Sit inside Pharos Pizza, in one of their 1970′s leather seat booths, and look across the street. Poised like a vulture studying its next meal is a Domino’s take-out counter. The ground zero of the fast food incursion into the Edmonton historical district of Old Strathcona happened a mere block down, where a KFC, a Taco Bell and a McDonald’s stand shoulder-to-shoulder, like a scrum entering the rival team’s penalty zone. Domino’s lurks dangerously close to High-Level Diner and Pharos, testing the waters.

For a while, Pharos seemed impervious to these market pressures. It’s easy to imagine that their menu hasn’t changed in 40 years of business. Every pizza or pasta they serve is custom made to order, and offer a simple, quaint elegance that must have made it a prime dating spot fourty years ago. For example, soft drinks are served in tiny 250 ml glasses, a ghost of an era before the litre jug became standard.

When visiting a place like this, it’s tempting to associate its timelessness with a form of immortality. But in less than a month, Pharos will close its doors, finally yielding to commercial pressures. The Garneau building has a new owner, and he is raising the yearly rent above their annual income. In other words, they’re being forced out of business.

There is no doubt that whoever will replace Pharos in their prime location will have the business acumen and the marketing power to pay the high rent. Someone, say, with deep corporate pockets, who can cut production costs with more efficient methods and supply systems. They will probably offer soft drinks in extra-large format, too.

The story of Pharos, sadly, is that of every mom and pop shop, every old-fashioned pizza joint or hot dog stand in North America. Thriving historical places such as Montreal’s Schwartz’s are the exception. There’s a reason these little pieces of local history are rare: their existence is a struggle in the currents of a globalized food industry. They are more concerned with authenticity and the human touch than they are with franchise scaling and corporate earnings.

“Local” as a food word is becoming trendy, but boutique bistros with seasonal menus are kind of missing the point. The real soul of many North American cities, including Edmonton, can be found in these pizza joints and hamburger stands. It’s the tragedy of these places that no foodie will stand up to their defense when the corporate food industry moves in for the kill.

The story of Pharos is the story of the Western world in the age of the industrial food chain. There might not be much appeal beyond the nostalgic in another spaghetti and meatball joint going out of business. But every time a burger joint goes out of business, another piece of our collective soul fades away.

And with Pharos passing away, so does another piece of Edmonton’s soul.

Pharos Pizza will close down for good in the month of June. This is your last chance to try Edmonton’s best pizza while enjoying a slice of Edmonton’s history. Pharos Pizza is located at 8708 109 Street, next to the Garneau Theater.

Back in January, I decided to go off meat for 3 months in what I called The Vegetarian Experiment. It turns out I didn’t last 3 months; but I definitely feel the experiment was a success. Here are a few observations:

1. Vegetarianism isn’t that hard

It was very easy for me to fall into the pattern of a vegetarian diet. The biggest difficulty was clearly establishing my bounds (do I want to eat cheese? Eggs?) Once that was done, though, I quickly fell into the habit, and naturally shunned meat. I definitely feel as if I could have gone on being a vegetarian if I wanted to.

To be fair, veganism sounds a lot harder to do than vegetarianism. It certainly would involve a lot less eating out, as it’s almost impossible to control the animal parts in restaurant meals.

2. A vegetarian diet can be fulfilling and varied

One of my concerns as a vegetarian was that my diet would be severely restricted, and my options limited. On the contrary, I felt I experienced a varied, delicious diet during this time. In addition, the common fear that I would run low on proteins was unfounded. (The question I got the most was, ‘Where do you get your protein?’)

Admittedly, I ate cheese and eggs, which contribute plenty of protein. I suspect such ingredients as vegetables, tofu and nuts provide plenty of protein on their own without eggs and cheese. Overall, I don’t find proteins to be any sort of concern whatsoever.

3. Vegetarianism didn’t translate into weight loss

Another common comment was that I would be losing weight by going vegetarian. That was not the case, as my weight remained perfectly stable over the last 2 months. Now, I already had a balanced diet before this, which included a lot of vegetables, and small portions of meat from time to time, all of it coming from small-scale farms.

As a result, I strongly believe I was already reaping the benefits of a healthy diet while I was still eating meat. Someone going off agro-industrial meat and fast food to a vegetarian diet would benefit, in other words, from the same gains in health that I already had from eating small portions of quality meat.

