Andrew Zimmern

Believe It or Not - There Is Something He Won't Eat

“I am riveted, I am nauseated, I have anxiety attacks. I am obsessed with this show.” Kelly Ripa on Andrew Zimmern‘s ‘Bizarre Food’
　
Andrew Zimmern has staked a brand all his own within food and travel journalism. His popular show “Bizarre Foods” visit’s remote corners of the world where the host enthusiastically consumes things that most USA viewers would probably never dream of eating. Because of that, many consider him extreme, “the Quentin Tarantino of the food media.” Yet, the New York Times thinks that his restraint defines him, calling Zimmern “less dangerous than Anthony Bourdain, less annoying than Rachel Ray and less cloying than Paula Dean.”

Everyone agrees though that he’s no ordinary food journalist. One of the first male students to graduate from Vassar, the New Yorker pursued an art history career on the East Coast before moving to Minnesota in 1991.
Today, he says that he was more of a fish-out-of-water at Vassar than he is today, even as the only white rodent and bug hunter in Equatorial jungles.

“No question, Vassar was the stranger experience and it was good training for what I do now,” he said laughing.

Besides his busy TV schedule, today he’s the spokesman for Target, where his title is “Meal Adventure Guide,” Pepto Bismol and Carson Wagonlit Travel and writes a regular column for Minneapolis - St. Paul magazine. His move to the Twin Cities changed his life in many another way though.
“Like everyone else I came to Hazelden (addiction treatment center in Center City, Minnesota) for treatment. Life got good, so I stayed and I’ve been sober for 17 years now.,” he explained.

Now he applies his risk taking behavior toward the pursuit of strange things to eat. His taste buds and gag mechanisms are not ordinary either though. He wolfs down putrefied flesh, guts and sex organs regularly in his travels, but can’t stomach a couple things that many people find easy to swallow.

“The only thing I do not eat is walnuts. I just can’t stand that pungent, acrid after taste and (Asian fruit) durian is more of that same thing. I’ve tried it a dozen times and none were palatable to me. I can get it down now, but the texture is something else. I know there’s a nature vs. nurture issue here but I have spent a lot of time wondering what it is about durian that makes it a seeming waste of my time, while eating the next odd jungle rodent gets my juices flowing,” he explained.

Of all the worldly preparations for sex organs, Zimmern said that the Chileans are the hands down masters.

“Fresh really maters in testicles and those in Chile were harvested, peeled, sliced, laid on a plough share over a wood fire and pan fried with onions, garlic, chilies. They were extraordinary,” he recalled.
He’s also learned to discriminate amongst rotten forms of flesh.

“When it comes to putrefied protein, fish beats mammal meat hands down. But the best single putrefied dish I ever tasted was the “dama mein” I had in Taiwan. The pork was cut in noodle-like strips, rolled in cooked rice and stuffed in a jar for 30 days. What you get is something like pork sauerkraut. Then it’s sliced thin and served over ice. The worst was in Morocco, I think because the putrefied meat was a confit - it was cooked in its own putrefied fat, multiplying all that is unpleasant about such things.

After 17 years in the Midwest, Zimmern says one local dish is as confounding bizarre as anything he’s discovered in desperate jungles or deserts.

“No question, lutefisk is the weirdest Midwestern food. I have never been given a reasonable answer as to why the Scandinavians do this. Why not just re-hydrate the (dried) cod without using lye? My own personal theory is that they were so penurious that that used lye to increase shelf life even longer,” he mused.

Beyond the shock factor of dining, Zimmern studies food cultures with urban and suburban application in mind = particularly in economically troubled times.

“A ton can be learned from the Third World‘s food. We’re an extremely selfish, results-oriented, destination-oriented, convenience-driven society and we’ve been eating high on the proverbial hog for too long. We gave up snout-to-tail eating over 100 years ago. We gave up eating whole vegetables long ago too and gave up eating a number of other vegetables in any form. We stopped eating a grain-oriented diet and switched to a high protein diet. We are the only country in the world where a 15 ounce serving of protein-rich food is the centerpiece of the dinner plate. No where else.

“And all that was driven by cheap food and easy living, which might be over for awhile. Change is coming. I know Des Moines folks won’t start foraging in the woods for grubs and bugs to augment the protein supply on the dinner table, but there’s a ton to learn.

“In Singapore last week I ate fish head curry, a classic there and one of the greatest dishes in the world. Two of my cameramen had never seen anything like it - that’s typical here. Waste is typical. Singaporeans get three great meals out the same portion of fish from which Americans just cut out a 12 ounce filet and throw away all the rest - and in the case of fish heads, they throw away the best food, in all aspects of what is best - taste, texture, nutritional value,” Zimmern said.

