A Conversation with Jenny Dorsey

16 feb 2022 · From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Jenny Dorsey, a chef, food writer and executive director of Studio ATAO, a nonprofit think tank that works on changing inequitable systems in food and beyond. We discussed how she went from business school to kitchens, cultural appropriation in fast casual restaurants, and launching a newsletter as a way to find her voice in writing.

Alicia: Hi, Jenny. Thank you so much for being here.

Jenny: Thanks for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Jenny: Yeah, of course.

So I was born in Shanghai, but I grew up in New York. Both my parents were getting their PhDs at Albert Einstein University up in the Bronx. So I feel when I was little, I ate a lot of just food at home. My family was definitely the ‘Why would you ever eat outside? You're wasting money’ sort of vibe. So everything was at home.

There was a lot of eggs and a lot of breads. And of course, every meal has to have a veg. So I kind of grew up with a lots of vegetables and never really understood that idea of like, ‘Vegetables are gross. Kids don't like vegetables.’ I think pea sprouts are my favorite vegetable in the world. Ate a lot of tomato and egg growing up; I think that's a classic Chinese staple. So things that were easy for young 20-something-year-old parents that had no cooking experience and worked all the time to make.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Did you grow up in the Bronx, or did you grow up in a different borough?

Jenny: Yeah, we grew up essentially in the student's compound within the Bronx. So there was some other, yes, children of fellow students that I hung out with. I felt we occasionally were actually able to go out and be with the rest of the Bronx. But a lot of times we were kind of confined in this little area, and so didn't really honestly get as much interfacing with the world outside as I think would have been beneficial to growing up, unfortunately.

Alicia: Yeah, no, I remember Albert Einstein College from driving past. I went to Fordham. So I remember just being like, ‘Ah, the signs.’ That's all I know of it. I'm like, ‘Oh, the signs for Albert Einstein on the Pelham Parkway.’ [Laughs.]

But that's so interesting, to grow up in that kind of environment with—and that's interesting, because I think when we think of the Bronx, we think of Arthur Avenue and we think of so much food diversity and that sort of thing. Do you go back now?

Jenny: Sometimes.

I mean, I try. But I feel I don't even know. Yeah, I didn't know to know. I feel sad about that all the time. I feel elementary school, at least I was able to go to public elementary and kind of learn about the fact that there are such a diverse group of folks up in the Bronx. But so many times when we were just in the student compounds, we’re so sheltered from everyone else. You don't interact with anyone.

And I think this is now, in retrospect, when I have kind of conversations around race and class and social status and immigration with my parents, they were so busy being students, heads down, that they had no concept of what was kind of happening, which is unfortunate. But I think that is—that's kind of a manifestation of how so many things happen here in the U.S., is that you have your own little silo and you don't realize you're in a silo until you're out of it. And that can take years. That could take your entire life.

Alicia: Right.

Well, what was your route to getting into food and becoming a chef?

Jenny: So, I had always been a food person growing up. I loved eating. I planned all of our vacations around eating. So when I was little, my parents really liked going to Vegas. This is after we had moved to Seattle. We weren't going from New York to Vegas. Because of the buffets, and there's a lot of food. And it was fairly inexpensive to go and have a good time. And so, I remember—I think I was like 10. We were going to Vegas, and we never gambled or anything. We would just go and eat at buffets. And I'd be like, ‘This one has this and this one has that. And it was all about the food.’

And so, my mother and father had always been like, ‘Yeah, you kind of like food. But that's not a real career.’ It was never really encouraged or allowed, I think. So I never really thought about food in that way. Just saw it as a hobby or a thing that I want—I liked and wanted to do, but not as a thing that I should pursue, so to speak.

It wasn't until after I had started my first job out of college. I was in management consulting, and realized, first of all, how miserable I was, but specifically because I was within fashion and luxury goods. I had this kind of sad moment where I realized so many of the people higher up on the food chain than me, they were filling their hearts, their metaphorical hearts, so to speak, with just stuff. And I could see it. And you never want to be in a position as a really junior person where you look at someone who's supposed to have their s**t together, and seems to have it all, and you just feel really sad for them. And that's how I felt all the time.

And I don't want to editorialize on their behalf. Maybe they're super happy. But what I interpreted was a lot of sadness. And then I realized, ‘I don't like this job. I've never liked this job. I don't know why I wanted to be in this industry. I think it was for the glitz and the glamour. But inside, I'm really unhappy. So what can I do about it? What is the thing that makes me happy?’ And naturally, it was like, ‘Ok, I'm going to go cook. I'm going to go take this advanced cooking techniques class at the Institute of Culinary Education.’ At first, it was just recreational. But soon enough, I was like, ‘I want something formal. I don't want the sheltered student experience again. I really want to be fabricating my lamb. I want to be breaking down the chickens. I want to be making the stock, not just have stock delivered to me from stewarding.’

So I ended up going to a full diploma program at school and wanted to give myself a chance in the industry. Ended up leaving—I was going to Columbia Business School right afterwards. Ended up leaving that and was like, ‘I just need to figure out—I need to at least give it a chance to try and see where I end up.’

Alicia: Well, and then do you think that your training and your experience, even if it wasn't what you ultimately wanted to do, and then some studies at Columbia Business School, do you think that they influence your work in food now that you are working in food media? You're also working in activism. You've founded Studio ATAO? Do those things still crop up? Do they still kind of aid your thinking?

Jenny: Yeah, I think a lot of what I saw at culinary school really shaped how the work that I do now just seeing—first of all, poor representation of how things are taught.

And just the lack of, I think, empowerment that culinary students and, in general, a lot of more junior-level workers within food, restaurant, hospitality, beverage are often imbued with, because you're constantly being told that your opinions don't matter. You don't have the right to stand up for yourself, and that the system is just like this. We were constantly indoctrinated in culinary school that you just got to go to these stages, and you're never going to get paid. And you're gonna to work a gazillion hours and make $10 an hour to start. And that's normalized. And that is a huge problem if we're normalizing literally hundreds of thousands of students to that sort of mentality every year. So I don't think I had the vocabulary for it then. But a lot of the micro- and macroaggressions that I faced in culinary school really informed the desire to even try to do this work.

And in a, I guess, a positive way, by interactions at business school—which I don't want to hate on too much because I did marry someone from the business school—but business school was such a jarring and terrible experience in that I was like, ‘Wow, are we really just out here to compete and make money?’ This kind of idea of constant scarcity, constant competition, it's so toxic. And what is the real value that we're trying to add to society at large?

But I think it's hard to get into that kind of mode when you're surrounded by people who are just telling you about their Goldman Sachs résumé, or telling you how great they have it because they made so much money last year. It's so easy to get into this keeping up with the Joneses sort of mentality.

And I think shifting from graduating from culinary school, and then three days later going to Columbia Business School, that juxtaposition made me realize these were two different worlds. We're not talking to each other. Because we're so siloed in both respects, there is so much—there's so much that we should be doing. We could be improving both industries or industries under Columbia, and then food hospitality in general. But right now, we don't even understand the problems each other are facing. And we don't have any empathy for them. So how, what do we do about that? How do we bridge that gap?

Alicia: Right.

And so, when did you start to move toward food media?

Jenny: It's kind of a strange, roundabout way, I guess.

I first went into work at restaurants, kind of had to do that as part of my culinary school externship, started working in corporate food R&D. And I think from all the just toxicity that I've absorbed over those years, wanted to find some sort of outlet to write, write about it, talk about it.

And as you're aware, it's really hard to land some of those more difficult reported pieces off the bat. So I had this, to start with the rigmarole of doing basic recipes, and then maybe a little bit more covered recipes with headnotes. And then slowly was able to move into ‘Oh, I really want to tackle really complex or uncomfortable topics within food media. Who's going to give me an opportunity to do that?’

And I think that journey also uncovered a lot of these problems that we have with the media of like, Who gets exposed? Who gets airtime? What kind of writing and language do we pay credence to, and which ones do we not? Ran into that constant issue of, ‘Can you really cover issues that aren't Asian American?’ So I think that journey continued to inform like, ‘Oh, ok, food media is a place that we can talk about it. But it's also not the end all, be all of how we're going to bring about justice or change.’

Alicia: Right.

And do you think things have gotten better since you started to work in food media?

Jenny: Heh. I don't know.

I would love to hear what you think, because I feel like I get this question. And I'm always like, ‘I want to say yes, I think so.’ But a lot of times, I am not sure. Because I feel optically we are saying and doing a lot of the right things. But I think systemically have we really made those big changes? I don't know.

Alicia: Right.

Well, my perspective right now is very skewed because I'm very focused on my newsletter. I think I've stopped really paying attention to food magazines, for the most part.

I get Bon Appétit in the mail. And I read it, and I—it's very thin these days.And I don't say that to insult them. They have a huge reach and everything. And they've really hired a lot of writers that I really enjoy. And so, that's really great. But we're not seeing that much.

Maybe this is the thing, and I would like to ask you about it, because this brings up a lot of your work with Studio ATAO, I think, which is how much does representation count if the stories and the narratives remain sort of the same? So what is your perspective on when you can have the representation, but maybe things don't really change at a deeper level?

Like you were mentioning, there's this pervasive idea in the media that people who, non-white people can't write about anything but their own background. And that is very pervasive. That continues. That I haven't seen really change in a real way. And so, in your mind, how much does representation count for in food media?

Jenny: Yeah.

I mean, I think representation is always going to be important. Of course, it's important that if you're a new reader to Bon App or Food & Wine, and you're flipping through the pages, and you see a face that looks like yours, of course, that's always going to be good. But I think what, when I say optically, we are doing that.

