Because I did such a crap job of reporting the Slow Food’s “A Taste of Slow” festival, I have found some links to blogs of folk who did a better job, like Esurientes — The Comfort Zone, and Caper Berry Gravy and A Few of My Favourite Things. If you know of any other good wrap-ups, let me know.
This guy‘s point of view — “largely pretentious yuppy rubbish” — definitely deserves representation: I have this nigling problem with the whole scene, and I think it comes down to this. This shows me to be hard to please, and really, the slow food movement can be whatever it and its members want. But for me, slow food should not be expensive; it should be a movement of the celebration of simplicity and home-cooked food, a rejection of the overpriced delicatessen. I would have liked to see big crowds of Italian and Greek families competing in an Olympics of home cooking where the teams could consist only of nuclear families, and 44 gallon drums spurting fire were provided to each team. Then peppers could be char grilled, goats roasted on spits, tomato passata produced in vast quantities and octopuses thrashed periodically to soften them up as they were roasted over the fire, basted with bitter herbal liquors. The Vietnamese could have made their minced meat wrapped in char grilled green leaf parcels, and taught the pronunciation of Phở. No doubt lawyers have ensured that no such festivity is possible.
