How to overcome the cheeseburga-cheeseburga mentality? Yes, by understanding that sex sells (but where's Gina Gershon?).

What: Wearing nothing but strategically placed lettuce leaves, a pair of PETA's Lettuce Ladies will hand out free Tofurky brand mock-turkey sandwiches and gift cards for 2 gallons of gas to the first 50 people at a Providence Shell gas station on Tuesday. PETA is "doing lunch" at the gas station to let drivers know that the best thing that they can do for the environment is jettison their meat-based diets. Eating meat is a more environmentally harmful habit than driving an SUV.

 

Eating just a single pound of meat is the environmental equivalent of driving more than 40 miles in an SUV. Researchers at the University of Chicago determined that switching to a vegan diet is more effective at countering global warming than switching from a standard car to a Toyota Prius.

 

"In a time of rising gas prices and rising concern for the environment, we're going the extra mile to help Americans fill up on vegan fuel for their tummies and gas for their tanks," says Lettuce Lady Colleen Higgins.

 

Where: 457 Benefit St., Providence

When: Tuesday, May 13, 2-3 p.m.

George Germon and Johanne Killeen, the famed duo behind local culinary landmark Al Forno, are working to create what may be the smallest restaurant in the smallest state.

Workers are toiling in the former New Yorker lunch counter, at 200 Washington Street in downtown Providence, to create a 20-seat Mediterranean-influenced restaurant in the diminutive 450-square-foot space. The name, appropriately, will be Tini. Germon tells me they hope for a June opening.

Everything about the place, he says, will be small, including bar seating and the plates created by chef David Reynoso. Price-wise, Germon says, the hope is that people will be able to have a meal "and not go into bankruptcy."

Germon (who is credited with the invention of grilled pizza) and Killeen rocketed to culinary fame through Al Forno, as I recounted in this 2000 story.

It began on a shoestring in 1980 when Germon and Killeen, battling back after a serious car accident, launched their dream by serving breakfast and lunch in a small 30-seat location on Steeple Street. The name Al Forno, Italian for "from the oven," referred not just to an inspirational mode but the fact that their sole cooking equipment consisted of two ovens. Ploughing one day's receipts into the next day's provisions, the couple eked out a living on the way to building a devoted following and winning plaudits from the International Herald Tribune as the best casual restaurant in the world.

As Germon and Killeen recount in their 1991 cookbook, Cucina Simpatica (HarperCollins), many of their friends couldn't believe it when they followed their early training in the arts -- he as a potter and sculptor, she as a photographer -- by pursuing something as fleeting as food. "I think people believed we were giving up art for some lesser, more trivial pursuit," the couple wrote. But noting that the sensual enjoyment offered by food and eating is one of life's greatest pleasures, Killeen and Germon perceived little difference between cooking and other arts. "Food is eaten the way art is perceived; it is digested and recorded," they noted. "Given the right circumstances, a connection is made and communication takes place, which is what art is all about."

Germon tells me the duo had long been interested in opening a small place, and that Buff Chace touted the appropriately pint-sized location when they encountered each other one day.

While the now-defunct Richard's, formerly next to Olga's Cup and Saucer, may have once been the smallest restaurant in Rhode Island, Germon thinks he is in the running to claim the title.

Speaking of Local 121, the Providence restaurant continues to offer some informative events, such as this one on Thursday:

On Thursday, May 1st from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., Local 121 presents Real Meals from Local Fields. Local 121 brings you into the food security movement, a movement that shows how our food system is connected, how our food grows, how it’s processed, who grows it, what we eat, where it comes from, who goes hungry and why. Participants include Carpenter’s Grist Mill, Farm Fresh Rhode Island, Narragansett Creamery, Olga’s Cup and Saucer, Matonuck Oyster Farm, Red Planet Vegetables, Sosnowski Farms, Southside Community Land Trust, Urban Greens Food Coop, and Whole Foods Market. 

 

The event is free and open to the public. Guests will have the opportunity to sample locally raised food, sign up for a CSA and learn more about the food security. Whole Foods has donated a basket of local products that will be raffled off that evening. Local 121 is providing free appetizers as well as cash bar.

Yes, the budget stuff is a lot more important, but Trader Joe's will be in the house (this fall), and I'd been meaning to do a related post for some time.

It's been something of a parlor game in Providence to ponder the question of when Trader Joe's might come to the area. Some perceived such a development as an ultimate sign of end-game gentrification, while others who've shopped at the distinctive, reasonably priced grocery store, N4N included, felt like it couldn't arrive soon enough.

