Mado Posts Its Hate Mail

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Aug 14, 2009 9:20PM

Sometimes it pays to subscribe to a restaurant's Twitter feed. Case in point: the hyper-seasonal and snout-to-tail experts at mado. Co-owner Rob Levitt occasionally posts updates to his feed letting fans know, among other things, what he and wife Allie are making in the kitchen and the not-uncommon complaint from a new customer regarding their commitment to using every bit of what they buy. Today Rob Levitt posted what the restaurant's "first piece of hate mail" to the restaurant's website It's a scan of highlighted capsule review of mado with the following written in green ink next to it:

"You murderous motherfucker. I wish you the most horrific death when it is your time to go. You make me sick."

Levitt writes (punctuation his):

"this woman is crazy. for the record, i am not back in the kitchen maniacally slaughtering hogs. mr. slagel sees his piggies into the world, raises the crops they eat, and has his own processing facility. he even puts them on his truck and delivers them to me himself. we are very proud of the fact that we buy and use the whole animal, not as a novelty, but as a business model. this is the way it should be. she clearly has too much time on her hands.

Can't say we disagree with Levitt. Among the many positive traits of the farm-to-table movement, two here stand out. First is the philosophy of "waste not, want not." mado routinely orders whole livestock from Slagel and Swan Creek Farms and uses every bit of ot, from making chops to head cheese. It keeps costs stable and reduces waste. The second and more important aspect is it gives the farmer (and hopefully the customers) a better understanding of how and where their food is sourced. There can't be a stable agricultural environment without some form of animal husbandry, be it raising livestock for food, using animals for grazing and weed control or using the waste of animals as fertilizer. It might behoove the author of this hate mail to bone up on the subject the next time she decides to send hate mail to Levitt or another restaurant that embraces snout-to-tail