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Thursday, November 15, 2007
Where’s Your Favorite Diner?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Diners have never really taken the same form south of the Mason/Dixon Line as they have in the north. Atlanta has very few real “diners.”
One of the real ones — Silver Grill on Monroe in Midtown — closed last December after 58 years in business. It reopened Tuesday with new owners and a new name: Silver Midtown Grill (for more details check out my column, Dishing, in next week’s accessAtlanta).
I’m anxious to check it out. With so few to chose from, where are the best diners in the Atlanta area?
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Is the local food movement elitist?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Small, local and organic met big government Wednesday at the CDC, as chef Alice Waters spoke eloquently about what good food really means to an audience of Atlanta chefs, farmers, Georgia Organics members, Emory students and CDC doctors and scientists.
And for the most part, she was speaking with an audience totally in sync as she advocated abandoning the values of a fast food nation — cheap and easy and endlessly replaceable — with carefully chosen food lovingly shared with family and friends.
But she raised an issue I’ve been thinking about for a while, as I cover the local food movement. And I’m not sure she got total buy-in from the crowd on this one. She talked about the elitism that eating locally often implies, that good food may be seen as reserved for people who can afford to pay the premium prices it usually commands, especially in urban areas like Atlanta. She wants to make sure everybody has access to it, especially children in public schools.
She said, “Good food belongs not just in fancy restaurants. It belongs on everybody’s table.”
In theory, everybody agrees with it. But how do you put that into practice? Pay less to farmers?
One of her solutions was for consumers to be willing to devote more of their income to food, such as giving up cell phones or expensive sneakers to invest in the environment and your community. She also called for the government to pay for it.
Do you think the local food movement is elitist? Is price a factor in what you choose, or how much you buy? What can be done to make this food more available and affordable? Are government subsidies the answer?
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