There are anecdotal accounts, perhaps apocryphal, that Whole Foods has maintained its Wayland Square location to keep Trader Joe's from coming into the space. And while some might have hoped for TJ to occupy the former Shaw's in Eagle Square, the chain is said to be very, very precise in where and how it sets up. That explains why it's going for as traffic-intense an area as Bald Hill Road in Warwick.

Jen comments:

This has got to be the worst location in RI. Anyone who has half a brain stays away from Bald Hill Road. The demographics HAVE to be better in Seekonk where they can draw from RI, East Bay and SE Mass. Are folks from Barrington and Bristol and Aquidneck Island going to go to Bald Hill Road? Doubtful. But folks from Warwick and East G might go to Seekonk. The whole thing is very strange! And I think TJs will rue the day they opened in RI when they try to conduct business in the state--my friend who manages REI says that it was a nightmare because of the laws around retail (ie., employees have to be paid weekly, which screwed up the company's payroll which is biweekly everywhere else in the country).

And who knew they were owned by the ALDI people? I didn't. And Scott Avedesian can totally be governor now if he wants. He can just glide into the statehouse on the "i brought Trader Joe's to town" ticket.

Anyway, the food fanatics among us will welcome TJ, but Route 2 is unlikely to generate the sexual frisson of a certain Trader Joe's in lower Manhattan. I can't find the link, but New York Magazine has a piece last year on how it's the hip place to work for a lot of young artist types.

A few St. Patrick's notes of interest:

-- The Wild Colonial will be offering its excellent annual corn beef and cabbage event today, with some of the proceeds going to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.

-- House Speaker William J. Murphy will present "Murphy's Law" at Bob Burke's Federal Reserve.

-- There's a different kind of Green Drinks, the environmental variety, slated for Thursday, at Olives, North Main Street, Providence, from 5-8 pm.

After my recent opus on the next generation of beer in Rhode Island, the folks at Meritage Restaurant in East Greenwich made sure to inform me about a specialty beer dinner there tomorrow night:

Meritage, located at 5454 Post Road in East Greenwich, will host a specialty beer dinner on Thursday, March 13th featuring the beers of Samuel Smith’s Brewery, located in Tadcaster, England; Bavaria’s Ayinger Brewery; Zatec Brewery in the Czech Republic and the Lindemans Farm Brewery, Belgium. The dinner will begin at 6:30 p.m. Sarah Karlavage from beer importer Merchant du Vin will guide guests through each course. The cost is $40 per person; tax and gratuity are additional. Guests reserving a table of eight will receive the discounted price of $35 per person plus tax and gratuity. Call 401-884-1255 for reservations.

Meanwhile, a little more low-key beer drinking will take place tomorrow night at Nick-a-Nee's, in Providence's Jewelry District, when the local chapter of the Association of Young Journalists gathers, starting at 7 pm.

The hype about Living on the Wedge is that it does for artisan cheesemakers what Sideways did for wine. It's screening tomorrow, fittingly, at Local 121.

Join Louella Hill from Narraganset Creamery for a screening and discussion of Marianna Coyne’s documentary, “Living on the Wedge:  Wisconsin’s Artisan Cheesemakers” on Wednesday, March 12th at 7:00 p.m. in the Speakeasy at Local 121.  "Living on the Wedge" is a one-hour documentary about the passion and personalities behind the artisan cheesemaking movement. Produced by Chicago-area filmmaker Gaylon Emerzia, it's a finalist for a James Beard Award. The film is structured as an "insider's tour" of "the state that cheese made." The engaging on-screen host, Mariana Coyne, invites us along as she drives through southwestern Wisconsin, from cheesemaker to cheesemaker, with additional stops at Larry's Brown Deer Market in Brown Deer, the annual Cheese Days in Monroe, the U.S. Cheese Championship in Milwaukee, and the Dane County Farmers Market in Madison. Odessa Piper of L'Etoile restaurant fame makes a cameo appearance.

Like a lot of people, I've long appreciated the unusual byline of Jennifer 8. Lee (it stems, I believe, from a belief in the lucky value of certain numbers) as well as the tangled history of such classic Chinese-American dishes as General Tso's Chicken. Now, since Lee has written a book about the back story of Chinese food, these two divergent strands have been wed.

