Writing about Gotham’s Plate

From colonial times to the present, observers have been fascinated by New York City’s ever-changing culinary life. Numerous books and innumerable articles have been written about New York City, and most contain lengthy descriptions of City foods and beverages, chefs and home cooks, bodegas and greenmarkets, pushcarts and food trucks, food corporations and the latest startups. Panelists will discuss the joys – and occasional tribulations– about writing about the City and its culinary delights.

Moderator: Andrew F. Smith

Featured Panelists:

William Grimes

Molly O’Neill

Jonathan Deutsch

Gabrielle Langholtz

A Critic’s Journey: Around the World from Greenwich Village

A conversation with Mimi Sheraton

Mimi Sheraton is a journalist, restaurant critic, consultant, lecturer, and cookbook writer who has lived in Greenwich Village for 70 years. She was the restaurant critic for the New York Times from 1976 until 1984 and has written 17 book on food and recipes, including her latest, 1,000 Foods to Eat Before You Die. She is also a contributor to the book Greenwich Village Stories.

In conversation with Karen Loew of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Sheraton will talk about what’s changed over her years in the food world: food trends, the role of the critic, the role of restaurant dining in the life of New York, and much more. If Gotham is on a plate, Mimi Sheraton will definitely have a choice opinion to render about it.

Provisioning City Plates: The Rural Urban Nexus

In the last year the “Rural Urban Nexus” has become part of UN discourse on sustainable urbanization. The reasons for the interest in the dynamic relationship between urban and rural landscapes are diverse and about much more than the flows of goods, services, people and capital needed to feed cities. Parallel to the “rise” of the Rural Urban Nexus there has also been a new global development around “City Region Food Systems” or CRFS that has engaged cities around the world with UN agencies, national and local governments, nongovernmental and civil society organizations and philanthropy. The panel assesses these processes and discusses their future developments.

Moderator: Thomas Forster

Featured Panelists: 

Karen Karp

Steve Rosenberg

Maurizio Mariani

Beth Forster

Business on a Plate:  What New Yorkers Are Eating…Today, Tomorrow, Together.

Join the city’s most prominent culinary trend-setters as they delve into – and debate – the future of dining in New York.  Once a city of restaurant extremes from ethnic food enclaves to luxurious haute cuisine, today’s New York food map extends into the boroughs, onto rooftops, into trucks, and underground.  Mom-and-pop taquerias share equal billing with four-star eateries on the city’s food blogs and both are equally crowded, often with the same clientele.  Food has become our language, our art form, and our ethos, connecting New Yorkers in a powerful new synthesis of pleasure and community.

Moderator: Rozanne Gold

Featured Panelists:

Michael Whiteman

Jacqueline Raposo

David Rosengarten

Adam Platt

Drew Nieporent

The Crisis of the Empty Plate: Hunger, Resilience, Recovery 

The New York City’s food system is not as robust as one would like to think, as Hurricane Sandy had clearly shown. The city procurement and distribution networks need to be ready for any crisis that may take place, while at the same time guaranteeing food security for all its citizens at all times. This panel discusses how ending hunger, resiliency and the capacity for timely recovery are crucial topics under circumstances shaped by climate change.

Moderator: Nevin Cohen

Featured Panelists: 

Kate MacKenzie

Rozanne Gold

Michael Ottley

Peopling Gotham’s Plate: Food and Immigrant Communities

Ever since the Dutch set foot in Manhattan, Gotham’s plate has reflected culinary influences from the homelands of immigrants. The bounty of New York has also changed the food habits of the different groups. Relatively cheap and plentiful meat has greeted all newcomers and changed food patterns for many new arrivals. The regional cuisines of some groups are now seen as essential New York food—witness the bagel and pizza. Some of the most recent arrivals’ food carries an air of the exotic Other, with heady, as-yet unfamiliar aromas wafting from street carts in the outer boroughs.

Moderator:

Cathy Kaufman

Featured Panelists:

Hasia Diner

Simone Cinotto

Anne Mendelson

Farha Ternikar