However, the power dynamics of who picks those people, who gets to greenlight the pitches, who gets to shape the pitches, who gets to censor some of the words, that sort of chain of command is the multiple steps behind representation that I would like to see more change in. And there's a lot of obstacles to all sorts of those things.

One of the things that we had been tackling through these two white papers with Well+Good and The Kitchn for the last year, so over the—over 2021 is how do we hire more BIPOC in these diverse leadership roles? And a lot of the problem’s that HR is saying over and over again is the pipeline is empty. There's no BIPOC in the pipeline. And yet, it's like yes, and no, right? I'm sure there is. But there probably isn't as many because BIPOC are regularly not promoted at the same cadence. They don't get the same titles, etc. So the pipeline probably does look a little bit empty.

And so then it becomes ‘Well, is that one institution trying to hire additional diverse leadership going to be the person that trains that leadership? Are they going to start working with BIPOC students so that they can move them up the promotion ladder, so that in ten years, you're going to have an exe editor that naturally is BIPOC?’

That's a level of commitment that far exceeds just finding a BIPOC woman and promoting them. It takes a lot more planning, it takes a lot more investment, time, money, energy. And I think that's kind of the, where a lot of organizations are doing the ‘Well, that's not on us. That's an industry problem. That's not for us to solve.’ And that's what makes me nervous in terms of long-term change.

Alicia: Right, right.

There's similar problems in terms of class or education level where the same—you have a whole team of people who have the same economic background, the same type of education background. And I think that also really comes through in terms of the content, which—and that comes through in terms of who you're speaking to, as your audience is like—

And that's a really interesting thing when you're writing about food, because the people you're writing about in restaurants, etc., are going to be probably super different from the types of people in the magazine office. And that's such a disconnect. That's a big loss, too. That's a loss for who your audience can be, like, if you're not even necessarily speaking to the people who work in, to the concerns of people who work in restaurants. That's a real loss.

And it's a big problem to deal with. And like you were saying, it's a problem of a lack of commitment from folks in these higher-up positions to put in that effort to find those people and to really be a mentor to people, even if they look different, come from a different kind of place, come from a different kind of education. And that reluctance, it shows in how much people are really engaging with the work and it shows in what the work is. Because I think that it's been a really big loss of opportunity to talk about restaurant workers in a real way in the media, especially since the pandemic. I feel like it's been a bit—that distance has been very apparent lately.

As someone who has worked in restaurants, how has this time been for you as someone who does work in the media, but also has that experience?

Jenny: Yeah.

I think it's tough because you have folks who are on the ground very concerned with day-to-day, like, ‘Is my restaurant going to stay open or not? I don't know if I'm going to get this paycheck or not? I don't know what's going on with unemployment.’

And then to ask them to also know kind of the fancy language terms that often are used when writers write for other writers, there's a huge disconnect, when you're supposedly supposed to be helping them understand, navigate this landscape. Because what we're getting in terms of directors from the government was confusing enough when we're talking about PPP, or we're talking about if some PPPs can be forgiven, or whatnot. There's already this barrier of people being able to access some of those funds, even if they were meant for everyone. Before we even start talking about how undocumented folks were not even able to access that, but yeah.

And then when you're covering it as a food media publication, who are you really interviewing? Are you taking the time to really interview people on the ground, versus talking to a PR company that represents a restaurant group that can easily pull you a couple sous chefs to interview versus getting into the kitchens and really asking the garde manger who's been there for 10 years, or the porter on this—and asking them like, ‘Hey, how are you dealing with this problem?’

I think that's a level of disconnect food media's always faced. I don't know how to fix that, because folks are not getting paid enough to cover their stories. They don't have enough lead time to write the stories that they want to write. There's not enough fact-checking that's happening. I don't know. It's a domino effect of all the problems from the top down.

Alicia: Exactly, yeah.

Well, with Studio ATAO, it’s a nonprofit think tank where you’re executive director, there's been a very broad approach to changing inequitable systems. And so, I was wondering if you can explain its founding and the work the nonprofit does.

Jenny: Yeah.

So Studio ATAO is a community-based think tank. And what we mean by that is, how do we conduct research? How do we create spaces where we can really listen to the needs and recommendations of community members that are most affected by various different inequitable problems, and actually champion and put energy and money and time to support their recommendations from the ground up instead of trying to implement solutions to fix these problems from the top down?

And I think, because of the very complicated convoluted nature of the nonprofit industrial complex, which we can get into if people want, as well as think tanks, which kind of get wrapped up in all of that, and academia as well, a lot of times you have philanthropists and big level donors who see a problem. And they have their own take on what the solution is.

The example I often use is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done a lot of great work in the world. But there's a lot of critique on how they handle child classroom access. And they're focused on getting small class sizes, which arguably, small class sizes probably is great. But was that the number one thing that communities with not great educational outcomes wanted to see in terms of structural change? Maybe not. Did they bother to ask anyone and figure that out before kind of putting all of that energy into it?

And so what we've really tried to do is, first if we see a problem like equitable representation of the media, talk to the people who are getting affected by that and say, like, ‘What are the changes you want to see? Is it more leadership at the top? Is it changing pitch guidelines? Is it more transparency? What is the thing that you think would most make the biggest impact to make your life better, to make you feel your work is more equitable, that you have a space to have your voice be heard in some of these sort of companies?’

So, that's kind of our approach in general. And our main thing for this year and next year is looking at gentrification and hospitality, which is a whole can of worms.

Alicia: That is really exciting though, because that is such a complicated topic. I am so excited to see what you come up with.

Yeah, no, I'm reading a lot about gentrification because of where I live—well, so I'm from New York. So there's gentrification there in New York City. But here in Old San Juan, it's just so rapid and virulent, and it's having such a huge impact on the culture. And it's just a really, really, really intense situation to live among. Yeah. It's happening so rapidly that I don't think anyone is thinking—Well, locals are thinking enough about what it means. But in terms of the politicians and everything, there's just really no concern or no regulation, and just selling everything.

And in terms of the food, it actually has—people always think of the impact of gentrification on the food, and that it becomes more bourgeois and inaccessible, and the impact here has interestingly been that the food is worse. And so, because locals can't open places, because it's too expensive, it's harder to get the capital to do so. And in general, the stat is 85% of food is imported to Puerto Rico. And so usually, we have really poor quality onions in the supermarket, the garlic is from Spain, etc., etc. So there's one or two good local restaurants in Old San Juan, and then other than that it's food for tourists. It's fast food. There's one local fast, a couple of local fast food places.

It's a very interesting thing, because you always hear that, like, ‘People bring the money, and then they bring gentrification.’ The way you tell that is through the food, but—or it's through the coffee, maybe. [Laughs.] But I mean, coffee is already part of the culture, so they can't really do anything with the coffee.

And so, it's just an interesting dynamic, because it's just—it's the opposite of how I was told, or had always read that gentrification works with food and with hospitality. And so, I'm super interested in this topic right now because there's so much to understand that hasn't, that isn't as simplified as people make it out to be. And so, I'm really excited to see that work that you guys are putting out.

And you do such interesting work around how cultural and political realities impact food and the way people get it. You wrote about cultural appropriation in fast-casual restaurants for Eater. I wanted to ask, how did that story idea come about? Why did you see fast-casual as worthy of serious critique? Because I was like, ‘Oh,’ reading it. And I read it when it came out, and I was reading it again to interview you. And I'm like, ‘Does anyone really talk about fast-casual in a rigorous way?’ And people should, because it is the way a lot of people are interacting with these cuisines.

Jenny: Yeah.

I think a lot of what I wanted to—well, maybe not just for that piece, but that that piece had a whole just fallout. Let's just put it like that, just an insane amount of hate mail. But I think what I wanted to do is point out these systems that we interact with in our lives, where we're normalizing things.

And fast-casual, I think, is often not scrutinized because we kind of dismiss it. We see it as a quick bite to eat. What harm is Chipotle doing if I'm just giving a burrito there? And whereas that we put a lot of worthy and important attention on things like Lucky Lee’s, or Lucky Cricket. And those absolutely should be critiqued. But why not the thing that you're quickly grabbing to go? Why not the thing that you are probably interacting with way more than this random restaurant in Minnesota that you might not ever visit? I think because of Internet outrage culture, it's easier to be angry at these kind of discrete things, versus acknowledging how these small little occurrences in your everyday life actually end up shaping your worldview.

I think back to as a culinary student, as I mentioned earlier, it's not that anyone comes out and tells you, ‘You're garbage and you're not worth more than $10 an hour.’ It's just something that you implicitly learn over the course of your time there. And I think that's a lot more insidious and toxic. And we really do need to be not only pointing that out for ourselves, but getting, I think, surfacing that for people who are still going through it, the next generation of students. So that they can identify it when their mentor tells them that, when there's—when their instructor tells them that, when their career counselor says something like that.

Alicia: Right, right, right.

Because we're talking about a lot of serious things, and now I'm sort of—I think we've sort of enacted maybe the thought process of where you launched a newsletter to do more personal writing, loose writing. Because you are known for the very rigorous looks at diversity and discrimination in the food industry. How has your experience been doing a newsletter so far?

Jenny: Yeah.

I mean, newsletter’s been so strange. But I think the big thing I've learned is just how differently I'm writing for the newsletter versus for any publication, and just how much of my voice I'm really tailoring. I think I just didn't notice because I never wrote for myself. So I know the kind of tone I need to strike for Serious Eats or for Washington Post or whatever. You read enough of their work, you get it.