Jane and Michael Stern have a review in today's Times Book Review:

Inevitably, Lee’s investigative trail leads back to the mass arrival of Chinese immigrants in California during the Gold Rush, when they became known as Celestials because they seemed so otherworldly. Their eating habits were especially distressing — using chopsticks instead of forks, they consumed strange sea creatures and animals considered vermin, not game. “The embers of culinary xenophobia smoldered,” Lee writes, citing a pamphlet published by the labor leader Samuel Gompers titled “Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion: Meat Versus Rice, American Manhood Versus Asiatic Coolieism, Which Shall Survive?” The Chinese Exclusion Act, restricting immigration and preventing Chinese from becoming citizens, effectively barred an entire ethnic group from jobs in agriculture, mining and manufacturing. The result? The Chinese opened laundries and restaurants. “Cleaning and cooking were both women’s work,” Lee explains. “They were not threatening to white laborers.”

Nor did the food in the restaurants the Chinese opened threaten American taste. It was, and mostly remains, “streamlined, palatable and digestible” — American food that looks foreign, with the Chinese who cook and serve it, according to Lee, “just the middlemen.”

Brown's Center for Environmental Studies is presenting a program tonight on Fair Trade coffee and the power of consumers:

Thursday, February 28 7:00 pm in MacMillan Hall 117   Dean Cycon of Dean's Beans will present Justice in the Coffeelands: The Social, Economic & Environmental Impact of Fair/Unfair Trade in the Coffee Communities of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Free and open to the public. Fair trade coffee and java drops will be served prior to the lecture (6:30pm).

Here's part of a previous story I wrote on the subject:

CAN A CUP of coffee change the world?

For embattled small-scale farmers like 28-year-old Carlos Reynoso, whose colleagues cultivate coffee beans in the western highlands of Guatemala, the daily choices of US consumers have a big impact. When most people in the US buy a $3 latte, a cup of java on the go, or a bag of beans at the supermarket, they unsuspectingly support a status quo in which poor growers in Latin America, Asia, and Africa receive as little as 20 or 25 cents for a pound of high-grade coffee. But when consumers buy Fair Trade coffee — which guarantees farmers a minimum price of $1.26 per pound — their spending fosters a variety of positive effects, not the least of which is the ability of these growers to sustain their livelihoods.

As one of six employees of Manos Campesinas, a collective that coordinates coffee exports for more than a thousand small growers, Reynoso has personally seen the impact. Since global coffee prices began plummeting a few years ago, many farmers have been unable to earn enough to support themselves, causing them to abandon the land and search elsewhere for work. Since Manos Campesinas became Fair Trade–certified in 1999, however, the heightened revenue stream has raised the income of farmers, he says, enabling their families to enjoy a better diet and their children to remain in school.

Speaking through a translator during a telephone interview arranged by the nonprofit development agency Oxfam America, Reynoso notes that Fair Trade isn’t a panacea for poverty. It does, however, offer some substantial big-picture benefits in a country fair like Guatemala, which suffered from decades of violence and anti-union activity after a US-backed coup in 1954. "Now people are realizing there are benefits to organization, and that if they can work together, they can achieve greater things," Reynoso says. There’s still not sufficient demand to sell all of the collective’s coffee through Fair Trade channels, he adds, "[But] the more that consumers get to know what Fair Trade means, the more possibilities we will have."

My friend Alan, while once traveling with the future N4N on dusty backroads in the former colony of British Honduras (which by then had been redubbed Belize), launched into a spontaneous ode to the wonders of beer: its refreshing qualities, its ability to stimulate thought, conversation, and bonhomie, and so forth. He was right on target, and one couldn't help being impressed.

Flash forward into the present, and you might notice that there are more varieties of beer available in Rhode Island -- even in little neighborhood package stores -- than ever before. This, too, is something worth celebrating, and I describe the trend in this week's Phoenix:

One such [beer destination] is Track 84, a tavern housed in a simple wooden structure on Kilvert Street, a dead-end off Post Road in Warwick, hard by T.F. Green Airport, which appears from the outside to be an old-fashioned Rhode Island watering hole.
 
Step into the place now, though, and it’s hard to resist being impressed by the 19 different taps — exclusively craft beer — running the length of the long old wooden bar.
 
