Southern Louisiana has the French to thank for many of its cultural mores. Prominently among them good food, good friends and good wine, in whichever order you please.

While it may be hard to complain with a credo like this, various members of the Baton Rouge community have found nits to pick: Surely, we could be doing more, and better.

The Baton Rouge chapter of Slow Food, an international movement to bring the focus of food back to the source, is looking to enter the gastrocentric Louisiana consciousness.

“It fits right into Louisiana,” said LSU AgCenter professor Carl Motsenbocker, president of the Slow Food Baton Rouge board. 

“We’re creating a connection between farmers and consumers,” he said.

At one of Slow Food Baton Rouge’s monthly meet-and-greets, Motsenbocker and company demonstrated just what this connection means to their community with help from the staff of the restaurant Le Creolé, which is situated on Highland Road between Interstate 10 and Airline Highway. 

The delicious results were presented with a river of wine by executive chef Ryan André, whose restaurant was chosen specifically for its support of local farmers and food sources.

      Flatbread pizza strewn with locally-grown mushrooms, tuna ceviche with endive, Louisiana crawfish and cream cheese rangoons, boudin spring rolls — all served with generous helpings of good company and alcohol: Is this what Slow Food is about?

    In Louisiana, it just may be. But putting a finger on what exactly Slow Food means can be difficult, even by its ardent and mindful

members.

Veterinarian-turned-sheep-farmer Roberta McKowen tee-

ters on the brink. She raises and sells her lambs but has a hard time declaring herself a “member,” per sé. “Believer” would be a more accurate title,

she joked.

“It’s an Epicurean philosophy, an ideal,” she explained, straining to verbalize the role of Slow Food in her gastronomic philosophy. “And it’s not just making money; it’s a great death for my animals.”

Every believer in the church of good, fresh Louisiana-grown food has tailored his or her role in

the cause.

“They aren’t requiring you to be organic. It’s just an appreciation of good food — you’d think Louisiana would be all over it,” McKowen said.

    While Slow Food chapters have sprung up in places like Shreveport and New Orleans, the New Orleans chapter is listed as “looking for new leadership” and members of the Baton Rouge chapter exhibited frustrations with slow progress.

Slow Food is a mindset and an ideal to strive for. It is for this reason that “all chapters have different activities,” as Motsenbocker put it.

“We do our own thing; we’re a very small group,” he explained.“Programs are designed based on the interests of the chapter.”

Motsenbocker hopes to create a ripple in the local culinary community, one that will shed light on restaurants who support local food and, in turn, get people to support those restaurants — and get money back to the local farmers behind the curtain.

“We don’t get many chefs that come to these meetings because they’re working 90-hour weeks,” Motsenbocker said. 

Such comments as these exemplify the deep appreciation Slow Food holds for the dirty hands behind the scenes, plowing the soil, feeding the animals and preparing course after course.

“If you want to pay a little bit more to have a direct connection with the farmers, are you willing to do that?” he asked.

On behalf of the cause, Motsenbocker happily said yes, it is worth the added value if it’s good for the local economy.

“People do understand that we should be buying Louisiana crawfish rather than Chinese, for instance,” he said. “We try to support whatever we can in the local food system, and Slow Food is just a piece of the pie.”

This particular night’s gathering hosted many slices of the pie, from enthusiasts to activists, fruit-growers to chicken farmers.

Slow Food sympathizer Chris Frink put it frankly in saying, “It’s the opposite of fast food — you don’t know where that comes from.”

Since starting up four years ago, Frink’s home plays host to laying hens, bees, citrus trees and a large garden.

“Gee, what can we do to feed ourselves if we don’t have any work?” Frink chuckled, but self-sustenance is virtue in the world of Slow Food. “It gets you more aware of what your food is and where it comes from.”