4. I still believe local, small-scale meat is ethically sound

Vegetarianism tends to arise in reaction to agro-industrial meat, processed food and fast food. I believe, and studies support this, that the ills associated with meat are actually due to the industrial processing of meat, and that these effects go away with grass-fed, small-scale beef.

In addition, while weaning myself off meat for two months, I reflected at length on the ethical considerations of eating animals, and I find myself agreeing with my previous postulate: that the slaughter of animals in the context of small-scale, humane, organic and ecologically-sound farms is an acceptable thing, and a positive contribution to our species and society.

5. I do not see vegetarianism as compatible with my style of travel

I was doing fine for 2 months being a vegetarian, until I visited a Chinese dumpling restaurant in Edmonton. There, I had two choices: either I ate only vegetables, or I cheated on my own diet and had some jiao zi (dumplings) with meat in them.

In that moment, vegetarianism felt absurd. I realized I would never allow myself to pass on a dish that was kindly offered during my travels, and thus, that this lifestyle wasn’t for me. Vegetarianism is a self-imposed restriction on one’s diet, which I find incompatible with the openness I expect of myself on the road.

Back on the meat wagon

On Saturday, February 7th, I visited the Granville Island Public Market in Vancouver. There, I saw Oyama Sausage Co., a small-scale, local prosciutto vendor, offering 12 different varieties of cured meat made from small, local farms. I stepped up to the counter, and bought 4 slices of Okanagan red wine-cured prosciutto, which I brought with me outside.

Looking at the meat in my hands, I tried to understand how I felt about going back to meat.

I put the slice of prosciutto in my mouth. It tasted like fireworks should.

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Related blog posts:

On Eating Meat
The Vegetarian Experiment
The Meat Send-Off
Vegediaries – Day 2
Vegediaries – Day 7
Vegediaries – Day 15
Vegediaries – Day 30
A Vegetarian with a Gun

Every Saturday since Catfish Coffee set up shop at the Old Strathcona Farmers Market, Jack sneaks in before opening hours, and gets his special order: decaf beans, roasted espresso dark. Dominic never fails to bring him a one-pound bag. In felt pen, he writes “Jack’s Blend” on the bag.

Sure enough, Jack shows up, right on time. He’s an amiable man, and he spends a minute chatting with Dominic as we rush to finish setting up the Catfish Coffee booth.

Jack is what Dom calls a “pro”. The pros make it early to the market, intent on snatching the freshest produce off the shelf before the masses can pick through them. They are organized: they bring lists, and know where to go.

I’m one of these pros, although my Saturday market routine involves spending a leisurely breakfast at the nearby New York Bagel Café. But today, I’ve beat them all, even Jack.

You see, today, I’m one of the vendors.

Bounty from the Market, May 2008
(Click to enlarge)

Over the last year, Helene and I have spent countless hours at the Catfish Coffee stand, chatting with Dominic and his fiancee Tracy. I’m as passionate about good coffee as they are about roasting it: and as surely as coffee begets conversation, conversation begets friendship.

For Dom and Tracy, the love of coffee means spending long evenings roasting their coffee by hand, despite having a newborn baby, and in the case of Dominic, a demanding day job. Yet every Saturday morning, they show up in time for Jack’s unofficial launch of the market day, with hundreds of pounds of coffee painstakingly roasted by hand, 5 pounds at a time.

Why do they do it? If you ever meet them go ahead and ask them that question. They’ll tell you they cannot imagine having it any other way; and their smile will leave no doubt they’re telling the truth.

Dom and Tracy manning the booth
(Click to enlarge)

The pros are meticulous in their appreciation of coffee. They ask questions about the roast, and sample the various blends. When Dom or I answer, you can see them lean forward across the table, gulping up the knowledge. They’re clear about what they like and don’t like, and the mere suggestion that they might not have a grinder at home makes their eyes widen in amused outrage.

Dom and Tracy give them friendly nicknames. Biker Al got his because of his omnipresent helmet. The Coach got his moniker for his seven daughters, enough for a baseball team. To Dom and Tracy, until they learned my real name, I was French Press, both for my native language, and my usual way of making coffee.

