From OPEN Restaurant

Shannon and I were pleasantly surprised about a month ago when we noticed that The Fishery had opened back up. The Fishery is certainly the best restaurant in Pacific Beach (although not the most affordable), and it had been closed for renovations for what had seemed like forever.

The renovated restaurant features a fair amount of new seating and a beautiful bar, as well as a slightly different menu. We were glad to see that they’re still making their amazing macadamia crusted halibut, and I was pleased to see that their menu now includes this little blurb:

We strive to support sustainable seafood, local farmers, independent local businesses, as well as the use of green products wherever possible.

It’s statements like this that make it easier for me to spend a little extra. I feel good knowing that I’m at a restaurant that actively supports a diverse bunch of local food workers, particularly people like fishermen and farmers who have strong incentives to maintain healthy seas and land.

But then I got thinking. What does it mean to “strive to support?” It could mean anything.

Before I say anything else, I should point out that I don’t know anything about how The Fishery sources its food. For all I know, they might get everything locally! The problem is that given the blurb on their menu, I just can’t tell if that’s the case or to what degree.

I sent an email to Jay Porter from The Linkery yesterday, asking if he was aware of any thought being put into developing a set of criteria that restaurants could meet to be considered a legitimate bastion of our local food economy. If restaurants meet those criteria, they could receive a certification of sorts. Perhaps that would solve my problem.

I heard back from him almost immediately:

I don’t know of anyone, but frankly I wouldn’t want to be certified anything. (You can ask the Green Restaurant Association to verify!). IMO certification builds opacity between the business and the customer, rather than transparency. Plus it inevitably puts in weird incentives to the business that aren’t really the priority for the business or the customer.

Instead of certification, radical transparency is IMO the way to accomplish the same goals. That’s why we go to such lengths to detail where all our food comes from. Or you go to a place like Laja where you literally see the food you’re gonna eat growing outside the restaurant, and then “local” really means something.

I agree with Jay that radical transparency is the right means to go about this, for the concerned customer’s (i.e. my) sake. Having a garden onsite would be ideal, but lacking that, having a more detailed menu and educated waitstaff can help as well. I’m often disappointed when waiters can’t tell me anything about their salmon other than how it’s prepared. It’s refreshing to talk to a waiter who knows a lot about what they’re serving.

Of course, Jay takes things further at The Linkery by writing excellent blog posts about where pork comes from and why they do things the way they do.

It was, after all, the same kind radical transparency sparked Alice Waters’s interest in local cuisine at a meal in Brittany in 1968. From The Green Gourmets:

I’ve remembered this dinner a thousand times… The chef, a woman, announced the menu: cured ham and melon, trout with almonds, and raspberry tart. The trout had just come from the stream and the raspberries from the garden. It was this immediacy that made those dishes so special.

There’s nothing more transparent than the air between your eyes and the garden.

It’s that same immediacy that my cousin Sam White and his colleague Jerome Wang have made people contemplate with the OPEN Restaurant project, in which diners are served the actual soil from which their food was grown.

What do you think? Would we foodies benefit from a certification system? Do you have any other examples of “open” restaurants? Are there any clear best practices for restaurants who want to be truly local?