Carlo Petrini and divinAmerica: Our Slow Food Journey

Marlene, my business and lifeway partner, and I met Carlo Petrini in the 1990's through founding Slow Food Seattle Convivia leader Gerry Warren. He asked us to meet with him and his partner, Diane Warren, to discuss Slow Food in general and to consider working on the Makah Ozette Potato Presidium he was introducing.

As operators of one of the first Indigenous American–themed restaurants in the United States, featuring Indigenous, traditional, and emerging American foodways, we recognized this as a watershed moment—one in which our life’s work and aspiration for comprehensive cultural foodway inclusion had found a broader movement and international voice. We continue to advocate for the Makah Ozette, now more commonly known simply as the Ozette Potato Presidium, among the hundreds of Ark of Taste foods promoted by Slow Food today.

Although our businesses were based in Portland, Oregon, Seattle Slow Food founder Gerry Warren, through his resourceful and determined search for truly regional partners, recognized our shared commitment to sustainability and invited us to present to Carlo and his entourage during their forthcoming tour of the United States promoting Carlo's mission. We agreed and prepared Indigenous-inspired dishes cooked in an imu fire pit, over live fire, and in a natural outdoor setting.

The fledgling winery DeLille Cellars was selected for its pastoral setting overlooking the Western Washington wine community, coupled with Greg and Stacy Lille’s unwavering devotion to Washington terroir. The site proved ideal for an outdoor gathering reflective of Carlo’s growing movement and community of participants.

The menu was dominated by finfish and shellfish: gooseneck barnacles, geoduck, Olympia oysters, and iconic steelhead, alongside wild and foraged foods including lhəq’əs (red alga), sea palms, glasswort, miners’ lettuce, wood sorrel, lady ferns, biscuit root, wapato, and camas, among others, together with abundant local produce including the remarkable Makah Ozette potatoes.

Later, as nominees for the Slow Food Award 2000, we were among the international honorees recognized for our work expanding ecogastronomic goals through featuring local food systems, regional beverages, and sustainable tourism. Strong regionalism had been central to our philosophy since the regionalization movement in American cuisine during the 1980s. Carlo’s manifesto arrived at precisely the moment we were presenting inclusive regional cuisines to the Smithsonian Institution as the only viable conceptual direction for the developing National Museum of the American Indian. Marlene and I both served as Core Members of the museum’s Design and Development Team, helping conceptualize, create, design themes and workflow, and write sustainability goals for the project—principles that fully integrated tenets of Slow Food doctrine.

We later worked alongside Seattle Slow Food founder Gerry Warren, agroecologist and activist Gary Paul Nabhan, and inaugural Slow Food USA president Patrick Martins to develop and coordinate the first Slow Food USA Ark of Taste booth for the Salone del Gusto during the first Terra Madre gathering in 2004. Marlene and I presented at the event, and although we had relatively few products to exhibit, they nonetheless represented everything we were able at that time to identify and gather that had been recognized by Slow Food as Indigenous, endemic, introduced, or naturalized American regional foods.

Lessons learned from Carlo

• Through Slow Food, Carlo enabled me, as a first-generation Filipino American, and my Indigenous family to feel welcomed and acknowledged for our contributions to our communities, where dignity is maintained and social class lines blurred.

• Recognize our goal, state it as clearly as possible, seek commonality, share knowledge, learn continuously, be joyous and remain hopeful, listen carefully, and repeat the entire process

• Practice inclusion and inclusiveness—allow those who can provide to support those who cannot, and partner with all willing community members to sustain local flavor, support the local economy, and celebrate together at the table.

• Place the highest values on community, locality, and biodiversity.

• Embrace, practice, and advocate for the principles of ecogastronomy and agroecology.