Real Food, Real Folk on Let's Eat Glasgow!

Many hands make light work – it’s a truism that, frankly, often leads to arguments and a desperate desire to keep everyone on side. But get a good team together and the pooled talents can achieve a lot more than would be possible working alone.

On that note, let us introduce the Real Food, Real Folk collective, the Glasgow culinary scene’s very own version of the Avengers, and their debut event Let's Eat Glasgow!. Formed of the minds behind some of the city’s best restaurants – the collective counts Ox and Finch, Crabshakk and Mother India among its members – RFRF aim to take its food beyond members' kitchen walls and out into the city at large.

According to Ubiquitous Chip’s Colin Clydesdale, the collective's chairman, the inspiration for Real Food, Real Folk came in large part from the MAD movement of NOMA head chef René Redzepi, focussing on food’s role in culture and community, as well as issues much closer to home.

Clydesdale explains: “Redzepi believes passionately that the role of chefs today extends way beyond the walls of their restaurant and the duration of a single service and right into their community at large. In today’s world, chefs have a responsibility to share their skills, knowledge and passion in dynamic ways, encouraging everyone across society to connect with, cook and consume, good, healthy food."

But there's also a motivation behind Real Food, Real Folk that lies much closer to home. Clydesdale says: “In Glasgow, we live with a stark and, in many ways, growing dichotomy in terms of our relationship with food. We have a vibrant food scene to rival any city in the country or abroad yet, as a population, there remain so many people still eating poorly because of income or low nutritional awareness.

"The gulf between those with access to good food and those who don’t is basically inherently unfair and, in Glasgow, which has always been such an intrinsically socially minded city, this strikes me as particularly glaring.

“Now felt the right time to approach like-minded chefs and restaurateurs and see if there was a collective will in Glasgow for our industry to stand up and help address the problem. Sitting around a table, we all gelled quickly around the notion of a not-for-profit co-operative with a dual aim to celebrate Glasgow’s fantastic food and drink scene whilst helping improve nutrition awareness across the city.”

For Let’s Eat Glasgow!, Real Food, Real Folk’s member restaurants will whip up £5 dishes at SWG3 over the weekend, alongside a pop-up market with dozens of makers and suppliers from across the west of Scotland, as well as a host of demos and classes to help the layman make use of the produce on offer.

Clydesdale says: “Building up our vision for Real Food, Real Folk, and what we want to achieve together over coming years, we looked at a number of projects but none was more exciting and urgent than to bring the very best of food and drink being grown and cooked in Glasgow and the West of Scotland right into the heart of the city and connect the widest possible audience with it.

“To make that connection, we knew we needed to create an amazing, colourful, welcoming, fun and informative event... Above all, we want Let’s Eat Glasgow! to be a dynamic coming together of folk which engages everyone across the city and beyond with the fantastic fresh local produce on their doorstep and inspires them to cook with confidence in their own kitchens.”

With huge interest in their inaugural event, Clydesdale hopes that RFRF, and its events, can continue to grow. He says: “We began Real Food, Real Folk with nine members. Glasgow has such a dynamic dining scene today that this is a relatively small number. Since we launched Let’s Eat Glasgow! in April, we’ve been stunned and hugely motivated by the industry’s response to both the event and the greater vision of the co-operative.

"We will capitalise on the momentum going forward, welcoming more like-minded folk onboard. We can then really begin to develop and promote a city-wide understanding of how we might, collectively as an industry, help end this dichotomy and encourage healthy eating right across the city.” They may not actually have magical abilities, but Real Food, Real Folk seem to understand that their culinary power comes with a degree of responsibility, and they're happy to help.