As the lunch hour approaches, the crowd thickens and changes. We’re entering Tire Kicker territory: that’s how Dom calls those who are just hanging out. We start seeing more and more Starbucks and other commercial coffee cups. Every time one cup-holding wanderer goes by without stopping to investigate the stand, I feel I’m on the darkened side of a one-way mirror. Will these people ever realize that they walked by the best coffee in town, while they sipped their Tim Horton’s?

Fortunately, others are curious enough to stop and ask a few questions. A minute of hearing Dom talk with knowledge and passion, and most of them will try a sample; and of those trying a sample, very few leave without a bag. The coffee speaks eloquently for itself; Dom and I are there to make the introduction.

Catfish Coffee’s “Bali Blue Morning” beans
(Click to enlarge)

If you ever stop by the Farmers Market, I dare you to ask Dominic about Fair Trade certification. While most of his beans are certified, he does not have the Fair Trade sticker on his bags. Doing so would require that he charge his customers as much as $5 more per pound, with not a penny going back to the producer.

But even worse, Dom has seen a decline in recent months in the quality of fair trade certified coffee. This is due in large part to the economics of Fair Trade: simply put, a grower must reach a certain volume of production before he can apply for certification; and because of market demand for Fair Trade, the only way for small growers to sell their beans in within a cooperatives.

During my visit to their retail and roasting location, Dom showed me a Fair Trade Costa Rican. The beans were uneven, some of them broken into pieces; he even pulled up rocks from the beans. This, Dom says, is the result of twenty-some farmers pooling their beans, and stopping to care about quality knowing it will be buried under nineteen others.

Then, one day, Dom and Tracy received a green bean bag from Harar, Ethiopia. The bag featured the crude picture of a horse, and was sewn shut by hand. When she opened it, Tracy found a surprise inside. It was a note, written by the grower, addressed to whoever would inherit the fruits of his labor.

Hope my beans are good, it said. If you have a problem with them, here’s my phone number.

Without knowing it, Catfish Coffee had taken its first step outside the comfort zone of Fair Trade certification. The world beyond was filled with producers too proud to abandon their beans to the anonymity of a coop. A world, unsurprisingly, very much like that of the Farmers Market.

Oh, and the Harar Horse? Best coffee I’ve ever had. Brew it fresh, close your eyes and take a sip: you can taste the soil it grew in, somewhere in the Horn of Africa, lovingly coaxed from the beans by Dominic and Tracy’s roast.

January 2009: Catfish introduces the Harar Horse
(Click to enlarge)

As closing time approaches, the Tire Kickers dwindle. The pros have moved in again: this is the crowd I usually join, when I’m not busy selling coffee.

I’m tired and exhilarated by my day at the market. Most of it has gone in a blur, and all I can remember are the powder of fresh ground coffee on my fingers, and my repeated explanations to customers about Catfish Coffee’s philosophy.

And it dawns on me: like Dominic, Tracy, and most of the vendors at the Market, I’m not here selling a product, but a worldview. Every time a customer walks by, I want them to taste the coffee, and share with me the feeling of walking off the beaten path of consumerism. I want them to see the world lurking behind the facade of brands and certifications, where human beings still trade with a smile and a handshake, whether on a field in Ethiopia, or in a market in Edmonton.

I want them to know the taste of a coffee born without a barcode.

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Catfish Coffee is on sale every Saturday at the Old Strathcona Farmers Market in Edmonton, at 10310 83rd Avenue. Their retail location will open soon at 6507 112nd Ave. For inquiries, call 780-491-0771, or join the Catfish Coffee Roasters page on Facebook. Tell them French Press sent you!

Sunday morning, my shoulder will feel sore as hell. It’s getting punched repeatedly by a merciless bully. The bully’s name? .300 Winchester Magnum.

I line up my shot, remembering not to lean forward too close to the rifle’s sight; I don’t feel like shopping for a new pair of glasses with a black eye. My target is square in the crosshairs, so now comes the hard part: not fearing the kick of the gun as the shot is fired.

“Every time, you have to convince your brain that this time, this one time, you won’t get hurt, that a bullet is not about to explode inches from your face. But of course, it’s a lie,” explained Jim, an ex-colleague and gun enthusiast.

Unfortunately, I’m not that great at lying to my brain, yet. I can’t help but double-check that the rifle’s butt is squarely set against the crook of my shoulder. I can’t help but close my eyes the second before I pull the trigger.

