We Are Slow Food East End

We bring the food community together on Long Island. Join us!

Slow Food East End’s mission is to seek to create dramatic and lasting change in our food system; we connect communities on the East End with the people, traditions, plants, animals, fertile soils and waters that create our food. We inspire individuals and communities to change the East End of Long Island through food that is good, clean and fair for all.

Slow Food is an international movement with chapters in more than 160 countries; Slow Food East End is a chapter of Slow Food USA, and is one of the largest chapters in the country.

This video highlights interviews with East End farmers, producers, chefs and educators:

Colin Ambrose, chef and owner of Estia’s Little Kitchen, was one of the first to receive a SFEE Snail of Approval due to his ongoing commitment to the Slow Food ideals of Good, Clean and Fair Food for All. His restaurant is dedicated to seasonal menus that feature its kitchen garden and composting program.

Cathy Demeroto, executive director of Community Action Southold Town, which provides essential services and a food pantry to the neediest on the North Fork. SFEE supports these efforts with grants.

Mimi Edelman of I&Me Farm, in Orient, N.Y., which specializes in heirloom varietals. Mimi is a SFEE board member and a leader for the Ark of Taste movement, an international effort to catalogue and promote heirloom varietals and food traditions.

Robin Epperson McCarthy, winemaker and owner of Saltbird Cellars, wine journey took her from her native Long Island to New Zealand and Tasmania and back again. Saltbird, one of the few local wine brands owned by a woman, produces vintages with Long Island sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, merlot and cabernet sauvignon. SFEE is proud to have given Saltbird received resilience grant in the wake of the pandemic

Tijuana Fulford is the founder and executive director of the Butterfly Effect Project, a nonprofit devoted to empowering young girls by giving them tools to achieve emotionally stable and self- confident futures. The Butterfly Project received a SFEE 2020 grant to start a community garden.

Kate Fullam is the executive director of the East End Food Institute, which has built partnerships among farmers, food producers and consumers to create an economically viable, environmentally sustainable and an equitable food system. EEFI has licensed commercial kitchen that gives farmers and entrepreneurs a shared kitchen to create packaged products giving added value and shelf life to local fresh produce.

Tom Hart’s family at Deep Roots Farm in Southold raises livestock and grows produce to maintain biodiversity among plants, animals and microorganisms above and below the soil. Techniques include crop diversity and rotation, intercropping, cover cropping, conservation tillage and incorporation of organic matter. Deep Roots was awarded a SFEE Snail of Approval in 2017.

Fred Lee and his son Will own Sang Lee, a certified organic farm that produces more than 100 varieties on 100 acres in Peconic. The business continues the family legacy that began in the 1940s. Sang Lee was honored in 2019 by the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York as Farmers of the Year and a Snail of Approval by SFEE in 2017.

Jay Lippin, chef in residence at the East End Food Institute and SFEE board member, has a career that includes tenures at New York’s famed Odeon and Cafe Luxembourg and most recently at Baron’s Cove in Sag Harbor. Jay is an advocate of cooking with endangered heirloom produce to ensure biodiversity and deliciousness.

Mark-Antonio Smith is a master gardener, who has worked with SFEE to operate and manage East End school gardens supported with grants from the Josh Levine Memorial Fund.

Peter Treiber Jr, of Treiber Farms in Southold established in 2014 with his father, Peter, is committed to minimal reliance on machinery, zero chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides and cross pollinating with those,who create using farm byproducts. He supports community activists, who share produce with needy families.

Sue Wicks, an oyster farmer and owner of Violet Cove Oysters of Moriches Bay, was once a WNBA star and a sports ambassador for the U.S. Department of State. She returned to her roots of baymen, boat builders and sea captains to start a floating cage system of sustainable oyster farming. Violet Cove Oysters received a 2020 resilience grant from SFEE.

Film by BIll Moulton https://www.bfantastic.com