He says that valuations in foods may turn upside down.

“The last ten years, the hottest restaurant trend has been, to state it broadly - snout to tail, natural organic, farm to table fine dining. People pay a premium in fine restaurants to eat like their more frugal ancestors ate 100 years ago. At Blue Hill in New York City, they pay $100 for a plate of trotters and roasted farm vegetables. People all over America now pay a premium for fresh, seasonal menus that were a matter of necessity to our immediate ancestors. Yet, farmers markets and CSA’s are offering this kind of food at relatively deep values. Those kinds of options have been relatively ignored in the recent past, but I think people will begin paying far more attention to them now.

“I recently returned from Russia where I saw the remnants of Stalin’s dacha system - one aspect of which was that everyone produced a percentage of the food he consumed. That’s not going to happen here, but people will start considering such options as they look to cut their budgets. The era of conspicuous food waste is over. Six to eight companies control something like 78% of all food production in the USA, that’s over as people look to options closer to home.

“We forgot, as we urbanized, about the displaced animals that propagated the foods Native Americans used to forage and eat. Economic security requires diversity of crops as of other assets. One crop solutions are no solutions -because the failure of one crop can become total failure. Crisis could force us to farm and eat healthier. There are opportunities in the woods. In Minnesota and Maine I found a lot more people eating native American vegetables, ferns besides fiddlehead ferns, marvelous little shoots that taste like cucumber and look like radishes, ramps in more southern climates,” he said.

In His Pantry

“I have 300 kinds of mustard. I love salt fish so I have lots of that, at least five natural fish sauces. Malaysian are the best. I am always buying chilies, both fresh and dried and ground.”

“My four year old son eats everything except worms. He had a book that made him adverse to worms. I got to him before the books did with other foods.”

“If I spit, it’s shown on the show. We reveal all. I live my brand. They have to drag me out of the places I go to eat bizarre foods. I love my food life and I don’t think most people do. How can they when the only eat three kinds of fish, only eat the center cuts of meats?”

photos courtesy of Andrew Zimmern

Why Do People Hate Monsanto?

Monsanto - Crown Prince of the New Robber Barons

We keep hearing an old story that should have died years ago: An organic farmer invites his children’s city cousins to visit. After the urban kids reveal that they eat McDonalds French fries twice a day, the farmer decides to experiment by having his own kids lay down in a field next to the city kids. After awhile, the farm kids are swatting away potato beetles but not single beetle comes near their city cousins.

True believers of this story are aware of some little known history. In the 1990’s, Monsanto released a “new leaf” potato genetically engineered with enough Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to repel potato beetles. McDonalds bought new leaf potatoes for its fries. No studies were ever done on the long term effects on people who consumed large quantities of such potatoes. We have never met any such storytellers who could identify an actual farmer who performed this test, so the story was always probably apocryphal. It’s undoubtedly so today because the new leaf potato never gained more than a five per cent share of the market, McDonalds quit buying them back in 2000 and Monsanto retired them soon afterwards.

The story lives on though because it incorporates the main ingredients of an urban (rural) legend - a worrisome hypothesis, an entertaining application and a logical conclusion. Therefore, it keeps finding new tellers among the growing tribe of those who are suspicious of industrial agriculture and all it represents.

Monsanto is the new Standard Oil, the corporation that typifies today the same relentless dominance of its industry that John D. Rockefeller’s company did in the Gilded Age. Like the old robber barons, Monsanto has successfully enlisted government support that helped them privatize profits while socializing the real costs of their products through subsidies, write-offs (of health and environmental damage) and ruthless stifling of both dissent and competition. Because both Monsanto and Standard Oil extracted the raw materials of their new technologies from the earth, with only a secondary regard for sustainability, they have been equally vilified by conservationists, naturalists and anyone who ever got in the way of their will.

In historical hindsight, it’s hard to hate Standard Oil. Few of us would choose to return to the days of whale oil lighting, steam engine transportation and pre-plastic economies. Though civilization might have found its way through the 20th century without Rockefeller’s indomitable guidance, it surely would not have done so as quickly or brightly. If governments turned their eyes away from the tactics of the old robbers barons it was because they had sold themselves as agents of a future prosperity that would trickle down to all. Monsanto similarly enjoys a privileged access through revolving doors of government because they have sold themselves as agents for universal prosperity.

