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How Powerful Are Chefs?

By jjacquet on December 4, 2007.

barton_seaver.03.jpgFrom 1998-2000, the Give Swordfish a Break campaign requested that chefs boycott swordfish until the international fishery commission cut quotas--700 chefs joined in. Here in Vancouver, a sustainable seafood event doesn't happen without the involvement of chefs. Since it opened, there have been a bizillion articles about Hook, D.C.'s sustainable seafood restaurant (including this one in Fortune yesterday, featuring head chef Barton Seaver--in photo).

"The Roman writer Livy once warned that when society's chefs come to be regarded as consequential figures, it is a sure sign that society is well down the road to decadence," wrote Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma.

On the other hand, chefs are responsible for new food trends, buying of all their restaurant's food, and can, in some cases, get politically involved. Barton, for instance, is planning to testify next month before the National Organic Standards Board, to oppose the idea of allowing farmed salmon to be labeled as organic.

Obviously, this is wonderful. Barton is not only a trendsetter, but a model citizen. Anyone's involvement in their industry and passion for their work is admirable. Across this nation, from Alice Waters of Berkeley's Chez Panisse to Molly Katzen of upstate New York's Moosewood, are chefs making a difference? And is Livy right? Where are we as a society if chefs have gained so much prestige?

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Seafood

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By Ktesibios (not verified) on 04 Dec 2007 #permalink

Every year as I watch Top Chef and other chef reality shows I cringe when the sea bass makes it onto the menus. I wish that the Food Network and Bravo would commit to endorsing sustainable fisheries choices, given the influence they're having on the celebrity chef culture.