This story last month by Chicago Reader reporter Mike Sula is apparently the reason that Illinois ag safety inspectors decided to spot check two of my favorite restaurants: Frontera Grill and Xoco.
What I like about both restaurants is that Chef Rick Bayless is a devotee to serving up locally-produced food wherever possible.
The constant line at Xoco is a clue that I’m not the only fan. But those lines will get shorter if patrons don’t believe the food is safe.
That said, I’m not too worried about news from the Chicago Tribune that inspectors confiscated a box of bacon that lacked a food inspection mark and headcheese that had Wisconsin mark, but not in Illinois as apparently required. I expect Bayless and Co. will be more careful going forward.
And he shouldn’t be surprised about the inspection.
Indeed, if I was a food inspector, this graph in Sula’s story probably would have caught my attention too:
“Because they sell meats that aren’t prepared in a licensed commercial facility, Erik and Ehran are operating outside the law. But some laws, they fervently believe, were made to be broken. ‘It’s one of those things that’s kind of overregulated,’ says Erik. ‘People have been canning and curing forever. It was invented to preserve food and keep things healthy.’
While I have some sympathies for these folks and am a big cheerleader for farmers and locally-produced food, the importance of a safe, regulated farm-to-table system can’t be overstated.
Buying straight from a farmer, farm stand or joining private clubs to circumvent food safety regulations (raw milk comes to mind) are one thing. That’s a personal choice and consumers assume some risk.
But I worry about unlicensed producers supplying restaurants. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
More on the Frontera/Xoco inspection here from Sula.
Virtual Farmgirl 