Probably another hundred years will tell for sure but Monsanto has already convinced their farmer customers that they are “feeding the world” through higher yields, “saving the environment” with reduced use of pesticides and, lately, “promoting sustainability” by using seeds that are genetically modified to require less water. (That latter message has particularly irked the audience of National Public Radio where it’s been played via Monsanto sponsorship announcements.) On paper, those sound like reasonable endorsements for Monsanto’s technological innovations. Yet, that company has alienated so many people that it’s hard to find folks within the organic community who don’t believe Monsanto’s claims are disingenuous. How on earth did they manage to do that? Let’s begin to count the ways.

1. Impudently patenting mother earth. Monsanto, more than any other company, appropriated the concept of intellectual property rights to control farmers. To purchase their genetically modified seeds, a farmer must sign an “end-user agreement” that limits what he can do with them. Agreements are considered necessary to protect intellectual property, justifiably precluding replications that make the seeds unique. However, Monsanto and their ilk also explicitly forbid the use of the seeds for independent research. Scientists can be sued if they examine whether such genetically modified crops lead to unintended environmental side effects. Thus the only research that ever gets published in peer-reviewed journals is that approved by industrial seed companies. According the Scientific American, “In a number of cases, experiments that had the implicit go-ahead from the seed company were later blocked from publication because the results were not flattering.”

2. Bullying law suits. Monsanto’s lawyers spent a decade tracking down farmers who might have saved seeds for replanting, like responsible farmers have done since civilization began. They sued them and broke them. They also sued a number of organic dairy farmers who advertised that their milk came from cows that had not been fed bovine growth stimulants. Monsanto, which owned the most commercially successful such stimulant rBGH, claimed such ads implied there was something wrong with their product. With control over most research, Monsanto almost always won such cases.

3. Sterilizing Mother Earth. In 1998, the infamous US Patent # 5,723,765 threatened to change farming forever by giving Delta & Pine Land Co. rights to a new technology that sterilizes seeds, as well as any other seeds contaminated by them. Named genetic use restriction technology (GURT) and nicknamed The Terminator, it was frightfully unpopular in countries like India where farmers still primarily grow foods with seeds saved from previous crops. Monsanto pledged a moratorium on commercialization of Terminator technology but then it bought Delta & Pine Co. The Terminator would free Monsanto lawyers from hunting down farmers who save their seeds, so their pledge is viewed cynically by many folks.

4. Sterilizing Mother Earth - unless. GURT’s latest form, called reversible transgenic sterility, is nicknamed The Zombie and appears to be Monsanto’s way around its pledge. Whereas Terminator technology produces plants with sterile seeds, Zombie technology requires an annual chemical application (patented and sold by guess whom) to trigger fertility.

5. Bullying the media. Monsanto’s influence has long managed to kill stories unfavorable to the company, That is most famously documented in the movie “The Corporation” and in Jeffrey Smith‘s book “Genetic Roulette and Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods.” Both documented a 1990’s case in which a Fox-affiliated television station in Florida killed a thoroughly researched story about ill effects from milk produced by dairy cows given Monsanto’s rBGH.

6. Blatantly influencing FDA and USDA policy. Revolving doors swing between industry and government agencies all over the world but Monsanto’s manipulation of them has left its critics with jaws agape. Anyone who thought things might change in the Obama Administration was dismayed by this summer’s appointment of Monsanto’s former Vice President for Public Policy as Special Assistant to the FDA Commissioner - for Food Safety. Michael Taylor is credited with ushering Monsanto’s rBGH through the FDA regulatory process and into the milk supply - unlabeled. He is also regarded as responsible for the FDA’s decision to treat genetically modified organisms as “substantially equivalent” to natural foods and therefore not requiring any safety studies. That “substantially equivalent” ruling allowed the FDA to ignore evidence that genetically engineered foods are in fact quite different from natural foods and pose specific health risks.

With Taylor back in charge of implementing whatever food safety laws Congress might pass, Monsanto’s opponents are growing. They now have an entire line of anti-Monsanto T-shirts (www.zazzle.com/monsanto+tshirts). Most ask people to trust GMO’s based on past performances of products Monsanto would like us to forget - agent orange, P.C.B., aspartame, etc. Our favorite says “Soil is Soul” and “Monsanto deals in dirt.” That’s why many of the others are too dirty for us to print.

What Did Your Meat Eat?

Grass Fed or Grain Fed, and Why It Matters

How do you want your food? Free ranged, or confinement? Genetically modified, or natural? “Enhanced,” or pure? With or without growth hormones and antibiotics?

There are already too many choices involved in providing healthy, conscientious foods for your family. Now add “grass fed, or grain fed” to the list, and then qualify it, because it’s legal to advertise some “grass fed” meats that are finished with grain diets.

