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It started in 1986, when Italian Carlo Petrini started a campaign against the addition of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome. By 1989, Petrini had formally founded what the world now calls the Slow Food movement. (Its universal emblem? The snail.) In the United States, the movement has been championed by chef Alice Waters, who, at her world-famous restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., has made "slow food" household words.

But it actually began around 2 million years ago, when man's social instincts drove him to become a hunter, gatherer and eventually herder. It is one of the most basic and natural instincts we possess as humans — our ability to feed ourselves, yet enjoy food as more than just nourishment. The pleasure of food beyond sustenance is an integral part of what makes us human.

Joey Ivansco/Staff (ENLARGE)
Woodfire Grill owner Michael Tuohy, a chef dedicated to his craft, breaks down his own hogs.
Joey Ivansco/Staff (ENLARGE)
Food 101 Chef Ron Eyester uses fresh vegetables in his cuisine.
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So how the heck did our food chain get so messed up? Twinkies. Chicken fingers. Genetically engineered strawberries grown to look red and plump for the weeks it will take them to get from California to Georgia. Industrial factory farming.

If we truly are what we eat, do we really want to be a doughnut?

From the farm to the table

What, exactly, is slow food and sustainability? Here's a quote from Slow Food International's Web site: "Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work."

Sounds easy, no? Just a generation and a half ago, we were eating more sustainably as a nation. Many of us grew our vegetables; we were raised on farms and ate from the lay of the land, butchering meats and eating farm eggs, drinking milk from a cow. We ate what the land gave us in plentiful months, and canned or froze excess to have during winter.

Industrial and technological advances have made it difficult for us to return to that kind of life. Yet the farm is the place we need to return to for the freshest foods and the most sustainable food practices, and with the proper support from government and community, it shouldn't be that hard of a jump backwards.

It's not surprising to find Waters at the forefront of the movement, though the soft-spoken chef often finds her role as the "mother of the movement" a daunting one. "I never started out with the idea that this would become a philosophy," she said at a presentation at the CDC last November. "I just wanted good food for my table."

Local proponents

Few would deny that Atlanta's "mother of the movement" is Anne Quatrano, James Beard award-winning chef and owner with chef-husband Clifford Harrison of Bacchanalia, Quinones at Bacchanalia, Star Provisions and Floataway Cafe. The couple uses produce and eggs from their own Summerland Farm in Cartersville; Star Provisions, a provender that fronts Bacchanalia, produces all the restaurant's sausages and cured meats. There is talk of a greenhouse on the farm for year-round growing.

Drew Belline is Quatrano and Harrison's chef de cuisine at Floataway Cafe, and is almost as soft-spoken as Waters. But one subject he'll pipe up about is the need for farm-to-table food practices.

"It's so important to know where your food comes from," he said. "If we are what we eat, I'm afraid most Americans are 75 percent high-fructose corn syrup."

Belline has been influenced dramatically by Quatrano and goes so far as to forage his own mushrooms with "the wild gatherer" Ken Zinkand, who also hunts down berries and muscadines for Floataway Cafe. "He just showed up at Bacchanalia one day about four years ago with around 10 pounds of freshly foraged chanterelles," said Belline, "and we've been with him ever since."

Light years ahead of where we were

Quatrano and Belline aren't the only chefs who value sustainability. Chef-owner Michael Tuohy of Woodfire Grill moved here from San Francisco, the heart of the movement in the United States, to open his own restaurant, Chefs' Cafe, way back in 1986. "It was perplexing and frustrating to not be able to get the products I wanted," said Tuohy. " I used to drive to [local natural foods market] Sevananda to get couscous and sun-dried tomatoes. You can buy them almost anywhere now."

Tuohy is perhaps the chef most responsible for bringing the farm-to-table practice to the Atlanta area. At Woodfire Grill, he breaks down his own Berkshire hogs that he gets from Gum Creek Farms in Roopville, and the restaurant makes its own breads and pastries and breaks down its fish from whole. The practice is labor-intensive and costs him more, but he doesn't plan to change. "I'm passionate about food," he said. "My payoff is often nothing more than the personal satisfaction of doing this."

Tuohy is the first to admit that the economics of farming practices are backward. "Our food distribution is convenience-driven, not flavor-driven. And so much red tape ties up the process of change."

Still, he said Georgia is "light years" ahead of where it was when he arrived 20 years ago, though, he said, the meat and poultry industries here are where produce was then. "There aren't enough small farms producing, and processing and distribution are huge issues."

Linton Hopkins, chef-owner of Restaurant Eugene (and soon-to-open Holeman and Finch) is waiting for green on the afternoon of our phone conversation. "I'm looking forward to my sorrel shoots," he boasted heartily, happy that spring is finally here. Hopkins asks local farms such as Indian Ridge to go beyond just growing and providing produce for his upscale Buckhead restaurant; he requests and purchases seeds for certain vegetables, like carrots, that he wants to try out in his kitchen.

He's also responsible for collaborating with the Cathedral of St. Philip on Peachtree Road to create the Peachtree Road Farmers Market, where many of the local farms he works with can sell produce and traditional foods to the public. He lists the farms and purveyors he uses on the back of his menu as a "thank you" to the local farming community.

Building community

That word — community — comes up frequently when I talk with these chefs. "Better support of local farms and farming practices will eventually drive the admittedly high cost of their products down," said chef-owner David Larkworthy of 5 Seasons Brewing in Sandy Springs (with another location in Alpharetta, and a third to open on the West Side later this year). "It builds community."

Five Seasons, as well as Food 101 in Morningside, manages to offer seasonal menu items in an environment that is decidedly casual — not the white-linen tablecloth atmosphere of Floataway and Eugene (and of course, they brew their own beer). "This isn't an elitist movement," explained Larkworthy, who, like Belline, often works with folks like Dean Stinson, who drives up from New Orleans with farm-raised softshell crabs, crawfish, alligator and gulf shrimp. (Stinson apparently uses rendered alligator fat in his truck for biodiesel fuel. Talk about going green.)

Food 101's chef Ron Eyester, a mainstay at next door's Morningside Farmers' Market every Saturday morning, manages to use local products and keep food costs down, too. But it isn't easy.

"I buy local organic arugula from Woodland Gardens [in Winterville] for $6 a pound, compared to the two bucks I'd pay for conventional. But the yield is much higher, and the flavor can't be beat," he explains. Eyester is known locally as the "ambassador" of the market, and knows all the farmers personally. "These guys eat brunch with me."

He, too, supports slow food for more reasons than just flavor, though. Knowing the farmers gives him a one-on-one advantage, the product is better, and "it adds personal character to my customers' dining experience," he said.

"It's so important to order the right thing," said Hopkins. "I didn't know there was another way to cook."

Critic's note: Starting Thursday, each of the restaurants featured in our cover story will offer celebratory "AJC" spring dinners to honor sustainability. Chefs will offer the season's first farm-fresh vegetables as well as locally produced meats. Go to my blog at www.ajc.com/tabletalk to get a peek at the fabulous menus these chefs are preparing, all between $20 and $25. For more information about slow food and sustainability, go to www.slowfoodusa.org; for more info about organics, log onto www.georgiaorganics.com.