Press Release
Home cooks, growers, chefs, visitors, and fishers of a remote island and microcosm of the world’s food challenges will convene on Fogo Island to host its first ever Food Circle. This community conversation about the past, present, and future of food will be led by Mitchell Davis, executive vice president of the James Beard Foundation; Bonnie Stern, one of Canada’s foremost cookbook authors; Fogo Island Inn executive chef Jonathan Gushue and international artist-in-residence Steffen Jagenburg. Fogo Island Inn Innkeeper Zita Cobb will host the Food Circle, which will be held at the Big Church in Joe Batt’s Arm on July 31, 2018 and will be free and open to the public.
Fogo Island’s first ever Food Circle emerges out of the Newfoundland tradition of song circles. It is the kind of community gathering that offers each participating individual an opportunity to lead, suggest, or request at least one story about food. The Food Circle will be conducted by Fogo Island Inn’s executive chef Gushue and Davis, Stern, and Jagenburg, who will organize the discussion around the journey of food from hyper-local to hyper-global and back again. Leading all in a discussion of Fogo Island’s path from self-reliance and specificity through weathering the impacts of industrialization on the food supply, this quartet of food animators will further explore the recent turn in the road back to nearer sourcing, sustainability, and a proclivity for wild products.
There is no better theme than food around which to convene conversations about the fruitful intersection of human beings, nature and culture. And there is no better place to have these conversations than on a North Atlantic island where food culture has been shaped by centuries of self-reliance and resourcefulness, weather and seasonal change, and increasingly, by international trade and the global economy. Innkeeper Zita Cobb states that, “As human beings rethink what it means to belong to the world and the position that our communities hold, food can act as a focal point from which to explore more respectful relationships between the past and future, the needs of humankind, and the needs of nature.”
While Newfoundland has always traded with faraway places for products including tea and molasses, the province has a history of self-sufficiency that has been largely lost in recent decades. Fogo Island’s Food Circle will seek to uncover an understanding of the considerations and trade-offs between ecology, nutrition, security of supply, and where the tension between the joy of local and the lure of global settles out.
The best way to join in the Food Circle is by checking into Fogo Island Inn under the For the Love of Cod itinerary on July 30th. Guests will spend the first day learning of Fogo Island’s deep relationship with cod and handlining the humble fish that changed the world. The second night will see them in the Food Circle, surely sharing tales of the day’s catch.
For bookings and more information, please contact Fogo Island Inn, or call toll-free in North America at 1-855-268-9277 or direct at 709-658-3444.
About Fogo Island Inn
Travel + Leisure (T+L) readers recently voted Fogo Island Inn Best Resort Hotel, Canada, and it was named 12th on T+L’s list of the 100 Best Hotels in the World for 2017. Fogo Island Inn made the Condé Nast Traveler’s Gold List 2016 and 2017—the editors’ choice list spanning six continents and 47 countries. This recognition from the US magazine followed the 2015 Gold List of its British sister publication, Condé Nast Traveller. The Inn is a community asset and all surpluses are reinvested in the community to help secure long-lasting resilience for Fogo Island, Newfoundland. More information on Fogo Island Inn can be found here.
Access to Fogo Island, Newfoundland
Gander, Newfoundland is the international gateway to Fogo Island. Commercial flights from Toronto with connections in St. John’s or Halifax can bring travellers to Gander in just over four hours. The Inn offers a land-and-ferry pick-up and return service to Gander. Travel from Gander to Fogo Island takes two hours by car or around 30 minutes by charter plane or helicopter. All transfer logistics and accommodations can be arranged by the Inn’s reservations team at: 855-268-9277 or [email protected].
