Food and Think
04.03.10
Katy Davidson, founder of the UK branch of the Youth Food Movement, talks to DOUGLAS BLYDE about flotation tanks, ‘Brave New World’ and the most perfect, prehistoric creatures lining our shores.
It’s dangerous!’ remonstrate penguin-suited Polish staff at Butlers Wharf Chop House in London. Regardless, ‘youth activist’ Katy Davidson continues to pop open two dozen oysters with a steak knife (the restaurant ironically exacerbating the risk by refusing to lend something more suitable).
Holding a deep-shelled Mersea Island rock, which is woven in a napkin, to eye-level, then smoothly sliding-in the flimsy tip, she confirms, ‘that’s a good one - it’s giving a fight’.
Winning (of course) she gestures to the silken flesh as it delicately winces, and instructively asks, ‘can you see how the oyster’s gills echo the patina of the shell?’ Beaming, she slips the morsel without spilling one briny drop.
Davidson is the founder of the Youth Food Movement UK, ‘a political, vigorous and anarchic body of cooks, artisans, students and farmers.’
Proposed in 2007 at the Slow Food international Congress in Puebla, Mexico, and sharing its motto of ‘good, clean, and fair’, it is intended to recruit and educate a new generation ‘determined to change food’s future.’
It was officially launched in 2008, when Davidson took a youth delegation to Turin for ‘Terra Madre’, a major bi-annual conference concerning gastronomy, globalisation and economics. A year on, it continues to gain momentum at home, throughout Europe and the United States.
Even armed with a blunt blade, Davidson makes shucking seem effortless - unsurprising when she later reveals how a trio she managed at ‘Slow Fish’, Genoa unhinged over 5,000 ‘of these perfect, prehistoric creatures’ over a weekend.
Observing her enthusiasm, I begin to believe that Davidson is part piscine. Bolstering my theory, she mentions that she surfaced from a flotation tank only minutes before meeting me - ‘a means of forgetting the feverish 4am critique of Anaglypta by fellow passengers on the Cornwall to London sleeper.’
Even in the supposedly meditative space, her ‘tummy rumbled,’ the utter appreciation and serious business of food never being far from her keen senses.
Davidson has been very hard to pin down for an interview. She recently returned from a road-trip to one of Beaujolais’ top crus, where she ‘rode tractors in the middle of the night, ate saucisson from the beamed rafters’ and was pronounced ‘Queen of Beaujolais’ by artisan producer Franck Bessone. She smiles mischievously, ‘he produced a long glass vessel through which we were initiated in some bizarre ritual. A chair was placed in the middle of the room and I was told to sit in the ‘throne’. After draining the vivid liquid, I was crowned.’
Tomorrow means more travelling, this time to the Loire Valley via Paris for Eurogusto, an exhibitor’s event and conference for Terra Madre Young Europeans, for which she has recruited the UK Delegation. To record the moment, her bags are filled with filming equipment, as well as talismans of British food for her host family.
Oliver Rowe, patron of Konstam, King’s Cross, an eatery famous for micro-sourcing produce from inside the M25, will be amongst her journeymen. ‘I chose him as the key speaker to inspire the gathered youth alongside the founder of Slow Food, Carlo Petrini.’
Partly encouraged by me, Davidson unravels a native oyster from its flat, verdegris-flecked shell into a beady flute of Black Velvet. Mesmerised, I ask her what Youth Food means.
‘Although we have just formed a partnership with the National Federation of Young Farmers, Youth Food is not an extension of that hard-drinking club,’ she says. ‘Above all, it’s designed to capture and nurture a culinary-curious state of mind. Indeed in one of our first committee meetings, an eager 70 year-old turned-up.
Read the full feature in Issue 10 of Fork magazine
www.youthfoodmovement.org.uk
