How can you get access to truly local food in the Portland area? Eat Oregon First brings local produce, grain, fish and meat to restaurants, food carts and specialty stores. Fork Revolution sells it retail to email subscribers. With this one-two punch, they battle the reputation of Oregon local food as being too expensive and not available to all.
The first Plate and Pitchfork dinner of the season was held at Eat Oregon First/Fork Revolution's warehouse on Cornelius Pass Road in Hillsboro. Chef Anthony Cafiero of Tabla Mediterranean Bistro prepared a meal featuring the foods available through these distributors. We dined on Basque Ranch bread, Payne Family pork, Taylor Made eggs, Cascade Red beef, Norris Dairy cream, and enjoyed Hair of the Dog beer and Love & Squalor wine.
Scot Laney took the diners on a short tour of their small facility. It is set up to bring in the food and move it right out to the "chef's joints" hungry for quality local ingredients. They have 18 farms now participating. Some of these produce only wheat to make feed for the cows and chickens on the other farms.
What is local? One meaning of local is food raised on local farms. Bi-local food (primarily animals) is both born on local farms and brought to market locally. Tri-local food is born on the farm, fed exclusively on food grown on the farm or nearby, and brought to market locally.
The strength of using Eat Oregon First for distribution is it keeps farmers on the farm rather than out distributing their food to markets and restaurants. Laney believes that Eat Oregon First is the only distributor of its kind.
All of the meat is USDA or ODA inspected. Laney noted that because of Portland has a concentration of chefs who like to create seasonal, local snout-to-tail cuisine, it's easy to sell whole animals or cuts that you don't see in the supermarket. List of Eat Oregon First patrons
Fork Revolution brings this same great local food to anyone who signs up for their weekly email list and is able to come pick it up Monday through Friday, 9 am - 5 pm at their warehouse in Hillsboro.
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