And I'm not discounting that kind of writing. And I very much enjoy it. And I'm going to continue reading the New York Times. But now I kind of see it—I'm like, ‘I'm not gonna structure my sentences like that.’ I love to have long things that are in parentheses that probably shouldn’t be in parentheses. Instead of feeling that is a problem or that is, there's something inherently wrong with that, it's like, ‘Oh, that's actually a quirk that I like to write in.’

I remember years ago, I wrote this piece that was very personal. And my editor shat all over it, and was like, ‘Stop anthropomorphizing your food.’ It was this whole thing. And that piece is fine. I'm fine with how it turned out. But I look back. And I feel like, ‘Again, see, this is those small things that get normalized.’ Editors say that all the time. And I was like, ‘There's something wrong with my writing style,’ versus ‘Oh, I'm just not writing in the tone that they want.’

So the newsletter has given me a little bit of that perhaps needed confidence to say, ‘These are my personalities.’ As a writer, I am allowed to find value in them, even if it's not well suited for a bigger publication. And also explore things that maybe some people don't want to talk about. I wrote a thing about fanfiction, and fandom. And that was really fun. I just had a good time writing about it. And so, I put my energy and time into that. And I hope that people care. And I think people, the response was like, ‘Oh, I never even thought about this before.’

And this is that problem with food media, or media in general, if you can't prove that people will care about it to start. You can't ever land the pitch. But once you actually get it out in the world, people did care. I don't know. Yeah.

Alicia: [Laughter.] No, that's so interesting!

And I've found the same thing. And in my newsletter is like, ‘Oh, there is an audience for cultural critique, it—of all these food issues, but also for personal essays about why I eat oatmeal every day.’ It's such a shocking thing, I think, because we have been trained to think that we have no story unless people are already talking about it. And it's like, well, by the time people are already talking about it, it's like the story's boring. They've taken the story and they've gone with it, and then it—you have to find a new angle on it, and that sort of thing.

And I think there's so much value in—and this is, I guess, what we sort of lost over the last—in the 2010s, the blogs kind of died out. And then we lost this really more informal and raw and voicey way of writing on the internet. And we had social media, but at the same time, it's very different. And so, I think newsletters are giving a little bit of a more informality and space and structure to the fact that people really do want that kind of work and want that kind of thinking and miss that kind of like, ‘Let me just hear what someone's thinking about something, even if they've never thought about it before.’

Because that's true. If the writing is good, and the writing is punchy and interesting, people are gonna read about anything. And that's, I think, something people have lost in this obsession with SEO and views, etc., etc. I published something on Monday that was just my thought process over a couple of weeks. And it's gotten 30,000 views in two days. And so it's like, that's not bad. [Laughs.] For just a person thinking out loud, I think that there is more space for that. People want that, then—I don't know. It is interesting.

And my advice always to younger writers—and I've sent it twice today to two different people [laughs]—I was like, ‘You do have to write for editors,’ because now people think that they can just start a newsletter and then boom! Career takes off. And it's like, ‘It's probably not gonna happen.’ Even though it hurts a lot of the time being edited, especially when you're just starting out and you have to learn and you have—

But at the same time, you have to figure out that balance for yourself of where you're comfortable with an editor taking away from your voice, and sometimes where you can push back and that sort of thing, or when and where you can do a long parenthetical that maybe someone else would take out. You have to have that understanding of the rules in order to break out of the rules. It's interesting to hear you say that the newsletter now has given you a whole new lease on writing, because I think that that's true. And I mean, I don't want this to sound like gatekeeping or whatever. But I do think you have to learn the basics first.

Jenny: Yeah, I think it's important to understand where every—but where everybody's boundaries are. It's very difficult as a person who's starting any career, writing or otherwise, to set those boundaries for yourself. So the best way we usually go about them is by emulating other people's boundaries. So I think it's really valuable to have an experience at a corporate entity or a small organization or nonprofit, whatever, because you start seeing how different people approach the world.

And similarly, with writing, if you don't ever get edited, you're never going to see other people's criteria of what they think good writing is or what they think good editing is or what they think something voici or newsy is. And then, you don't—you kind of can't set those parameters for yourself. And you also can't really discover what you—I know what a voice EP sounds like. Maybe I just don't want it to sound like that, because that's not what I'm feeling right now. But you can't really have that kind of self-reflection without having the experience first.

Alicia: Oh, that's such a good way of putting it. [Laughs.] I'm gonna steal your work. [Laughs.] The next time, I'm gonna send a copy of the transcript.

But I wanted to ask, because you do so much. You're writing for other outlets, you're writing your newsletter, you do—you still are doing recipes. You still are working with Studio ATAO. What are you hoping for this year, 2022?

Jenny: Yeah, I think the big theme for myself personally this year is to create more and to create things that bring me joy. Because what I think is very hard for any sort of creative type, whether a writer or a chef or whatnot, is at some point because of money, because of the world, you start creating things for other people so much so that you kind of forget like, ‘What actually brings me joy? I have no idea sometimes.’ I'm sitting around in my kitchen like, ‘What do I want to make today?’

And sometimes I do have the envy of people who are pure content creators, and they go in and they're like, ‘I'm going to create content. What do I want to make?’ Because I feel so much of that has been taken from me, because I have to think about what other people want. And not saying that content creators don't have that outside pressure as well.

So that's number one for me for the newsletter, is how do I explore things that I care about? If 100 people read it, so be it. It wasn't for them anyway. Ithink it's really hard to have that mentality. And I'm already struggling with it three weeks into the year. So we'll see how that goes.

But for the studio, the big thing is sustainability. We have been actively trying to resist being part of the nonprofit industrial complex, to not have all our funds come from big donors or corporations or grants and big philanthropists. But it's very difficult to not only make sure that we can employ people, but give them the employment length and the benefits and whatnot. And we're really struggling with that. And it's kind of a what do we have to sacrifice in order to have some of the runway that we want without compromising our values?

And I, we’re struggling through that, to be totally candid. It's just an ongoing struggle. I don't know how to fix it, because the whole system is broken. Everyone's heard this before. So I won't belabor the point. But I don't know how to make it better. I think we're just trying to do less, and figure out if the—we have four initiatives for this year. How do we do them the best we can with what we have?

Alicia: Right.

And is it on Patreon?

Jenny: Yes.

Alicia: Ok.

Jenny: Yeah, you can support on Patreon. You can also give one-time gifts. We really would prefer most of our comes, coming from the community, because obviously we don't want kind of this big overlord telling us we can't say this, or you can say that.

Alicia: Right, right. That's very important.

So how do you define abundance?

Jenny: I think it's feeling you don't have to worry. Abundance means kind of that absence of scarcity. So you don't have to worry about—the thought of being hungry never crosses your mind, right? It's the absence of that worry at all.

I grew up in a very privileged environment where I wasn't worried about hunger, and I wasn't worried about shelter. And I don't know what it feels like to truly be actively worried about that. And I think that is a feeling of abundance in its own way. I don't think it's necessarily about having more. It's about like this—yeah. A lack of worry.

Alicia: Right. I love that. I love that definition of it.

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Jenny: Yes. I think cooking is always a political act. And it doesn't have to be—And I think how people define political, of course, varies. To me, it's like it's always an expression of all the systems that be.

For example, last Thanksgiving, it was the first time that we had a Thanksgiving after my father-in-law had passed. And my family had come down. My husband's family comes down. Cousins were there. And I made an active effort to make sure to make food that people have probably had never had before, so that what—

Did they totally fit into the classic American Thanksgiving table? Probably not. But there were things that I knew that they probably would not be able or not have interest in going to those restaurants they experienced themselves and could give a little bit of texture and nuance to the conversations, which already there's kind of a cultural gap, right? Because we have different cultures. We have different backgrounds. People live in different places.

So I think food served as both a connector in that way, but also as a way to kind of challenge people. And I think that is very political, where it wasn't like, ‘Hey, let's talk about Biden in this dish or whatnot.’ [Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.] It was more just like, ‘Let's talk about all of these interesting systems that brought this dish to be here.’

Alicia: I love that.

Well, thank you so much, Jenny.

