LOCATION: Threes Brewing, 333 Douglass Street, between 4th and 3rd Avenues, Brooklyn, NY 11217

TIMING: 12:30 PM-1 PM arrival, lunch, soft time. 1 PM-2:30 PM lunch + facilitated conversation.

THINGS TO KNOW:

Threes Brewing is graciously providing space for our meeting — we encourage folx to buy beer, coffee and other beverages from our host venue.

Katy McNulty + Pixie Scout are lovingly providing lunch!

Space is limited. Please email kimber.chou@gmail.com and let us know if you RSVP but can no longer make it.

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We are thrilled to co host artisan fish smoker Sally Barnes — alongside our longtime comrades and founding FIG members Kate McCabe and Max Sussman of Bog & Thunder — as part of a New York residency for the "Queen of the Sea."

It's a treat to host this intimate "lunch and learn" gathering together with the only producer still smoking fish in the traditional manner in Ireland, with only wildcaught fish! (Please note that there is NO evening Study Group event at Little Egg this month.)

Come with your appetite, curiosity and your questions!

About Sally Barnes:

Sally Ferns-Barnes began traditional smoke-curing as a means to preserve the bounty that she and husband at the time were catching from the Atlantic waters of the West Cork coastline. Working as a fisherwoman and commercial fisherman’s wife, she smoked her first fish in 1979 and through endless trial and error, supplying the local community with preserved fish, established a famously unique recipe that began winning awards and accolades, including the prestigious Supreme Champion at the Great Taste awards for her now legendary cold-smoked Wild Atlantic Salmon, and most recently the Eurotoques Craft award. Sally was honored to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Food Writers' Guild in 2022.

Working only and always with wild fish, Sally has remained a stalwart of small-scale independent business with a predominantly local client base, and dealing with genuinely sustainable quantities of real fish from local boats when the weather is good and the fish are in season.

With a firm and unfaltering stance against environmentally unsound aquaculture, Sally has won the respect of retailers and top chefs around the world, speaking regularly at Slow Food events in defense of natural produce and now supplying some of the Michelin starred restaurants around Ireland with her deep knowledge of true, natural fish from West Cork waters.

For pre meeting reading, learn more here:

Sally Barnes: Lessons from a Trailblazer

If you are interested in other Sally Barnes x Bog & Thunder happenings, check out this schedule

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Please read the following before RSVP-ing.

About the politics of our shared space:

Over the years, FIG has expanded and deepened what we mean when we talk about sustainability in food and hospitality. Given that food businesses stand at the intersection of the exploitative and destructive systems we must fight to change if we’re to save this planet and ourselves — and given that food is central to effective resistance, self-determination, and cultural preservation — we are committed to building alternative models and developing transformative practices that we can share out with the wider food industry.

We understand that the issues that we and our extended network of critical-thinking food colleagues have identified cannot be resolved without changing the actual structures we do the work within. We must go to the root of the issues, not just treat the branches. We understand that if we truly commit to going through this process of transformation aiming for a more equitable and sustainable business model, we will not end up with the same business nor the same position or power on the other end of it.

Study Group is open to anyone and everyone working within the food/hospitality space/industries who is down with the politics of the space. To get a sense of where we’re coming from and where we hope to be going (together), please review our guiding principles and current initiatives.

In all our work — from the Food Security Program to Study Group — we move from a place of cooperation rather than competition; of solidarity not charity; of generosity not scarcity. We pursue a positive politic; embracing critique and channeling it into creative change, continuing to build new modes of living and working together understanding they will be imperfect and messy at times along the way.

We trust those who participate in FIG Study Group to share this ethos. Thank you for joining us.

May all our people be free and self-determining in all ways — including any and all ways they engage in food — from here on Turtle Island, to Borikén, to Palestine.

TLDR: Doors, catching up, food and drink at 12:30 PM; discussion at 1 PM. Clean up at 2:30 PM. See you then!

Photo via Woodcock Smokery.

10/23 FIG STUDY GROUP: "Lunch & Learn" with Sally Barnes