On The Food Totem Pole, What's One Better Than Organic?
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
--Spinal Tap
It's probably safe to say that no one has ever used Spinal Tap--one of the finest mockumentaries ever made--to help illustrate Bay Area restaurateurs' search for the type of produce that is "one better" than organic ... biodynamic!
For Manresa chef David Kinch, biodynamically grown vegetables are "the cornerstone" of his cuisine, because according to him (and others), they are superior to organic veggies. In a nutshell, biodynamic farming usually involves stirring quartz and manure in water in a vortex and then combining the mixture in the soil:
Biodynamic farming is the brainchild of the late Austrian philosopher/naturalist Rudolf Steiner, who came up with the method in the 1920s as farming was turning to chemicals, depleting the soil as well as the plant. Steiner felt that as a result, human nutrition was suffering. His philosophy is called anthroposophy; longtime adherents of biodynamics also study anthroposophy.Of course, one of the other aspects of biodynamic farming is that the restaurateur is much more intimately involved with the farmers. For example, Manresa's Kinch has spent many an early morning and late night whipping up special formulas in the lab/barns of his local farms.At the heart of Steiner's biodynamics are nine preparations. Most, like the springtime silica solution, involve highly diluted mixtures applied to compost, to the crop or to the land itself at specific times of the year.
"It's the next level,'' Kinch says. While he gratefully acknowledges Alice Waters' legacy, the farm-restaurant connection and the organic revolution, it's nonetheless time to go deeper. "You go to the farmers' market and all the chefs are there. We're buying the same organic leeks and lettuces. We're all doing the same thing. I wanted to do better.''
It just goes to show you that someone will always find something that is "one better." Take that, Alice Waters.
Digging biodynamic [SFGate]