Jenny: Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

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A Conversation with Millicent Souris
25 maj 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
This week, I'm talking to Millicent Souris, someone I have long wanted to make my friend. Millicent is to me just wildly cool. She talks about food equity and drinking bourbon, and there was no one I would rather talk to you about the dichotomy of being politically engaged with food justice, and also stocking your pantry with very nice olive oil. She's also one of my favorite food writers period; her pieces in Brooklyn Based, Bon Appetit, Diner Journal—they kind of redefined the genre. As a longtime line cook who now runs a soup kitchen and food pantry in New York City, she's someone who simply knows food—its highs and lows and is cool as hell. Did I say that already?
Alicia Kennedy: Hi, Millicent. How are you, Millicent?
Millicent Souris: I'm doing all right. How are you, Alicia?
Alicia: Did I say your name right?
Millicent: Yep!
Alicia: Actually, we should have done that before. [Laughs.]
Millicent: I know. Yeah, my name is Millicent. And is Alicia correct for you?
Alicia: Yes. Alicia is correct.
Millicent: Great.
Alicia: Yeah, I'm Alicia sometimes, but only if you're a Spaniard. [Laughs.]
Millicent: Fair, I'm not going to pretend…
Alicia: Yeah, yeah…well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Millicent: Yeah, I grew up in Baltimore County, north of Baltimore City, and in Towson, Maryland, and Lutherville, Maryland—which is of course home to John Waters and Divine, and also in North Baltimore County.
So my dad's parents had immigrated from Greece, so I grew up eating Greek food. And then my mom's family had a dairy farm, so I grew up drinking—when I was up there—unpasteurized milk, which I would say about 10 years ago, I made the connection was raw milk. And country food, you know—my grandfather would grow his own corn and tomatoes and zucchini, and that would be summertime. We ate a lot of crabs in the summer, because it's Maryland, and then also, like, oysters were definitely a part of my mom's family. Like we'd have oysters stuffing and raw oysters at Thanksgiving, because her dad would bring them and shuck them.
But then also because it's the ’70s and ’80s, straight-up shitty American processed food, was a gift, you know, for our household because my mom worked and my dad worked, and there's three of us. And, you know, even on the farm, my uncle and his wife, they would buy Steak-umms, even though they had ground beef from the steers that they sent to slaughter. You know, we would drink Tang, and we ate Stouffer’s lasagna, so it was a real hodgepodge, I think, of all that stuff.
And then there was, when my mom left my dad and there was the episode called “divorce food,” which was Lean Cuisines and Hamburger Helper and La Choy and a lot of Mandarin oranges in tins.
Alicia: Wow. Yeah. Was that on behalf of your mom’s side?
Millicent: That was on my mom's side. And then my dad would just take us to his friends’ restaurants or bars and we’d eat there.
Alicia: [Laughs.] My parents, when they got divorced, I always say, when I knew something was going wrong was when my mom started to make instant mashed potatoes.
Millicent: Yeah…
Alicia: I was already like, 20. So it wasn't like I was a kid. But you know it was always seared in my mind that the instant mashed potatoes were the beginning of the end.
Millicent: It's the tell…it’s the tell… except I, when I did eat instant mashed potatoes and I think I was 21 I first had them, I was like, What is this magical stuff that just turns into mashed potatoes?
Alicia: No, it's super cool.
Millicent: It's…I mean, science. It's science.
Alicia: Yeah, well, you know, as you were just talking about the dairy and also your family had a bar as well, you know, how did you end up in food, personally?
Millicent: I ended up in food…uh, I mean, my Yaya would cook—Souris’s started as a restaurant in 1934. And so it was a classic Greek restaurant, which is American food and then Greek specials. And then when my dad made it a bar, there was a grill, but there was a flattop behind the bar, and so my Yaya would make totally frozen hamburgers, but she'd also have really good Avgolemono soup. But I didn't—I was just a kid and I didn't really take in all of that. So I don't have that—it would be really cool if I could lie and be like, and then yeah, romantic version of food.
I got a job at the Royal Farm Stores, it was my first job on the books, when I was 14. And that was the convenience store that had fried chicken and Joe Joe's, and then you take the leftover fried chicken and break it up and make chicken salad. So that was my first job in food and everyone who worked there hated it. And, it was cleaning cases of frozen chicken thighs and cutting potatoes and deep frying a lot of stuff. And then our neighbors owned a luncheonette in a pharmacy and I remember working there and being blown away by making salad dressing from scratch.
So, what I knew is that I would always have a job in food because I was willing to do that hard work and for girls like, and teenage girls, I would never be hired to be the counter person or a waitress, because I wasn't cute; I was tall and big and strong and fat, you know. And this is not now—this was the late ’80s. And like, no one was…no one would hire me to be their waitress, but I could always work in the kitchen. And so I—it's not anything I verbalized; it's just something that I knew, that I could always get kitchen jobs. I know that's not really passionate, but you know, you got to make money…
Alicia: Right, well did passion emerge for it?
Millicent: Yeah, I mean, I think for me I found a land that made sense to me. You know, I remember living one summer, and working um, finding a job at—I lived in Portland, Maine. And I was in this place Greedy McDuff’s, which was a brew pub, and it's still there, and English-style pub food and just working; you're just working with a bunch of heshers, you know, and a bunch of—you're hanging out listening to music, you're working hard, you're kind of gross, your skin's not great, you didn't get a lot of sleep, because you had to work the prep shift…
But, you know, I remember working with a guy where when Black Sabbath would come on, we’d take the melted butter and dip a brush in it and turn off the lights and hit the grill and the flames would come up. And it just, I don't know, it was that moment: It's just fun—somewhere that felt free when there's not a lot of places to be free, you know?
And so I knew that. And then, when I moved to New York, 17 years ago, I helped someone open a restaurant. And I've just always been like, I'm a good worker—everything made sense for me. So I do, when I talk about food, a lot of it, I talk about work, but there has to be a sustained level of the community of people that you're working with and that you're buying from, and that you're feeding. And also the food itself, that is passionate. It's just, that's not just, I'm not one of those people who like has that language, you know, who’s just—I'm not very over-the-top with language about myself and what I like, but don't worry, there's plenty people who have that covered, you know…
Alicia: I'm one of them…so… [Laughter.]
Millicent: I don't think so.
Alicia: Well, you know, yeah, you've worked in restaurant kitchens for years, you write, you've curated social justice film series, you've been a DJ, now you're cooking. You know, well, how would you describe what you do now?
Millicent: Right now, I mean, I work at a food pantry in a soup kitchen. And before the pandemic, I'd been there for over five years and I came on as a consultant to do a culinary job training program. We didn't—it didn't work, and it didn't get more funding, but I was I was the only person there who had worked in restaurants. So I kind of had an eye for the food. And I was like, I can work here part time, and we can get more produce and rescue food and things like that, get more produce to people, take care of the food better, increase our capacity for produce.
And then I did that, and then the pandemic hit, and then it was that times a million with just the whole world shut down, so where's all the food gonna go? And all the pantries shut down, so we just got dropped all this food. So then I became—then it just became something different. So now, I mean, I don't even cook there. I just, I'm the facilitator of the pallets, you know, and trying to—
There's a good grant that came out of the pandemic called the Nourish New York grant. And I think that's permanent now. And it was to really just keep the state going. And you have to spend it on New York State products. And this grant, the director and the head of the pantry, they were just like, What are we going to spend this money on? I was like, I got this, I got this, give it to me please—let me, let me have, let me buy things and not have it all just be like, donated Tyson evil meat.
So those grants I take care of and I like to think it balances out all of the super-gross food bank tax writeoffs for giant companies and really just, because I've consulted on restaurant kitchens, I have a good eye for logistics in space. And so we just had to switch our entire building over to be a warehouse and I was like, the chapel can hold pallets and the waiting area can hold pallets. And if we open this up, we can fit pallets through here—so just really nerdy s**t, you know, and also where all the food goes. So that's what I'm working on. That's what I'm working on now. And now hopefully something new will happen.
Alicia: Well, that grant is really interesting. Living here in Puerto Rico coming from New York, I'm always thinking about how—well, I never know if it's enough, or if it's actually good, what New York State has done to support local agriculture around the state and craft stuff. I know, I'm like, well, they support it in some way, so that's good. Whereas here, you have, there's nothing there, you know? So this grant sounds really great.
But what more should the state be doing, in your mind, to kind of help that?
Millicent: Well, this grant is great. Also, because I still remember the moment of, you know, you're talking about farmers or processors, or bakers, and truckers, and people were like, Thank you, you know, because there was nothing, and for all the people making food and growing food, all the restaurants were closed so there was nowhere for any of it to go. I mean, you never forget, I'll never forget, the first couple of times at different truck drivers were just like, Thank you for being open.
So that grant is permanent and that's a really important grant, because in terms of, you know, everyone's like ‘supply chain supply chain,’ and then we see what horrible things happen when we're dependent upon such a consolidated supply chain and how, you know, the Trump administration got OSHA to lift their f*****g regulations and Tyson poultry workers had to process more chickens and there was no safety for them. And also, that was all the fear of, This is America, everyone has to have chicken, no one can go hungry. Where actually it's like, no, tons of people will go hungry. But to be able to have, the means, the tangible food system that you can see, I think more so, is so important. In terms of the state. I mean, I do see some holes in what's available, you know, and I do have some ideas, but I don't want to share them here, because, you know—
Alicia: —you need to get paid for them. [Laughter.]
Millicent: But we can't just—it can't just be restaurants and people who shop at the farmers’ market to support farms. Because those people have summer homes somewhere else. And they also have the ability to just pick up and go somewhere when the s**t hits the fan.
Alicia: Yeah, no, it's very complicated. But I'm glad to hear that that's happening. That's—that's…yeah, I wish… [Laughs.]
Millicent: It's also, I'll say also for a lot of farms and things like that, it has skewed their—and I work with a headwater hub; there's more infrastructure for schools, and food pantries and institutional food, which also because of brigade is turning into something that's so much more important in terms of like school foods and things like that. And we need that—we can't just be like, f*****g neoliberal people who care about what they eat and are—it's so short-sighted, the food, the food scene, which sometimes feels like the food system is so short-sighted and individualistic, it's gross.
