Going to Turin, Italy…

Madden is head to Italy this week...

Remember Madden, who ran Steps restaurant for years in Friday Harbor? He has a place over on Orcas now (the Quilted Pig), and he was chosen to go to Italy next week – here’s more from Linda & Maureen with the local Slow Food movement:

Hi Ian – Yes, Madden’s going as our Land & Sea, Slow Food San Juan chapter’s delegate to the Terra Madre event in Turin Italy next week, Oct 21-25.

All the Slow Food chapters can nominate delegates they think should go. This year for the first time Slow Food had 2 or three more times nominated delegates than open delegate slots, so we were really happy Madden was chosen.

Madden will be such an asset to the conference, and he’ll be taking lots of information there from our islands. Slow Food USA covers all the expenses of the delegates for the entire conference except for air travel.

We’re actually getting ready to send out a note to our email list this afternoon because we’ve just set up a Paypal acount for anyone who’d like to contribute to Madden’s travel fund, or to send him good wishes on his way, or both. He’s already purchased his airline ticket, it was about $1300, so we want to return that to him if we can.

We will be having a least one dinner or event when Madden gets back, probably in December or January when things slow down for him a bit, so he can talk to everyone who’d like to come about his time there, and what he took and what he brought back from the conference. It should be incredible, really.

We nominated Albert Strasser this year too – he would have been great – but only got the one slot, so we will likely nominate Albert again for 2012.

Here’s a short summary of the main points we made about Madden in our application to Slow Food’s Terra Madre (this is from our recommendation letter, which was another thing we had to send for our nominees):

MADDEN SURBAUGH
Madden is a young chef with a great deal of experience in both owning and running a restaurant, along with baking, teaching, and much experience and insight from volunteering for serious groups taking on big issues around sustainable farming her in our community and throughout the state. Madden created the Island Certified Local program & stamp. This stamp is and important certification for San Juan Island producers and restaurants,

Madden has worked with our chapter extensively, with our Land & Sea high school youth group. He always is willing to work with us, no matter how busy he is, and goes the extra mile, doing lots of research and preparation before any workshops or other programs he takes part in with us. He has a great rapport with young people especially,
He is a volunteer member of the respected San Juan County Agricultural Resource Committee, advising the county on all kinds of agricultural issues, including regulations about food, farming, and water, and he’s also a volunteer member of the 12 person Ag Guild, working to find a permanent home for the San Juan Island Farmers market.

The restaurants Madden’s worked in and owned consistently get the very best reviews, and he is always creative and innovative in finding new ideas & ways to help improve the quality and availability of fresh, sustainably grown foods. Madden is a hard worker, humble, and shows a lot of courage in choosing to champion and use good local foods even when it would increase his profit margin to go for less expensive options. He is enormously respected by the local farming community.

We hope you were able to look over the application that was submitted for Madden. We know he would be a great asset to Terra Madre. We know he will bring a lot back, and will use everything he learns to help our islands’ community of farmers and co-producers. He is one of a kind, and a very great friend to our islands and Land & Sea.

What Terra Madre is (from the Slow Food Int’l web page):

An international network of food producers, cooks, educators and students from 150 countries who are united by a common goal of global sustainability in food. The “food communities” of Terra Madre come together biennially to share innovative solutions and time-honored traditions for keeping small-scale agriculture and sustainable food production alive and well.

Here’s a link to frequently asked Terra Madre questions: and here are really good pages with explanations and great photographs and more.

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