Notes from Karen Brooks’ TEDx Portland talk on the Portland food community, and the factors that led to our unique foodie culture.
Karen Brooks
Karen Brooks
Portland Monthly / Foodie
- While the rest of the country focused on celebrity chefs…
- Portland’s food scene developed with no leaders. Just a crazy crew of cooks and farmers and truckers.
- Handmade, fabulous, and cheap.
- Portland has easy access to the best farmers and farm land.
- We don’t have access to money.
- We are soaked to the bone most of the year, we need to find our own rays of sunshine.
- Our good culture is small scale, extremely local, willfully eccentric.
- It’s not just what taste good in our stomachs, but what makes our heart feel good: craft, connection, community. feeling respected.
- Stirling Coffee Roasters, Adam and Eric. Two coffees roasted each day. identified by home town. but also by two words that seem to define it “the chocolate peanut”.
- Farmer Gene trucks 300 miles each week from farm to Portland to stand on concrete all day long to sell his carrots at the Portland farmer’s market.
- “Why does these taste so good?” “Because I talk to them!”
- David, chocolate maker.
- made in the back of a sandwich shop.
- happens because of community. someone is willing to rent a space for $200. other people are willing to try to sell them.
- booming business, made possible through community.
- Crossroads for food today
- Obseity, manufacturing, overconsumption, underconsumption.
- Craft, Connection, Community. — Put these together.