The beverages of choice at the moment include Captain Swain’s Extra Stout, by Nantucket-based Cisco — “I call that a local beer,” says David A. Longiaru, Track 84’s proprietor — Kasteel, a Belgian brew made with black cherries, Dale’s Pale Ale (the only craft brew that comes in a can), Lagunitas Brewing Company’s Brown Shugga, Stone Brewing Company’s Double Bastard, Magic Hat’s Odd Notion, Weyerbacher’s Blithering Idiot, and several offerings from locally based Newport Storm. The most unusual tap is the pink elephant for Delirium Tremens, a reference to both its 20 percent alcohol-by-volume content and the thrill-seeking spirit embodied by craft brewers.

While the bar has passed in and out of Longiaru’s family over time, the affable Warwick native realized, after reacquiring the place in 1999, that a different approach was needed to sustain it into the future. Thankfully, his enthusiasm for craft beers offered what seemed like a promising direction.
 
Since installing the new focus about three years, Longiaru remains amazed by how many people enjoy good beer. He talks authoritatively about the subject, describing with awe how the Belgians won’t serve a certain brew if they lack the appropriate glass in which to put it (he took a busman’s holiday with five other enthusiasts, including Nikki’s Liquors’ [Michael] Iannazzi, to Belgium in February 2007.)

City mags put a lot of emphasis on their covers -- with such familiar staples as attractive models, actors, and the like -- to encourage newsstand and checkout sales. Now, though, as the cleaver waits to fall on the first high-end steak joint to accept that Providence isn't a big expense-account town, an editor at Texas Monthly is accusing the Belo-owned Rhode Island Monthly of swiping a meaty cover concept (h/t Romenesko).

From TexasMonthly.com:

Some of you may be aware of a two-plus-year-old dust-up between TEXAS MONTHLY and Boston Magazine over a purloined cover concept. In February 2005, we put Tom Craddick on the cover of our "Power" issue, only to discover, a few months later, that our neighbors to the far northeast did a clumsy job of ripping off our design. (The cover subject for their "Power" issue was Mitt Romney. Hey, how'd that work out for you?) Now comes this: Rhode Island Monthly's February 2008 issue on steak. Look familiar? The art director of that fine publication has a future. Elsewhere in New England.

Update: Here's what the editor of Rhode Island Monthly, Sarah Francis, just emailed me:

Oh Evan - put a photo of a steak on the cover because we have a steak feature inside? We never could have thought of that ourselves!! You guys are so smart!

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like the idea of eating cloned food. Even more worrisome is the lack of notification for consumers about whether what they're buying has been cloned. As it stands, we're already very distanced from the sources of our food.

Regardless, cloning is coming:

After years of debate, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday declared that food from cloned animals and their progeny is safe to eat, clearing the way for milk and meat derived from genetic copies of prized dairy cows, steers and hogs to be sold at the grocery store.

The decision was hailed by cloning companies and some farmers, who have been pushing for government approval in hopes of turning cloning into a routine agricultural tool. Because clones are costly, it is their offspring that are most likely to be used for producing milk, hamburgers or pork chops, while the clones themselves are reserved for breeding.

Perhaps, with some news organization moving part of their operations offshore, the next step will be to clone reporters.

 SB and diet guru Rory Freedman [Left] 

With the official coining of vegansexual, there's no surprise in how a couple of self-described skinny bitches have parlayed the success of their first book into Skinny Bitch in the Kitch. They got some nice play on the front of yesterday's Times' Dining section.

Myself? I know cheeseburgers are bad for the rainforest, etc., etc., but that I still want to eat them on occasion. I nonetheless suspect that Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food would be more to my liking. According to Janet Maslin:

Nutritionism has lately helped to justify vitamin-enriched Diet Coke, bread bolstered with the Omega-3 fatty acids more readily found in fish oil, and many other new improvements on what Michael Pollan calls “the tangible material formerly known as food.”

Goaded by “the silence of the yams,” Mr. Pollan wants to help old-fashioned edibles fight back. So he has written “In Defense of Food,” a tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to the proposition that food can be reduced to its nutritional components without the loss of something essential. “We know how to break down a kernel of corn or grain of wheat into its chemical parts, but we have no idea how to put it back together again,” he writes.

In this lively, invaluable book — which grew out of an essay Mr. Pollan wrote for The New York Times Magazine, for which he is a contributing writer — he assails some of the most fundamental tenets of nutritionism: that food is simply the sum of its parts, that the effects of individual nutrients can be scientifically measured, that the primary purpose of eating is to maintain health, and that eating requires expert advice. Experts, he says, often do a better job of muddying these issues than of shedding light on them. And it serves their own purposes to create confusion. In his opinion the industry-financed branch of nutritional science is “remarkably reliable in its ability to find a health benefit in whatever food it has been commissioned to study.”