Why should you care what your meat ate anyhow? The answer depends on whom you ask.

The Case for Grass

Those of us with only one stomach can’t digest grass. Cows are different. They have a double gutted system which includes a 45 gallon fermentation tank called the rumen. This converts cellulose into protein and fat, using stomach bacteria as a catalytic converter.Until the 20th century, virtually all beef was grass fed. In American supermarkets today, it’s nearly impossible to find any beef that didn’t come from a feedlot. However, to convert the cow’s natural digestive process, man had to mess with nature. Francis Thicke, an organic dairy farmer in Fairfield and candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, puts it simply.“Grass loves by nature to stay in one place. Cows love by nature to graze. The madness of modern agriculture reversed the process,” he told us.
In 100 years, corn has shortened the average life of a steer from 5 years to 15 months, while adding body fat to its carcass. Grass can’t take a baby calf from 80 to 1,200 pounds in a year and a quarter. For that matter, corn can’t do the job alone either - it takes protein supplements, antibiotics and growth hormones.

Michael Pollan wrote about the consequences for cows taken off pastures and put into feedlots:

1.) Their new diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, so rumination all but stops. Then gasses inflate the rumen like a balloon, pressing against the animal's lungs. Unless action is promptly taken (forcing a hose down the esophagus), the bloated animal suffocates;

2.) Corn turns cows’ rumens unnaturally acidic, causing them to pant, salivate, paw at their bellies and eat only dirt. This can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of their immune system.

This has further consequences for meat eaters - the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Acidic rumens breed pathogenic E coli bacteria. Unheard of before the 1980s, E coli now lives happily in the intestines of most U.S. feedlot cattle. According to Pollan, the microbes that find their way into hamburger used to get killed off by human stomach acids, but by acidifying cow guts with corn, modern agriculture destroyed the food chain’s natural defense system.

Other health arguments for grass fed beef include much higher omega-3 fat counts, more vitamin E and conjugated linoleic acid, a nutrient associated with lower cancer risk. Thicke sums it up.

“Our cows harvest their own food and spread their own fertilizer and they love their work. This makes more sense than the modern mode of hauling fertilizer and feed in trucks making round trips,” he said.

The Case for Grain

Iowa was built on corn grown to feed animals, giving Americans the highest powered diet in the history of the world, at bargain prices. Grain fed meat costs less to produce, at least with all the current political subsidies in place.Some environmental and humane advantages of grass fed livestock are debatable. Cattle raised on pasture produce more methane than feedlot animals. Even with U.S. beef cattle spending only six months outside feed lots, huge parts of the American West are used for grazing livestock that pollute water, erode topsoil, kill fish and displace wildlife. Bringing cows to market weight on rangeland alone would multiply the damage. The USDA's Animal Damage Control (ADC) program was established in 1931 to eradicate, suppress, and control wildlife considered detrimental to grazing livestock. Opponents dubbed ADC “All the Dead Critters” and “Aid to Dependent Cowboys,” so the federal government changed the name to “Wildlife Services.”

Government “services” include poisoning, trapping, snaring, denning, shooting, and aerial gunning. In “denning,” government agents pour kerosene into a den and ignite it, burning young critters alive. Among the animals intentionally killed are badgers, black bears, bobcats, coyotes, gray fox, red fox, mountain lions, opossum, raccoons, striped skunks, beavers, nutrias, porcupines, prairie dogs, black birds, cattle egrets, and starlings. Animals unintentionally killed include pets and endangered species. The agency, whose motto is “Living with Wildlife,” intentionally kills more than 1.5 million a year.

This prompted a bumper sticker that reads “Wildlife Services, “Living with (Dead) Wildlife.”

In the Pudding

Most people think corn-fed beef is superior, but that is a matter of taste. Corn-fed cows develop well-marbled flesh, which lends a melt-in-the-mouth texture and a softer flavor that most American and particularly Japanese diners prefer. Grass fed beef is leaner and has a heavier flavor, preferred by traditional diners in parts of Europe, particularly among those who chew more than the average American.

Generally speaking, because of its lower fat content, steaks and roasts of grass fed meat taste better undercooked, rare or medium rare. For this reason, burger is by far the most popular form of grass fed meats. Jerky is also a crowd pleaser.

Buying Grass Fed Meat

Iowan Steve Wallace has assembled a coalition of ranchers who raise cattle fed 100% grass diets. Wallace Farms is adding new family farmers to the group, to increase production. Grasstravaganza, Thankful Harvest and Klinge Farms also offer grass fed Iowa beef.

