Food Life AVL
FOOD is my Muse. She is real, a part of my daily life, both a gentle nurturer and a demanding tyrant. Over many years of practice, I have learned to balance the two and have negotiated a peace.
More than aroma or taste of a childhood experience, the act of cooking and eating is the pillow I lay my head upon, FOOD is light that pierces the darkness, and has provided the discipline to stand at the stove as a cook for fifty years.
Food Life AVL represents the culmination of my experience at the foot of my Muse. The genesis of Food Life AVL is the intersection of water, fire, earth, and the hand of humankind. Ancient, timeless, and always present, these elements affect every aspect of our daily lives. Oft times the necessity and ritual of food pass through our days without notice. This site and my workshops in Asheville are my next adventure - to share the lessons FOOD has to offer.
Here I will explore the craft of cooking, delve into a Practice of Food, tell the stories of the cooks, the crafters, and thinkers of Asheville’s food ecology, distill understanding, and enrich our experience of food through a process of thoughtful exploration.
For those who participate in the workshops, we will share our personal stories and those of others, practice the craft, and take small excursions, in order to take away a richer, deeper experience of Food Life.
Mark Rosenstein
Mark began his professional cooking career in 1972, opening the Frog & Owl Café in Highlands, North Carolina. Located in an idyllic spot on Buck Creek Road, the restaurant featured simple French food. Due as much to necessity, Mark and his wife Jerri, relied on the farms, streams, and woods close by. Fresh trout from Icenhower’s trout farm, a stone’s throw from the kitchen and three local gardens – Harper’s, Deal’s and Zahner’s, which were visited daily, were the foundation of the menu. Thus started what is now a lifetime of cooking with what is local, seasonal and on hand.
Moving to Asheville in 1979, Mark opened The Market Place restaurant, continuing with the theme of fresh, seasonal and local, as well as expanding the kitchen’s reach to an international scale. For thirty years, he was at the stove, cooking, inventing and teaching. “Graduates” of that kitchen can be found in Singapore, Chicago, Atlanta, and Portland, Oregon as well as in Asheville.
In those thirty years, he was central to the revival of local food and helped establish “Foodtopia” in Asheville – a wondrous collection of farmers, foragers, producers, and chefs. Along the way, he authored a book: “In Praise of Apples”.
Selling the restaurant to William Dissen in 2009, he took his skills and connections and along with Michel Baudouin, Steve Frabitore and Asheville Independent Restaurants, established the Kitchen Ready training program – a kitchen-based skills training program for individuals suffering in poverty. Now, many of the graduates of Kitchen Ready populate the kitchens and dining rooms of Asheville.
