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Downtown Dallas Dairy: The Urban Cow Tour
By Mary Kimbrough and Mark Haley
Texas is a big state with a rich and diverse food culture influenced by many traditions that have evolved over generations. Food Roots (www.foodroots.com) is a Texas culinary tourism company founded to explore the breadth of Texas food and wine by offering experiences that help people connect to the sources of their food. The Food Roots mission is to provide participants the cultural and historic context of native and artisanal foods and wines as well as to give them access to the growers and producers who make possible the abundance and variety of products.
With an emphasis on food sources—roots--our tours have traditionally focused on rural farm tours, visiting grass-fed-beef ranches like Burgundy Pasture Beef (www.burgundypasturebeef), Texas olive groves such as Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard (www.sandyoaks.com) and often one or more wineries including Fall Creek Vineyards (www.fcv.com).
With a total population over 20 million, Texas has the largest rural population of any state; even so, over 80% of Texans live in cities and suburbs. To explore our really local food sources, we recently began offering urban tours that support the Food Roots philosophy. One of our newest tours is called Urban Cow.
Urban Cow introduces Dallas-area participants to cheese making starting at the source: an improbable urban dairy farm. Lavon Farms (www.lavonfarms.com) produces high-quality milk from a herd of pampered Guernsey and Jersey cows in Plano. This family farm, now entirely surrounded by suburbs, is a reminder of the vast former farmland north of Dallas that now comprises the cities of Plano, Frisco, Allen, and McKinney. Visitors learn about milk production and herd management and then follow the milk to the farm’s creamery, Lucky Layla (www.moocheeses.com). At the creamery, located in an industrial park in nearby Garland, the milk is first pasteurized and then transformed into remarkable dairy products with a South American influence. The specialty at Lucky Layla is the award-winning single-serving-size drinkable yogurt with flavors from plain to lightly sweetened with fresh fruit--from the familiar strawberry to the more exotic custard apple. Lucky Layla also makes creamy Campesino, peppery Tex-Mex cheese, fresh mozzarella, a variety of aged cheeses and traditionally-churned golden butter. The tour ends at a local specialty grocery store or artisanal cheese shop where participants sample more Texas cheeses and engage in a discussion of cheese making. Texas, in particular Dallas, has long been recognized for its artisanal cheese producers with Paula Lambert (www.mozzco.com) at the forefront.
Our urban tours offer an ideal introduction to culinary tourism for curious but time-pressed city folk. With less ground to cover, these tours are typically shorter in length than our rural farm tours but still provide special access to producers and production facilities. One of the delights of an urban tour is the “who knew?!” factor.
Our on-going challenges include connecting with engaging and enthusiastic producers and finding the right combinations of venues. We interview many individuals and visit many sites in order to find the right formula. Having the producer as part of the tour and making his or her story our focus is what sets a Food Roots tour apart. Continual networking with area farmers, growers, producers and manufacturers is the key to creating new and interesting urban experiences for our culinary tourists.
Food Roots (www.foodroots.com),
a culinary tourism business providing food and wine tours in Texas, was
founded in 2006 by Dallas-based professionals Mary Kimbrough (mary@foodroots.com)
and Mark Haley. The two have been friends for more than 20 years and share
a lifelong passion for culinary adventure and the pursuit of healthful,
wholesome foods. Mary is also partner in Culinary Nutrition Associates
(www.culinarynutritionassociates.com).