The shot goes off. The bullet’s explosion is enough to shake some snow off the roof of the firing stand. My shoulder briefly throbs from the hard plastic punch of the rifle’s butt. I check the target, and see I’ve missed the center by a few inches. I jerked a bit as I squeezed the trigger, knowing the shot was about to go off.

I eject the spent cartridge by pulling back the bolt. I load up a new one, and lock up.

Lining up the shot, I start lying to my brain again.

The Sherwood Park rifle range in summer

Jocelyn, Ben, Jim and I are at the Sherwood Park Outdoor Firing Range on a Sunday afternoon in February. Despite the biting cold, two other men are at the rifle range, and shotgun shots can be heard from the skeet shooting range nearby.

I came here at Jocelyn’s behest, after he heard of my trip to West Edmonton Mall’s Wild West Shooting Range. Joce is a Quebecois friend from BioWare, and a hunting enthusiast. I hadn’t planned to venture again into the world of firearms, but Joce’s proposal is tempting: he’s offering me the chance to fire real hunting rifles, at an outdoor shooting range. In travel terms, he’s suggesting I move away from the tourist trap, and try out an authentic local spot. Put almost anything to me in these terms, and it’s impossible to say no.

On the way over – a 45 minutes drive from downtown Edmonton – Jocelyn and I talk about local food issues, as well as the thrill of hunting. And truth be told, I’m warming up to the idea of stalking an animal, holding a big gun. “What’s more organic than a buck that grazed from the forest all its life?” asks Joce. He’s right.

After the WEM shooting experience, I’m less weary around firearms. Not that I’m careless, on the contrary – but my aversion for them is turning into respect. As my friend Malcolm puts it, it’s the kind of respect you give a boiling pot. You can feel it coming from the experienced shooters, as well; you never see the guys waving them around, or making light of them in any way. If anything, they are even more aware than me of the gun’s destructive potential. When I lean forward to look through the scope of Ben’s unloaded rifle while Jim is in the field placing targets, Joce quickly instructs me to put the rifle down, even when it was clearly not loaded. I feel a bit shameful, and do as he asks.

Once Jim is back from the target area, Joce sits down to business: he’s doing load development on two of his rifles, which means he’s testing out a number of loads for accuracy and velocity. It’s all business for him, but thankfully, he lets me sit down with another one of his rifles, and a box of .300 cartridges.

I shoot enough of them to numb my shoulder. Lie as much as I want, my brain remains firmly convinced I’m out to hurt myself every time I pull the trigger. Damn you brain for being right.

Third from right: .300 Winchester Magnum

On the way back from the shooting range, I express my satisfaction to Joce. It definitely felt more real than at West Edmonton Mall, and firing a hunting rifle capable of taking down a moose is quite different from a 9mm pistol.

We talk about hunting some more. Joce explains how he’d like to butcher an animal himself, some day, maybe this year. I nod my consent. Whenever I speak to hunters, there is nothing but respect for the animals they kill. They talk about the thrill of the hunt, of the beauty of nature, of the quality of the meat.

“The people who say it’s too easy to hunt with a gun make me laugh,” explained Jim, earlier. “They have no idea how hard it is to kill an animal with a rifle. The cold, the interminable waiting, the difficulty of hitting an animal at 100 yards… It’s hard.”

Joce, for his part, explains the thrill you feel when you have an animal in your sights. “That’s what you don’t get at the firing range… the adrenaline. Your hands start shaking, it’s so hard to take a shot.” It sounds like a hell of a thrill.

Feeling my bruised shoulder, I wonder what it would be like to kill a buck myself. To clean its carcass. To grill its meat on the barbecue. I wonder how you can be disrespectful to an animal when you snuffed away its life yourself. Is it possible to treat it with the blind contempt our society holds for industrial meat? I doubt it.

In a way, the thought process that got me here, on a cold, sunny day, is the same that got me to quit meat for 3 months.

It comes from a desire to appreciate the food I eat with both eyes open.

Wow, has it been a month already into my vegetarian experiment?

One month is long enough to start forming habits, and my vegetarianism is no exception. The simple fact is, I barely think about it anymore. As a matter of fact, others are starting to think about it for me.