Some Iowa buffalo and elk ranchers offer meat that is grass fed, too, but sometimes these animals also eat grain. Heartland Elk eat only grass and hay unless drought intervenes.

Grasstravaganza beef can be found occasionally at the Downtown Des Moines Farmers’ Market. New City Market at 48th and University sells Wallace Farms burger, steaks and roasts year around. All these ranchers sell directly to the public via mail order.

Grasstravaganza
641-449-3254, grassfedmeat@yahoo.com.

Klinge Farms
563-783-2456

Thankful Harvest
712-365-4433, tagerman@netllc.net

Wallace Farms
630-466-8723
info@wallacebeef.com

Heartland Elk
Metro Market
2200 Woodland
heartlandelk@hotmail.com

Iowa Beef: Rekindling an Epic Romance

There’s no denying the power of beef. The word itself is a synonym for substance. Politicians don’t ask, “Where’s the bran?” During the second half of the 19th century, beef became an international obsession and a status food which transformed the American range into the world’s largest feed lot. Between the Civil War and 1880, Midwest cattle populations increased 30 times. Because Iowa’s fertile soil grew the most grain, the state’s beef became the gold standard of the new food economy, when food drove all economies.

For a century, the status of Iowa Beef extended to New York City steak houses and beyond. In 1959, current Des Moines restaurateur Harry Bookey, then 11, told Russian Premiere Nikita Khrushchev that the USSR might have a edge in satellite technology but that our beef was superior. Khrushchev, a staunch Russian chauvinist, conceded the point.

When Khrushchev visited here, “Iowa Beef” represented the culmination of one of the great romances in the histories of both agriculture and human migration. Once Europeans got word about the fertility of Iowa’s black soil, immigrants flocked across oceans, mountains and hostile prairies to realize the American dream of owning land from which they could make a good life. By the end of the 19th century, those immigrants made Iowa a rich state built on fields of grain and pastures of plenty. The wealth of that romance was self contained. Fields produced corn in such abundance that farmers fed it to cattle who had grazed their youth away in clover. Those corn finished cattle moved short distances to packers and lockers. Iowa Beef was birth-to-burger Iowan and famous for its superior marbling.

Brisket at The Q in West Des Moines

Big changes came by the 1980’s, after it became more economical to ship grain out west, where land was cheaper, and finish cattle there instead of on Iowa farmland that could be plowed over and planted with corn and beans. By the end of the 20th century, most industrial batches of hamburger came from multiple plants, multiple states and even multiple continents.

Statistics tell the story. In 1970, 70 % of Iowa farmers raised cattle. Today less than a third do. Iowa led the nation in beef production between World War II and the 1980’s, peaking in 1969 at 7 million head of cattle. This year our inventory is around 3.8 million, up 40 % from ten years ago but now less than 4 % of nation’s herd. Despite that big increase in the last decade, our feedlot population is now at a post World War II low - 1.8 million. That suggests Iowa has a cow brain drain, its bright young calves are leaving the state. The further the center of the beef universe got from Iowa, the more its luster dulled. American beef consumption dropped by a quarter in the last decade as cholesterol paranoia and burger borne pathogens, from industrial plants out west, scared consumers.

A number of signs suggest that Iowa beef is making a comeback: It’s now the era of the locovore as fresh and local foods are trendy in culinary, political and medical circles. Both the federal government and Illinois have begun funding significant incentives to encourage more local production of foods. Stories are rife about reopening Iowa Best Beef, the non kosher arm of Agriprocessors of Postville, as well as the farmer-owned Iowa Quality Beef company of Tama.

Carpaccio at Fleming's in West Des Moines

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey keeps a close watch on beef trends.

“Nationally the beef herd is as low as it has been in the last 3 decades,” he said, adding that Iowa cattlemen have been working on a South Dakota model of owning cattle from birth to marketing though Iowans have yet to put together a viable business plan. Northey thinks that ethanol could figure prominently in increasing Iowa’s feeder herd.

“We are seeing more cattle feeding in Iowa again, in part because Iowa has an abundance of distillers grain due to ethanol production in the state. This makes wonderful cattle feed and makes the cost of feeding very competitive with feeding costs for cattle in other parts of the country. It is reasonable to expect that if more production would come back to the state that we may see more meat processing again in the state,” he said.

Atlantic’s Alan Zellmer is taking advantage of such distillers grain to raise Iowa cattle of such quality that they are again attracting overseas attention. Early this decade he started raising wagyu, a Japanese breed that is legendary for its marbling and its healthy profile of good cholesterols.

