Hothouse
Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food, passed away earlier this week. I did not know him, but I write and think about food in the wake of his influence. My thinking on food systems—that they should be regional and agroecological when feasible; that they should be equitable to people, land, and animals; that they must not be run by bloated agribusiness for that to be the case—is undeniably part of this lineage. Raj Patel characterized Petrini’s perspective as being borne of the belief that “there’s nothing too good for the working class.”
That comes to mind as I read Kate Brown’s Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City, where she writes about the foraging that sustained commoners on a diverse and nutritious diet while English elites dined on meat, wheat, and sugar—the commodities that would become a Western standard. In Anne Jomard’s piece in this issue, she comes upon similar analysis while reading a foraging guide that Slow Food Editore published in 2022.
This piece was accidentally timely, which is ideal. I want these issues to be evergreen, because the world itself these days feels like a hothouse: both literally and figuratively. Everyone talks of slowing down and going analogue, and while I read a ton of print, I also love the digital world—it’s true! Print is beautiful; digital can travel. As these writers are speaking from all over the world, I want to make sure the work can be read everywhere, too. That’s why in this issue, we also have our first piece that is appearing in both English and Spanish: Luis Alexis Rodríguez Cruz’s “El Difícil.”
In this issue of Tomato Tomato, which has a focus on conviviality as lifestyle and lifeline, we also have Skylar Renslow on why cask ale invites conversation in English pubs; Lari Burgos on the role of Cointreau in Anjou, France; Sarah May Grunwald on the fantasies of food while medically fasting in a Roman hospital; Rebecca Duras explains how to read salad menus in Serbia; Lauren Tu-Ying Bo in conversation with Tiny Chef about char siu tofu and heritage in St. Louis; Anna Ansari chronicling a ski trip in Bulgaria; and Gan Chin Lin with a longform piece on the labor and gastronomic politics of Singapore’s school canteens—plus fiction on the recipe comments section by Julia Tausch.
If you enjoy reading, please consider becoming a member of Tomato Tomato x the Desk in order to support the work of the writers.
Thank you to contributing editors Devin Kate Pope and Simi Sonubi for their invaluable help on shaping this edition.