Eating vegetarian is a personal decision, and not even one I feel that strongly about. It’s an experiment, so I’m more interested in observing my perception over time, than I am in ensuring my vegetarianism is strictly followed. I’m being strict with myself, don’t take me wrong; I just don’t expect other people to bend backwards for it.

But bend they do. I feel like I have acquired some disability by choosing to be a vegetarian, in the way people feel obliged to carefully consider this whenever food is discussed. They’ll triple-check to make sure a specific restaurant has vegetarian options, for instance, or feel bad if they suggest I should enjoy a meat-based dish. The attention is nice, mind you; I just wish people didn’t feel they had to inconvenience themselves so much to support my choice.

On the personal front, I’m absolutely not missing meat right now. I still look at cooking shows featuring meat and think “that looks delicious”, but I certainly don’t feel like having a steak right now. As a matter of fact, the one dish I have been craving for a week now is palak paneer.

I  wouldn’t kill for it, exactly… But I would aggressively uproot a carrot.

I don’t know yet whether I’ll go back to being a regular meat-eater once this is over. I think I’ll definitely keep eating meat when I travel, since it’s important to me to be receptive of other people’s cuisines, and many of the world’s cuisines feature meat proeminently. I couldn’t turn down snake blood alcohol when it was offered to me as a gesture of hospitality in Vietnam, so I’ll definitely accept beef offered to me out of kindness and hospitality.

But my perception of meat as an every day meal is definitely changing. My meat eating had already gone down before I cut it out completely for 3 months, but I’m thinking of keeping my diet mostly vegetarian afterward, with meat being used rarely and as a special dish.

Then again, Helene predicts that within 3 months, I’ll actually grow to find meat disgusting. We’ll see… That would be a heck of a reversal for a 3 months period. But who knows? If that’s the case, I’ll definitely have learned something about myself.

Wednesday evening, Helene heated up a pot of spicy pea soup that she had frozen in December. The soup base was from a stall at the Farmers Market. Hungry, we dug in immediately.

“Say, didn’t we use bison bones as the stock for this?” I asked.

We both stared at each other, in shock. Yep, this soup was made in December using the bones from organic, grass-fed bison, purchased at my favorite meat vendor at the Market.

This posed a very practical and immediate moral conundrum: should we eat it anyway, or throw it away?

If I were eating vegetarian for health reasons, I should throw it away, for sure. But my main motivation for experimenting with vegetarianism is an ethical one. Were I to have thrown away this soup right then, would it have made a difference? The bison had already been bred, raised, killed then butchered; the bones already boiled into stock. Still, should I have simply thrown it away to avoid being “guilty” by association? Ignore the act and simply clear my conscience?

Such is the moral minefield that can arise from being a vegetarian for ethical reasons.

In the end, we took the more pragmatic route: this soup was already made, and wasting it would have been a greater shame than consuming its protein content. And if being vegetarian is about respecting animal life, then certainly it was a better form of respect to eat it in full knowledge of the life that went into making it, rather than simply throwing it away.

We ate our soup. It was delicious.

I’ve been a vegetarian for a week now, and it’s going pretty well thus far.

Many vegetarians report an increase in energy from the get-go. Did I get an energy boost myself? Well, I think so. Could be psychosomatic, of course, or it could be that the contrast between my Christmas Holidays diet and this one is so drastic that I’d feel this way even with a steak for dinner.

Still, this feels nice. It feels empowering. It feels like I’m in control of my diet, and I’m exploring new territory. Part of the reason I want to go 3 months without meat is that I want to see how this feels once the newness of it is gone; so we’ll see how things feel when I’ve been going 2 months without meat. For now, though, it’s pretty cool.

My biggest difficulty thus far has been to clearly define, and then respect, my own definition of vegetarianism. Initially, I wanted to avoid having eggs, milk and cheese if I didn’t know that they were locally-grown and organic. This is proving to be a tough proposition: I might get a dish I ordered that contains cream, for instance, or agonize over whether they used gelatin in a dessert I might have.

So after reconvening with Helene on the subject, we both decided that although we should try and avoid milk, eggs and cheese from non-small-scale sources, it was better not to agonize over it for the time being. After a month of vegetarianism, we can “crank it up” and see how we handle it. So for now, I try and restrict myself to black coffee, for instance, but I won’t make a case if cream ends up in my dish.

