Lexington, KY - Sometimes advocates for change are among the last to realize it's actually happening. Take last year's IncrEDIBLE Food Show (IFS) at the Lexington Convention Center, for example.
As a local foods advocate, I should have been all over it. But I didn't write a word.
After years of tapping into the local foods underground at grungy potlucks, farmers'
markets and sparsely attended county extension office seminars, it was hard to accept - even with evidence before me - the movement had become mainstream enough to hit Main Street (OK, Vine Street, if you want to be technical about it.)
It seemed too much; the splashy ads, the multi-chambered venue in the cavernous convention center, the cooking demonstrations by big-name chef Bobby Flay, and the inevitable hordes of beer cheese vendors.
These elements made me think of the two-day event as more of a trade show and Bobby Flay cookbook tour than a true celebration of central Kentucky's food possibilities and a salute to area farmers and food purveyors. In retrospect, I think I focused on those things at the expense of the show's other welcome and spot-on offerings.
That's why I'm happy to report the IncrEDIBLE Food Show's coming back around for an encore in October - with promises that the second rendition's going to be bigger and offer a stronger emphasis on what central Kentucky is doing, and can do, to feed itself.
Everything's show biz, of course; thus you may have already heard about the second IFS because the Food Network's glam Giada De Laurentiis is pulling celebrity chef detail this year - and looking a lot better than Bobby Flay while she does it.
Tickets to get close, watch her cook (or chew gum, for that matter) and get an autographed copy of - surprise - her new cookbook, are going for $85.
If she's what it takes to get you downtown for a show about food, then by all means, snap up a ticket before they're gone. But go early or stay later so you can get a taste of everything else happening over the two-day event.
Convention center event manager Theresa Lloyd is the spark behind the IFS, and once you know something about her background, it makes sense she'd use her position to give local foods a shot at the big time. She's a Lexington native, fairly recently returned from years of living in Vermont, where she farmed sheep, made sheep's milk fudge, made Christmas wreaths and did just about everything else she could think of to keep the small-farm enterprise she loved afloat.
In an interview, she said she was happy when she got back here to catch a few signals of growing interest in local foods. Local government's long-delayed embrace of the Lexington farmers' market with the new permanent downtown pavilion was one of them.
"I see Lexington starting to get it," she said. And she expects events like the recent nationwide recall of salmonella-laced eggs from a few huge poultry farms are only going to spur greater interest.
"People need to wake up and think about where their food comes from," she said.
The food show is designed to drive that process. Lloyd said about 100 vendors are signed up for the event on Oct. 23 - 24. And only four of them make beer cheese. And she points to a new offering she's calling the Sunday Supper demonstration as proof of this year's stronger focus on regional food and cooking.
Like the best traditional Kentucky Sunday supper, Lloyd said, it's going to be drawn-out, delectable and entirely dependent on fresh, seasonal ingredients, as well as the abilities and inventiveness of the cooks involved.
They include: Edward Lee, chef-owner of Old Louisville's 610 Magnolia, recognized last year by Gourmet magazine as one of the best young chefs in the Midwest; Ouita Michel, chef-owner at Midway's celebrated Holly Hill Inn; Brad Mitchell and Allyson Buchta, the cooking team for Governor Beshear and his wife at the mansion in Frankfort; and Brigitte Nguyen, a Lexington-based pastry chef who has made several appearances on the Food Network.
Over the course of four hours on Oct. 24, these cooks are going to lead
anyone who cares to sit down and listen through the preparation of a multi-course meal, from appetizer to dessert. Lloyd said all the major ingredients will be in season and easily available in this region, and the methods demonstrated will be simple enough to re-create at home.
Buchta, the pastry chef at the governor's mansion, said, even before the expected planning sessions with the others, she and Chef Mitchell know their assignment: "Whatever ingredients we end up using, we want to come up with dishes people will feel they can make at home. Maybe it'll take a little extra time, like you might have on a Sunday, but it won't be complicated."
The fresh ingredients, she and Mitchell stressed, and not the techniques, are meant to be the real stars of the show.
De Laurentiis aside, that appears to be the philosophy behind the whole two-day event, and it couldn't be more timely or welcome. I'm sorry I was too slow to recognize it last year, but you can bet I'll be there this time. If you care about where your food comes from, and where it might in the future, you should be, too.
David Mudd is a local food columnist for the paper's sister publication Business Lexington.