 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Feeding the Metropolis
By Nadia Arumugam
|
My portfolio is about the logistics, systems and processes that operate day in and day out to keep a city of over eight million people fed. Restaurants, greenmarkets, supermarkets, gourmet delis, street carts and soup kitchens; as New Yorkers we are constantly and consistently surrounded by food. I want to explore where all this food comes from? Where are the sources of the raw materials? How and where is all the food made? And I'm interested in the personalities behind this industry, in their stories and unique histories.
New York City has the best food in the world, it's often said, and that's because the world has come to New York City. In this melting pot of diverse ethnicities, where distinct cultures have maintained their unique identities, but have also mutated and conflated to various degrees, I want to know how and who are serving the gastronomic needs of these communities. Where are the Polish are getting their famous sausages from? Who supplies the city's Chinese restaurants with their many miles of noodles and pre-made, frozen dim sum? During the Hindu festival of Divali, where do Indians get their festive sweets from? Grandmothers no longer make gefilte fish at home, so who provides this Jewish ground fish delicacy? As a cosmopolitan hub, it is no surprise that New York has become a focus of ethnic food manufacturing and this is an aspect of the city's food culture that I would like to delve into. Who started these businesses and who are the people who work there today? I would like to explore how traditional foods, once made by families at home, with recipes passed down from one generation to the next, have been commercialized to satisfy the masses thousands of miles from where they originated.
I have come to think of New York's food system as a living, breathing organism, adapting to the needs of its mongrel population. With the Internet boom has evolved a breed of on-line delivery grocery businesses. We can do everything else from our laptops; why not shop for milk as well? As more and more New Yorkers take up companies such as Fresh Direct and Organic Direct on their offers to select the freshest and the best on their behalf, this is an integral aspect of New York food culture that I would like to write about. What happens after your order disappears into cyberspace? Does someone actually browse through all the aisles looking for those items you can never find? How does your order not get mixed up with the thousands of other customers requesting the same mundane groceries of milk and eggs and diapers?
I envision my portfolio project to take various journalistic forms including profiles, reviews, interviews and conversations, shorter front-of-the-book pieces and longer features. In all I hope to approach my portfolio through a series of thought-provoking stories and elucidating features which will reveal as much about the character of New York City and its inhabitants as it will about the reality of feeding the metropolis.
Back to Nadia Arumugam's portfolio
|
|
|
|
|
|