Some of this reasoning turned up in Mr. Pollan’s best-selling “Omnivore’s Dilemma.” But “In Defense of Food” is a simpler, blunter and more pragmatic book, one that really lives up to the “manifesto” in its subtitle. Although he is not in the business of dispensing self-help rules, he incorporates a few McNuggets of plain-spoken advice: Don’t eat things that your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize. Avoid anything that trumpets the word “healthy.” Be as vitamin-conscious as the person who takes supplements, but don’t actually take them. And in the soon to be exhaustively quoted words on the book’s cover: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” An inspiring head of lettuce is the poster image for this mantra.

Do we really need such elementary advice? Well, two-thirds of the way through his argument Mr. Pollan points out something irrefutable. “You would not have bought this book and read this far into it if your food culture was intact and healthy,” he says. Nor would you eat substances like Go-Gurt, eat them on the run or eat them at mealtimes that are so out of sync with friends and relatives that the real family dinner is an endangered ritual.

Phoenix contributing illustrator Steve Brosnihan has long raved about breakfasts at The Barn, in the Adamsville section of Little Compton, and Bill Rodriguez this week helps to explain why:

What also intrigued me were their four interesting variations on eggs Benedict ($8.25-$10.95), in addition to the regular one, which included one with lobster and asparagus. There were no eggs Florentine. Instead, the spinach version was eggs Sardou, with artichoke hearts, roasted garlic, and creamed spinach under the hollandaise sauce. That last one Johnnie especially appreciated when she was here before. (The other item she sampled and liked then was “Adamsville jonnycakes” [$3.95], done East Bay-style, thin, crisp, and pancake size.)

However, the version they call “Eggs on the Bayou” ($9.95) is now my absolute favorite, bar none. The poached eggs on the English muffin halves are over crab cakes and under a Creole hollandaise sauce. The yoke and crab and just-hot-enough lemony sauce perfectly complement one another. Exquisite. And the chunks of home fries, by the way, are nicely herbed with rosemary. A small wedge of watermelon is a quirky and refreshing touch.

Click here for the whole review.

Rasoi, just over the Pawtucket line from Providence, has some of the best Indian food I've had in Rhode Island. Try the frontier shrimp, the chicken biryani, and the restaurant's inventive cocktails. Johnette Rodriguez reviewed Rasoi for the Phoenix earlier this year.

We read the Saturday New York Times so that you don't have to. Get a glimpse of these gems:

-- China, the biggest importer exporter of seafood to the US, is awash in "water supplies contaminated by sewage, industrial waste, and agricultural runoff that includes pesticides. The fish farms, in turn, are discharging wastewater that further pollutes the water supply." Mmmm, pass the shrimp.

-- In Ohio, a state whose electoral votes narrowly swung two elections toward President Bush," all five voting systems "have critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election," a report commissioned by the Democratic secretary of state has found.

-- Fred D. Thompson has not just a guys' guy's self-awareness, but a sense of humor about how he's married to a FLILF! (In an AP survey, he cited his "trophy wife" as his favorite possession.)

-- This week, I told you that Google will soon be in our bathtubs. Now, the increasingly omnipresent company is developing a competitor of Wikipedia.

-- On the lines of the more things change, the more they stay the same: "Report says the rich are getting rich faster, much faster."

The Natural News Network has suggestions for making it a green holiday.

And Farm Fresh Rhode Island is putting on a cold-weather farmers' market, Saturdays, from noon to 3, at AS220, 115 Empire St., Providence (until May 31):

A bit about the Providence Wintertime Farmers' Market

 

Local food all winter long. The chickens are still laying eggs. The salad greens are so leafy and crisp. The onions and garlic are packing spice. The apples and squashes are getting sweeter by the day. Join us for the start of another 365 days of local food. Chefs and eaters, one and all, come enjoy all that grows in Rhode Island year-round!

 

Plus aprons, bowls, cups and calendars by Providence artists for your culinary-inclined loved ones. And hot coffee and brunch next door at Taqueria Pacifica.

In contrast to the fertile period from the late '90s and into the new decade -- when Nick-a-Nee's, the Wild Colonial, the Red Fez, the Decatur Lounge, and Lili Marlene's burst upon the Providence scene -- things have waned a bit n recent years.

Babe's closed. The Custom House closed. And we know all about the Decatur.

