Red Herring Local Day Recap

The Local food day at the Red Herring Vegetarian Restaurant was a big success. Many thanks to Chad and Lisa who made the idea a reality, and to Amy who did some great last minute publicity for the event. (Channel 3 news WCIA showed up and did a story on the event).

For us, the best part was eating food that wasn't made by us! In the picture is the basil stir-fry, cornbread, and mashed sweet potatoes with green beans, all local.* There were also two local soups, butternut squash and potato leek.

The other best part, was seeing labels for all of dishes, which showed where every ingredients came from. How great is that? Full traceability. Some people don't want to know what is in their hot dog or chicken nuggets. Give me all the nitty gritty details! Here are pictures of the ingredients' places of origin:

(click for larger versions)









Wouldn't it be great if all restaurants did this? Each dish would be a story of soil, water, sun, farmers, trucks, trains, or ships, distance, freezers, cans, microorganisms, and so on.

*the corn for the cornmeal was grown in ohio but milled in illinois. see the ingredients lists for the rest of the exceptions.

Eat Local Thursday at the Red Herring

This Thursday, the Red Herring Vegetarian Restaurant (in Urbana, corner of Mathews and Oregon) will be serving at least one all-local meal (butternut squash and roasted red pepper soup) with many local items used in the other dishes, like a local stir fry.

For those of you who live in Urbana-Champaign, come out on Thursday (lunch served 11am-3pm) to show your support for a restaurant that is making an effort to support locally grown food and local farmers. If enough people show up, maybe they'll make this a weekly occurrence!