper and celebrity chef devotee, Macy’s Great American Chefs Tour is worth knowing about. Starting today in Seattle with the awesome Tom Douglas, chefs from Macy’s Culinary Council will begin a local food-focused road trip. As the tour travels from city to city the celebrity chefs will seek out…

Local food was involved in not one but two brawls this week resulting in nine arrests and an eruption of incensed tweets. Chef-icons Thomas Keller of French Laundry in California and Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz in Spain told The New York Times that they prioritize taste over supporting local agriculture, inciting a debate that…

Welcome to Parachilna, South Australia — Population: 7. It’s hard to call it a town – it’s more of a way station – but it’s the only place you’ll come across between the Flinders Mountain Ranges and a salt lake called Lake Torrens. There’s just one business in Parachilna and it’s the Prairie Hotel, a…

When people hear about Australia’s Barossa Valley, they may not necessarily think about Napa in the early 1970s. In fact, they may not think of anything at all. Situated an hour north of Adelaide in South Australia, the Barossa feels like a time machine back to the beginning of America’s wine boom, with sleepy small…

When Chef Sean Brock opened Husk in Charleston in 2010, his goal was to create a restaurant that glorified Southern food and featured only ingredients grown below the Mason/Dixon line. While Husk has been an unqualified success, sourcing ingredients has proved to be a challenge. The first big stumbling block was finding good domestic olive…

UPDATE: Food Republic co-founder Marcus Samuelsson featured more details about the summit and photos on his website. Yesterday, the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce hosted the 2011 New York Green Summit, focused on sustainable eating. The summit, aptly titled “From Farm to Fork,” was divided into “five courses” of different speakers. H.R.H Prince Daniel of Sweden…

Welcome to the 12th installment of the Food Republic serial, The Worst Idea Ever?, in which chefs Seth Siegel-Gardner and Terrence Gallivan set out to open a restaurant in Houston, Texas as Pilot Light Restaurant Group. This time, the guys are thinking about how the seasonality trend will affect their upcoming restaurant. Seasonality has become…

Today, Sunday, Center for the Science in the Public Interest is hosting the first annual Food Day (no not World Food Day, that was last week). Food day is billed as a day when Americans are encouraged to put down the chips and soda and eat “real food” instead. The minds behind Food Day want…

Vertical farming. Rooftop gardens. A greenhouse on a boat. Pop-up farms on stalled construction sites. Farms in the beds of trucks. The urban farming movement is reaching a crescendo. Nowhere is this more evident than in New York, where there are over 500 community gardens and between 15 and 30 urban farms according to a…

Chefs from around the world attended last weekend's symposium at René Redzepi’s MAD Foodcamp in Copenhagen, including Charleston’s Sean Brock, whose restaurant Husk was just named the number one new restaurant in America by Bon Appétit. Brock is renowned not only for the strong bonds he has forged with his purveyors, but for the fierce…

Jim Denevan brought his Outstanding In The Field dinners to New York this week, starting with last night's event at Queens County Farm, with Food Republic co-founder Marcus Samuelsson tasked with going ultra-locavore as guest chef. One day after a hurricane swept through the region, the weather provided a perfect backdrop to an inspiring evening…

When people think about eastern Long Island, it's always Hamptons, Hamptons, Hamptons. But for the past five years, a cute little building on the other fork of Long Island has become a worthy competitor in itself for the glitz and glamour. The North Fork Table & Inn, headed up by former Gramercy Park pastry chef…

Inevitably when I spot a headline about eating in Portland I click on the link, eager to see which of my favorite restaurants made the cut, only to find that the article is not about Portland, Maine, but rather Portland, Oregon. I’m sure the Oregon Portland is terrific (I’ve never been), but in my book,…

“Michigan” and “dining destination” are not often seen in the same sentence, but Steven Grostick, executive chef at Toasted Oak Grill & Market in Novi, MI, is determined to change that. Grostick’s mantra, “I cook Michigan” leaves you wondering what “cooking Michigan” even means. As it turns out, it’s a focus on local ingredients (and…

When his 8-year-old twin girls were just babies, Hemi Weingarden’s wife came home from the grocery store with a berry yogurt for them. Weingarden opened the container and poured the yogurt into a neon bowl, only to see that the yogurt itself was brighter than the bowl. “It was basically glow in the dark,” he…

Let’s face it: no matter where you live, meeting people is hard. You can only do the bar thing so many times before you want to stab yourself with a cocktail straw. That’s why you need to get creative. Skip the book store (if those even still exist); pass on the “singles mixer” with your…

Where’s your beer from? Wine’s provenance makes the label — these grapes from that dirt — but beer’s is harder to trace. Barley doesn’t grow many places; it’s malted in even fewer. That means most beers, whether brewed in Boise or Boston, get their ingredients from the same spot. But local beer is still possible.…

In 2010, fans of Rob and Allie Levitt’s cooking were heartbroken when the married couple mysteriously up and left the Chicago restaurant they opened together, Mado. However, excitement began brewing in November as sustainable meat and charcuterie enthusiasts began passing rumors of the couple’s new venture — a whole beast, old-school butcher shop using all…

Here at Food Republic, we don't consider ourselves joiners — especially when it comes to the myriad Internet sales groups popping up all over the place. But we may make an exception for One Kings Lane. Why? Alice Waters, chef of Chez Panisse in Berkeley and champion of local and sustainable food is teaming up…