"When we started this project eight years ago, all the beef was raised for the Japanese market. Now it's almost entirely local, domestic," he said, adding that, in late September the market for high end steaks started coming back from a year long slump. Steakhouses had been hit harder than any other segment of the restaurant business after the stock market crash last October.

Pete Woltz of Timber Ridge in Osceola also finishes beef that nutritionists love. He buys Iowa calves and puts them in his Clark County pastures, supplementing their grass diets with a flax seed, vitamin E and glutens.

“Our cattle are given no antibiotics, no growth hormones, and no feed additives. We began this project about 2 years ago. During that time Iowa State University testing has shown our beef to contain nearly five times the amount of ALA omega 3's as corn fed cattle, 25% more unsaturated fats,” said Woltz, who directly markets in Iowa.

In Central Iowa, suburban sprawl challenges the locovore and the cattleman. LaVonne Griffieon’s family have been raising Limousin cattle in Ankeny since the 1960‘s. They began marketing their beef directly this year by opening The Farm Shed, a store on their property. Griffieon says it’s a matter of survival for a way of life.

Short ribs at Alba in Des Moines

“Thirty years ago this farm was 3 miles north of Ankeny. Now its surrounded on three sides by subdivisions. Ankeny has annexed 7000 acres of prime farmland in the last six years,” she cautioned.

Francis Thicke, who is running against Northey in next year‘s election, says a pork company has created a model that could work for Iowa cattlemen.

“What may be possible is for Iowa beef producers to create new markets – independent of the consolidated meatpacking industry – for high-quality Iowa beef that commands a premium price. A model for that is Niman Ranch Pork, through which Iowa pork fills a national demand for premium pork products. One possibility for a premium market that could be developed by Iowa beef producers is grass-fed beef,” he said.
Limousin also figure in a trend that resembles that model and that could restore prestige to Iowa cattle farming.

Red veal is red hot, supported by the growing demand for healthier and humanely raised meats. The Strauss Free Raised Veal company has been growing a humanely raised line by integrating farmers committed to their model, much like Niman Ranch has done with pork. Strauss farmers raise Limousin calves, the preferred breed for top of the line veal, with mother cows out doors on natural diets. Most industrial veal is raised in confinement, on formula diets that restrict their intake of iron - to turn their meat white. Red veal now commands prices that make it a delicious option to shipping calves out west for finishing. Strauss Veal’s president explained why.

Red veal chop at Sbrocco in Des Moines

“ As America’s proverbial bread-basket, Iowa producers have unlimited opportunities to increase the value of their livestock by responding to the demand for traceability, all natural, locally produced and locally fed, grass finished and more. Non-traditional markets are posing huge opportunities,” said Randy Strauss.

A number of the state’s finest chefs believe in the magic of Iowa Beef. Rube’s Steakhouse made a national name serving beef they raised themselves in Montour, Iowa. They also have supplied other steakhouses, such as Jesse’s Embers. Caffrey’s Steakhouse also uses an all Iowa line. Andrew Meek at Sbrocco features beef from Kristine and Ryan Jepsen’s Grass Run Farm in Dorchester, a certified organic pasture raised and grass finished farm. Matt Steigerwald of Lincoln Café exclusively uses Iowa beef: wagyu from Majinola Meats; and grass fed from the Jepsen’s farms. George Formaro has used Vande Rose Farms’ all Hereford beef from Oskaloosa plus the Iowa Best line at Centro, Django and Gateway Market Cafes. Court Avenue Brewing Company and BOS use Vande Rose‘s beef too. Dean Richardson of Phat Chef’s likes beef raised and finished on Calhoun County family farms where he grew up. Troy Trostel at Greenbriar is currently using Majinola’s wagyu as he waits for his long time Iowa beef suppliers, Iowa Best Beef, to reopen.

One new development has long term potential. Tenderizing technologies can now soften tough cuts without marinating. That’s why you see many new steaks - Denver, Cordelico, Cabrosa - at the supermarket. Many of those cuts (flap meat, ball tip, etc.) used to become burger. That’s suggests a message Iowa Beef could market - Why go out (of state) for burger when you can come home to steak?

Andrew Meek & Strauss Veal - Back to the Future

Andrew Meek is the bellwether of Des Moines’ restaurant renaissance. This city’s prestige grew in direct relationship with the introduction of good regional products in its best cafés. Meek advocated more of those than anyone else. At Sage, he was among the first to use Niman Pork, La Quercia prosciutto, Northern Prairie chevre and Sheeder Farms poultry - the fouding quartet of Central Iowa’s artisan food revival. He introduced Des Moines to Malloy Game Birds, Grass Run Farm’s beef, Nueske’s cured meats and Christopher Elbo chocolates. Meek designed entire dinners to feature Templeton Rye whiskey and Sunstead Farms tomatoes.

