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Sustainable sushi pioneer was guest on our June 3 webinar
Local Food Forum was honored to have Chef Hajime Sato of suburban Detroit's Sozai restaurant as a guest expert on our "Better" Dialogues webinar on Monday, June 3, titled "Can Sustainable Seafood Catch Up?" Regarded as the creator of the sustainable sushi category, Hajime was then a finalist for The James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes in a field that included two Chicago chefs.
During a pre-call, I joked, "Don't tell any of our Chicago folks, but I'm rooting for you." And yesterday (June 10), I was at home watching the livestream of the Awards ceremony, which took place at Chicago's Civic Opera House, and when I heard Hajime's name called, I shouted so loud that my wife (who was returning to the apartment) heard me out in the hall and rushed in to make sure everything was okay.
Hajime was paired on the webinar with Niaz Dorry, whose epic efforts with the North Atlantic Marine Alliance and the National Family Farm Coalition to build a better food system had already earned her the 2024 James Beard Foundation Leadership Award for Policy Advocacy. My webinar co-host, Chef Sarah Stegner of suburban Chicago's Prairie Grass Cafe, is a two-time James Beard culinary award winner.
And there was... me. It calls to mind the lyrics from The Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime: "And you may ask yourself, 'How did I get here?'" Let's just say that it was a webinar I won't soon forget.
The webinar recording follows. The video has a very cold open and is a bit raw, as Zoom webinars tend to be, but the conversation is dynamic and engrossing, with Hajime and Niaz fearlessly speaking their minds. I hope you will watch, because I know I learned more than I knew before about ocean sustainability and how far we have to go to ensure the viability of the world's fisheries.
Photo by Bob Benenson
Local Food Forum also shares its congratulations to Jason Hammel, one of Chicago's pioneering farm-to-table chefs, who with his team at Lula Cafe received the James Beard Best Hospitality Award. The above photo shows Jason at a talk about his The Lula Cafe Cookbook at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art last October.
Click below to view all the 2024 James Beard Awards winners.
Great People, Great Food, and the Greatest Swag Bag Ever
Photo by Bob Benenson
As I alluded in the article above, there is a certain amount of Bob's fantasy camp involved with this second career of mine. When we moved to Chicago almost exactly 13 years ago, I knew a handful of people and none of them had anything to do with food. Through a lot of hard work, nonstop networking and a little bit of luck, I've been welcomed into a local food community here that is replete with talented, committed and very nice people.
That's why I found myself on Saturday (June 8) at the Family Meal, an annual open house thrown for food community folks by freelance writer Stacey Ballis and her husband Bill Thurmond. The event, which coincided with the weekend of events preceding Monday's James Beard Foundation Awards, was held at their beautifully restored 1907 home in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood.
Photo by Bob Benenson
Stacy had invited the team with the Chicago Chefs Cook humanitarian and philanthropic non-profit to attend. And because of my close working relationship with the group — co-founder Chef Sarah Stegner co-hosts the Local Food Forum webinar series — I got to come along for the ride. That's Sarah on the left in the photo above with host Stacy and Justin Pioche, a chef of the Navajo tribe, whose culinary art in New Mexico has made him a prominent voice in the revived interest in Indigenous food culture.
Photo by Bob Benenson
The party can easily be summed up. There was a warm welcome on the porch...
Photo by Bob Benenson
Photo by Bob Benenson
... everybody appeared to be having a great time (gotta love that mini-Chicago hot dog cart)...
... and the food included the andouille and chicken gumbo from Paul Fehribach's Big Jones (and yes, chef, I went back for seconds).
But what will always stand out about this event is the swag bag. The gift bags at most events have a few nice product samples, maybe some coupons, some literature about companies and organizations. The Family Meal swag bag was something completely different.
Photo by Bob Benenson
One of the first things I saw upon entering the house was the dining room completely filled with totes from Mariano's supermarkets that were packed with roughly 20 pounds worth of stuff provided by sponsors that Stacy had lined up.
Photo by Bob Benenson
I knew when I wrestled the bag into an Uber for the crosstown ride home that this was a lot, but it wasn't until I unloaded the bag the next morning that I realized the grandeur of this thing. It wasn't tchotchkes, no sir, but rather a lot of incredibly useful food items and kitchen gadgets... with an envelope full of coupons for more stuff. I'll be holding souvenirs of the party in my hands for a long time to come.
Thank you, Stacey and Bill, for your over-the-top hospitality.
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