Now, good guy David Segal offers the news that Talk of the Town, a downtown Providence mainstay, will serve its last rounds on Wednesday night. I've heard some loose talk that TOTT might try to relocate in Olneyville.

The bar is being displaced by plans for a hotel. Last week, P+J offered their thoughts on New Japan, which is also being forced out by this development:

Sayonara to a wonderful place
P&J are greatly saddened by the imminent closing of one of our longtime favorite restaurants, the warm and inviting New Japan, which has been a staple in downtown Providence for 30 years.
 
Yukio Hiyama is closing shop at the end of October — when the building will be converted to (another) hotel. We’re not entirely sure what to make of the recent proliferation of downtown hotel projects, but we do know that there will never be another place like New Japan. When Yukio first opened, there was almost no Japanese cuisine in the state.
 
There was the Oki Steakhouse chain restaurant, but that was generic stuff. The sushi craze had not yet hit, and New Japan was a wondrous little spot with a small menu of great food and an atmosphere like home. Yukio has been one of the greatest hosts in local history. Jorge remembers accidentally leaving his wallet at home one evening and Yukio (who was much closer to Phillipe) told him, “Oh, just come by next time you’re in the neighborhood. No problem.”
 
New Japan was a favorite of the Young Adults back in the ’70s, when it was run by Yukio’s predecessor, the equally beloved and diminutive Beatles-song-singing Osaki. The band would often convene there, for a light meal and plenteous sake, before a gig at Lupo’s.
 
Your superior correspondents had many a fabulous lunch and dinner at New Japan, and we mourn its passing. We send all the best to Yukio, a true prince of a man.

If you're looking for somewhere to get a drink or a meal over the Labor Day weekend, Bill Rodriguez gives a thumbs-up to Josh Miller's Local 121.

And if you haven't tried it, give a whirl to a guacamole-topped Joesadilla at AS220. Delish.

You've got to hand it to PETA. Its message is left of the mainstream, but the animal-rights group is rigorous in its media outreach and practical in its persistent use of sex appeal as a way of delivering its message. For an example, here are details from a news release for an event slated for tomorrow:

Hot Chick Protests KFC's Cold-Hearted Farming Practices

What: Wearing a sexy yellow bikini and holding a sign that reads, "KFC Tortures Chicks," sultry PETA member Ashley Byrne will lead a protest outside a Providence KFC restaurant over KFC suppliers' abusive treatment of chickens in factory farms and slaughterhouses, while other PETA members hand out leaflets.

The more than 850 million chickens killed each year for KFC are tortured in ways that would result in felony cruelty-to-animals charges if other animals were the victims. They are drugged and bred to grow so large that many become crippled from the weight of their massive upper bodies. Many have their throats slit while they are still conscious and are scalded to death in defeathering tanks. KFC ignored recommendations for animal welfare improvements made by members of its own advisory panel, including five who have since resigned in frustration.

"I'll 'heat' things up a little to help customers see exactly what cold-hearted KFC does to make birds' lives and deaths painful," says Ashley. "Lots of kind people will go find another place to eat when they see our video and hear our appeal."

Where:  KFC, 805 N. Main St., Providence

When: Wednesday, August 22, 3:30 p.m. 

Matt has a good post about Blue State Coffee, a purveyor on Thayer Street of Fair Trade coffee. This reminded me of a piece I did a few years back on the power of consumers to make change with their coffee-buying decisions:

CAN A CUP of coffee change the world?

For embattled small-scale farmers like 28-year-old Carlos Reynoso, whose colleagues cultivate coffee beans in the western highlands of Guatemala, the daily choices of US consumers have a big impact. When most people in the US buy a $3 latte, a cup of java on the go, or a bag of beans at the supermarket, they unsuspectingly support a status quo in which poor growers in Latin America, Asia, and Africa receive as little as 20 or 25 cents for a pound of high-grade coffee. But when consumers buy Fair Trade coffee — which guarantees farmers a minimum price of $1.26 per pound — their spending fosters a variety of positive effects, not the least of which is the ability of these growers to sustain their livelihoods.

As one of six employees of Manos Campesinas, a collective that coordinates coffee exports for more than a thousand small growers, Reynoso has personally seen the impact. Since global coffee prices began plummeting a few years ago, many farmers have been unable to earn enough to support themselves, causing them to abandon the land and search elsewhere for work. Since Manos Campesinas became Fair Trade–certified in 1999, however, the heightened revenue stream has raised the income of farmers, he says, enabling their families to enjoy a better diet and their children to remain in school.

