By Kathy Gilsinan
Photograph by Katherine Bish
On a Monday morning in Turin last October, Stephen Hale waded through a crowd to take his seat for the closing session of Terra Madre, a gigantic international meeting of food producers. He was just one of many men wearing kilts, but his was not a nationalist gesture. He wears his kilt most days at the Schlafly Tap Room, where he’s the chief brewer. His wife, Sara, runs the Schlafly design department.
St. Louisans were just a few of the exotic creatures on display; Tibetan yak cheese producers, Rwandan farmers and Israeli chefs also attended this conference, sponsored by the Slow Food movement to bring together farmers, herders and food producers of all kinds. An international organization based in Italy with chapters all over the United States, Slow Food is a loose group of people who care about where food comes from and how it gets to their plates.
It was at the first Terra Madre meeting in 2004 that the Hales got involved with Slow Food; now they co-lead the St. Louis “convivium” with Beki Marsh.
The Slow Food philosophy, with its emphasis on quality, sustainability and local producers, meshed nicely with the Hales’ own. “It’s kind of alarming that a lot of people in the world think their food comes from the supermarket,” Stephen says. “I don’t think it’s right for human beings to be so far removed from their food supply.”
Upon returning from Turin, Sara and Stephen held a Slow Food meeting to discuss local events like vineyard tours and the second edition of Lambstravaganza. (The inaugural gathering took place last June, with 50 Slow Foodies gathering at a farm in New Florence, Mo., to dine on lamb sweetbreads, crêpes stuffed with shredded lamb shank and pecan-encrusted lamb medallions.)
This month, the group is planning a walking tour of the Hill, where they’ll meet with chefs and purveyors to discuss preparation methods from Old World Italy that might translate here. It’s a recruitment trip of sorts, but he’s not as concerned with increasing membership as he is with exposing others to the Slow Food philosophy. “I guess it’s a bit like evangelism,” he says with a laugh—before deciding that the word might be a little off-putting. “Maybe it’s more like ‘spreading the word.’”