Alicia: Yeah. Well, you did write an essay sort of about this in Bon Appetit in 2019. You know, where you wrote about finding kind of about—I don't know if it was about you finding a balance, but what is that balance that between the olive oil and hunger and—I think about this, of course, as a food writer, where it's, you know, what am I selling people on? Like, what is it that I want to sell people on basically, when it comes to food? Is it just that having a good olive oil is sufficient? Of course it's not, you know. But for you, what are the gaps here that need to be filled in when we talk about food?
Millicent: I mean, the gaps are major. Well, I feel there's personal consumption, right? And there's personal consumption that I prefer, and I know that, man, I know on paper, and if I told any of my co-workers the price of a glass of wine that I drink—I'm just some bougie white person, you know. Also, personal consumption is not about production and politics and everything like that—I don't quite know how to say that great.
But look at how much food writing there is, look at how people's lives are curated. And the people who have the most influence and are influencers, they only talk about political issues when they need to, to stay relevant, or unless it's something that they actually care about where they're like, Abortion…Abortion. You know, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ when you know, especially two years ago—
But the amount that we discuss food in conjunction with the amount of people who are hungry—and hunger can be such a vague thing, especially in this country, right? Like before, generally, it was like 10 to 12 percent [in] America, you’re like, all right. But to me, in New York, your neighbor is hungry, you know? You are moving into a neighborhood, you are opening a restaurant in a place where you have to just, where so many people are just, That's just what that corner is like. And I think that there's ambition and I think this city begs people, if you have ambition, to willfully ignore things, but the amount that food is written about…
And like, I would say now, like Grub Street and Eater, and those places, now they're all also consolidated under the same media group, right? Before it used to be more competitive and they used to just be kind of a real content machine. And more 24/7, you know, because everyone's like, I can be on the internet all the time. And once it's out of the bag, then you're stuck with it.
Let’s just say Salt Bae, he'll never go back; he’ll never go away, because someone's just like, Look at this guy. And then now he's there and he's validated. But think of all the people who got validated and all the s**t that we talk about. And we can choose so much of what we want to consume now, everywhere, and it's great to read about things that don't ultimately matter, because the things that matter are so painful. And it's only during a shutdown that we actually have this bandwidth to care about it.
I mean, the food media is just, they're just—most of them are content creators. They shouldn't be able to write about anything that has any politics or systematic issues and anything to do with like actual workers, you know, who are they? They're not journalists.
Alicia: No, it's an interesting thing, because I think right now, everyone is always asking me—like, well, asking me personally—do I consider myself a food writer and then asking, what is a food writer? And I think that it's important to, I mean, I'm aware of the market forces that create certain types of content and how you have—you have to do things in order to have a career at all. Of course, you have to then ask the question, if I have to do this, why do I want this to be my thing that I do all the time? Why don't I do something else? And so it's difficult, because you know a lot of food writers will say, I just want to write a recipe and then just look cute, and like, get things sent to me, and that shouldn't be a problem.
And I'm like, for me it, you know, it is a problem. And I've written about this, that food writers don't, at large, have even a basic consciousness that comes through in their work around climate change, around hunger, around, you know, conditions of factory farming, around like any ecological significance to anything.
Millicent: It’s sheer consumption.
Alicia: Exactly. And that's becoming more and more, I think, because we're in this vague post-pandemic moment, so things are sort of going back to normalcy in terms of what gets covered. And it's just restaurants, restaurants, restaurants, like cookbooks, cookbooks, cookbooks. And then there's that moment where we were going to talk about the conditions, the labor conditions and the supply chains. And that moment seems like it's just going away. Now it's no longer relevant.
Millicent: It's gone. And I mean, you and I both really love Alice Driver, and she's working—she and her partners are working on that book. And I am kind of stunned by the consistency in which that topic, because I thought it would be one article, one out, and if you all don't know about Alice Driver—you gotta sign up for her. She's an amazing writer. And she has interviewed poultry workers, and consistently interviewed them. And she's worked with a photographer who takes portraits of them, and she has been reporting this since the beginning. I mean, I think for her kind of a bunch of b****y dilettantes, you know, and I think that we have been taught that you cannot hold all of this and, you know, I don't really believe in balance because nothing seems to be balanced—
But like, but what you were talking about before, like, How do I do these things and I know I have to do this—well, we certainly have to have joy. You know, and sometimes joy can't be just like—and trust me I know because I've been doing—working on a food pantry in the last two years during COVID. Like, there has to be joy. It's too hard to live like this all the time.
But the sheer consumption and the way that the world is created, it's so easy for us on phones and the internet, of everything, is so unsustainable, climate wise, food wise, content wise. And our escapism isn't escapism anymore—it's our reality. And that's a problem. Because if everyone can be some f*****g content creator and influencer, is it possible that everyone's ability to figure out a way to survive like this means that we don't have anyone actually doing the real work? And that's why this world sucks so hard?
Alicia: I mean, the fact that Alice Driver didn't have a column immediately, you know, reporting ongoingly about the conditions when she was on the ground in Arkansas with the workers at Tyson—that is such a damning fact of food media, is that that wasn't some editor's dream to have someone on the ground—
Millicent: Just be like, Alice Driver, tell us about this, you know? And because—you guys, the answer isn't for all of us to buy sustainably raised chicken; the answer is for the conditions to be better for all workers and all chickens, you know? And that individualist notion of shopping, which you know, was in the early aughts was really just like, You're not going to change the world—it's such a neoliberal approach towards eating that your trip to the farmers’ market is changing systems. It's only changing you, your system, your house. And that's all part of it.
You know, we're so broken right now. I mean, I think we've always been broken. But we're so broken, because the people who think that they're doing good work kind of really aren't, and they're like—I think of them as really affluent people and they walk amongst us. I am around them in New York all the time. I'm friendly with a lot of them or I might be friends with them. They might think I'm their friend. But they're not the one-percenters, so they don't think they're part of the problem. But they are part of the problem, because they're not doing anything. And their comfort is what allows so many things to happen. Like, if they actually wanted change to happen, it would happen more, because the one-percenters are untouchable to us, you know, unless there's crazy, systematic governmental and worldwide changes—that's why they're one percent. They're like, I have so much money, I'm gonna be on the moon, you can't touch me.
But the affluent people who are never, still are never rich enough and someone already always owns one more house than they do: They're the ones who pat themselves on the back, because they read all the books, they went to some marches, their kids have Black friends, you know, they're doing all the good stuff, and they care. But they're not really sacrificing anything, they're not really doing anything to really change stuff. And right now, sometimes I hope, you know, I get a little tunnel vision, but I'm like, you guys got to do some s**t. And it's not what you think you should do. Because it’s never what you think you should do, because you're still very self—centered—
Alicia: This is—I'm reading a book called The Imperial Mode of Living, which is what you're describing basically, which is that the way we live in the West, or you know, the global North is on the backs of so much exploitation and ecological destruction that we don't see. And then, yeah, and it doesn't matter what class you are, necessarily, and exporting also the idea of this mode of living as the good life quote, unquote, being basically a means of ecological destruction. Like, our way of living and consuming and just thinking about things is part of climate change, part of destruction, like people—and I understand that, but people, when I've written or said anything about the way people will regard their access to the tropical as sort of a human right, just when they need the release or the idea of a vacation to buy a cocktail or a piece of fruit that they probably just shouldn't have, and so, or vacation, etc., but like, people do treat that as though it is their God-given right to have that.
Millicent: Yes, for sure. And they do it, they're like, I mean, that Noma pop-up in Mexico City was or—no, it wasn't it—it was in Tulum. Tulum has no infrastructure for what it has now. It certainly doesn't for a bunch of people who need to go to that.
Look at all the people who have moved to L.A. I mean, look at California—we just have a straight-up fire season and all the people who moved to L.A., it's like, did you move to L.A., because you like the weather and because then you can have tomatoes all year round? It's kind of a bratty existence.
Alicia: It's very—
Millicent: To think it's a very—I don’t know if you can hear my neighbors come home from school—it's still consumption, you know? But also, what's fascinating is that this is all also done under the mode of “health,” you know, wellness and health and like, Oh, I get these mangoes or I have to go here. And the rest of us were just having drinks, and maybe there's a cigarette, or maybe there's some weed and more drinks. But we're not doing it for—we're not like, Well, I mean, it's wellness for a lot of us, but we're not lying to ourselves about that pedestal of wellness.
Alicia: Yeah, it's no, it's interesting. Well, because especially here, here in Puerto Rico, where, you know, there's so much gentrification and displacement, because of people who come and get tax breaks for starting their businesses here. But it's been restructured so that some actual Puerto Ricans can take advantage in some ways. But for a long time, it's been, you have to have not lived in Puerto Rico for this consecutive amount of years before 2019, or [something] like it was like, or it went into effect in 2012. But you pay like a four, zero to four percent tax rate, and you don't pay federal taxes, because you become a bona fide resident of Puerto Rico.
And then these are the people paying $2,000 for a studio, so that like now, none of our friends live anywhere near us because they've been completely priced out, you know—
Milicent: It's all the loopholes. I mean, it's like everyone who holds on to their apartment even though they moved upstate, because it's their Airbnb, and you're like, or someone could live there.
