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Celebrating Ottawa’s local food
A tall, thin man dressed completely in black walks through the grounds of Ottawa’s Museum of Civilization. He’s wearing long coattails that flutter in the keen October breeze, and a top hat is planted firmly atop his head. In his right hand he carries a picnic basket.
Dining out. Hundreds of excited foodies gather on the Museum of Civilization grounds for Harvest Noir’s eccentric all-black picnic.
Tourists and museum-going families stare in confusion as he saunters down the steps towards the museum’s Adventure Park, but as he turns the corner, it becomes very clear where he’s headed.
Settled in the grass, with a magnificent view of Parliament and the Ottawa River, 800 picnic-goers have assembled, dressed in their finest and most outlandish black attire, to picnic and celebrate local food at Ottawa’s very first Harvest Noir.
Harvest Noir is one of the many new local food-based events taking over Ottawa’s cultural scene. Focusing on the area’s diverse farming community and the rich selection of produce, meat and dairy found so close to the city, organizers aim to make people more aware of their carbon footprint and of the good food close to home.
Black ties and picnic baskets
The event is based on the idea of Diner en Blanc, a gourmet flash-mob picnic that started in Paris and has spread to major cultural centers around the world. Harvest Noir diners pay for tickets, sign up to an email list, pack a locally sourced picnic basket and await the last-minute information on where and when to meet.
Participants dress extravagantly in tuxedos, ball gowns and fascinators, bringing local, gourmet food, their best china and elaborate table dressings. The atmosphere is vibrant and the diners are excited—talking, giggling, and admiring each other’s dishes and costumes.
‘We’ve lost connection to where our food comes from; it’s wrapped in plastic and totally anonymous.’ — organizer Greg Searle
There’s a veritable sparkle under the gloomy October cloud-cover as guests bustle around to perfect their table set-ups. After weeks of speculation, the event is in full swing, and the enthusiastic attendees feel like they’ve been let in on Ottawa’s coolest secret. What more could you expect from hundreds of like-minded foodies brought together for this one spectacular event?
Food isn’t served by the Harvest Noir organizers (it’s a strict bring-your-own-picnic rule), and although $40 a ticket seems rather steep for a dinner party with no dinner included, there are over 800 people in attendance, all toting baskets full of locally made or sourced meals. From La Bottega sandwiches and farmers’ market goodies to full three-course meals from Les Fougères, the selection is impressive and truly showcases Ottawa’s growing and diverse food scene.
After dining, the crowd moves indoors for a dance party complete with live music and performers, which seems to be enjoyed to a certain degree, but it’s the local food element that really drives the event. This isn’t surprising considering the number of new, trendy organizations popping up to promote Ottawa as a foodie city. Harvest Noir was, for the most part, a party celebrating Ottawa local food.
A wave of local food events
Greg Searle, organizer of the event, said that after stumbling across the Diner Blanc event in Montreal last August, all he could think of was how Ottawa needed something similar.
New food events like Harvest Noir use social media like Twitter and YouTube to connect with the widest audience possible.
“I didn’t know if Ottawa was hip enough for it, but it was worth a try,” said Searle. “I think that something is changing in Ottawa. There’s a growing recognition that official culture is not enough. I think Harvest Noir proved that Ottawa is definitely hip enough, and maybe even thirsty for more events.”
Although Ottawa is often seen as a sleepy government town, criticized for lacking culture and a dynamic food scene, the landscape is certainly changing. Events like Harvest Noir, the Ottawa Foodie Challenge, Dishcrawl Ottawa and Bon Appetit are creating an accessible, fun, vibrant culture of eating and socializing in the city. Over the past few years, Ottawa has been moving into what prominent food blogger Hilary Duff refers to as “the new way to do food.”
Duff, known for her blog, Hilary Makes, as well as for being the restaurant critic for Ottawa XPress, says that although there have always been wine and food shows in the city, they are generally outrageously priced and thus not accessible to everyone who is interested in food. She says dynamic new events like the Ottawa Foodie Challenge and Dishcrawl Ottawa are more open and adventurous, and are often seeing more diversity and media attention than the traditional tasting shows.
“I think the unfortunate thing about Ottawa’s food reputation is that a lot of tourists don’t venture out of the Byward Market, so the dynamic food scene is overlooked,” says Duff. “Events like Dishcrawl are helping Ottawa step into a new world—one of accessible food, appreciation of the city’s offerings, and one where anyone who wants to be a foodie can be.”
After starting in Ottawa last June, the San Francisco-based Dishcrawl has sold out its events within hours. Focused on certain sections of the city, it is a progressive dinner: people are led to four “mystery” restaurants to try four different plates. Duff says it’s supposed to expose people to restaurants they haven’t heard of and dishes they haven’t tried before.
‘Ottawa is stepping into a new world, one of accessible food.’
— food blogger Hilary Duff
Social media is a key factor in getting a new generation of foodies out and about in the Ottawa food scene. Harvest Noir was promoted almost solely through Twitter, Facebook, and the circulation of an intriguing YouTube video invitation.
Searle credits these new media tools with drawing in a varied crowd. “We had a really big demographic at Harvest Noir. People ranged from 18 to 75. Using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube helped us get younger people, and then the younger people invited their parents,” says Searle.
He adds, “The event had its feet in two worlds. It has one foot in Old World Paris, and the dining culture there, and the other foot in flashmobs and DJ’s and partying. Social media probably accounted for over half of our guests.”
Carolynn Lacasse, who organizes the Ottawa Foodie Challenge, says she thinks the people of Ottawa are craving the fun experiences you find on Queen Street West in Toronto. People love to go out and be part of a cultural community, so the events and the restaurants popping up everywhere in Ottawa are helping them do that.
Embracing Ottawa’s farms
The overwhelmingly positive response to Ottawa’s hipper food events is something that is encouraging the appreciation of local food, and even creating buzz around what’s being grown in Ottawa.
“People are realizing that Ottawa and the surrounding area has so many farms, and is a great place to get your food locally,” says Lacasse. “They’ve always been there, but people have been talking more about it, so I think that’s why we’re more aware and that’s partially why the food scene has opened up.”
Harvest Noir is a perfect fit into the growing mainstream movement of buying local. Canadians have been participating more and more in the “buy local” and “100 mile diet” phenomena because of the negative reputation of imported foods and a concern about their carbon footprint. The Dieticians of Canada say that although the 100 mile diet isn’t possible for everyone, they encourage Canadians to choose local foods to help support agricultural producers and protect the environment.
Ottawa’s farmers’ markets are fantastic places to find an array of local produce, and no plastic wrap in sight.
Searle says the theme of harvest was integral to his event because it’s one of the most important traditions, particularly in Canada where we have so much to enjoy.
“We’ve lost our connection to the place where our food comes from—it’s wrapped in plastic and totally anonymous, and we don’t know how far it’s travelled, what kind of fields or farmyards it came from,” says Searle. “We’re headed into a future where that’s not going to be realistic anymore. Preparing for an energy-constrained future means getting reconnected with our local farms and having a local food system.”
The future of Ottawa’s food scene seems to be promising. The addition of even more food events, creating buzz through social media tools and promoting the idea that anyone can be a food lover, means that more people are going to be getting involved.
“The more food events, the more that people get into the food scene,” says Lacasse. “We need more events like Harvest Noir, to bring out more fun, creative, cultured people of Ottawa. I’m always having new food experiences, and I just hope I can help bring that to other people.”
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Front page photo courtesy of Hilary Duff.