Photo illustration by Marisa Morrissette

The Oxford food scene has exploded in recent years. New restaurants seem to appear every month. Similar to the rest of the country, there has been a surge toward “locally-sourced” or “farm-to-table” menus in Oxford.

There are several restaurants in Oxford who are loyal to include local ingredients in their food. Not because it is a trend, but because it is their way of life.

In 2014, the Oxford Canteen, now an Oxford staple, came on the scene. Chef Corbin Evans includes ingredients from local farms like Native Son in Tupelo.

Evans said he believes the community should better educate local restaurants on local availability for ingredients and shopping at farmers markets.

“I can do it in my little window,” Evans said.  “Bigger restaurants who have bigger buying windows might even be able to purchase more than five heads of kale and purchase a case which would really help the farmers out.”

Oxford culinary legend John Currence laughed about the irony of the farm-to-table trend to Mississippians.

“When guys in Brooklyn started wearing overalls and buying food in pickle buckets and calling themselves farmers, the world was amazed that chefs used those local products, but we laughed in Mississippi,” Currence said. “In the South, people dismiss us to be the last at everything, but this is what we’ve always done.”

Currence is also purposeful in the ingredients he chooses to employ in his restaurants. He uses foods from multiple local vendors including Woodson Ridge Farms and Brown Family Dairy.

“I love that I can take something from seed to tomato to table and serve it to someone,” Currence said. “This is why it’s significant. I hope that people will continue to demand more in the way of quality.”

The Tampa Bay Times recently released an investigative report aptly titled, “Farm to Fable”, which challenged the farm-to-table restaurants of Tampa’s food scene. The investigation revealed restaurants were falsely advertising ingredients as local to make themselves look invested in their community.

That is a danger of the farm-to-table label. There is a lot of wiggle room.

“It’s become a buzzword that, I think, is a little tired,” Evans said. “The word ‘local’ addresses better than farm-to-table. In reality, everything comes from a farm, whether it’s from Chile or California in the middle of winter.”

Currence said that as this movement became popular across the country, it picked up some ethical baggage.

“The odd thing is that it became a phenomenon all across the country and there has also been a disingenuous usage of the term because people thought they had to get on board with it,” Currence said. “They became total liars.”

Both Currence and Evans said there are restaurants in Oxford operating dishonestly, like those the Tampa Bay Times exposed. The chefs agreed that a telltale sign of a deceiving establishment is the advertisement of local ingredient usage of produce that is not in season, like cucumbers or celery.

“The guys you can trust are those who say they have used ingredients as best as they can get them,” Currence said. “There is ignoble activity in the claims about what people are doing. We stay away from it as much as possible.”

Evans said he feels similar frustration with restaurants operating deceitfully.

“I don’t want to name names, but there are plenty of people in this town who are serving catfish that is not catfish and not local,” Evans said. “They are serving shrimp that is definitely not wild-caught, local shrimp.”

Restaurants in the state are still learning how to employ local ingredients in their foods. Oxford Chef Joel Miller of Ravine is known for actively incorporating local foods in his work.

Miller worked in the California food scene for a time, garnering him with an interesting perspective on Mississippi’s food culture.

“I did not feel Mississippi was ahead of the farm-to-table curve,” Miller said. “In California, eating locally is already a way of life for many people, ingrained into the culture. It seemed more an exception than the rule here in Mississippi.”

When Miller moved to Mississippi, he found he had to prove himself to local farmers before they would even sell him their produce. Farmers were hesitant to sell Miller their products because other restaurateurs had promised to buy and never did.

“I actually had to fight and prove myself to local farmers before they would sell to me regularly,” Miller said.

Miller has seen fabrication not only in local restaurants but also in local farms.

“I have found local farms that do not grow everything they attempt to sell,” Miller said. “I am always very honest with people. Not everything we use in the restaurant is local. That would be nearly impossible, whether here in this state or California.”

Those being honest in serving locally sourced food, like Miller, Currence and Evans, said they feel the confines of the economic framework in a small Mississippi college town.  

“The challenge is living in a town where over half the population is students,” Currence said. “We’re doing what we can, but a lot of what we do is catering to our audience.”

Daniel Doyle, executive director of the Mississippi Sustainable Agriculture Network, said less than one-tenth of the state’s population is buying from a local farmer and those who do are not making it a main component of their diet.

“When you look at most Mississippi communities and you realize over 90 percent of the food they are eating is not grown locally and even more of it is not grown sustainably, it’s no wonder that there are so many health issues in these communities,” Doyle said.

According to the Mississippi Food Policy Council, 90 percent of Mississippi’s food supply is imported and $8.5 billion is lost annually from the state’s economy because of the way Mississippians are currently producing and eating food.

“People say, ‘They are growing a lot of stuff’ and we are and we always have, but we haven’t farmed in a way to feed the population,” Melissa Hall, assistant director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, said.

For Currence, a native Southerner, subsistence farming is familiar to him because of his family’s history. The first thing he did after moving to Oxford was start a garden because both of his grandparents were subsistence farmers who lived off of the food they grew.

“In the South, it’s not a new phenomenon because we are the agricultural bread basket of the country,” Currence said. “So many family histories are tied up in agriculture.”

While there are families like Currence’s who actively grow their own food, there is still a visible disconnect between those families and the rest of the state.  

Ron Shapiro, a curator of the Oxford food scene and new co-owner at Shelter, explained the juxtaposition between the wealth of agriculture in the state and the individual.

“The amount of food that Mississippi grows is an insult for eating,” Shapiro said. “Fortunately in Mississippi a lot of people have gardens, but as far as what the large farms are contributing, it has nothing to do with local food.”