Camp recipe for change

STIRRING THE POT: Nick's On Broadway owner Derek Wagner, center, meets with fellow chef Maneet Chauhan, left, and Kris Moon, senior director, strategy and development at the James Beard Foundation. / COURTESY KEN GOODMAN
STIRRING THE POT: Nick's On Broadway owner Derek Wagner, center, meets with fellow chef Maneet Chauhan, left, and Kris Moon, senior director, strategy and development at the James Beard Foundation. / COURTESY KEN GOODMAN

Chefs play a number of roles in their individual restaurants, communities and the food-service industry at large. More than just creators and menu-makers, chefs have great influence on their guests, their staffs and increasingly, their world.

This dynamic is not lost on the James Beard Foundation, which has quietly been undertaking a program that is mobilizing chefs to advocate for change in our food system.

The foundation started a series of retreats for its members called Chefs’ Boot Camp for Policy and Change, to empower them to become effective advocates. As Kris Moon, the JBF’s senior director of strategy and development told me, this is part of the foundation’s educational mission.

“Our Boot Camps educate chefs about how to use their voice most effectively,” he said. “Chefs want to know how to make their constituency aware of issues they care about.” The retreats are held all around the country. The participants receive advocacy and media training while learning about important issues, challenges and opportunities facing the food world.

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And not surprisingly, there is a leading local chef taking part.

Chef Derek Wagner, proprietor of Nick’s On Broadway in Providence, last month attended a boot camp with 14 of his fellow chefs from all over the country. They spent three days at Shelburne Farms, Vt., cooking together, listening and learning about change.

Wagner is no stranger to JBF events. This year alone he has participated in two other collaborative events in Providence as foundation staff came from New York to take part in a seminar on sustainable seafood and in a program called Culinary Lab.

“The JBF connects chefs and cooks to educational material and teaching,” he said. Wagner and the other chefs in attendance had the opportunity to tour and learn more about Shelburne Farms’ farm-to-school education programs. This is a pet project of Wagner’s. “We have to create food that kids want to eat [in a successful and nutritionally sound school lunch program]. Food should be sustenance, but should also be delicious!”

Moon pointed out that this is a major focus and a perfect example of what can come out of the boot camp.

“The Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act of 2015 is a major initiative and an important one,” he said. “But how does it translate on the plate? If a chef can have three or four minutes with an elected official, how can that chef get his or her message across, reinforced with knowledge?”

Moon emphasized the Beard foundation maintains a neutral position in these issues and is interested only in providing skill to the chefs to facilitate them being effective advocates.

All 15 chefs were in the kitchen at once during the weekend to prepare a family-style dinner for each other, as well as a friendly competition among teams of two. The idea is for these culinary professionals to communicate through their cooking, as well as to experience local produce and ingredients from Vermont farms and suppliers. Sessions during the gathering included a mock interview with an elected official to give an opportunity for the chefs to craft a message and maximize a short window of time that might be afforded in the chef’s hometown or in Washington.

What does chef Wagner hope to bring back to Rhode Island from the boot camp? He put it this way: “I would like to further my knowledge of how to impact education, legislation, to inspire my dining guests and the public at large to vote for positive change.”

He hopes that he will continue to be asked how he does it, from creating to sourcing to running his business, because “maybe if you keep getting asked how you do it, it’s because you’re doing it right!” •

Bruce Newbury’s Dining Out talk radio show is heard on 920 WHJJ-AM, 1540 WADK-AM and on mobile applications. He can be reached by email at bruce@brucenewbury.com.

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