Yeah, you know, my old apartment in Greenpoint. I've had the lease on that—I'm pretty sure my old landlord is not listening to this. Since I moved here, and when I moved out, my friend lives there. And yeah, because I'm like, You're not gonna find anything. It's rent stabilized, you're like, you're not gonna find anything this affordable. I mean, and that's also interesting, because I think about that—I thought about that before the pandemic, where the food pantries in Bed-Stuy, you know, and we're across, there's a rehab across from us. And then there's like, to the right of us, there's a lot of brownstones that a lot of like gentrifiers live in, and it's like, You're the ones who moved here, because this soup kitchen has been here in this building for like, over 14 years, and the rehab has been here, you know, but also what happens when people become displaced further and further away from the place that gives them the food that they need, and the services that they need? And where are they going? And how much further displacement can the city handle or Puerto Rico? Or, you know…
Alicia: Yeah, everywhere.
Millicent: Everywhere. And then I think, I mean I think about that so much is how, and I have moved in my life, like being able to move freely, and kind of make decisions based on you know, where you're trying to, just moving around, is such a privilege and we don't actually talk about that.
I think that the people who—the media voices that we hear the most are the worst representational voices of who most of the people are. I think that most of us are living pretty fraught financial lives. I think that if you actually have student loans— I think that we're haves and have-nots now, you know, and if you have student loans, you have to actually work for money and not just work for what you hope your life is. But the voices that we hear the most that tell us like, where to eat, what Airbnb to [stay in], you know, who have like, the most exposure, are the people we should listen to the least.
Alicia: The least, yeah. [Laughs.]
But it's really interesting, because people—those people are successful. People want—they have a huge audience; people want that. And that's what's troubling to me. Like, I as a person, who does, who's a writer, and then like, I have to sell myself a little bit. I think I've come around now to being like, I'm done even trying to sell myself, you know, I'm like, What is is and whatever will be will be and so—but the idea that that's a popular mode of engaging with the world is so troubling to me, existentially, because it's just like, we don't want to grapple with reality—we don't, and it becomes increasingly more necessary to do so.
Millicent: Well, it's the question of do we not want to grapple with reality or are we still having problems with—because people are drawn to your work, you know. People are drawn and there's this, people would be like, That person is so real, but people are definitely drawn to it, you know. Which came first: is it like the influencer, or the following or the escapism and the inability to deal with reality.
Alicia: Yeah, no, it's definitely a chicken or egg thing.
Millicent: It's a chicken or egg thing. But I was reading an older essay that was in the Times, written by a woman who had moved upstate before the pandemic. And I was like, New York Times, isn't it time to stop just publishing this voice? Because this voice—do we really have that many white women in their 40s who we should be listening to about moving upstate and how they're ahead of the COVID people, because there's a slight patting on the back of like, I wasn't part of that wave. And it's like, Well, are you actually doing something or are you writing about it? But I'm like, it's the Times’ choice. And I'm like, don't do that.
And then I saw that—was it the Times? They published something by a Chinese-American person who—it was all about the subway. And it was great. It was about the Sunset Park shootings, but just how this person has taken the subway his entire life, and how that mode of transportation is important. But for a moment, I was just like, Oh my god, they got an op-ed by someone who lives on the subway and don't take that away from him—Eric Adams and the NYPD, you know… And we're, I mean, look at it—media and all the people up top, how many people do they know? They just know—it is still super gatekeeper-y.
Alicia: Yeah, yeah. No, it's hard. And I mean, I wanted to ask, too, because, you've written that Brooklyn is such a place of stark dichotomies, in terms of, you have the new restaurants and the extreme wealth, and you have—20 percent of its population [was] food insecure before the pandemic. And, you know, there was this moment of like, kind of what we were talking about, but there was also this moment where hunger was on the forefront of the conversation like community fridges, and mutual aid, and that sort of thing.
Like, has that died down? Or, you know, what is the conversation? What is the landscape like?
Millicent: That has definitely died down, and it started to die down when people had to go back to work. And like, but also like, the community fridges kind of blew too big too fast. You know, like we worked with a bunch of community fridges, and there was a lot of in vogue writing about them and anyone could open them, but they also need a community to sustain them. So, that kind of ballooned and, and some have closed.
Mutual aid—there's still smaller groups that are really dedicated to their mutual aid and working with people and especially working with people who are being kicked out of shelters and all the really terrible things that the city is doing in different tenants unions.
I feel like what really emboldened me over the past two years was how radicalized a lot of people became, like younger people. I'm 48, okay, so I'm Gen X. I think we've got—the boomers can move on, you know. Gen X, we're gonna die before the boomers because that's just—they got all the good stuff and we're just depressed, but it feels like a lot more people have been radicalized. But now the question is—I mean, it's a small percentage that I feel like is left because now that people are kind of going back to their really kind of decadent, made-for-Instagram ways. But things are really bad for people in this city, and there's not a lot of support. And I guess that's the part where I'm like, you have to be so willfully blind to people as you walk by them to not think that there's problems and to still stay so committed to whatever you think your life is supposed to be.
And for me, I was just really tired of feeding rich people. You know, like working in restaurants, it was always a community and feeding friends and feeding community and whatever. And then it just became rich people, and I don't like rich people.
Alicia: When did that shift happen? Do you feel like you felt that shift, in terms of who was able to go to restaurants?
Millicent: I don't think so. I mean, I think that I challenged myself to work outside—like, I worked in Brooklyn restaurants for a while and it was when there were a lot of artists opening things because the rents were low. And then that slowly changed and I was really tired of how homogenous the kitchens were, where it was just this is all the same guy with the same liberal arts education and everybody's the same. And then I would go—and then I went to Manhattan, and I tried to learn more and it was way more intense. It was all—it's all intense, but I think there was just a point where, I don't like anyone here anymore. I'm not looking for validation from food-obsessed—I don't know.
Because also when I moved here, it's not like I went out to restaurants all the time; I just worked in one. And I knew that when I was in the kitchen, friends that would come in, or people in the neighborhood that would come in and different kitchens and things like that. But through elevating or going into different restaurants or whatever, even just the concept of elevating, I just didn't—it wasn't for me. And I don't care for the status of it. You know, and also I was never the person who got the status of it, because I wasn't the chef or I wasn't the owner or I wasn't anyone.
You know, for me what's always been so confusing about food—I read Kitchen Confidential when I worked in a kitchen when I was 27 and I totally got it because I also grew up going to bars, like my dad's place. And when we would go to Rehoboth Beach, we would go to the Rusty Rudder and count the bartender's tips. I've been going to bars since I was born, so I got Kitchen Confidential.
And then I just didn't understand when I moved here why no one—you know, I grew up on a farm, I grew up in the business and I've worked, but no one was ever interested in me, in writing about me or talking to me, or anything that I wrote. I mean, I can only assume it's because I'm not making anyone feel good about anything, you know?
Alicia: [Laughs.] They don't like that.
Millicent: They don't like that! Or the way that they like it is that you have to be—it has to make people feel edgy and you have to be super charming. And, yes, I'm really charming, but I'm not going to blow smoke up anyone's ass to make them feel better about how hard it is to be a farmer or work the line or anything.
Alicia: Yeah, yeah—no, that's so interesting. I feel like for me, I think leaving New York and kind of getting away from it made it a lot easier for me to divest from traditional notions of success as a writer or as a food writer. And so you know, it's been so freeing, which is great. But you know, yesterday, the James Beard media nominations came out or whatever, and someone was like, I can't believe Alicia Kennedy's newsletter hasn’t been—I didn't submit. I didn't pay $150. [Editor’s note: It’s now $100 per entry.]
Millicent: Right? You have to submit, right? Oh my god, I gotta say that I learned about that through one of your podcasts about submitting and how you have to pay, because I was like, I'm sorry—are you telling me that neither you nor I, in the year 2020 of what we wrote about food, are you saying that wasn't, that shouldn't be in an anthology? I mean, I'm not a very hubristic person. But that s**t that I wrote about the partially dried duck that I got during shutdown, that two-part thing and like, nobody's writing that, okay? Nobody's writing that. Nobody is coming at it from that—nobody's experiencing that dystopia and writing about it. There were plenty of people experiencing dystopia, for sure.
But it's—you gotta pay to play. And how do you—so if you always have to pay to play, then you just have the same people in the room, and even if they're different people, they have to do the same things, so how are they ever going to be different? Or there's a f*****g scholarship, you know, but you're still working with the same systems of like, restaurants are perfect. You just want them to be perfect, so you can always go to them and feel good about stuff. But they're based on ultimately exploitative work. They're based out of people who couldn't afford servants, but didn't want to cook all the time. That's what restaurants are.
And the systems are all the same and the people who try to keep opening the systems up, they still want themselves to be the gatekeepers, you know, and that's the media—that is totally the media, that the person who was criticizing all the memoirs by white chefs, white female chefs. And it's like, Well, you're still here, because you're gonna gatekeep who? The Black female chef whose memoir you're gonna do? You know, yeah, you guys still just want to be the gatekeepers and make sure that you stay relevant—because you have to stay relevant, so you have status—so that you stay relevant, so you have status, so you can still make money.
And your perspective of moving to Puerto Rico kind of broke that. And for me, I feel I was still trying to chase that to be an outlier. But I was still—the only reason why I was in Bon Appetit is because a friend of a friend. My friend was having a pie contest at his shop, to raise money where I worked. It wasn't because anyone at Bon Appetit was interested in me: It was a friend of a friend who's connected who hooked me up with someone. And then anytime I pitched to them, they were like, No, no, no, but they were like, Tell us about the poor people, how's it going? So I had access, but only in one way.
And then I feel the pandemic kind of—I was like, Millicent, you're part of the problem, because you want to be invited to everything. I mean, I'll spite-crash any party, you know, it's fun. But I wanted to be the kind of classic—I mean, this is a very white male thing, outlier, you know, but who's still invited to everything, and has status.
And like—
Alicia: But you only get to be that if you're a white male.
