The U.S. Ark Committee

Ark of Taste nominations are reviewed by a committee of food lovers around the country, including home cooks, gardeners, culinary instructors, grocers, chefs, food historians and farmers. Committee members hold three-year terms, during which they review nominations and champion U.S. food biodiversity by organizing events, leading Ark food restoration projects, and contributing to Slow Food USA publications and education material.

Ben Watson is a writer and editor specializing in food and agriculture issues, and is the series editor for the Slow Food City Guides, published by Chelsea Green. A member of Slow Food USA and Seed Savers Exchange, Ben is a founding member and co-leader of the Slow Food Monadnock Region (NH) convivium.

“The Ark of Taste is neither a living history museum nor a static repository of quaint, traditional foods that have had their day. It's more like a temporary vessel for preserving and promoting foods and traditions until more people rediscover and embrace them. Because we focus on foods that not only are important, but delicious, I have confidence that most, if not all, of these now-unfamiliar products will someday find their constituency in the marketplace.“

Though the target audience has varied from consumers to restaurants to distributors, Jennifer's work has long focused on building relationships between food producers and purchasers, and helping to increase understanding about the impacts of where and how people purchase their food. She was the Executive Director of Chefs Collaborative, the Seattle District Manager with Bon Appétit Management Company, and a Small Farms Marketing specialist with Washington State University Extension. Currently Jennifer is leading the charge to design and open a retail food co-op in downtown Spokane, WA. She is also the founder and leader of Slow Food Spokane River, organizing community events that showcase local food producers and support and preserve biodiversity.

“Slow Food attracted me as a fun way to continue my education about food. As my relationship with sustainable foods has evolved and I've moved to various cities, Slow Food has helped me connect to others in a new place who care about the food we eat – where it comes from and who produces it – and are interested in being active participants in preserving taste and culture. To me, the Ark symbolizes a combination of history and hope. It is a theoretical vehicle to help us recognize and restore some of our edible heritage.“

Arie McFarlen, PhD, is co-owner of a ranch in South Dakota, promoting the preservation of endangered livestock breeds through conservation, breeding, production and marketing. A published author, Arie is well versed in a variety of disciplines including nutrition, theology, organic farming, animal husbandry, sustainable agriculture and cooking. She serves on the Board of Directors of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, national Family Farm Coalition, and Dakota Rural Action.

“Actively participating in Slow Food USA is a natural complement to our mission of preserving the world's food supply. It is a joy to be around people who appreciate the time and care that goes into producing natural and artisanal foods and who relish every bite. Representing the Bison Nation on the Ark is a wonderful opportunity for me to connect with food artists and producers, bring them to the public eye, and help them connect with people who are seeking their products.”

Elissa's foraging and gleaning business, Artisan Preserves, specializes in wildcrafted and rare heirloom fruit. She writes for Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooming and teaches wild mushroom cookery courses. Elissa has developed menus for Slow Food Sonoma County's Ark Dinner and is a co-creator of the “Ark Trunk,” an exhibition of Ark products featured at Slow Food USA events.

“The Ark is a tool to help bring about the restoration of the traditional American pantry, both indigenous and historic. Several of the foods that have already been boarded onto the Ark—the Olympia oyster, Gravenstein apple, Blenheim apricot, traditionally harvested and parched manoomin, Single-Leaf pinon and the Klondike strawberry—are foods that are fortunately part of my personal history as well.”

Emile owns and operates Caw Caw Creek Pastured Pork in St. Matthews, South Carolina. He was a recent candidate for South Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture, campaigning for a local food system with the motto "Put Your State On Your Plate." Emile founded the All-Local Farmers Market in Columbia, South Carolina, and currently serves on Senator Barack Obama's Rural Affairs Advisory Committee. The Southern Foodways Alliance recently inducted Emile into the Fellowship of Southern Farmers, Artisans and Chefs.

“The Ark is a way to memorialize and promote plants and animals that are important to our food culture. I joined Slow Food to help establish a parallel local food system in a commodity food world.”

Gay Chanler is a professional chef by training and anthropologist by education. She has worked as chef and baker in the private sector in the US and France, and at numerous restaurants and caterers in New England and Washington, D.C. Currently, Gay teaches cooking classes and serves as co-leader of Slow Food Alta Arizona and co-coordinator of the Navajo-Churro Sheep Presidium project.

"I support the mission of Slow Food because it works to uphold principles which are important to me – the protection of food traditions, food sovereignty, biological diversity, and food that is good, clean and fair."

