Slow Food, Going Fast: Popular New Café Celebrates Local Ingredients

It wasn’t your ordinary BLT.

On March 30, when the 93rd customer of the day ordered lunch at the new Slow Food Café, the student chefs were nearly out of ingredients for their “Big, Local and Tasty” sandwich. What the customer got was a “bacon grilled cheese mash up.”

But the important thing was the bacon came from local farm Fountain Prairie, the cheese hailed from Madison’s Willy St. Co-op, the bread was locally baked, and the vegetables were purchased at the Dane County Farmers’ Market. To compensate for the menu change, the customer received a free brownie with a slice of sugared beet on top.

It was only the café’s second week of business, but word had spread fast. The basement dining hall of the Crossing was packed with students, professors and Madison residents drawn by the promise of a homemade, affordable meal made with local ingredients. Run by students in UW-Madison’s Slow Food chapter, the café was founded on the principles of eating locally and supporting small-scale agriculture.

“When you go to the grocery store, the food is so anonymous. You take stuff off the shelves and you don’t know where it comes from,” said Andrea Snow, one of three Slow Food interns who run the café. “You take a bite of a sandwich [here] and we’re more than happy to tell you who grew the lettuce you’re eating.”

The café’s rotating menu features sandwiches, soups, salad, desserts and coffee made on site with ingredients from local farmers. The eatery opened March 23 and served lunch every Wednesday through May 4. After a brief hiatus, the Slow Food chapter plans to re-open the café and serve lunch three days per week this summer and up to five days per week this fall, if all goes smoothly.

One goal of the project is to offer wholesome, locally grown food at reasonable prices (a sandwich with soup or salad costs $6; coffee is one dollar). Students said the café also provides an opportunity to bring consumers closer to every aspect of their food.

Eating locally grown food is a core tenet of the Slow Food movement, which began in Italy in the 1980s as a response to fast food and agribusiness. (Founder Carlos Petrini started the group when a McDonald’s restaurant opened near the Spanish Steps in Rome.) Today Slow Food members total 100,000 and the group has 13,000 chapters worldwide, according to slowfood.com. Supporters celebrate small-scale production methods, organic farming, traditional food products and regional culinary traditions.

“What we eat tells a story about who we are and where we come from,” said Heidi Busse, former co-chair and current member of Slow Food Madison. “It reminds us how we need to live and how we need to act in this world.”

The UW Slow Food Café, Busse said, embodies a shift in the movement toward a greater concern about food origin, preparation and co-creation.

“It seems like it’s moved from a movement of taste, education and talking about good food, to being more of a food producer, where people involved are actually making food and involved in the whole process,” she said.

Café Committee Coordinator Danny Spitzberg, who has helped lead the café planning process for the last couple years, said he hopes that by enjoying a good meal at the café, people will become more curious about their food and more involved in producing and preparing it.

“It’s not about making a speech,” Spitzberg said. “It’s on your plate. The food itself should speak.”

Every week, three interns and several volunteers plan the menus, buy ingredients from local farmers, cook in the Crossing’s industrial kitchen and serve the meal to paying customers. So far, Spitzberg said, the café’s costs have been completely covered by sales, and the group has earned extra money to invest in kitchen equipment.

One of Snow’s favorite aspects of running the café is meeting farmers at the market. On Saturday mornings, the group heads to the Dane County Farmers’ Market, where they chat with farmers and select food for the week’s meal.

“The people from Fountain Prairie… tell us about the opera they went to in Chicago last weekend, and we’ll chat about the café,” Snow said. “A lot of them really believe in what we’re doing and want to form relationships.”

She said she hopes eventually farmers will visit the café so customers can meet the people who grow their food.

“We want to introduce people to their farmers,” Snow said. “It gives students a chance to realize there are actual people behind the food they eat and that their choices impact these people’s lives.”

The group encourages customers to come to the café early and help with food prep, offering a free meal in exchange. The goal, Snow said, is to teach people skills so they feel encouraged to cook more often.

At the café’s launch March 23, diners packed seven industrial tables covered in light blue tablecloths and topped with comment cards. A few large potted plants from Home Depot brightened the basement dining hall.

Customers drank water from glass jars and chatted while they waited to hear their name called with their order.

In the kitchen, where about ten volunteers bustled between stoves and counters, Nina Simone’s “I shall be released” played from a speaker connected to an iPod.

As the visitors ate, some read newspapers or worked on homework. Others introduced themselves to their neighbors, bonding over mutual interests.

Many of the patrons came looking for a delicious, locally made meal.

“I feel better when I eat healthy,” said Kristine Omen, a UW-Madison junior who has visited the café both weeks since its launch. “I think it’s really important so you can feel good throughout the day, and it’s important for your future.”

Omen said it can be hard for students to eat healthy on campus, when they don’t have time to pack a lunch or money to buy a high quality meal.

“In one way it’s fortunate we have this campus with a gap in food service,” Spitzberg said. “We have a good opportunity to turn it backward.”

Anyone interested in volunteering with Slow Food can contact Laura Peterson, Volunteer Coordinator, at laura@slowfooduw.org.