Food provenance. It has become an important aspect of our responsibility to ourselves and the world to eat responsibly and yet, many people don’t even know what provenance means. Wikipedia can help here:
Provenance, from the French provenir, “to come from”, means the origin, or the source, of something, or the history of the ownership or location of an object.
In order to be responsible consumers, we need to start paying attention to where how food comes from, who produced it and how. Is it organic? Were the workers treated fairly? Was the farmer paid a fair price? Did it have to travel far to get here? Etc.
It is often challenging to find the answers to these questions. Ask the shop manager to tell you about the bananas he is selling and the chances are he won’t know much more than which supplier he purchased them from. Ask a waiter about the ingredients used in the dish you are about to consume and again, the chances are neither the waiter nor the chef will be able to tell you much.
This has to change and the people who are selling things to us must realise that we want to know. The guys at &Union are setting a good example in this. They are actively involved in sourcing the the products that they purvey. They ensure that the products are produced in an ethical and environmentally friendly way, and they can tell you all about the provenance of the products they sell.
In fact, they are very excited to pass on this information. Last night I attended the first in a series of evenings at &Union called Meet the Maker. We listened to presentations by some of the producers before experiencing an excellent pairing of the wine and food with which we had just become acquainted.
It was a fantastic evening, very informative. It was also uplifting to hear people with real passion for what they are producing. It’s nice to know that there are producers you can trust to do things the right way so that you can consume responsibly.
As I mentioned, this was the first of a series of Meet the Maker evenings, I would highly recommend you book yourself one of the (limited) seats at the next one.
& Union
110 Bree Street, Cape Town
021 422 2770
Original Post on Relax with Dax: Meet the Maker at &Union