Millicent: You only get to be that if you're a white male or there's a couple, there's a couple of females—there's one who's grandfathered in. But you only get to be that. And I was like, my desire for status is not helping me and it's not helping anything. And so I'm like, f**k status. It's more freeing. But it's also something I have to keep in check.
I mean, I'm always interested when you write about like, Vogue or the New York Times, and I think for a lot of us who feel like we're outside, how do we participate in these institutions? Like, man, if I was ever in the New York Times, my mom would be so excited. I've been a part of restaurants that are in the New York Times and I've never been mentioned. And it's so meaningful to our family when that happens. And also, I would imagine, for me at some point, but I'm not going to pretend that's ever going to happen. There's such weird relationships with those institutions.
Alicia: Oh yeah, super weird. Like I—yeah, for me, it's always like, okay, it's nice to be seen, because it just allows me to keep doing my work. You know, if everyone stopped seeing me, then I don't get to do it anymore. And for me, and I've been really lucky, of course, like I wrote—my book will come out eventually, who the hell knows.
Millicent: Supply chain issues, right?
Alicia: Supply chain issues and edit—like issues of… The funny thing is to have your book sort of pre-mentioned in the New York Times, like in the T magazine by Ligaya Mishan, who's a fantastic food writer, but my publisher doesn't talk to me, so I don't actually know anything. [Editor’s note: It’ll be summer 2023.] You would think they'd want to get the book out by me because I have had moments of success and should ride it. But no, they're making you have to keep it—yeah, I have to just keep going and—
Millicent: They're making you doggy paddle. They're like, when you've stuck your head up, keep your head up. And then right when you're like, I can't do this anymore, they're like, Don't worry, we got you a PR person. [Laughs.]
Alicia: Exactly, exactly. But until then I must just—doggy paddling is the best f*****g metaphor for that, for how it feels, because it's, you know, I don't want to be a food writer because I want everyone to look at me. I just want to talk about things. You know, that's what I like to do! [Laughs.]
Millicent: Well, and I really like how you've loosened that up for you. I mean, two years ago, we both know Melissa McCart from—she's an editor and she's great. And I had written some things for Heated. And she was like, You should be writing all the time. And I was also like, Oh, I'm out working during a deadly virus pandemic and trying to not kill my partner, or anyone I work with, and trying to figure out like, we're nowhere and we're everywhere. And I couldn't—and I had to let go of that feeling that I need to capitalize on this moment, because I had to figure out a new way to take care of myself or else I wouldn't have been able to do what I do. And it was also so physically brutal, just moving food. And I kind of gave that to myself instead of being like, I could have been somebody—because, yeah, I was like, I just I can't—I’ve just got to survive this.
Alicia: Yeah, yeah. It's a hard negotiation.
Millicent: It definitely is. It definitely is. I mean, hopefully I can change that. I mean, my goal is to write more and to actually have a newsletter. I've just, I think, two months ago I was like, Shut up, Millicent, just stop qualifying it and being like, there's too many newsletters and what if—just do it.
Alicia: Yours would be wildly different from anyone else’s, so.
Millicent: Well, because I'm writing anyway, you know, yeah. But they make it. They make it hard, does it ever—I mean, how does anyone read all the newsletters?
Alicia: I do. I mean, because I was a copy editor at New York Magazine, a digital copy editor, I became a very, very fast reader.
Millicent: You're such a good reader, too.
Alicia: But the reason I can read fast is because of that job. Like I would have to read 10,000 words of TV recaps before 9 a.m. So, like… [Laughs.]
Millicent: I mean, let's just talk about that for a second. When I was in my 20s, there was one person who had a job doing TV recaps, Heather—what's her last name? She's a great writer. She writes for…Heather Havrilesky? I'm not sure.
Alicia: Oh yeah yeah yeah, Ask Polly.
Millicent: Yeah, she would write about it. Now that can be a job for everyone. But shouldn’t someone who has a job writing TV recaps be in charge of making society better instead of writing TV recaps?
Alicia: I think—who is, uh Mindy Isser, she did—she is a great human, she's a great writer, too, but I think she's a labor organizer. But she was on Twitter the other day, quote-tweeting someone who was like, ‘Every job deserves, deserves respect,’ it's like, or ‘every job is a valid job,’ something like that. And she's like, Actually, a lot of people should be doing something else. Like, instead of being on their computers, they should be planting trees.
And I agree for myself even. The nice thing about having the freedom of what I do, and now that my book is done, and so I don't feel like I'm going to die every day—because that's how that felt—but I'm like, I need to put my energy, my excess time and energy and fruits, you know, existence into doing something to make the world better, not to make anything better for myself, because things for me are as good as they're probably gonna get. Unless, you know—Okay, I have extra time and extra, so I gotta put that energy somewhere where it'll do good for the world, like and I'm gonna figure that out. [Laughs.]
Millicent: I'm always—I feel like that always, that's the balance, you know? And like, when people are like, Don't you feel good about yourself? And I was like, No, I don't feel good about myself—the world is hell. But we can't all just write TV recaps. Sorry, TV recap people, I read you, but that used to be 20 years ago; there was only one, and now it's just too much.
Alicia: Yeah, yeah. No, there needs to be a big transfer of energy for doing things that actually matter. And I feel it for myself, and I feel it for the world. And I think a lot of people feel it, you know. I mean, even before, years ago, a lot of people find a lot more satisfaction in jobs that are physical, like in jobs or doing work that is not considered prestigious, than they do find in the job they do that gets them more money. And of course, you want to make an amount of money that makes you comfortable. I mean, there's a difference obviously between being comfortable and being a hoarder.
But, you know, there's a reason for that. You want to—it's a way of protecting yourself and it’s way of protecting your loved ones, is to have a job that pays you a salary that is comfortable, and that's an ever-changing goalpost, especially with inflation, etc. But like, how much more satisfaction in my life did I get when I was baking, or when I was bartending, than I get from tapping on a computer? I mean, I don't know.
Millicent: The visceral aspect, and I think it's also, because I feel the same. I can be a real heady person, but that's why I liked line cooking. There's a certain point where—I love working with my body and it's a different relationship with it, because it's also a relationship not built out of being seen and how do you look, but how do you function and what can you do and how strong are you? And that's such a better way to live in your body, for me, which is also—so the work I've done, you know, I had moments of being a real egghead. But I've taken care of cows. You know, I've worked in restaurants. When I worked at a record distributor, there was certainly a lot of moving of boxes of records. And like, that is—whenever I'm living like that, it's better.
But then there's also the capitalist exploitative line where you're like, And you crossed it, and now I'm crumpling, which is something that restaurants are really good at doing.
Alicia: Well, I mean to talk about your writing work, the issue of Diner Journal: Dear Island about doing private chef work upstate. I think upstate, right? When I say upstate, I mean New York.
Millicent: It was in the Adirondacks, so it's upstate, but not like upstate—it's like closer to Canada, around Lake Placid.
Alicia: Oh okay, wow, that’s up there.
Millicent: It was great because it was mainly free of anyone from New York.
Alicia: [Laughter.] Yeah. Well, you know, it's such a—it's so good. And like, I meant to ask you more specifically about your writing in this conversation, but I was just kind of winging it. But you know, it's such—you really are such a brilliant writer—like self-reflection, humor, the self-awareness that I think anyone listening to this is understanding exists, which is always refreshing.
Millicent: I'm so red with anxiety and like, thank you!
Alicia: No, it's absolutely brilliant. And I was actually, I was super floored reading it. I just read it like a book and was like—holy s**t. I knew you were great from what you wrote on the internet, but then I was like, but here you're getting like—
Millicent: But the internet wasn't funny, that was COVID. That was like, Listen, and this is, What the f**k am I doing here? Who is this Wes Anderson family?
Alicia: And I think that's—I'm so excited for you to launch your newsletter because I would hope to see kind of that mix a bit.
Millicent: For sure. I mean, I think I've just been real—I mean, the whole reason I started an Instagram account when I started that job, and it was private chef but it wasn't like private chef money, like what private chefs would make like, and of course, I have to qualify that because I'm all—‘I’m working class,’ but not really.
But it was such a weird and interesting place. But I started my Instagram account, because I was like, I'm going somewhere very strange. And I just say that because then, if anyone follows me, and then they're like, Wow, she's so intense about politics and hunger over the past two years. And well, it's been a pretty intense past two years, but I am a funny person.
Alicia: Yes, yes. [Laughter.]
Millicent: Not that statement. No one ever believes that when someone says it like that.
Alicia: No, no, no, but I mean, I think for me, I want to be thought of as funny, which is a terrible thing to want, I guess. Because it's corny. But for me, it's funny, because I'll make jokes, or what I think are jokes on Twitter, and people will just be so serious in the replies and I'm like, Forget it. But then I did see a comedian today make a joke and people be very, very serious in the replies. And I was like, All right, like this is just, this is the environment in which we’re living in…
Millicent: Our way of communicating—and you actually wrote about this, where it's like people are like, That person's right and I agree with all of it, or That person's wrong. And it's like, jokes never come across in texting. And it's real, it's real hard in any version of social media. It just doesn't work like this, and also, then that beg to—like we're communicating mostly with a really terrible means of communication, if these things aren't conveying humor and nuance, it's pretty shitty.
Alicia: What good are they for? Yeah.
Millicent: Fights. They’re good for fights.
Alicia: Good for fights. [Laughs.] Well, I wanted to ask, because in the introduction to that, you wrote about choosing which cookbooks to take up with you and you wanted to bring Prune, and then you decided not to, and I wanted to ask, you know, what cookbooks you would take now to an island?
Millicent: I mean, I've thought about this, because I was also like, I don't feel like I've purchased a lot of new cookbooks. I would take—I did just get the Gullah Geechee Home Cooking…
Alicia: Oh, nice. Yeah.
Millicent: Well, first of all, it's a matriarch of an island. And that is, you need someone who is on an island, because it's very specific. You don't have access to everything. Also, all of this, Emily Meggett, all of this is in my wheelhouse, of kind of like very country cooking. There's stuff, you know, there's crabs, I'm there.
I would say the Olia Hercules books. Those are, I think this is what I know about cooking on an island, is that when you want to spread out a little bit, or any kind of like cooking that you're doing for hire, you don't want to like, jump to who you aren't, you need to kind of, for me, I need to have different ideas of variations on a theme and like I do, I can bake. I make pie crust, like I have variations of crust and ideas of things that I do. And I think that this cookbook, the Gullah Geechee and Olia Hercules. There's always variations on—she has so many doughs, you know, and things stuffed, greens and things like that. And I'm like, all right, that's a variation I can do.
