Outstanding In The Field
Day 11
The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.
Wallace Wattles
Outstanding In The Field was created in 1999 by acclaimed sand artist and self taught chef, Jim Denevan. His mission was to honor the women and men who grow, nurture, catch and harvest the food that we enjoy each day, by staging communal dinners on their land. Denevan seeks to bring us back to the source of our food, turning the soil where it’s grown into the restaurant where we dine.
For the past ten years, Jim’s been staging his hugely ambitious culinary roadshow all across America. What started with just three California based dinners in 1999 grew to around 58 dinners nationwide in 2009. I first read about Outstanding in Howie Kahn’s James Beard Award winning 2007 GQ article and was immediately taken with the concept.
Last year I attended my first dinner, at Devil’s Gulch Ranch in beautiful Marin County, CA. My friend Andre and I were actually nervous about going, concerned we wouldn’t meet anyone to connect with. We needn’t have worried – Outstanding attendees tend to share the same ethos – the importance of sourcing and using locally sourced food and a desire to enjoy it in the company of others – all you have to do is show up and you’re guaranteed a memorable time. Our section of the table got very merry indeed (we all ended up partying back in San Fran together after the dinner) and our long table went down as the first in Outstanding history to drink them out of wine (it’s on their blog!). Jim even warmly called me a “Rabble Rouser” that night – I guess that’s his polite term for “shitfaced drunk”.
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Best Brew – Bondi
Day 8
Black as the devil, Hot as hell,
Pure as an angel, Sweet as love.
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord
Coffee paid my way through college.
While most students drink the stuff to get through midterms and finals, I made it instead, working as a barista to help pay my way through school. I must’ve made literally hundreds of thousands of lattes, cappuccinos and flat whites over those years. On quieter days, it’s a really lovely, meditative process making coffee. If I ever needed to, I could go back to that job tomorrow and be pretty content. I never drank a single cup during that period, preferring the aroma of freshly ground beans to the taste of coffee. These days though, I love the stuff.
Australia has a serious coffee culture. Unlike much of America, where serious coffee means seriously huge cups, Aussies know their lattes from their macchiatos. Recently, I’ve discovered a couple of spots in LA that serve incredible coffee (I’ll share them with you soon), but the sad fact is that it took me six years to find a decent coffee in a city this large. Whereas in Sydney or Melbourne, you could throw a handful of coffee beans in the street and be sure to hit at least one spot that makes incredible coffee.
In Sydney, there’s nothing better after a swim at Bondi Beach than sitting down with a towel wrapped around you for a flat white (like a cappuccino, but with just the coffee crema instead of the foam on top). My brew of choice is a soy flat white with a teaspoon of honey or raw sugar. I don’t go overboard with coffee, at most a cup a day, sometimes two, always single shot.
Here’s my vote for the top three best flat whites in Bondi -
bru COFFEE
The new kid on the North Bondi scene (with equally young owners), bru coffee operates out of a tiny, hole in the wall storefront – it used to be a hair salon when I lived there – and makes a seriously good cup of coffee. Patrons spill out onto the astroturf, lazing in the sun with a latte and the paper. Like all Bondi spots, the vibe is relaxed.
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In Praise of Honey
Day 2
Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.
Winnie the Pooh
As a small child, my favorite books were A.A Milne’s original Winnie The Pooh series. I loved the tales of unconventional communal friendships – bear, tiger, kangaroo, piglet, rabbit, donkey, owl and boy – now that’s diversity! Mostly, I loved the way the books celebrated the magic qualities of honey and Pooh’s gentle, yet determined obsession with it. I love honey. Raw, natural, untreated and nurturing.
I was backpacking through the Middle East a few years back, and honey was a staple when I wasn’t sure about what was safe to eat. In Damascus, at the top of a small steep street near my hostel, there was a large open window with a woodfired oven behind it. For a few cents, you got turkish style flatbread straight out of the oven, generously drizzled with raw honey. Every morning I’d sit with my piping hot bread and a cup of sweet black tea and think I was the luckiest guy alive.
When I read that bees were starting to disappear and honey was predicted to become a rare commodity, I seriously considered stockpiling it. Visions of doomsday scenarios flooded my head and I imagined myself in a bunker somewhere eating honey while armageddon descended upon the poor honey-less souls outside.
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It All Starts Today
Day 1
A possibility was born the day you were born and it will live as long as you live.
Marcus Solero
It All Starts Today.
Those four simple words have taken me on quite a journey. It’s the name of an extraordinary, low budget 1999 French film by Bertrand Tavernier, about a schoolteacher in a small French town economically devastated by the closure of coal mines that employed most of the residents. The children this man teaches bear the consequences of their parents misfortune and the film documents his daily struggle, against incredible odds, to bring some light and beauty into their lives.
The climax of It All Starts Today is a scene of profound beauty. Using old plastic soda bottles, water and food coloring, the children create an art installation that, for one evening, shifts the entire energy of the town. This act of using items otherwise discarded to bring color and light into a dark space is breathtakingly moving. This isn’t a Hollywood film. There’s no standing on desks, no massive redemptive moment that changes the town for the better. It’s a gritty, often harrowing look into the effects of poverty on communities. Yet it remains one of the single most inspiring films I have ever seen.
As I write this, unemployment in my chosen home state of California is pushing 15 percent. Myself and many of my closest friends have been dramatically affected by the current economy. Much of what I gained during the past six years working in Los Angeles exists now only in memory. And I am acutely aware that there are too many in America (and beyond) who are suffering far more terribly, barely surviving. My heart is filled with compassion for their pain.
Yet, today I feel an incredible sense of optimism. I’ve been threatening to launch a blog for years. And for me, there has never been a better time than now to begin. It costs nothing but time to write. Thanks to digital cameras, photography is no longer a rich person’s career. And the internet is a free canvas to create and share work upon.
Lewis Likes It brings my two greatest passions – writing and photography – together for the first time. And my aim with it is simple – to bring a little more beauty into the world. Not so much the models and celebrities I’ve been photographing in LA these past six years. Like It All Starts Today, I want to share the kind of beauty that comes from the simplest of ideas and most unusual of places.
I’m having a very small group of friends over tonight to celebrate Day One of Lewis Likes It. We’re going to crack open a few bottles of cheap prosecco and toast the somewhat miraculous birth of my new baby in the midst of less than ideal circumstances. These are people who believe in me, who believe in Lewis Likes It, and who have supported me during its early development. It’s a far cry from the celebrity filled launch party for 10, a photography collection I released with much fanfare back in 2007. That was an incredibly fun night. And those were different times.
There’ll be big launches again in the future, and I truly believe there’s many good times ahead for us all. For now, I hope you’ll dive in and enjoy this journey with me as we celebrate both the moments and things in life that bring us closer to each other and the beauty of this world that makes life so worth experiencing. And as I move forward with this next phase of my life, I carry the message of that small film with me.
It All Starts Today.