Speaking through a translator during a telephone interview arranged by the nonprofit development agency Oxfam America, Reynoso notes that Fair Trade isn’t a panacea for poverty. It does, however, offer some substantial big-picture benefits in a country fair like Guatemala, which suffered from decades of violence and anti-union activity after a US-backed coup in 1954. "Now people are realizing there are benefits to organization, and that if they can work together, they can achieve greater things," Reynoso says. There’s still not sufficient demand to sell all of the collective’s coffee through Fair Trade channels, he adds, "[But] the more that consumers get to know what Fair Trade means, the more possibilities we will have."

Although Fair Trade–certified coffee has been available in the US since only 1986, it is rapidly growing in popularity. TransFair USA, an Oakland, California–based nonprofit that monitors the product, announced this spring that it certified 18.7 million pounds in 2003 — a 91 percent jump from 2002. Equal Exchange, a Canton, Massachusetts-based cooperative (soon moving to West Bridgewater) that bills itself as the nation’s leading Fair Trade company, has enjoyed enviable growth, topping $10 million in sales and gaining recognition as one of the fastest-growing small firms in the region. Furthermore, although Fair Trade coffee represents only about one percent of the 2.8 billion pounds of coffee imported into the US in 2003 — aiding just a small fraction of the world’s 25 million coffee farmers — industry giants like Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, and Dunkin’ Donuts have slowly begun to include Fair Trade offerings among their offerings.

It’s not hard to see why proponents tend to embrace Fair Trade java with something approaching evangelical zeal. Perhaps like no other product, a cup of this coffee holds the promise of empowering consumers as a force for global good, offering at least a potential counterbalance to unmitigated corporate consolidation and the exploitation of workers in undeveloped nations. With the spread of the Fair Trade approach to other products in recent years, including chocolate, cocoa, tea, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, and grapes, the prospects seem even greater.

For conscientious coffee mavens like Rik Kleinfeldt, the owner of New Harvest Coffee Roasters, in Rumford, emphasizing Fair Trade beans comes down to doing the right thing. As New Harvest states on its Web site, www.newharvestcoffee.com, "Over the last 200 years, less and less money has gone to the people who actually make things, and more and more wealth has flowed into the coffers of people with soft hands and no shame. The coffee industry is no exception. The people who do the hardest work in making your morning cup possible, the farmers, have long received the smallest share of the proceeds. We want to do all that we can to reverse this reality."

 As noted by Matt, Narragansett Brewing and major domo Mark Hellendrung, with a story reprinted today in the ProJo, are getting some love from the Wall Street Journal. RI's beer boom, which also includes restaurateur-legislator Josh Miller and the guys at Coastal Extreme Brewing, was previously noted in the Phoenix:

During the distant heyday of Narragansett Brewing, workers at the Cranston brewery enjoyed not just solid pay and good benefits, but complimentary beer and the encouragement to drink it. frequent advertising and the familiar slogan — "Hi, neighbor, have a ’Gansett" — combined to make the brew the top-selling brand throughout New England. Although Rhode Island might have dwelled in the shadow of Boston, Little Rhody more than held its own when it came to fostering a combo, beer and organized crime, in keeping with the state’s picaresque history, with the former generating no small share of local pride. If a worker spotted someone drinking a Heineken in the bar at the brewery, according to an account published in American Breweriana Journal, he would ask, "Why would you want to keep someone working in Holland instead of the people in your own neighborhood?"

If you sometimes perceive a surfeit of Italian restaurants in Rhode Island, you're not alone. Don't get me wrong. I love Italian food. It would be nice, though, if we had something like one of N4N's all-time favorite restaurants, the East Coast Grill in Cambridge.

That said, there's a pleasant boomlet of French-inspired restaurants in the Capital City, including Bravo Brasserie, Red Stripe, and Mike Sears's new place, not to mention such venerable outposts as Chez Pascal, Rue de l'Espoir, and Pot Au Feu.

N4N was reminded of just how good Bravo is during a dinner this week, and Johnette Rodriguez happens to have a review of the same establishment in this week's Phoenix.

N4N was enjoying a midday repast at an Indian joint on Wickenden Street last week when he overheard someone at a big table trying to describe the difference between "a geek" and "a nerd." Bigger minds are needed to clarify this distinction, but you can do a little field work by checking out the latest Providence Geek Dinner, slated to happen tonight at AS220, 115 Empire St., Providence, from 5:30-9 PM. 

