It's awesome to see this sort of mentality and food progress being pursued in Middlebury.
"I would love to see is a farmers market delivery network." This is a perfect statement for what is needed to improve our restaurants' year round access to fresh local food; it will take a lot of planning, trust, and infrastructure from both chefs and farmers to implement something of this nature, but it can certainly be done!
Thanks for the great insights, Matt... sounds like it is time to stop back by Two Brothers and check out the menu!
Hi Christina, you are absolutely right when you say that American Flatbread in Middlebury does an awesome job of utilizing local ingredients, and they do it year round, which makes it even more special. And yes, an occasional pop-up is certainly easier in many ways to integrate a broad array of local foods, especially during peak harvest season as it is right now.
I think the larger idea we are trying to get across, though, is that Middlebury has a lot of room to improve when it comes to offering local foods through restaurants, year-round or not. Personally, if we were coming from an out-of-town perspective, we would never consider traveling to Middlebury based on its food offerings right now. We are not trying to say that there aren't people doing good things, but we have a broad and notable disconnect between the food producers and the restaurants. American Flatbread is literally the only restaurant in town (as far as we know) that continually works directly with farmers throughout the year... is it wrong to want others to do that as well?
Bottom line is, we rarely eat out in Middlebury for three reasons: the food is not consistently local, the food is not consistently delicious (with a couple exceptions), and the food is very consistently overpriced. Thanks for your comments, and I hope this helps to clarify our position on the matter.
Dear Richard, yes, we sell our chocolate bars for $6.95/ea and we also produce a special series called "Epoch" that range from $12 to $18, depending on the bar. Unlike Lindt or Ghirardelli who manufacture bulk chocolate using commodity grade cocoa, lots of extra cocoa butter, soy lecithin, and other flavor enhancers/neutralizers, we craft small batches of chocolate from sustainably produced, organic cocoa, we press our own cocoa butter in house, use no emulsifiers, and add only organic sugar and whole spices. We sort, roast, winnow, and refine all our own cocoa, with each small batch of chocolate taking over a week to produce (60 days in the case of our Epoch bars). If you find no value in what we offer and prefer Lindt, Ghirardelli, or any of the other bulk commercial manufacturers, that is perfectly okay, but please know that we and many others find immense value in a producing and consuming products that are better for our bodies, better for the ecosystem, and better for the economic chain in which they are produced. Just FYI, our milkshakes are $5 - comparable to what you might pay for a creemee-based shake consisting primarily of corn syrup and hydrogenated oils... except ours are lovingly made with local cream, milk, organic sugar, and other homemade components. Thank you for your comment, as it has provided a great opportunity to provide this distinguishing information for others to assess and decide where they place value.
Re: “Taco Time at Middlebury Chocolates”
"What local farms does Middlebury Chocolates get its cocoa beans from? Right."
As cacao cannot generally be grown outside of the tropics, we put a great deal of time, energy, and money into dealing directly with growing co-operatives and farmers to ensure fair wages, sustainable agricultural practices, and consistently delicious end products. Simply put, we try our best to provide a better model for a specialty product that cannot be grown locally.
We do integrate many local ingredients into our products: we use local honey in all of our confections, local maple sugar, as well as many local herbs and spices. One of our top selling chocolate bars, the "Chupacabra", utilizes loads of local maple sugar from Little Hogback Farm and habanero peppers grown specifically for us by Elmer Farm and Quill Hill Farm.
"If the Jacksons feel so strongly about serving local food, maybe they should change their business model."
Why do you think we are doing this taco night, silly?
"But a couple of tacos are not going to cut it."
True, and that's the summary point of the article.
If anything was stated that leads you to believe that we or the author are attempting to put down the existing restaurants in Middlebury, then there must be some confusion, as this is not the case at all. The point is that we can and should attempt to improve the way that local restaurants utilize and feature local foods on a year-round basis. Please check out the great interview with Chef Matt Corrente of Two Brothers which was also published last week. Matt does a great job of pointing out what is currently being done to improve the integration of local foods as well as addressing specific shortcomings in our local food distribution system.