Market to Market with Monica Pope: Why Food Tastes Better When You Eat Where Your Food Lives (Behind the Burner - Nov 18, 2009)

As one of the founders of Houston's Midtown Farmers Market, Monica Pope, Chef/Owner of T'Afia, walks the garden-to-table talk as well as any chef in America. But for this expert, this year- round Saturday day morning food fest that hosts produce vendors, meat growers and a bee-keeping honey maker in the very parking lot of her restaurant, may distinguish her from the rest. Along with the tempting outside treats, indoors portion features Texas-made cheese, locally made fresh fruit gelato, just baked bread and the restaurant's own breakfast items, including the satisfying McMonica, an oversized Southern biscuit embracing a cheese omelet and rosemary ham.

1. You often speak of two fundamental truths about food—"what grows together goes together and food tastes better when you eat where your food lives." What led you to these truths?

I've been cooking in my own restaurants for 15 years, but the epiphany for me came five years ago, when the farmers market came here to my property—with food that's just been harvested, tomatoes still warm from the fields.

How often in my 46 years have I gone to a grocery store and gotten a perfect piece of produce? I've been burned by fruit so many times. But here, you get the honest truth and you get flavor first. It starts with the farmer growing and harvesting the right way. And it creates this community, a biodynamic ecosystem. It's such a beautiful thing to watch urban gardener Lola Daniel out there, shelling peas—peas I'll serve in the restaurant that very night. It's not just point A to Point B—some big global corporation saying let's take stuff 3,000 miles and drop it off.

2. Watching you out in the market, it seems you really groove on this synergy of grower, consumer, and chef. Can you further explain?

I love it when people get that look: "Why does this taste so good?" Soon after we started the market a person came up to me. She told me she was a doctor. "I hate to say this," she said, "but this is the highlight of my week." What's more, not only does she have this great experience at the farmers market on Saturday morning, but throughout the week she's cooking a couple meals from what she's bought —and that changes her life. That's part of what we're trying to do—tap into why you're dissatisfied, why you're unhappy. You want people to realize: "Hey, this is the way a peach is supposed to taste." Or, try cooking with fresh shell peas. Suddenly they're in a better situation.

3. You've been called the Alice Waters of the Third Coast. Appropriately so? Happily so?

Not originally, no. Fifteen years ago when somebody stuck that label on me it felt dishonest, although I certainly wanted to emulate her, I couldn't do it back then. I didn't see it being possible with what I was being given locally. Now, we highlight it on our menu—something local in every dish in the five-course market menu.

4. What tips do you have for shopping at a farmer's market?

Bring a canvas bag from home and come with an open mind. Oftentimes people come with an agenda of "Where are the tomatoes?" rather than with the willingness to adapt to what's seasonally available that day. It helps to own a couple good cookbooks that focus on vegetables and farmer's markets. One I like is Deborah Madison's Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets.

5. What's your advice for selecting the freshest food possible?

Ask for a sample. And ask for an honest assessment of what's best today or how did they know to pick that fruit or vegetable at this point. It really comes down to trusting that farmer, looking carefully, and sometimes going by size. Particularly things like zucchinis and eggplant, the smaller they are the less seedy and less bitter.

— Written by John Grossmann

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