In other goings on:

-- Josh Miller's Local 121, which has been heralded here and in the ProJo, is set for a grand opening tonight.

-- AS220's similarly situated Dreyfus Hotel project, noted in the Phoenix and in the ProJo, will have a ribbon-cutting celebration tomorrow at 3 PM.

-- The Rhode Island Young Democrats will have a 6 PM happy hour tomorrow at tazza, in Providence.

-- Former Governor Lincoln Almond, who will celebrate his 71st birthday on Saturday, will be feted tonight with what is billed at the first reunion of his staff, at the Renaissance Providence Hotel.

-- Barman extraordinaire Mike Sears, the owner of Lili Marlene's on Atwells Avenue in Providence, has a very swanky new restaurant on Westminster Street in the Armory District. The menu is French-inspired and the decor is way cool. I haven't tried the food yet, but the place marks a welcome addition in the neighborhood.

-- Mike Doyle, chairman of the Prov-based RDW Group, has been awarded the Publicity Club of New England's coveted John J. Molloy Crystal Bell for lifetime achievement in the communications field.

A reminder, as previously reported here, that Obama for Rhode Island is slated to hold its first event on June 13. Charlie Bakst, meanwhile, has the scoop on visits to our little town on Wednesday by GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, as well as the husband of Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, Kudos + Congrats to . . .

-- State Senator Josh Miller (D-Cranston), the impresario of the Trinity Brewhouse (a Phoenix advertiser) whose Local 121, in the Dreyfus Hotel in downtown Prov, is a new hot spot. One of the highlights is a beautifully restored bar area, which has been known to attract a lively mix of ink-stained wretches, bloggers, politicos, and other colorful characters.

-- PR maven Christine Heenan of the Clarendon Group, who, as noted today in Political Scene, recently celebrated her 40th birthday at the aforementioned Local 121 and who is slated to marry former Cicilline chief of staff Mike Mello.

-- Charles Rappleye, the brother of Channel 10 newsman Bill Rappleye, whose book (now in paperback), Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, The Slave Trade, and the American Revolution, has won the Washington Prize.

-- To Grow Smart Rhode Island, the anti-sprawl group, which is scheduled, on Thursday, to receive an environmental leadership award from the Environmental Business Council of New England. The Phoenix has previously honored Grow Smart chieftain Scott Wolf as a Local Hero, and the group's efforts are well-deserving of further recognition.

Tyler and Allison's excellent Taqueria Pacifica at AS220 has posted a few tables on the sidewalk outside its Empire Street location in Providence, making for excellent people-watching on these beautiful spring days. Take in the view while chowing on one of the TP's superb Joesadilla, a kind of chicken quesadilla, with the optional guacamole and hot sauce for full effect.

Run, don't walk, to Olga's Cup & Saucer in Providence, to get one of the best pulled pork sandwiches you will ever taste. Without tax, this taste treat checks in just under $9, but it's well worth it -- a mouth-watering combo of tangy pork, barbecue sauce, and crunchy cole slaw on an onion roll.

It's time for the annual Best issue of the Providence Phoenix. The highlights include readers' picks for the best the state can offer in arts and entertainment, city life, shopping, a host of editors' picks, and more. One of my favorite parts of this issue is the recognition of Local Heroes who are making a positive difference in Rhode Island.

So give it up for Sebastian Ruth + Minna Choi of Community MusicWorks; Lucie Searle + Sean Wallace of AS220; Jon Mahone and the rest of the crew from In House Freestyle; and last, but certainly not least, Andrew Cortes of YouthBuild Providence and Building Futures.

Will the Clinton machine roll over the other Democratic presidential candidates? Will Obama's charisma overcome his institutional disadvantages? Boston Phoenix political reporter David S. Bernstein has a look at how well the two big-name Dems are faring in making friends and influencing people in New Hampshire.

Also, as promised:

-- Peter Ian Asen offers a post-Valentine's Day report on the outlook for civil unions and gay marriage.

-- Bill Rodriguez reviews the new, improved Cuban Revolution.

More later on good stuff in this week's Phoenix . . .

Some gubernatorial chiefs of staff leave to go to Hinckley, Allen & Snyder. Others prefer to make a quixotic congressional run while setting up shop in a Cuban restaurant bedecked with Che posters and other appropriate accoutrements. Ed Morabito's Cuban Revolution has moved to a bigger, more pleasant space in downtown Providence, and Bill Rodriguez will have a review in tomorrow's Phoenix.