Cafe Maplethorpe Blog :: PEI Restaurant

It was great to participate in the PEI Department of Agriculture’s “Culinary Connections 2009″ program on March 3. The goal of the event was to connect farmers with product to sell with restaurant chefs and owners, who (we hope) want to buy local. This might sound unnecessary–don’t all restaurants buy local? In a small place like PEI, don’t producers and restaurants work closely together every day?

In a word, no.

Obstacles to Buying Local

It is surprisingly hard for restaurants to buy locally-grown products.

• Geography Counts! Restaurants need a consistent steady supply of the ingredients for menu items. PEI’s location (hardiness level 5), with a last average frost date of May 23 and first average frost of October 9, means a short growing season for local agricultural products. An above average rainfall or an early frost can easily thwart the business plans of farmers and gardeners.  Restaurants–even small ones like ours–rely on consistent availability of menu essentials.
• Summer Tourism Bulge! The year ’round population of Prince Edward Island is about 138,000, but each year over one million tourists visit us. (And we love you–keep coming!) Most tourists come in July and August to enjoy the beaches, golf and natural beauty of the Island. But that bulge creates a huge, temporary demand for all kinds of goods and services, including locally-raised food. It is really hard for local producers to gear up to serve the tourist market needs then quickly scale back down for the smaller numbers of residents.
• Time! Or lack of it. Sourcing locally takes time–time for producers spent on the phone and not producing. Time for chefs and owners to locate suppliers, arrange pick-up or delivery, invoice and pay for goods, etc. Buying local simply takes more time than looking at the food distributor’s catalog and making a single call.

At ‘Culinary Connections,’ I participated in a panel made up of buyers. We each spoke about what we purchase and how individual producers can best do business with us. Growers and producers were identified and shared their stories and their products. It was great to see so many new producers and hear their individual stories! Some producers even had information tables with posters and flyers. There was a lot of networking going on–it made me wish that summer was already here.

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Local Ingredients Are Worth the Effort

At Maplethorpe, we have a heart for Prince Edward Island. Buying locally supports our friends and neighbors as they struggle for sustainability and rewards them for being good stewards of our shared resources. Buying locally is our way to help maintain and support vanishing rural communities. We don’t worry about food recalls or contamination because we know the people who produce the food we buy. We believe fresh and organic ingredients taste better, look better on the plate and are healthier for our family and our customers. For 2009, look for our “Farm Gate to Dinner Plate” menu, identifying selections that are 100% locally sourced.

To find local PEI growers who sell to the public, farm markets and providers of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA’s), follow this link.

My Montana friend Father Gary always says that February is the worst month for unhappiness. No money but plenty of bills. A blinding flash of the obvious that the New Year’s Resolution to (lose weight, stop smoking, change your life, whatever), is a joke. Lousy weather. Fr. Gary always finds that complaints, dissatisfaction and general malaise are at their peak in February. And being a priest, he would hear it all.

In Prince Edward Island, the month of malaise is March. Today is March 3 and this is the TENTH day of school cancellation this winter for inclement weather. TEN DAYS of kids in the house when they shouldn’t be. The entire world is a sheet of ice with scattered power outages all across the Island from ice bending branches on to transmission lines. No one wants to come out to lunch in this weather, so the café is empty. (Miraculously the mail gets delivered…bills can find you through anything.) I resist the urge to call or e-mail Fr. Gary to lodge my litany of complaints—it is the wrong month for him to listen.

Ice Melt…A Reason to Go to Town

Instead, I go off to the big box store in Summerside to pick up another bag of ice melt. I head straight to the ‘seasonal’ section. Something is wrong–the smell hit me before I got past the pharmacy. Liquid lawn herbicide…you know that peculiar acrid stench. Where last week there were snow shovels and ice melt I found a sea of bar-b-que grills and islands of potting soil.

My God, people.

I stomped up to the front and asked where I could find Saf-T-Salt.

Nope, I was told. All gone. Little scraps of Pepto-Bismol colored ‘Spring Fashions’ hang nearby.

Better Than Ice Melt

I ended up buying a bag of organic granulated fertilizer and a sack of cat litter. The fertilizer will melt the ice and the cat litter will provide traction. Effective, but messy. We’ll make it through this weather and next winter I will try to remember to stock up on ice melt early in the season.

We are still 2 months from spring in Prince Edward Island. I am just hoping for no more school cancellation days.