D.C.'s Speed Dating Event For Chefs And Farmers

Last week, a group of chefs and farmers gathered for drinks and speed dating at Bluejacket, a restaurant and brewery in D.C. But no one was looking for someone to go home with for the night. Rather, at the fifth annual speed-sourcing event, organizer Pamela Hess from the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture was pairing farmers and producers with local chefs, NPR reports. The goal: to ultimately help more sustainably sourced food end up on plates at restaurants and to support the local food economy.

Guests were given specific cards with farmers or chefs to seek out. "We connected folks based on where they're located, what they grow, what they want to buy," she says. Spike Gjerde, who is the chef at acclaimed Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore, took the evening seriously: "What this is about is confronting some of the most serious aspects of our food system, and what we're trying to solve here is some of the ways that our food system is failing us."

Several chefs and farmers left with digits from the evening. One farmer sold a lamb, and others found three chefs interested in the eggs that they sell.