THE U.S. HOLDS ITS FIRST NATIONAL SLOW FOOD EVENT. THE KERMESSE IN SAN FRANCISCO OFFERS OVER ONE THOUSAND VARIETIES OF FOODS AT RISK. ALICE WATERS WANTS TO TRANSFORM A PART OF THE WHITE HOUSE GARDENS INTO A VEGETABLE GARDEN

Healthy food and good wine, organic and safeguarded products: even the homeland of fast food is changing. The first “Slow Food Nation 2008” was held in San Francisco recently and reaped great success. The largest celebration of American food ever opened its doors on August 29th.

“It is a grand eco-friendly demonstration and our main goal is to help preserve the over one thousand varieties of traditional foods in North America that risk disappearing from circulation”, explained Carlo Petrini, the founder of the original Slow Food in Italy.

Not just a culinary event, but a complete food event, the idea to do an American version came about by Alice Waters, who is the Vice President of Slow Food and owner of the restaurant Chez Panisse in San Francisco. And the initiative attracted visitors from all over the globe: from Canada, Japan, Peru, Argentina, Chile, and, naturally, Italy.

One of the protagonists of the event was coffee where Slow Food Nation managed to reunite producers from the U.S., Caribbean, Central America, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. “It was an excellent occasion to start up commercial exchange channels”, explained the organizers of Slow Food.

There was also space for a lecture series titled “Food for Thought”, where philosophers, intellectuals, and writers were able to meet and discuss food.

The choice of using San Francisco was not by chance because some of the most important leaders of the Slow Food movement are already centered there. It is the city where Alice Waters, together with Carlo Petrini and Michael Pollan (author of the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”), managed to create an immense vegetable garden, called the Victory Garden, in front of the city hall.

“For some months now, vegetables of all types have been growing in the center of the city. We are still not at the White House, but nature has at least arrived in San Francisco”. Waters would ideally like to transform part of the White House gardens into an organic garden. “Obama likes the idea a lot. I ran a fundraising center for him in California”. And it is destined precisely for the two nominees for the 2008 U.S. presidential elections the petition titled “Slow Food Nation” for a new food politic.