In 1986, Carlo Petrini, a noted Italian food and wine writer, was standing on the Spanish Steps in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna when his nostrils were assaulted by a nauseating odor. The assailant? The greasy scent of burgers and French fries wafting from a recently opened McDonald’s.

While many celebrate the arrival of fast-food outlets to their communities, Petrini considered the opening of a McDonald’s in Italy—a country renowned for its passionate embrace of food—a culinary crime of the first degree, a warning of impending doom and a call to arms. Thus was born Slow Food, Petrini’s visceral reaction to McDonald’s invasion of his country, and to what he feared was the creeping homogenization of Italian food. In the past 17 years, Petrini’s mission of celebrating food traditions, indigenous products, regional cooking and small growers and producers—as well as the joys of savoring a sumptuous meal shared with good friends—has grown into a grassroots movement with more than 65,000 members worldwide in 45 countries, including over 10,000 members in the United States.

Those 10,000 members make up the more than 100 Slow Food groups formed in the United States; an individual chapter is called a convivium, from the Latin word for a social feast or banquet. Though conviviums are all about food, they should not be confused with a supper club, says Cindy Wall, initiator of the newly formed Nashville convivium. “Certainly, all of us involved in the convivium love to eat. But Slow Food’s goals are about more than sharing a meal. It is about education, about celebrating and preserving those foods and food traditions that make an area unique and individual. If every place we eat and everything we eat tastes the same—from Nashville to Milwaukee—then what makes us different? It’s as simple as encouraging people to go to Bobbie’s Dairy Dip instead of Dairy Queen.”

Martha Stamps, cookbook author, chef and co-owner with husband John Reed of Martha’s at the Plantation, was one of the first to sign on to the Nashville convivium, attracted by its emphasis on regional products from small independent concerns. “This has nothing to do with food snobbery,” Stamps said one afternoon last week, sitting at a table in her restaurant. “It’s not about truffles and foie gras, at least not here. In Nashville, it’s about beaten biscuits, cracklin’ and country ham, or whatever is indigenous to your area. For me, it’s about finding a local producer of sorghum, or locally ground cornmeal, or locally grown produce, which naturally follows the season of your region. At its center, it is about the integrity of food.”

As if to illustrate her point, Stamps’ pastry chef Kathleen Stephenson brings a small plate to the table on which perch two cornmeal-rolled, deep-fried whole okra from nearby Buffalo River Farm. “I worked with the grower at Corner Market when I was there,” Stamps says. “She brought me the okra and a bucket of blueberries this morning. We are so ideally located; there are three growing seasons in Tennessee. Why are we getting onions from Mexico when we can get better, fresher onions grown in Pegram?”

One of Slow Food’s most unique endeavors, and one that sets it apart from wine and food societies devoted to elaborate meals, is its mission to identify and save foods on the verge of extinction. As they are discovered, they are added to Slow Food’s “Ark of Taste.” Of the first 100 foods elected to the first Ark of Taste several years ago, most were from Italy: donkey salami from Veneto; red garlic and violet asparagus from Liguria; varieties of apricots and tomatoes grown in Campania’s volcanic soil; diminishing breeds of pigs from Emilia-Romagna.

At Slow Food’s mammoth convention, Salone de Gusto (mounted every two years), the Slow Food USA Ark committee also presents historic and native foods believed to be in need of promotion and support: a type of native wild rice, for instance, grown along Minnesota lakes and rivers. Slow Food might then publicize a product through a variety of ways: its membership, mailings, its quarterly magazine Slow, its newsletter Snail and events worldwide.

This devotion to the preservation of regional foods and cooking traditions was one of the things that lured Stamps. “Off the top of my head, I can think of beaten biscuits, chicken croquettes and spiced rounds,” she says of local foods that are at risk of disappearing from Southern tables. “Country hams are no longer cured the way they were years ago; now they are done by large companies using chemicals that shorten the process. If we don’t somehow preserve these traditions, in a generation or two, they will be gone forever.”

Wall agrees. “What is more central to a people’s culture than their food?” she asks. “To me, promoting regional foods and preserving our food traditions, old and new, is not so different than preserving native trees or creating greenways. It all contributes to the quality of life.”

A confessed foodie to the core, Wall heard of the Slow Food movement from a friend who was a member of a convivium in California. “I have been in Nashville eight years, and in that short time, I have seen lots of changes. It seemed like the right time to start a convivium here. We are so fortunate to be seeing so many independently owned, chef-driven restaurants opening. The growing ethnic population contributes so much to the taste of our region. Let’s bring all of that together, celebrate all of those influences.”

To form a convivium, the group must submit an application that includes information about the geography of the region, especially as it relates to food and cooking. There must be at least 10 members, including a leader, assistant leader and other officers as deemed necessary. The convivium must also make a commitment to a minimum of three annual get-togethers or events. Nashville’s nascent Slow Food group held an exploratory meeting last fall at Sunset Grill, and enough interested parties showed up to form a convivium. Wall wrote and mailed in the application, and this year, Nashville became home to the second Tennessee-based Slow Food convivium; the first was established in Chattanooga.

On Sept. 16, the group will present their first local Slow Food event: Nashville’s End of Summer Harvest Supper at Martha’s. On the table will be beaten biscuits with country ham and butter; curried pumpkin turnovers with green tomato chutney; Tennessee farm-raised prawns with October beans and heirloom tomato salad; shredded pork tostada with spiced peaches and Alabama goat cheese; braised lamb with squash dumplings and spicy kale; and deep-dish apple-bourbon pie with Kentucky sharp cheese. (Stamps notes that the menu could change slightly depending on product availability.) Courses will be paired with Italian wines imported by Wine Bow, a company that specializes in distributing unique wines from small vineyards. At $70 per person, the cost of the event includes food, wine and gratuity; reservations are required and can be made by calling 353-2828. More information will be presented about Slow Food membership at the dinner.

Also taking turns in the spotlight at the dinner will be a new exhibition of John Reed’s art; an acoustic performance by Adrienne Young, a former server at Martha’s who has just released a CD of Appalachian-tinged music called Plow to the End of the Row; and Stamps’ brand-new cookbook, Martha’s at the Plantation: Seasonal Recipes From Belle Meade. Filled with engaging anecdotes about family and friends, the cookbook is illustrated with paintings by Reed; author Alice Randall wrote the introduction.

“It seemed like the right time to do another cookbook,” says Stamps, the author of New Southern Basics, Fall Harvests and Spring Pleasures, and the mother of three young children. “People who eat here are always asking if they can get the recipe for something they have enjoyed, so it’s nice to have that for them. More selfishly, it also made me standardize all my recipes for the cooks here, so I don’t have to be in the kitchen all the time. It would be nice to slow down, you know.”