I haven’t felt the need to apologize for being a vegetarian; that is, until I went back to the Farmers Market yesterday. I told Grace, a kind and cheerful Polish woman who sells amazing beef jerky and pepperoni. I didn’t want her to think I didn’t like her products anymore, so I spilled the beans about my experiment. I told her I’d miss her pepperoni.

She patted my hand, a sad expression on her face. “They’ll miss you too!”

As you know, I place a lot of importance on small-scale meat production, as opposed to industrial slaughterhouses. I believe that although it is ethically acceptable to eat meat, this does not imply the right to treat animals inhumanely.

Here is a blog post that exemplifies the kind of understanding and appreciation that can grow from small-scale meat production. The fascinating story comes from Joe Cloud, who operates a small-scale slaughterhouse in the US. Joe is the partner of Joel Salatin, mentioned in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore Dilemma.

Queen of Spades lifted her tail and had a pee. I watched as Gingerbread Boogie tasted her urine, sticking his tongue in the stream, then curling his lips back and inhaling deeply to catch the fine aromas, like a wine aficionado with a premier cru Burgundy.  Bulls do this to see if the cow is coming into heat. Here he was in the abattoir, and he was enthusiastically thinking of one last fling. I admired his spirit.

Postcard from a Slaughterhouse: The Ones that Got Away

(Via The Ethicurean)

As I said in a previous post, I’ve decided to give the vegetarian lifestyle a 3-month trial this year. Last Sunday, I took my parents and brother out to Au pied de cochon, and sensing the orgy of meat this would represent, I decided that it would be a fitting point to start my vegetarian experiment.

And so, as of yesterday morning, I’m a vegetarian.

Going vegetarian has one very specific thing in common with quitting smoking, it would seem. When you’re a smoker, you go hours without thinking about the fact you are not smoking at this precise point in time. But quit smoking, and suddenly you’re thinking about your non-smoking every damn minute. As you’ve seen from my recent posts, quitting meat has the same effect on me: I just can’t stop thinking about the absence of it. That is particularly annoying, given that in the days leading up to the Christmas Holidays, my meat consumption was already down to a handful of meals a week.

Ahead of the beginning of my vegetarian experiment, I phoned Helene, who is currently staying at her grandmother’s for the Holidays. I discussed with her my idea to stop eating meat immediately following my trip to Au pied de cochon. Turns out I hadn’t thought this one through.

“Now, what precisely is your reason to become vegetarian? This will influence your choices and restrictions,” she explained to me.

That one is a bit tricky, because as I previously explained on this blog, I’m actually fine with eating meat. So part of my trying out vegetarianism involves imagining myself not being fine with it, and seeing where I draw the line.

“I’m actually less fine with eating an egg that comes from an agro-industrial chicken, than a steak from a small-scale organic farm. So for me to quit eating that steak and having eggs at McDonald’s feels wrong.”

“So vegan, then. But to what degree do you want to do it? Are you fine with wearing leather shoes?”

Ah, yes, the good old downward spiral of vegan ethics. You start by wanting to cut meat because it feels wrong to butcher a veal, and the next thing you know, you’re avoiding silk because you feel guilty for exploiting silkworms.

In the end, Helene and I decided to be dietary vegans in most restaurants, and ovo-lacto-vegetarians at home and in restaurants that offer local and/or organic products. I feel like a smoker who quits smoking cigarettes unless they’re menthos and/or unfiltered Gauloises. But as Helene sagely points out, if you try to do too much with vegetarianism, you’ll just go crazy and give up.

So after reading on vegetarian food, today I went out to Planet Organic, Edmonton’s organic supermarket. I considered myself something of a finicky buyer before, but this reaches entirely new levels. For instance, I’m now looking for “vegetarian cheese”. What’s non-vegetarian about normal cheese you ask? Many cheeses are made using rennet, an enzyme. And it turns out that newborn calves’ stomachs are a wonderful source of rennet.

Well, that’s just peachy. What’s next? Eggs are actually made out of aborted chicken fetuses? This isn’t as easy as it was meant to be.

Anyway, I’ve made it back home with a modest amount of vegetables and one cheese clearly labelled as “rennet-free”. Score! I’ve also braved the refrigerated aisle in order to explore the dark underworld of meat substitutes.

