Texas Locavore

Have you met Olivia? She’s a new restaurant in south Austin who, according to language on her own menu, “is committed to supporting … local farmers, ranchers, foragers and artisans.” There’s been loca-buzz about Olivia in every review I’ve read, so I was eager to meet her.

So before ordering when I ate there last month, I asked our server where the hanger steak came from. She didn’t know and didn’t offer to find out. Instead, she assured me that all of the meats on their menu were grass-fed, local, free-range… yadda yadda, her attitude seemed to suggest — I could rest easy ordering anything I wanted. (I opted for the vegetarian risotto that wasn’t on the menu but was available upon request.)

Then, as we ate, a Winn Meat Company truck pulled into Olivia’s driveway. Winn Meat is a Dallas-based meat distribution company with a reputation for quality, but neither local nor humanely raised products. Later, when I buzzed Jamie Samford, Winn’s Corporate Chef, about local and grass-fed, he replied, “We do not source any Texas cattle specifically,” and, “We feel like a grain finished product has a beefier and more consistent flavor.” He also listed the six types of meat Winn provides to Olivia — among them a hanger steak. To connect the dots: Olivia’s hanger steak comes from a cow that was grain-finished on a feed-lot that wasn’t in Texas. (To be absolutely precise, there’s a possibility that it once grazed in Texas. Once an animal gets to a feedlot, its origins are lost — at least to pesky journalists.)

I applaud Olivia’s commitment to local producers. And I know it’s difficult — some say impossible — to consistently source quality product from local sources. And except for an uneducated server, the folks at Olivia have told no lies. If they buy regularly from local producers, they can, indeed, consider themselves “committed” to them. Winn Meat isn’t a villain in my view, either. That company is candid about its sourcing and pushes the envelope on meat quality, which in the long run serves all of us - and the animals we eat - better.

But I’m troubled. It shouldn’t take investigative reporting to find out where food on a restaurant menu comes from — especially when that restaurant talks the noble talk of local, transparent sourcing.