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Berkshires Spooning Into Food Tourism

Facebook: Outstanding In The Field

The Berkshires are widely known for tourism, but what about people flocking to the region for its food? Well those in the industry are working to make that a reality.Working with Berkshire Farm & Table and Find. Eat. Drink., Stockbridge’s famous Red Lion Inn has launched its latest video to capture the soul of Berkshire County’s dining destinations and the people in its kitchens or behind its counters.

“There’s a whole community of chefs, artisans and artists that all have a common bond and that’s that we live in the Berkshires,” said Chef Brian Alberg of the Red Lion Inn. “I think that when outsiders come here they just feel such a warmth and a hospitable welcoming that it makes them want to come back.”

Featured in the video, Alberg is also the founding chair of Berkshire Farm & Table.

“The arts themselves kind of all go together,” Alberg said. “People that enjoy the symphony at Tanglewood love a great innovative dinner. The people on the lawn at Jacob’s Pillow want to have a really good lunch somewhere. It’s building awareness of the Berkshires as a brand through food.”

Angela Cardinali of Berkshire Farm & Table says the idea of farm-to-table is a trendy topic, but Berkshire cooks and chefs have been doing it for many years because in reality - both restaurants and farms dot the landscape.

“We’re not just saying we do it, we are doing it, we live it,” Cardinali said. “Farm-to-table isn’t actually a phrase we want to use. We want to say just come here and experience our food.”

With many people coming from the New York City area, Cardinali says restaurants in the Berkshires are trying to attract a younger audience in their 20s or 30s.

“Mostly its people who just care about what they’re putting into their bodies and they want to know where their food comes from,” she said. “They want to have authentic experiences that connect to the region rather than just something where they’re just going out to eat. That’s a very particular person. That’s not the masses so we have been trying to discover ways of reaching them.”

Cardinali says the Berkshire Farms Market in Logan Airport draws roughly a thousand customers each day and less than a year after opening has nearly tripled its projected revenue.

Working with Berkshire Magazine, Cardinali’s group has created Taste Trails which map out places to get cheese, charcuterie and beer and cider. The Red Lion Inn has launched Taste Tours where it offers low-cost tastings at other dining destinations within a 20-minute drive of its kitchen. Each year an internationally-traveled event called Outstanding In The Field comes to the area where people sit down for a meal at a long dining table outside. Cardinali says the Berkshires have also garnered major interest from Find.Eat.Drink., a mobile app that features regionally fine dining.

“They go to the chefs and the pros and they say ‘Where would you go,’” Cardinali explained. “It’s not necessarily the thing you would know about because it’s not being advertised. It’s the thing you would know about because someone on the inside gave you scoop. That’s sort of what we feel in the food world at least in our region, you need to know about these places through other people because a lot of these small businesses don’t have the resources to advertise.”

Cardinali says it’s difficult to calculate the economic impact of food tourism right now, but says 80 percent of the people who attend the Outstanding In The Field events are from outside the given area. And the hope of https://vimeo.com/121481106." target="_blank">the video is to keep that trend cooking.

Jim is WAMC’s Associate News Director and hosts WAMC's flagship news programs: Midday Magazine, Northeast Report and Northeast Report Late Edition. Email: jlevulis@wamc.org
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