I’ll be trying these out over the next few days, and blogging about it afterwards. But in the meantime, I’ve got one terrifying word for you:

Veganrella.

Having heaped praise on the Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market throughout the better part of last year, I was curious to revisit the fabled Marché Jean-Talon during my Montreal visit. Partly, I wanted to see how the Market held up to my year-old memories of the place; but also, having learned a lot about food and local agriculture this year, I wanted to look at the Market with these new eyes.

Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market and Marché Jean-Talon have very different missions. Old Strathcona is a traditional farmer’s market, promising that every vendor is directly responsible for growing, raising, baking or crafting the products you can buy. The Jean-Talon Market, on the other hand, offers no other promise than to allow a variety of relatively small food vendors to congregate in a common space. It has more in common with “ethnic” markets (its roots as an Italian market still show today), offering specialized food products to a segment of the population.

Jean-Talon Market is split in 3 distinct parts: the periphery of the market is made of various shops that have more in common with modern stores than stalls at an ethnic market. You get a mixed bag of shops in the periphery: from the spectacular (Fromagerie Hamel or the absolutely awesome Marché des saveurs) to the forgettable (the bland fruit supermarket Sami Fruits and baker chain Première moisson.) The second part of the market is a recent interior construction hosting year-round producers selling their wares, while the third part, only open in summer, is the exterior market, where seasonal producers come in droves. To be fair, Jean-Talon truly comes alive in the summer, but being that this is January, I had to content with vendors in the interior part.

I remember my delight at purchasing meat at Jean-Talon, and what I saw today pretty much confirmed this. Judging strictly from the look of it, and from the claims and explanations seen around the shops, the quality of the meat at Jean-Talon Market seems exceptional. Whereas I can only choose from four small-scale meat producers at Old Strathcona (albeit of very high quality), the meat on offering here is as varied as it is mouth-watering: elk and bison from Petite-Nation, Charlevoix lamb, organic pork… It’s all there, and I was pleased to  recognize the signs of care and pride I associate with small producers (“happy lamb!” proclaims a vendor’s sign.)

The produce, however, were a huge disappointment.

Oh, they were pretty, and varied, and perfect… like at the supermarket. If you go to Jean-Talon Market in the winter, you’ll find fruits and vegetables regardless of the season. Today, I saw asparagus, cherries, avocados, and even bananas. Naturally, none of these are from Quebec: cherries were from Chile, avocados from Mexico, asparaguses from as far as Peru. The bananas hailed from Columbia.

Now, that’s fine in itself, except that these imported produce are sold at stands claiming to belong to small farms from the regions of Quebec. The cherries, for instance, were sold at a farm’s stand, alongside with Quebec-grown hothouse tomatoes. The sign proclaming the tomatoes’ origin is huge; to find the cherries’ origin, you have to crouch and inspect the crates.

I don’t know how much this fools the Market’s patrons. Most likely they do not care, as they go to the Market because the produce are fresher than at the supermarket, and a few of the items in their bags end up being regional. But I can’t help but feel there’s some amount of deception involved. When a stall claims to sell heirloom tomatoes from a South Shore farm, and you end up buying cherries from Chile, you’re no longer dealing with a farmer, but with an importer. And aside from mandarin oranges from Morocco, all these non-Quebec origins were kept quiet: not hidden, but not advertised either.

Walking these aisles, I suddenly understood the Old Strathcona’s Farmer’s Market’s insistence on vendors being growers. This single principle has ensured that I can stop at a stall, and engage in a meaningful dialog with the person who raised my beef, roasted my coffee or grew my carrots. Over the last year, this relationship with the people growing my food has played a key role in shaping my worldview and my eating habits.

I don’t begrudge the farmers who pay the winter rent  at the Jean-Talon Market by adding imported produce to their stalls. But as I leaned forward to study the elastic band on the asparagus stalks, I remembered how precious the asparaguses I ate last summer had been. They had shown up in June, giving a summer flair to most of my dinners. Come mid-July, they were gone, announcing the autumn days ahead.

It’s summer in Peru, so the Jean-Talon Market gets asparaguses in January. But I can’t shake the hand that grew these. And in that singular absence, I feel a quiet but disconcerting loss.