How One Restaurant Critic Took on the Food Fables We’ve All Been Fed
Laura Reiley’s first investigation was a small one. But it proved to be a nibble into something much bigger, a story the Tampa Bay Times’ food critic took on this week.
Four years ago, over dinner at Tampa’s famous Bern’s Steak House, Reiley listened as the waiter expounded on specials that came from the restaurant’s eight-acre organic farm. She thought to herself: These things don’t grow in Florida this time of year. The following week, Reiley got into her car and drove to the farm. Nothing was growing — except grass. Her investigation ran in May 2012.
The farm is a field of grass and dirt and no vegetables are evident. Most of the restaurant’s produce comes from major food-service providers, and just a small portion of it is organic.
On Wednesday, Reiley’s latest work found the same was true at restaurants and farmers markets around the area. The series, “Farm to Fable,” takes Reiley and readers in search of government oversight, into restaurants to examine menus and chalkboards, into her car down rural roads seeking farms that don’t exist, to meet the frustrated farmers whose names are used but not their products, inside DNA labs to see what we’re really eating, and into farmers markets that often just sell tchotchkes and “Publix rejects.”
This is a story we are all being fed. A story about overalls, rich soil and John Deere tractors scattering broods of busy chickens. A story about healthy animals living happy lives, heirloom tomatoes hanging heavy and earnest artisans rolling wheels of cheese into aging caves nearby.
More often than not, those things are fairy tales. A long list of Tampa Bay restaurants are willing to capitalize on our hunger for the story.
“Farm to Fable” represents a new approach to investigative journalism from the Poynter-owned Tampa Bay Times. It’s written largely in first person. It relies more on illustrations than photojournalism. It was released all at once in a Netflix-like approach rather than over time. It’s the first big investigation for both Reiley and her editor. And it’s breaking Times’ traffic records.
Reiley has been surprised, so far, by the national response. But food is something everyone can relate to.
“It’s ironic, as we all know more about food and care more about food…the system itself has gotten really complicated in terms of food safety, food ethics, food waste,” she said. “There’s a lot to know, and I feel like in a way, the beat has expanded.”
Fifteen years ago, her work was rating what was on her plate. And she still does that. But now, she’s also asking — how did it get there?
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