Declan Schweitzer

Intro to Journalism

Heather Chaplin

10.24.10

Nora Pouillon

Nora Pouillon picks up the phone after the first ring. There is commotion behind her voice and I can tell she is probably at work in her restaurant. What would seem to be a disruptive environment for conversation is somehow not discouraging, though. Perhaps it is due to her warm voice or endearing Viennese accent. Nora Poullion is the owner of the fist and one of only three certified organic restaurants in the entire country. She is not only the owner of the first organic restaurant but is the reason that such a certification even exists.

From outside her restaurant, which is simply called “Nora,” I can catch a glimpse of Poullion’s modest organic herb garden. From the rough brick building walls you might not suspect this place is much more than a neighborhood restaurant. The restaurant’s interior on the other hand has the aesthetic atmosphere of any sophisticated place with white tablecloths and superbly polished silverware that big time legislators and the president’s staff might go to dine. During Bill Clinton’s presidency Nora was a common destination for such a crowd. Even Clinton himself was known to drop in now and again. “Nora” is the type of place that a health food enthusiast and “foodie” meet for dinner.

It would be inappropriate to say that Pouillon has a “history” with organic food; this would imply that her fascination began at some point during her life. Instead one might say that food is her history. Born in post-war Austria, Nora’s family had moved to the countryside during her mother’s pregnancy because fresh food was so difficult to find within the city. Nora spent the first three years of her life in a farming community that was entirely self-sufficient and for the most part, organic. Pouillon attributes much of her passion for healthy food and farm life to this early stage of her life. It was characterized by the most basic element: food. She also considers her father to be particularly influential in developing her commitment to food.

“My father always said your health is the most important thing,” Nora tells me “The easiest way keep your health is to eat good things your whole life.”

In the early 1960’s after completing a traditional French schooling, Nora made the journey across the Atlantic in hopes of starting her own restaurant. When she arrived she was devastated by the state of the food systems in America.

“When I got here it was crazy, literally like food wasteland,” she said. “I didn’t wake up one day and say ‘Hey I’m organic’, but when I saw these foods, I knew that I could not use them in a restaurant.”

Nora’s own restaurant, simply called “Nora,” opened in 1979 after she had helped open another restaurant within the Tabard Inn a hotel in Washington DC. Since it’s opening “Nora” has grown from the wholesome but gourmet restaurant it was in the 1980’s to a beacon of the progressive food movement in the present day.

“Nora’s goal with the restaurant wasn’t just to be organic for itself,” says Susan Feniger, owner and head chef of Bordergrill in California and Nevada. “She wanted to show the gourmet food community that organic restaurants are possible –that we could all be organic.”

Although she was discouraged when she first arrived in the U.S. by the state of the American food landscape, Pouillon immediately started searching out the farms that produced organically. By the 1980’s she was able to supply her own restaurant with many organically grown goods. It is funny to hear her talk about the history of the restaurant. There is a sense that the excitement in her voice comes from a re-living of the challenges she faced when starting. She seems to remember all of the farmers that were part of what she calls “the old crew”—the first circle of farmers and progressive chefs that dedicated themselves to the organic movement.

“I didn’t always know that my passion was for organic food,” she explains in her broken English. “Slowly I became friends with farmers and they could give me the organic food I needed.”

In wasn’t until 1999 that Nora was actually certified as organic. Pouillon was the first to try and achieve this status in the restaurant world and therefore had to work together with the private organic certification company, “Tilth” to develop the actual standards that go into certification. Today when she is not at the restaurant Poullion does consulting for such companies as Whole Foods and on USDA campaigns like “Team Nutrition “Food Family and Fun,” as a youth educator.

Even now after more than 10 years of being organic and 31 years of success, Nora is still highly involved in her restaurant. Her commitment is slightly more demanding than a conventional chef for a number of reasons. Most important, her suppliers are never stable. She explained that her biggest challenge is keeping her ingredient lists stocked in the kitchen because there are so many growers that go from organic to conventional farming or visa versa.

“I have a man on my staff who is constantly dealing with finding the farmers and working out how to get the foods to the restaurant,” Pouillon tells me in frustrated tone. “Some growers are only organic for one or two seasons before they quit.”

Nora Pouillon is modest about her influence on the organic world. Although she is considered an innovator in the progressive food community she sees what she is doing as the obvious way to produce and use food. For Poullion conventional farms, chemically modified vegetables and meat, are clearly harmful and the people producing them ignorant.

“When people say that organic food is too expensive I think they don’t understand. You have to know the real cost of eating these (non-organic) things,” she says. “You are paying with your health instead of you money.”