Global Gormet

 Global Gourmet has temporarily closed until Sept 6th. The owner is traveling and tasting in Europe.

Saluki Cares Fundraiser

The SIU Foundation is running a fundraiser to help cash strapped SIU students. Primarily, the funds raised will go to help fund technology purchases for students who cannot afford them, housing and the Saluki Food Pantry. It is rather appalling that the university has a food pantry for students, but this is a trend that has unfortunately become much more common on college campuses in recent years.

Hot Dog Carts

Looks as if hot dog cards are seeing a resurgence in Carbondale. There is one on the west side of town  in the Westgate Shopping Center parking lot, one downtown parked across from the Civic Center and one in the Lowes parking lot. Guess you would have to try all three of them to find out how each one serves upt its hot dogs.

city Council Meeting--Food Trucks

City Council meets tonight. Main item on the agenda appears a look at the ordinances regarding food trucks in the city and possibly relaxing them. Last year a dozen operated in the city and apparently enough more want to operate that council is considering making it easier for them to do so. More options are good, as long as all of them don't offer variations on the same thing.

Food and Beverage Tax Forum

Quite a few restaurant and package liquor owners showed up for the Chamber of Commerce's meeting yesterday to discuss the new tax on prepared food and alcohol sales in Carbondale. Money raised by the tax will go to fund police and fire department pensions as well as downtown revitalization projects.

Most of those in attendance agreed with Mayor Henry, after an explanation, that the city needed more money to pay those costs, though a few advocated looking for the always popular "waste" in city expenses. Two major concerns were advanced by attendees:

1) Carbondale would have the highest tax on food and alcohol in the state, and possibly in the nation.
2) The tax is unfair, in that it targets a specific class of businesses, rather than spreading the cost out citywide, as an increase in the overall sales tax would do.

Mayor Henry said an overall increase had been considered but shelved due to complaints by sellers of higher ticket items such as furniture and cars, as increases in the sales tax on those items would raise the price significantly more than would the increase in tax on a dinner. However, he aid the council would go back and take another look at a sales tax as well as other options for the food and beverage tax, such as a graduated introduction.

Several restaurant owners, as well as the Chamber, said they had received a number of messages and complaints about the tax, with customers threatening to take their business to lower taxed restaurants in Carterville, Marion and Murphysboro. The extra time this would consume however, makes this pretty unlikely. Carbondale's population doubles during the day and those people who come to town to work are not going to take the time to drive to another city to save the tax. 

Food Trucks

Given that the city council voted to OK food trucks on public property at last night's meeting, will we get swamped with them? I would be not, at least not on the town square, whcih appeared the major point of concern when voting on the ordinance.

The town square just doesn't have the concentration of population needed to sustain a food truck, which by their very nature need heavy pedestrian traffic in order to stay in business. Consider the Strip, or S. Illinois depending on how well you know Carbonale. During the Strip's heyday in the 1990s, foot traffic at night could support up to 4 transient food stands within a two block stretch. Winston's Bagels held out for long after the others departed but eventually even he moved to a more lucrative location on East Grand.

Food trucks will do well if they can locate near Memorial Hospital, giving staff there a convenient option to on-premises dining, near the clinics on the west side of town, or close to campus, as students are always looking for another dining option. Any place else just doesn't have the concentration of population needed to support a food truck.

Local Food

Interesting article in the Southern on local food. Looks like only a little over .5% of the money spent on food here is spend on food grown locally:

Of the $1.8 billion Southern Illinois residents spend on food each year, $1.7 billion of that is spent on food from far-flung places.”

Of course, it is very hard for us to to grow bananas, kiwis, pineapples, etc. in this region.  Plus, it would be very hard to grow enough food locally during the fall, winter and spring (hardly growing season here), to provide a well balanced diet for residents of the area.   I remember hearing a couple of months back that there are counties in southeastern Illinois that do not have a supermarket within their borders, meaning they had to drive a significant distance to purchase out of season fruits and vegetables, not to mention raw meat.

Cheese Please

The place doesn't look like much but if you like cheese, check Ware Grocery at the intersection of Highway 3 and 146, west of Jonesboro. The store stared selling cheese last fall and has the best prices in the area that I have seen.  I figure they are buying surplus from a wholesaler as I picked up a 10 pound bag of English Cheddar trim pieces for $5.

Farmer's Market

Some nice photos of the fist C'dale Farmers Market of the season on the Local Matters blog.

Local Food

n case you're wanting more information about buying local food in southern Illinois and don't want to start your own backyard chicken farm (or any other sort of backyard farm), here's some more information on it.

Chickendale

Another ban a local group is interesting on overturning, this one on keeping chickens within the city limits. Wayne Weiseman presented this letter to the C'dale City Council a few weeks ago, advocating allowing Carbondale residents to keep a backyard coop of chickens. This looks tied into the "local food" trend that is growing in popularity throughout the nation.

However, comparing chickens to a pet such as a cat or a dog is a bit of a stretch. Chicken's are nowhere as well behaved as a cat or a dog and the owner will have to have multiples of them in order for a decent stream of eggs to come. However, there's no denying that a chicken is much more useful than the typical cat or dog, at least in terms of providing physical sustenance.

Southern Illinois Eateries

The Talking Tourism blog lists their top 10 +1 places to eat in Southern Illinois.

Strawberry Fields

Stopped off at Blueberry Hill by Cobden this morning to pick up more strawberries. The manager on duty told me this would be the last week for strawberries there and he actually expects to be out by Wednesday.

Sustainable Foods

Got an email pointing to this site the helps you find local sustainable foods. The Neighborhood Food Co-op gets listed twice, while Arnold's and the Town Square Market, not at all.

Harbaugh's Review

Very positive, albeit mildly snobby, review of Harbaugh's Cafe. Maybe it's me, but "dive" is not the first word that comes to mind to describe Harbaugh's.

Raid on Ohio Food Co-Op

With the local farmer's markets reopening soon, I thought this story on a raid by Ohio officers on an unlicensed food do-op timely. The Peach Chicken blog paints a significantly different picture of what happened.