Glenn is a South Carolina sustainable farmer, seedsman and miller of American landrace cereal grains and legumes threatened with extinction. He founded Anson Mills in 1998 to introduce chefs and bakers to organic ingredients milled from heirloom grains grown on farms located in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. Glenn is president of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, past lecturer at the French Culinary Institute and Johnson & Wales University, founding fellow of the Fellowship of Southern Farmers, Artisans and Chefs and an avid supporter of Slow Food’s activities throughout the USA and in Italy. Glenn is a specialist in connecting historic foodways, chef’s tables and farms.

"I love the challenge of making relevant nearly forgotten or little known aromas, flavors and textures of the extraordinary foods of America, both past and present. That these foods are without exception culturally vital, local, low input, low fuel and reach perfection only with careful and slow preparation seems astonishingly fitting for our time. I’m thrilled to be able to share and contribute to this passion for discovery within the Ark of Taste."

Kraig Kraft is an agricultural ecologist specializing in crop domestication and evolution. His research focuses on the origins and ecology of Mesoamerican foods. His career has included education and program leadership for numerous international development projects in sustainable agriculture, technology transfer, and grassroots community development. His culinary zeal is based in a great affection for the people, customs, and landscapes in which food is rooted. A member of Slow Food for four years, Kraig is an active participant in local food and farming events. He has traveled and eaten extensively in Latin America and is most at home seated on a milk crate next to the taco truck.

The Ark of Taste represents an important effort towards the conservation and preservation of agricultural diversity and their associated culinary traditions. The stories of these foods and crops tell our own histories. These are part of our cultural heritage that we need to remember and renew.

Leah is Chef-Proprietor at The Washington Hotel, Restaurant & Culinary School on Washington Island in Wisconsin. From the island-grown wheat she uses in the buttermilk donuts, brick-oven bread and ale, to the smoked whitefish pizza and the afternoon's Burbot catch in a delicate saffron broth, every dish at The Washington Hotel features locally and sustainably grown products. Leah also teaches classes at the hotel's culinary school on a variety of cuisines, but always focuses on island foods. Through Leah's innovation, the island's wheat has also been incorporated into Death's Door Spirits. As a result of her commitment to rebuilding the agricultural economy of this small island, commercial farming has gone from 0 to 900 acres of sustainably farmed grain in five years.

“The Ark of Taste and Slow Food are natural extensions of what I'm doing on a hyperlocal level on Washington Island- saving/restoring food and farming to preserve heritage, flavor, rural beauty and lifestyles. There is a world of flavor that I want to experience and learn about through the Ark-Presidia Committee and all the knowledgeable resources connected to it.”

Wisconsin native Sara Roahen cooked professionally for several years before becoming a writer on food and restaurants for New Orleans' Gambit Weekly in 2000. Her book, Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, has recently been published by WW. Norton. In addition to writing and editing, Sara documents Louisiana foodways via oral history interviews for the Southern Foodways Alliance. She lives in New Orleans.

“The Ark gives me hope that American foodways are—and can continue to be—much richer than what is most available, and least expensive, to eat in the majority of American neighborhoods. I view Slow Food USA as a movement to counterbalance the super-processed foods glorified in multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns, the fast-food restaurants that trade nutrition for convenience, and the mediocre supermarket selections of foods trucked in from hundreds of miles away. I proudly view my involvement in the movement as a social/civic duty.”

As President and Principal of Right Stuff Enterprises, Robin specializes in creative culinary concept, product, menu and market development. Robin and Right Stuff have also served as incubators for the nurturing and co-creation of several businesses focused on delicious, regional, seasonal and sustainable foods. Robin writes about food and culinary R&D for several publications and regularly teaches and speaks on subjects from varietal honey in cocktails to the process of menu ideation. She is Vice Chair of the Chefs Collaborative and President Emeritus of the Vermont Fresh Network, both which strive to connect chefs with more a more wholesome and sustainable food supply.

“It seems both an obligation and a privilege to align my passion, profession and politic and I find the notion of rescuing, preserving and celebrating endangered cultural, gastronomic treasures infinitely compelling. We too often overlook the culture in agriculture, the flavor in food and the pleasures and connections found in sharing the table. I see social, environmental, economic acts and outcomes as inextricably linked. Eco-gastronomy is Slow Food's way of positively focusing that interconnectedness. The Ark of Taste is demonstrative of the inherent relationship between a flavorful food culture and a diverse agri-culture.”