The Foodist Mangia-festo - A Call to Farms! (The Pork Fatwa)

I believe it was Voltaire who said that every philosophy contains the seeds of its own destruction. Today is a sad day, my friends, for I am beginning to feel this way about the state of dining in general. I've just about had enough.
As a cook, I felt like a slave. As a server, I feel like a servant begging for scraps. Yet, I cry tears of joy for the most reverently and fearfully created dishes, and experience some of my greatest peak experiences in the midst of a busy dinner service. I cannot seem to reconcile these experiences!
With my increasing interest in food ethics and food security, my philosophical inclination predisposes me to believe that having a plate of food and, if one is lucky, a glass of wine to enjoy it with, is the only thing of any importance in this life -- save for the company of loved ones.
Yet, restaurants are invariably concerned with profits above ethics. Even the best and most ethical of restaurants that are popping up in this town, on the cutting edge of dining responsibility as it is, charge exorbitant prices. It seems that dining in the best interest of society as a whole is reserved for the upper class. And more often than not, from my experience in the dining room, these people are barely aware of the importance of food ethics, let alone even actually care about the future of food security. As much as dining is the shrine of the moment, and the dining room is a place to put all of one's worries out of one's mind and enjoy the beauty of this one meal, this is no excuse for the ignorance of the rich.
What's even worse, are the attitudes of the people who work in this industry. So many of us are indifferent to what we put in our sautee pans or carry in our own two hands on the way to the table. We're more concerned about our careers, or our tips, or the hostess we're trying to shag. Even of the cooks and servers who are informed about the pressing issues surrounding our food system, there is a big shrug and a "what can you do?" about the fact that every single restaurant pushes countless litres a day of GM corn in the form of cans or boxes of soda. The best you can do as a frontline worker in this battle is to keep doing what you're told until, some day, you too can make a tiny difference in our evolution toward gastronomic awareness - also accepting the golden handcuffs of profiteering as your master.
Well, we don't have time to fuck around with our tiny lives and self-interests. I don't care if you become a celebrity chef. I don't care if your restaurant makes money. I don't care if your ethical eatery gets 28 in the Zagat guide, because 70%* of food consumers in this city will never spend $30 on an entree. The 30% of us who will are just as likely to waste our money on an unethical alternative, because we only do eat out "once in a while," or because we simply don't care. The only reason any of us have enough money to eat your $30 entree is because, somewhere along the line, we've sacrificed our ideals and mortgaged the future of our species in some way. Those of us who can afford to eat ethically at $30/plate are merely outsourcing our pollution and karma to those who can't afford boutique ingredients at a four-star restaurant. Everybody needs to make a living, we tell ourselves, and overlook our daily overconsumption and reckless disregard for the stewardship of this planet.
Fuck that! I say. We need to wake the fuck up. And our restaurants aren't doing anybody any good, we're only getting better at being wasteful. Everybody needs to be able to eat locally, organically, and ethically. Everybody needs access to an affordable meal, and good company. And even the poorest of us deserve to experience the beauty of gastronomy, once in a while.
I will never become your chef. I will never become your bar manager, your maitre'd. I will never actually care about any arm of the unquestioned profiteering restauranteer agenda. I care about the future of our food... I care about where it comes from, and what it does to our bodies and our producers... I care about the taste, the love, and the passion. But we don't have much time left to cast our votes for our future... and we can only do it one meal at a time.
*Every single one of these numbers is completely anecdotal and improvised. Statistics and polls these days aren't a far cry from opinion anyways, so fuck it.