Bon Appetit
January, 2003
Artisans of the Food Revolution
By Ed Levine

THEY ARE THE DREAMERS, the restless wanderers, the visionaries among us. One grows peaches so sweet and juicy they should be used as currency. Another battles a life-threatening illness yet still makes chocolate every bit as good as the chocolate the French or the Belgians make. They have defied conventional wisdom, and in so doing have provided food lovers with something to talk about. How have they done it? With sheer willpower, a fair amount of science, an abiding curiosity, and a little luck. Here are their stories.

…DAN O'BRIEN
WILD IDEA BUFFALO COMPANY
Buffalo rancher-novelist Dan O'Brien might have an even higher calling. O'Brien, an extraordinarily gifted writer with six novels and an unforgettable memoir (Buffalo for the Broken Heart) to his credit wants to return a good chunk of the vast and unforgiving northern plains to the animals that flourished there more than a century ago-the buffalo. And on their 7,000-acre spread just outside Rapid City, South Dakota, they're showing their neighbors and, in turn, the world just how ot do it. The buffalo from their 320-head herd graze exclusively on pasture land and never suffer the unnatural indignities of the feedlot.

Their Wild Idea buffalo meat is faintly sweet, thoroughly meaty, and utterly delicious. And like all buffalo meat, it is lower in fat and has fewer calories than beef. O'Brien says, "I don't want to get on a soapbox, but what we're doing is important stuff, important to both the people of the great northern plains who have to live off this land, and to eaters everywhere, who will get to know what real, honest, pasture-raised beffalo tastes like.

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