Harvest inspires our critic's rant

[Robin Garr]

Harvest inspires our critic's rant

LEO's Eats with Robin Garr



For a change of pace this week, let's start with a rant. A political rant! A rant about food politics!

I don't want to say Michael Pollan or Mark Bittman are latecomers to the party. But I'm sure I'm not the only Boomer who woke up to the issues of food justice a generation earlier when I read Frankie Moore Lappé's "Diet for a Small Planet" and "Food First" back in the '70s, when being a "foodie" -a name not yet invented -was just becoming a thing.

The idea that there was a connection between stuffing our faces, feeding hungry people locally, fighting hunger around the world and pushing back against the food industry's excesses from Frankenfood chemistry to horrific concentrated animal feeding operations came as a new and exciting notion back then.

After I took the pulpit as the Louisville Times' dining critic in 1984 (30 years ago this past spring, yowza!), I was pretty darn disappointed to discover that you could read about these things, and think about these things, but you couldn't really eat this way in Louisville -not unless you grew and cooked your own stuff. I whined about it in print now and then, but in those days, few Louisville readers were ready to grasp what I was banging on about.

So I was mighty excited when Kathy Cary opened Lilly's in 1987, finally bringing to Louisville a locavore concept (another word not then invented) that celebrated regionally grown meats and produce, presented in a full-service restaurant with creative culinary chops and upscale flair.

Lilly's spawned few immediate imitators, though, and it would be another decade-plus before the first local farmers market came along, perhaps not coincidentally also on Bardstown Road.

Eventually, as Pollan and Bittman and many other writers came along, with movies like "Food Inc." and "Forks Over Knives" screening in mainline theaters, the idea of linking food, community and ethical consciousness finally gained traction.

I know I'm not the only one who has begun looking skeptically at what I eat and where it comes from. Feedlot beef, factory-farmed poultry and pork, and industrial dairy and eggs don't appetize me much any more.

I'm put off by the way the industry treats its animals and the way it treats its human working stiffs. And yeah, the threat of salmonella and listeria and e. coli, not to mention the unknown long-term effects of chowing down on "food" laced with growth hormones, herbicides, pesticides and genetically modified organisms, kind of puts me off my feed.

You, too?

Happily, just about every new eatery with a yen for a trend does farm-to-table these days. But I can't think of one with any deeper commitment than local farmer Ivor Chodkowski, who, with a bunch of associates, opened Harvest in NuLu just over three years ago.

Allowing a little wiggle room for, say, saltwater fish, or green leafy veggies in the winter, they shoot to have 80 percent of ingredients sourced within a 100-mile radius.

That's a lot to love, and my early reviews lavished praise on everything except possibly its NuLu-style noise level, a dull roar that acoustical pads do little to abate.

So it is more in sadness than anger that I have to report that recent Sunday brunch and weekday lunch visits have left me vaguely dissatisfied.

OK, it didn't suck. "Disappointing" covers it.


Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/harve ... itics-rant
And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/harvest-ins ... 0%99s-rant

Harvest Restaurant
624 E. Market St.
384-9090
http://harvestlouisville.com

Your experience sums it up for me.

The food is the most important element of a restaurant. If it can be done locavor-ish and farm to table-ish so much the better. Unfortunately, every restaurant I have ever dined at that really emphasized it has fallen short of the mark on taste. By emphasize, to be redundant, I mean that their promotional efforts tout those (admirable) traits above others.

There has to be one out there somewhere, I haven't been lucky enough to find it - yet.

[Robin Garr]

Unfortunately, every restaurant I have ever dined at that really emphasized it has fallen short of the mark on taste.

In fairness to Harvest, Chef Coby can and does do it. I suspect, though, that she's not there for the brunch/lunch shift.

You can't be there for every shift, so you need to hire and train staff that can execute at your level in your absence. Not a viable excuse for failure to execute.

I have only been to Harvest once, but I can agree with this review. A little underwhelming for the hype. But, Robin, it felt like you spent more time with your rant than you did your review. Balance!

[Robin Garr]

But, Robin, it felt like you spent more time with your rant than you did your review. Balance!

What fun is a balanced rant?

Honest question from an industry outsider: If I eat at a restaurant during the dinner service when the chef is present, what are the odds she's actually had anything to do with the creation of my dish? I've always assumed they were pretty small, as I couldn't imagine the chef actually cooking for every diner herself. So the idea that quality would suffer when the chef isn't in the building struck me as odd.

What am I missing?

[Robin Garr]

Honest question from an industry outsider: If I eat at a restaurant during the dinner service when the chef is present, what are the odds she's actually had anything to do with the creation of my dish? I've always assumed they were pretty small, as I couldn't imagine the chef actually cooking for every diner herself. So the idea that quality would suffer when the chef isn't in the building struck me as odd.

What am I missing?

I'll leave the fine points to our folks who work in kitchens daily, Jeff, but I think there's a difference between micro-management and leadership. The head chef doesn't need to micro-manage, but somehow it just seems to me that having the boss present during the dinner rush makes a difference.

A lot of it depends on the size of the restaurant. During my stints as head chef I worked the busiest shifts, usually working sautee and/or expediting, but we were a small brigade of about 4, so everyone worked. Likewise, during my stints as lower chef, the head chef was almost always working the line in some aspect.

I don't guess I've ever been good enough to work in a place where the head chef was a desk job, but I know they exist. I would prefer the head chef to be integral in my dining experience whenever possible.

Anyone that refers to Coby Ming as a desk job chef can duel with me at sundown.

[Robin Garr]

Anyone that refers to Coby Ming as a desk job chef can duel with me at sundown.

I don't think Ronnie was saying that, Nora ...

I'm not saying anything Nora likes of late, Robin

[Robin Garr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sONfxPCTU0

I've only been to Harvest once, and I agree with the review. The ingredients were fresh, and top quality, but the offerings were bland. I can grill locally-sourced steaks and burgers at home. I want something more, um, "prepared" than that when I spend $100+ for dinner. Wiltshire and Mayan Cafe use a lot of local ingredients also, but they do a much better job with flavor, IMO.

I've only been to Harvest once, and I agree with the review. The ingredients were fresh, and top quality, but the offerings were bland. I can grill locally-sourced steaks and burgers at home. I want something more, um, "prepared" than that when I spend $100+ for dinner. Wiltshire and Mayan Cafe use a lot of local ingredients also, but they do a much better job with flavor, IMO.

Not intending to be snarky, but why order steaks or burgers? I don't, normally, when I'm at restaurants, because I feel the same way. But Harvest, like most local gems, has plenty of other offerings.