I love a good food trend as much as the next person. But what I love more is a bonafide food revival. Here’s the difference:
A food trend starts with an innovative hack or recipe twist and makes waves on social media in mere days. Your favorite food bloggers offer up their takes on it, then said trend is murdered by big chains trying to get in on the action. It’s a windfall experience, left to die a lonely death with only faint memories of their once viral hashtags and millenial social love.
The story of a food revival started centuries ago, back when food was a means of survival. Food was fuel then, made delicious by generations of tweaks and passed down techniques. Sure, they may have faded to make way for said trends above, but they’ve never fully disappeared. The revival begins quietly on the shelves of your favorite stores. It gains traction slowly after one recommendation to take it home and try it for yourself, one Google session to figure out what to do with it, one bottle of wine to pair it with. Small articles in Bon Appetit or Food and Wine will mention it, your friends will say they’ve tried it. Your mom might even send you a newspaper clipping about it. Before you know it, you’ve changed your eating habits to incorporate it, developed a tiered list of favorite brands, traditional preparations, and recipes using it at home, and now you’re sending clippings back to your mom about even better options than she’d originally recommended.
That’s the food revival. Unassuming at first, but impactful. Think of the difference between $100 gourmet burgers and Greek yogurt, artisan cupcakes and fermented foods…you get the idea. Spendy burgers and all things cupcake came and went. Yes, they’re still around, but you may not feel as inclined to keep ingredients on hand to prepare on a whim or boast their consumption on your Insta stories. Greek yogurt and fermented items found their way into our hearts and refrigerators and will remain. Whether it’s for solo snacking or adding to recipes, the health benefits and lingering flavor keeps us all coming back for more.
So, I’m here to tell you what’s next. Now remember, enter with an open mind. It’s time to get reacquainted with tinned seafood, my friends.
This is not the mass-produced ‘Chicken of the Sea’ cans of tuna that ensnare dolphins and tuna alike. It is not flash-cooked and preserved in weird faux-brine water. It is not tasteless slop. Revival-worthy tinned seafood is the stuff of legend. Think small boats with three generations aboard—working together, catching together, selecting the very best to bring back to shore. Grandmothers oversee the preparation and preservation with strong opinions, heavy-handed seasoning, and a forever-furrowed brow.
Once preserved, seafood does a magical thing and becomes even more delicious with time. The oil, sauce, or brine permeate the fibers and flesh and textures become soft and supple. Flavors commingle and rest until each tin is chosen for consumption. What was once a way to preserve precious proteins for the off-season is now a stalwart of tapas fare and ultra-sustainable because of its inherent nature, not because of a trend.
You’ll find one of the best in Jose Gourmet. Fish, bivalves, and mollusks are prepared traditionally with classic sauces and oils. There’s an option for every eater: mild and delicate or toothsome and full of flavor. Each tin is prepared with exceptional attention to detail, down to how each piece is artfully preserved in the tin, sealed for optimal preservation and flavor, and bound with eye-catching art and enchanting stories. For those of us residing in landlocked locales, this is the perfect way to start introducing seafood into our diets without breaking the bank. Roll back the lid on a tin, toss together a salad, and pour yourself a glass of wine. You’ll be transported to another place and time for as long as the tin takes to consume. You’ll begin craving the experience and the flavors and come back for more as often as I have this year. I’ll see you in the tinned seafood aisle.
In the coming days, Mesa Tome was released into the hands of many devoted chefs, cheese geeks, and new cheese friends. Each batch changed in flavor based on what was growing near Randy’s farm and being able to experience that has been so special. I’d seen where the goats would graze freely, where they were milked, and where Randy deftly created each wheel of cheese. Now, weeks later, seeing, cutting into, and tasting each batch felt ceremonial.
Evan led us out of Hell’s Backbone Farm, across another plot of land, over a fence, up a hill, and then into the sunshine atop an Eastward(ish) facing hill. We Goat Campers gathered as close as the warm afternoon sun would allow us to hear Evan’s story of how he came to arrive on this hill and what lies ahead for him. As we listened, the sun dipped further behind us and extended a welcome shadow over the now un-planted land. Soon though, this will change.
Five years and six wines after the first release of Mahlon, I was standing behind Evan on that hill in Boulder. Since the inception of Ruth Lewandowski, the goal has always been to make wine in Utah from Utah grown fruit. Wine is not the kind of industry that is kind to newborn labels and makers. The means required to achieve such a lofty goal take many years (five-ish) and an unfathomable amount of work. But, Boulder is a place where dreams come true and hard work is rewarded with a bounty of support and serendipitous circumstances. On that hill, not a mile from our Hell’s Backbone farm, a dream became destined to become truth and reality. Vines will be planted on that hill in the coming years and our little group had the very humble honor of being the first people to see it with Evan. Ruth Lewandowski will make a home in Boulder, Utah alongside the ladies of Hell’s Backbone legend and all the other kind inhabitants of this beloved town.
