Tampa Bay Reporter Calls BS on "Farm-to-Table" Restaurants and Farmer's Markets

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IF YOU EAT FOOD, you are being lied to every day.

The food supply chain is so vast and so complicated. It has yielded extra-virgin olive oil that is actually colored sunflower oil, Parmesan cheese bulked up with wood pulp, and a horsemeat scandal that, for a while, rendered Ikea outings Swedish meatball-free.

Everywhere you look, you see the claims: “sustainable,” “naturally raised,” “organic,” “non-GMO,” “fair trade,” “responsibly grown.” Restaurants have reached new levels of hyperbole.

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MERMAID TAVERN has been a Seminole Heights draw for craft beer since it opened in 2011. The restaurant’s tagline is “Death to Pretenders,” and one of the appetizers is the “F**k Monsanto Salad.”

he menu reads: This menu is free of hormones, antibiotics, chemical additives, genetic modification, and virtually from scratch. We fry in organic coconut oil and source local distributors, farmers, brewers and family wineries … Our fish is fresh from Florida or sustainable/wild fisheries.

During Tampa Bay Beer Week, I stopped in to eat.

“Do you make your cheese curds here?”

“Yes,” said the bartender, “everything is made in house from scratch.”

Only it’s not. Those cheese curds arrive in a box. The fish and chips, which the menu says uses wild Alaskan pollock, are made from frozen Chinese pollock treated with sodium tripolyphosphate, a common preservative. And although the menu says its shrimp are Florida wild caught, they are actually farm-raised in India.

And that F**k Monsanto Salad? Moran said he buys his produce at wholesaler Sanwa on Hillsborough Avenue. According to Sanwa produce buyer Beatrice Reyes, while produce is labeled by country of origin, it would not be labeled as “local” or “non-GMO.”

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WITH ITS LOCATION AT Renaissance Tampa International Plaza Hotel and menu of high-end Italian, Pelagia has been a hangout for Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Rays players and a regular go-to for business travelers. Hosting events such as a Florida strawberry tasting menu, chef Brett Gardiner has been an active participant in Fresh from Florida promotions.

The menu touted “local” burrata mozzarella on the caprese salad. Gardiner said it was a product from Fort Lauderdale called Fioretta.

The menu also listed Zellwood corn polenta, Zellwood being Florida’s most famous sweet corn, grown about 15 miles north of Orlando.

“We buy fresh corn from them and cook it down,” said Pelagia sous chef Tim Ducharme.

When reminded that Zellwood corn isn’t in season now, Ducharme said, “Well, we buy fresh corn from someone.”

About the menu’s Florida blue crab:

“We don’t really use blue crab,” Ducharme said. “It’s a jumbo lump crab canned product from US Foods out of Miami.”

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Many vendors at the outdoor markets are not growers but resellers, and there’s a reason for that. Publix, one of the 10 largest-volume supermarket chains in the country and the largest in Florida, is based in Lakeland.

“What Publix doesn’t want is what, actually, people are buying,” she said. “It’s Publix rejects.”

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