Pollan is the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, which argue that Americans would be healthier if we ate fewer Big Macs and more fresh, organic produce. (Duh.) He shops at farmers markets and lives in northern California, where eating well is a religion.
So when Pollan shows up in your town to sample the cuisine, it's like Tiger Woods dropping by to play your golf courses. You don't take Mr. Organic to Chuck-A-Rama.
"Yeah, there was pressure," says UMNH director Sarah George, whose staff planned Pollan's Salt Lake schedule. So instead of the food court at The Gateway (so tempting), Pollan's Utah hosts took him for lunch at Lugano, where chef Greg Neville served a field-greens salad with local chioggia beets; grass-fed short ribs with handmade orecchiette pasta and shaved Beehive cheddar; and a panna cotta flavored with Utah honey. All washed down with a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon (kidding).
"I wasn't used to being under such scrutiny," Neville admits. "There was more of a sense of, 'Don't screw it up.' "
After his lecture that night Pollan was squired over to the Metropolitan, arguably Salt Lake's best restaurant, where he dined on barramundi, a mild Australian fish, and "said everything was delicious," according to manager Craig Smith.
Wow. Imagine that wherever you go, people take you to the finest restaurants and pick up the tab. Not a bad life. But I bet even Pollan has days where he can't stomach yet another fussy dinner of small talk and squid ink risotto.
Sweet! Customers who visited Sam Weller's in downtown Salt Lake City last Thursday and Friday were surprised to find the bookstore closed and gawkers peering in the windows. No, J.K. Rowling wasn't in town. The occasion was in-store filming of "Gentlemen Broncos," a comedy by Jared Hess ("Napoleon Dynamite") about a teenager who attends a fantasy writers' convention and gets his idea stolen by a famous novelist.
The movie stars Sam Rockwell ("Charlie's Angels") and Michael Angarano ("Sky High") and should hit theaters in 2009. It already got a preliminary thumbs-up from Sam Weller's manager Jim Rosinus.
"If the rest of the movie is as funny as the stuff they shot in the store," he says, "I'm looking forward to it."
griggs@sltrib.com
