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Getting the Word Out PatTanner likes to tell the story of when she and I met. A food writer with a huge following, Pat came to Tre Piani in the late 1990s to interview me for one of her food columns. “A young chef making waves” is how she kindly explained her visit. But later that night she told her husband, Bill, what she really thought of me. “He’s a nice guy,” Pat said, “but I don’t think we really connected.” She was wrong, however. Pat and I became fast friends and for nine years were co-leaders of Slow Food Central New Jersey. From the beginning, I was determined to get Pat interested in the Slow Food movement—and not just because she is a top-notch food critic and restaurant reviewer. Plenty of critics have good reputations but often because they are flashy with words rather than culinary experts. I have always wondered who was reviewing the reviewers: as far as I can tell most of them can’t tell the difference between a soup and a sauce. No, I wanted Pat’s support because she is a serious food advocate who understands what it takes to bring high-quality food to the table. Her professional life began when she opened her own catering business and cooked the food for it, which not all food-business owners do. With that real-world experience behind her, she has gone on to write a newspaper food column, host a radio show, and become a lively presence on the web. She also leads seminars, gives talks, and makes frequent public appearances. When I decided to found a Slow Food chapter in central New Jersey, I knew that I needed to get the support of food pros: restaurant owners, farmers, small producers , and so on. But the movement also had to inspire the public. Otherwise, who would buy into the concept? Chapter organizers had to communicate the value of Slow Food to everybody, no matter who they were or where they were coming from. Who could do this? Pat Tanner. “When it came to developing our chapter and spreading the word on Slow Food, I saw my role as publicist,” Pat recalled. She lined up cookbook authors for our annual Food & Wine festivals and organized dinners and speakers at ethnic restaurants that featured Peruvian, Ethiopian, Bulgarian, 7  66  Turkish, and many other cuisines. She wrote welcome letters to new members. Most important, she got the media interested in us and our Slow Food activities. Pat stepped down as a chapter leader in 2009, yet she remains committed to the Slow Food movement. Our success proves, she believes, that great things can be accomplished in “tiny microscopic steps.” For instance, “the fact that Michelle Obama has planted an organic garden on the White House lawn—if you would have told me in 1999 that such a thing could have happened in a twelve-year span, I would have said, ‘No way!’” Getting the Non-Joiner to Join It was a coup to get Pat onto our Slow Food boat because she usually resists signing anybody’s roster. “I don’t join organizations of any kind,” she said. “But remember, back then, Slow Food’s slogan was ‘Defending the pleasures of the table.’” As a food advocate, she saw that goal as worthy of support. We organizers had come together from all professional corners. What we had in common was that we all believed that our culture’s infatuation with overprocessed, mass-produced food had gone far enough. It was time to remind people that another, better way was possible. Our palates were being robbed of “the pleasures of the table,” and we needed to return to supporting local producers who provided us with highquality , seasonal food. Pat has always seen Slow Food as more than a movement or a philosophical statement about food. She sees it as a foundational idea, one that used to reflect how most people lived. “Every immigrant group that came to the United States found ways to take what they had grown up with in the homeland and managed to cobble together whatever was at hand.” People brought with them traditions about preparing wholesome meals and assumed that good food should be available to everybody, even if it was not necessarily abundant. People were thoughtful and thrifty. They didn’t waste, but most of them didn’t want either. They knew who was producing and selling the...

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