After closing Sage last year, he could have easily skated on his reputation. Recent visits to Sbrocco suggest he‘s still pushing the envelop.
Sbrocco looks like a good fit for Meek. This wine bar is the most sophisticated venture of Full Court Press, a local company that invigorated downtown with a half dozen distinctive, independent restaurants. Riedel stemware, vintage jazz, and a good, affordable wine list draw sippers and diners to an historic Court Avenue building remodeled with salvaged heirlooms and funky style. Copper ceiling tiles have been welded into bar tops, Deco banquettes escaped the Embassy Club and stained glass windows found refuge from several churches. Two things from the pre-Meek era might be missed. A cheese station made way for more tables and home made breads disappeared altogether. There was no bread service at all.

Lunch options ranged widely. Tempura battered halibut cheeks & frites, Meek’s signature New Bedford scallops (with cauliflower puree and cider syrup), and “Savannah style” crab cakes with pommery mustard sauce all showed off the chef’s exceptional Rolodex - dockside contacts he maintains from his previous life in Savannah. Braised Niman meatballs in La Quercia prosciutto red sauce, butternut squash ravioli, and beef brisket lettuce wraps all flaunted his Iowa stewardship. The chef’s entrees are anything but meek. In two recent tastings around town (of duck and short ribs), Sbrocco’s offerings were the heftiest. Short ribs featured Grass Run Farm’s beef, with a celeriac-potato mash.

A duck entrée featured Fox Hollow Farm’s mallard breast, larger and fattier than others. It revealed Meek’s tail to beak talents, with duck confit, duck demiglace and a mushroom cherry risotto. The new piece de resistance is Meek’s latest discovery - a red veal chop from Strauss Veal.

Red veal is the new old thing - raised the way all veal was before World War II - outdoors with their mothers. In the 1950’s “white veal” was invented by weaning boy calves a few days after birth, confining them so they couldn’t graze, and feeding them an iron deficient formula that made them anemic. Many ranchers tethered them to be sure they didn't graze on any iron rich grasses. They even monitored and restricted their drinking water, lest it carried iron. Insidious marketers spun the resulting pale, flavorless flesh as a good thing.

Served with pain perdu and wild mushrooms in a veal and quince demiglace, Meek’s chop looked so good that strangers at the next table asked about it with envy. I shared and all agreed it had bold, spectacular flavor. So, I tracked the source. A few miles east of Dubuque (magically without snow cover like the rest of Iowa),

I found a jolly Strauss farmer named Barry Brodbeck running the most idyllic farm I’ve ever seen. Limousin calves and their mom’s roamed nine different cliff side pastures of 50 to 90 acres each, nursing, grazing and drinking from streams. Limousin cows came to the US from France in the 1970's and are the preferred veal calf.

Brodbeck said his calves live months longer than most industrial veal calves. Plus, they only have "one bad day in their lives." All Strauss farmers follow the same protocols that Barry does. Sort of like Niman Ranch pork farmers do.

Meek is the first Iowa chef to use Strauss Veal. Mario Batali, Wolfgang Puck, Art Smith and Emeril Lagasse are among the more celebrated fans of the product. Tony Bourdain recently spent two days, with his camera crew, at Strauss, so look for them on one of his upcoming episodes of "No Reservations."

Sbrocco
208 Court Ave., 282-3663
Mon. - Sat. 11a.m. - 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. - 10 p.m.

Best & Worst of the Decade in Des Moines

When the last decade began, few people argued with a New York food critic’s assessment that “a gourmet trip across Iowa is non-stop.” At decade’s end, more semifinalists for the James Beard Award as Midwest’s Best Chef came from Des Moines than all but one other city (Minneapolis). In between, our food world turned upside down. Fishing moved indoors, hog farming returned outdoors. Cows were allowed to eat grass again and humans began to drink it. Iowa’s emerging wine industry survived the Chinese lady beetle while genetically modified seeds overcame the scorn of Europe to dominate Iowa agriculture. Best of all, an artisan food movement made Iowa products like La Quercia, Niman Pork, Eden Farms, Templeton Rye, Majinola, Sutliff, Cedar Ridge, Vande Rose and Northern Prairie into renowned brands of quality.

