Lucid Food: Conscience Catering in New York City
by Kara DiCamillo, Newport, Rhode Island 
on 07.13.06
Next time some of you New Yorkers are planning an event and don’t want to cook for it or might want some help, keep Lucid Food in mind. Run by New York restaurant veterans Louisa Shafia and Cydnee Yamamoto, Lucid was recently hired by the New York Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council not only to cater a picnic for them, but also to make the event waste free. For this high-end crowd, the food needed to be nothing but the best. Lucid designed a chic, simple menu which offered locally grown food and organic products purchased from a Farmer’s Market and local cooperatives. In addition, they also came prepared with biodegradable take-away boxes, drinking cups and trash bags that can be taken right out to your compost pile. Even the napkins they used are 90% post-consumer waste that can be recycled. The company feels that “if you give New Yorkers earth friendly choices, and you make those choices convenient, affordable, and of good quality, people here are happy to support those choices.” One New Yorker, Wendy Tremaine, utilized Lucid’s services for her Swap-O-Rama-Rama event recently (see our TreeHugger TV episode on the event here). Lucid says, “With this kind of food, Lucid Food may be converting a lot of New Yorkers to the sustainability cause.” ::Lucid Food
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Is School Food Harming Kids? Enlist a Labor Day Eat-In To Promote Fresh, Healthy Food
- Raw Food for the Rest of Us
- Mister Miyagi's Guide to Going Green: 5 Questions to Always Ask to Think Green and Be Green
- Fried Green Tomato and Pimento Cheese Stack
- Why Building Community is the Greenest Thing You Can Do
- Emeril's Hearty Green Enchiladas (Video)
Serving meat in a recyclable package is a bit like a sign in a Vegas casino asking you to turn out the bathroom lights. Sure, the end-consumer gets the warm fuzzy of feeling environmentally aware, but the great majority of the energy costs and waste happen outside of the consumer's reach.
Personally, I think this is a great story. As anyone in the food industry will tell you, the industry itself makes being green a tedious task with little hope of being competitive from a convenience and cost basis. I applaud the effort and results.
B, the picnic food pictured is actually 100% vegan, so be careful what assumptions you make before acusing people. I've sampled some of Lucid Food's meals, and they taste great, and prove to all their clients that vegan, local (even more important for sustainability), and seasonal food can be delicious, beautiful, and make you feel good about what your eating.
Hi there, I just happened upon your site by accident. My partner and I are having a ridiculous online (our choice) dispute with our local council, (It's very one sided at the moment as you will find should you chose to read our blog) Various media people have now pricked up their ears, two BBC investigative programme producers have made contact with us, we are waiting to discuss our issue with them, we'd be interested to hear any comment you may have. Please find us at, http://snatchcafe.blogspot.com
Kind regards
Geoff Fahey
I feel that 'neo conned' our commentator in Tasmania captures the essence of the point perfectly in his comment. He/she would make a great Global Green Correspondent should he/she be interested, as would Lindsay Tuffin, (Editor of the Tasmania Times ) who directed me to read Richard Flanagan's disturbing essay on the Tasmania Times website, the fight going on there makes our issue pale into insignificance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have other fish to fry should this sorry episode go' tits up' hence we are able to shout about what we see as not so much an issue of tables and chairs, but more seriously of officers of various local Government Departments making outrageous and blatantly untrue statements in our local newspaper as well as in letters to us, and all because we've asked an embarrassing question. We have all of the evidence to prove our innocence but our voice cannot yet be heard.
For Council officers, whilst hiding behind a thinning facade of respectability,to be able to publicly make untruthful statements, and carelessly, and unashamedly trample the democratic process underfoot whilst seniors look on is a move too close to dictatorial behaviour for our liking.
GF