elephantwalktalk

Food Sanity in the Mad River Valley

A restaurateur myself, it's fitting - and something we've celebrated - that in pursuit of a mid-winter retreat my wife and I stumbled upon a food-lover's paradise in rural, northern Vermont. Living in Boston, we've become spoiled by the growing abundance of great restaurants, even in the suburbs these days. But for the longest time, whenever we hit the road for a long weekend escape into northern New England, we resigned ourselves to the persistent, discouraging lack of good quality meals to be had away from our hometown.

For what seems like forever the standard menu one found in most restaurants outside the major cities has been American generica: potato skins, clam chowder, Caesar salads [with grilled chicken for a small upcharge of course!], burgers, dry char-grilled chicken breast, and green beans, broccoli, or corn on the side - oh, and perhaps updated to include "ethnic twists" like burritos, quesadillas and the odd stir-fry.

You know the drill: Way too much Sysco fresh-from-a-can or boil-in-a-bag, way too little farm-fresh or local, let alone organic - neither interesting nor particularly nutritious. And this has been true even in the more touristy areas that enjoy the economic lift from well-heeled visitors. - But a recent weekend getaway convinced me that real change can come to rural America, at least as far as the availability of good food is concerned!

In mid-January we visited mid-coast Maine, Camden, Rockland and Rockport, where we were married back in '01. Rockland's Primo is one of the truly great meals anywhere, but we were deeply disappointed to find that they now close seasonally. Forced to seek out alternatives, we were further discouraged to find that a winter shut-down was common among good restaurants in the area. Although we did find a couple of good meals in our three days in the area, unfortunately, most of those restaurants still open in January were those that played it safe - familiar, unexciting, and probably not very good for us!

No doubt the ski mountains are the crucial difference between the dormancy of mid-coast Maine and the relative vitality of the Green Montains in the dead of winter. We were much more than pleasantly surprised by what we found when we returned two weeks ago to Waitsfield, Vermont and its environs! 

For starters, no one was closed. But, even more impressively, just about every restaurant, market and dry goods merchant we visited seemed very engaged in a collective push for high quality - in concept, materials, and execution - all more than happy to refer one another. 

After an all-too-quick four day stay we left having concluded: They get it in Vermont. Later this week I'll tell you why.

Vegan and Vegetarian Food in Cambodia

Last September in celebrating with you our 2008 Best of CitySearch award for Vegetarian food at The Elephant Walk I explained that putting up our vegetarian menu was no simple matter. This is due to the fact that Cambodians, though mainly Buddhist, are rarely vegetarian.

I just visited the absorbing website/blog - Verdant Reports - of a gentleman who commented on that post earlier this summer. There you'll find an excellent post on this very same subject, Vegan and Vegetarian Food in Cambodia, including a very well-produced audio-blog entry wherein the blogger interviews a Frenchman who opened a vegetarian restaurant in Siem Reap, near Angkor Wat. It's worth 5-10 minutes of your time - especially if you are an avid traveler, a foodie, or - and especially - are vegetarian.

Today is a great day

Today we began working with a new purpose at The Elephant Walk in Waltham. We are now a Benefit Restaurant™, raising money on a continuous, transparent basis for charities and non-profits - a different one every month.

Our theme for the first three months as a Benefit Restaurant™ is hunger relief. Our first beneficiary is the Bristol Lodge Kitchen, a soup kitchen on Moody Street in Waltham to which we are donating 3% of our September sales [no, not a percentage of profit, a percentage of sales].

I'll have plenty more to say about this soon enough but TODAY was worth noting all by itself!

In Search of Sustainable Giving

My previous post mentioned three extraordinary, ongoing efforts to improve our world. Two common threads among them stand out to me: The first, of course, is the belief that literacy and education are crucial fundaments of a stable community that seeks to thrive. The second - and what I want to focus on here - is that it takes money to build and maintain those foundations [double entendre intended].

On September 1, 2009, The Elephant Walk in Waltham will become a Benefit Restaurant™ [not to worry: it will still be The Elephant Walk too!], committed to a new form of philanthropy that actively seeks to reduce the "drag" on the charity/non-profit world that the necessity of fundraising imposes.

We'll share more details of The Elephant Walk in Waltham's added purpose as September 1st approaches. In the meantime I urge you to visit benefitrestaurants.org to learn more about this new concept.

Getting an education... on Education!

Like many of you, I recently finished reading the 2006 bestseller Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin - an astonishing and ongoing story of a man [Mortenson] who, climbing down K2 after a failed summitting attempt, stumbled into a Pakistani village and a new life building schools where there aren't any in northern Pakistan and now Afghanistan.

Working similar magic, but from a somewhat different perspective is John Wood, founder of the remarkable foundation Room to Read, which builds libraries, schools and computer labs in Southeast and Central Asia, and now Africa. I also just finished Mr. Wood's book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, a no less inspiring story of an overworked corporate executive who stumbled upon a cavernous need for better education in the developing world and dropped everything to commit to help build libraries and schools for people who don't have them. - The Boston Chapter of Room to Read held a sold out findraiser at The Elephant Walk in Cambridge last November in pursuit of their goal of building 10 libraries in Cambodia.

It was Heather Faris, Cambridge resident and mother of two students who educated all of us at The Elephant Walk as to what American journalist Bernie Krisher is doing with his non-profit organization, American Assistance for Cambodia [AAfC}- you guessed it: building schools in Cambodia [more than 400 so far] and more. Ms. Faris brought us up to speed early last year on the Cambridge School for Cambodia [CambCamb] project, a grass roots Cambridge organization she was helping run that included many students and was raising money to fund a school through the AAfC. [We hosted a fundraiser in support of their effort at our Cambridge restaurant last April that raised over $5,000. - We're also hosting a follow-up buffet luncheon this coming May 9 - spearheaded by Cambridge high school student Lucy Flamm - to help further the CambCamb mission - (Tickets are still available!)]

Frankly, until recently, I had no idea how many people are making extraordinary commitments of time and money, sometimes even risking their lives let alone their life savings to help bring the opportunity of education to people whose governments and community resources cannot provide it. Their efforts and achievements are amazing and inspiring.