Earlier this month, the National Restaurant Association rated “locally grown entrees” as the number one food trend of 2009, followed by “locally sourced meat & seafood,” and “sustainability.” Cityview and its sister Relish rated those three things as Des Moines’ top food trends seven years ago. Foodwise, this city spent the 00’s way ahead of the national curve. That took individual vision and entrepreneurial fortitude, the best of which follows:

As bread rises from yeast, Des Moines’ culinary revival began in two bakeries. George Formaro reconstructed a Sicilian brick oven bakery on the southside while Joe and Steve Logsdon built a state of art French bakery on the east side. Together these “Catalysts of the Decade” spawned South Union Bakery Café, Centro, Django, Gateway Market Cafe, Basil Prosperi, Lucca and La Mie.

Renaissances can’t live by bread alone. Formaro and the Logsdons’ genii were sustained by entrepreneurs whose visions covered a broader aesthetic. Minimalist architect Kirk Blunck preserved the historic integrity of East Village. His designs for Basil Prosperi and Lucca made those cafés into anchors of that neighborhood revival. Pam & Harry Bookey defied the city-endorsed forces of rubble lust to save the Temple of the Performing Arts while creating Centro with Formaro. The Bookeys would later give Court Avenue its defining restaurant - Dos Rios. Blunck and the Bookeys were the “Visionaries of the Decade.”

Centro was “Restaurant of the Decade” for reviving the concept that downtown could again be the heart of Central Iowa, with coal oven pizza, chic trappings and a dedication to fresh & local foods.

Formaro was the “Chef of the Decade” for being the face and soul of South Union Bakery and Deli, Centro, Django, Gateway Market Cafe and so much more.

All those visions might not have found financing were it not for a gang of friends collectively known as Full Court Press (FCP), the “Pioneer of the Decade.” When venture capital for local restaurants was directed toward “proven” franchise operations, FCP gave The 50309 a distinctive culinary personality. With sweat equity, they created Royal Mile, Hessen Haus, High Life Lounge, El Bait Shop, Fong's Pizza and Sbrocco while disproving the bankers’ myth that only cookie cutter operations were worth risk. FCP likely enabled other neighborhood developments like those that brought Café di Scala and Gateway Market to Sherman Hill), or those of our “Entrepreneur of Decade,” the Manuel Mora family, who parlayed a small tienda and café into La Tapatia supermarket and its adjoining strip mall.

The “Story of the Decade” was the curious magnetism that attracted so many owner-chefs to Des Moines from the American South and even further away. Doug Smith (Cosi Cucina), Jeremy Morrow (Bistro 43, Star Bar, Azalea, etc.), Gary Hines (Bistro 43, Bistro Montage), Andrew Meek (Sage, Sbrocco), Don Hensley (Danielle) and Rob Beasley (Varsity) all came from Dixie and raised the bar for fine dining here. Ephraim Malag (Oak Room), Miyabi Yamamoto (Miyabi 9), Liam Anivat (Cool Basil, etc.), Mao Heineman (King & I), Jesus Ojeda (El Chisme), Rosa Martinez (La Rosa) and Mark Lijadu (Jasmine Bowl) came further to upgrade our ethnic cuisine.

That story beats out the uglier stories that garnered more headlines while vainly denying the reality that America's dependence on artificially cheap food comes with immigration problems: the terrible Swift raids in Marshalltown that displaced mothers from nursing babes among other scandals; the fiasco that was Rubashkin's in Postville.

The “Worst Idea” of the decade sprung from the Des Moines Public School System, which centralized its cafeterias, at huge expense, and expanded bussing to include the food our kids ate. That converted school lunches from homemade to reheated, while driving students off campus to fast food outlets.

Top 10 Questions About Sustainability and Pop Culture

1.) Why do universities do so little, often less than nothing, to support sustainability in their most visible outlets - sports arena concession stands?

2.) Why do governments regulate and test raw foods, especially dairy, so much, and processed foods so little?

3.) Why is it still assumed that "bragging" justifies any kind of claim in advertising?

4.) Why don't stockholders exert more pressure on big ag corps to do the right thing, instead of just bolden the bottom line?

5.) Is there a politician in America, with any clout, who isn't in the pocket of environmentalists, or the Farm Bureau, or Monsanto?

6.) Has there ever been a serious, polite debate about whether Industrial Ag is really the only way to feed to world?

7.) Why don't our schools teach easy-to-grasp concepts like sustainability like they drill vague ones such as the "Pillars of Character" ?

8.) Why aren't students of all ages encouraged to save seeds and recycle them?

9.) Why isn't there a value added tax on foods that are processed?

10.) Why do so many "farmers markets" allow vendors who don't grow the foods they sell?