Though we are but a small market for wine compared to the booming cities along the East and West coasts, there is a seat at the table for every producer, especially a local one. New perspectives often challenge what we once knew as ‘good’ and ‘right’. This is no different. Yes, there is more than one way to make wine taste good. Yes, winemakers can choose whether or not to add yeasts and other ingredients to wine. No, one way is not more right than the other. Yes, we can enjoy wines made both ways. And you know what’s great about that? We can disagree and have have fond affections for different wine, and I will still respect you (yes, you), your palette, and your right to drink whichever wine makes you happiest. Each wine has its own story, from the people behind the bottle to the work that’s gone into it all the way to us, the consumer. The beautiful thing about it all is that each of us affects the other, which is always something for the consumer to consider; what we purchase affects both our local and national wine industry and this power is, perhaps, just as impactful as anyone else involved. I will simply ask that you consider the people behind the bottle, the work that’s gone into it, and how your purchasing power affects both our local and national wine industry.
Our group departed along different roads: one through the heart of Capitol Reef National Monument, the other along Notom Road filled with winding backroads and breathtaking beauty. When just the 60 mile journey is enough to impart wonder and appreciation for our little state, we’re living in the right place. We reconvened at Hell’s Backbone Farm for a tour and discussion on sustainability in the restaurant, on the farm, and the implications for the surrounding area. Blake led us through the 6.5 acres of farmland while sharing the history of all things Hell’s Backbone, past and current challenges, and its bright future. Blake’s peace and joy were infectious, the staff was the same. I’d always known farming was not as easy a planting a seed and only returning to harvest, but this became more clear while hearing about both the challenges and small victories they face daily. Though these challenges are certainly not without success. I mean, they harvested over 18,000 pounds of produce in the 2014 season. More astounding than the weight of harvest is that they used all 18,000 pounds at their restaurant. Sustainability is often a fluid, sometimes abused, term in our industry. The Hell’s Backbone team is the most true and honest example of what it means to live and work sustainably. All food waste from the restaurant is composted and fed back to the farm, any excess produce is preserved for the winter season, and anything beyond that even get turned over to feed their flock of chickens. After discussing the idiosyncrasies of growing asparagus, we were feasting upon it at the grill not four hours later as part of a meal that left us all with full heart and bellies.
We took a walk to another future farm after visiting the Hell’s Backbone Farm (more on that later), and regrouped for dinner at the Grill. The restaurant team was in the middle of launching a new cocktail program during our visit. Convenient, right? We spent happy hour on the patio of the restaurant reflecting on our visit, sharing ideas for new recipes, planning our next visit back, or maybe just never leaving. The cocktails were balanced and delicious and the perfect way to begin our experience at the restaurant. What came next was transcendent. I’m quite positive there has never been a more satisfying meal ever served in all of Southern Utah. Salads and vegetables and soups and proteins arrived in waves. I still get teary eyed at the thought of the sunchoke soup, but each dish was as good as that. Well seasoned, perfectly cooked, made with love.
Blake and Jen are shining examples of what happens when love and kindness intersect with food. Quality is a natural priority because honoring the integrity of land and animal existed from the very beginning. Everything at Hell’s Backbone feels warm and inviting, it tastes delicious and comforting, and it left us inspired and full.
In a humble farm market store, over nibbles of Randy’s cheeses and fresh coffee, I, and many others, rediscovered why we do what we do. Matt has always said it best – we don’t work in specialty food because we want to be millionaires; we do it because we have a love for food, with its cultural and historical implications, and we have to protect that. Randy’s cheeses are as excellent as they are because Randy is committed to creating them from the very best beginnings. His herd – which is now at 38 lovely little goat ladies- graze freely on the banks of the Fremont river. During the winter, their diets are supplemented with a much higher quality feed than industry standard; in fact, it’s organically grown specifically for Randy’s herd by his neighbors. That doesn’t come cheap. Even more surprising than their feeding practices was learning that Randy only milks during the natural cycle. As winter comes and the babes begin grazing themselves, Randy does not give the goats any kind of hormone to lengthen the milking. When they dry up, he closes up shop until the next spring. This is so uncommon and nearly unheard of in modern day cheese production, even for most artisan cheese production.
Since Randy doesn’t cut corners (or costs): we receive the kind of quality cheeses people write poems and love stories about. Whether it’s one of our cave-aged cheeses, chevre, or feta, the taste is unlike any other cheeses we carry. There’s true Utah terroir buried deep within the paste of each cheese because that’s where it came from. From the natural grasses and plants nourished by the Fremont river to the buckets of milk separated into curds and whey, something truly magical happens. Add expert cave aging to the mix from the loving, deft hands of our own affineuse, Antonia Horne, and suddenly, it’s like nothing else matters and no cheese ever existed before this one.
With all this beautiful imagery and romanticism, I almost forgot Randy was facing closure of his farm before our partnership. It wasn’t until Caputo’s and our customers began purchasing and raving about the cheeses that things started looking up. This year, 
Heartbreak aside, hope exists. Hope exists at 