I always take a version of The Flowering Hearth, because I just want to live there. And then, I always take The Saltie Cookbook—I don't know if you have that one.
Alicia: I need it! It was out of print.
Millicent: It’s out of print, you better find it because—
Alicia: I know, I have to buy a copy.
Millicent: I use that one the most, because it's vinaigrettes, bread, desserts, and like, it's the most cross-referenced for everything. And then I always take—you ever read the Jim Harrison, the writer, Jim Harrison?
Alicia: I have one of his books on my shelves, but I haven't read it yet.
Millicent: You know, he's a big cook and hunter, and he had a column in Esquire called “The Raw and the Cooked”—the book is all of his essays. And for Saltie and for Jim Harrison, I always take them with me and whenever I've opened a restaurant and I haven't been able to see any friends forever, I read them because they're my friends’ voices. It's like Caroline, and A.D., and Rebecca, and Elizabeth and Saltie…
And then Jim Harrison. I mean, he is—whatever. He's an old white American male; there are going to be problems. But also, he was a screenwriter, along with a fiction and poetry writer. He has an amazing essay about eating with Orson Welles where they try to like both jump out of a check, and I think there's lines of cocaine somewhere during the meal. There's an essay about a gout flare-up in the airport wearing his favorite leather boots, you know. And so, for me, cookbooks, sometimes I feel like I don't cook from them, I just like to read from them.
And then also, I would totally go with vegan or vegan baking because you can really stuff someone on an island. And so I think vegan baking, also because you can have more shelf-stable things to substitute. And I don't do it enough but I like cooking with different grains, just because it gives different textures and like AP flour, just—AP flour, sugar, butter, like, we've all done that, you know?
Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm in a big flour moment right now—
Millicent: What does that mean?
Alicia: [Laughs.] It means that, it means that people were upset that I am always doing recipes with AP flour, and not with whole grains. But I don't have access to a whole grain flour here. So I, now I have to, I'm trying to get into working with different root vegetable, quote, unquote, flour.
Millicent: Oh, fascinating!
Alicia: Which is cool—and it's, but at the same time, I can't, you know, when I write a recipe for a cake, it's still gonna just have AP flour in it, you know. It's just because I need other people to make it.
Millicent: It's also about access, you know, and that's something that people don't talk about that much. And when you write about food accessibility in Puerto Rico, and when people write about Cuba and food accessibility there, that's really important, but also the access of people anywhere, you know? And we can get anything, I mean, this is—we talked about this—we can get anything all the time; we shouldn't be able to get anything all the time now. Things should be harder for us.
Alicia: In general, things need to be harder. And that's a hard thing to tell people, but I think if my writing has a thesis point that I haven't explicitly articulated, it's: things need to be harder.
Millicent: Things need to be hard, because guess what, they're hard for a lot of people. And we're—how many people for you to lead your life are exploited so you can do what you want to do? I mean, people—and I'm not, listen, there's nothing exploitation-free about me. But I think about it a lot. And consumption for me now, I’m finding how there's a shift in me where it's just what used to be satisfying isn’t necessarily satisfying for me.
Alicia: No, absolutely.
Millicent: I drink tea now.
Alicia: Instead of coffee?
Millicent: Yeah, I mean, now I think I'm back to a cup of coffee a day, maybe. But I have—that was just like the past two days. I was like, come on, let's get some life back into us.
But yeah, COVID in December, and I had it again and I was like, Tea tastes so nice! But I used to drink so much coffee and smoke a pack a day and drink bourbon you know, but some things—and that wasn't right before the pandemic, but I'm just saying, I've noticed the things. I liked shutdown.
I'm gonna say something real unpopular: I liked shutdown. I liked being—I also had a different life for everyone where I went outside and worked and my partner's a musician, so I had live music every week for his Instagram show. But the stretching everything and being really intentional and all of that, and not getting to have whatever, and really having social interactions sustain me—and for longer than they used to. Everything was way more meaningful. And I really appreciate that. And I hope that some of that has stayed with me, you know?
Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Well, how do you define abundance?
Millicent: I think—enough, you know? The feeling of enough, because I think the feeling of enough is kind of contentment. Because abundance is dangerous, look at all—everyone who has abundance, it's never enough, you know?
Alicia: Right. Right. No, yeah. I think this question is about being, you know, redefining abundance to me and I have enough because, we're talking about so many people do not have enough. And so trying to reframe the thinking around what that means is, I think, a powerful tool, imaginary tool for reconsidering.
Millicent: I think what they're calling it now, Alicia, is a perspective shift.
Alicia: Yes, a consciousness shift or consciousness raising. [Laughs.]
Millicent: I am not going to say that working at a food pantry makes me feel good about myself or like I've done anything good, but it has recalibrated what I think about my life.
Alicia: Yeah, well, and for you, and in general, is cooking a political act?
Millicent: I don't think cooking is but I think feeding is, and I think that they're different. And that's got to be talked about more because cooking is—no. I think people pat themselves on the back too much thinking they're doing something political.
And I know, years ago, a friend of mine, we were catering—it was a social justice food award that this Episcopal Church in Long Island gave out. And I was all, I work in restaurants; we buy from farms, and I grew up on a farm and I know—and I remember one of the farmers, he was from Iowa, and he was talking about how worried they were because they'd heard that white supremacists had moved into the neighboring county and so they're just really worried about the people who worked on their farm.
And I heard his speech and I was just—and this was before Trump was in office, you know, this was, this was in—let's just say before Trump was in office. And I remember feeling humbled and being like, You don't know s**t, Millicent. You know, and money's politics, but systems or—money needs to be systematic for it to be political, you know.
Alicia: I think that's so important and that you allowed yourself to be humbled and have that change your approach to things is such a rare, I think, a rare characteristic to encounter.
Millicent: I'm humbled all the time. [Laughter.]
Alicia: Well, thank you so much for being here. This has been so, so great. And yes, it's been interesting of course, that I just get to meet people over Zoom and record it, that I've just wanted to talk to, and this was one where I've just—I just really want to talk to the person and so here we are.
Millicent: Well, you know, when you, when you come to town, we'll get some tea, or a martini.
Alicia: Okay!
Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe
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A Conversation with Andrea Hernandez
11 maj 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I'm talking to Andrea Hernandez, the oracle behind the newsletter Snaxshot, which explores food and beverage trends with humor, broad insight, and gorgeous graphics.
Nothing about the conversation went according to plan. I had to reschedule because of Puerto Rico's archipelago-wide blackout, my usual recording software wasn't loading, my laptop and Andrea's AirPods were dying, and we went totally off the prepared script to discuss the limits of tech that doesn't cross borders, having to be self-motivated as independent workers, adaptogens, commodification of culture, and much more.
Alicia: Hi, Andrea. How are you?
Andrea: I'm good. I'm actually doing good. [Laughter.] Thanks for asking me, how about you?
Alicia: I'm good. I'm good. I know, you've had some power problems lately.
Andrea: I was honestly, yesterday, I was like, Oh, God, because yesterday, I woke up with no electricity. And then at night, the power went out too. And I'm like, I don't know if we're gonna be able to do this. I was gonna have to— I don't know if tomorrow will be okay. But thank God, there's been no issues. I don’t wanna jinx myself. [Laughs.]
Alicia: Right. Well, yeah, we rescheduled this because there was a blackout in Puerto Rico and then there have also been problems in a lot of other places as well. It's interesting, because someone messaged me in the Pacific Northwest, in Oregon, and was like, “We're having bad weather, I don't know if the power is going to hold.”
And I feel like this is something that's underestimated and that's not as discussed, I think, because people in New York and LA don't have these problems right now, you know, and so I did want to talk to you about that, about how do you get your work done, and how do you keep your kind of resolve because also, as independent writers—as I know, of course—we are self-motivated completely with kind of, these unpredictable issues that happen.
Andrea: Yeah, it really sucks at times when, at night, because it's like, well, I don't really have anywhere else to go. My phone has been sort of like what I default to, which is, like, so funny that you put yourselves in these positions, like I've literally, like, learned to do like, writing on Substack on my phone, which is like the most tedious thing—I wish they would like improve upon that experience. But I'm also, you know, before my laptop battery died, I will literally use my phone as a hotspot, for whatever, [how long] it can last.
But yeah, I think—it's just so funny, because I talk to a lot of people from literally all over the world, people from Sydney and London and all these places. [And] they are always surprised. They're like, Wait, like, you're in Honduras? And I'm like, yeah, and they're just like, so shocked. They can't believe that someone from an unknown hub could be putting out work that's recognized in their places.
So I think, to me, it's like, you mentioned something, like the self-motivation. It's so true. I talk to people, constantly, that there's no hack. You need to get the work done. Nobody else is doing it for us; we don't have a team so that we can default to—it's on you. So you have to figure it out, and I think growing up, my parents taught me that sort of resiliency of, you have to figure it out. Like, there's no backup. So, you have to…there's a saying, it's called the “the law of the wittiest,” “la ley del mas vivo” in Spanish, which is like you just have to be streetwise and figure out, Okay, this isn't working, let's try to figure out which angle to work at, whatever. And so I think that's my approach to everything. And I again, we’ve got no power—okay, cool, my phone. Like, there's no, Oh, you know what, let me just, I'll nap and see if something happens. [Laughter.]
Especially growing up in countries where you don't have infrastructures to depend on. Like, you can’t depend on your government; you can’t depend on the infrastructures. Even growing up in a politically unstable country has taught me I can't even rely on there being peace. There's gonna be unsettling things that happen and you kind of just have to figure out how to work it out. And also the emotional toll that these things take on you. I think I addressed this last week. I feel like I've internalized these things, but the reality is, it f***s with you. It’s like s**t, you know, I am not really competing, because I don't see myself and I'm like competing with mass mediums, whatever, because I'm like, kind of the antithesis of that. But I'm like, yo, there's so many people with so many resources out and I have to figure out how to, on top of all the s**t that I have going on, like, Oh, f**k, I don't have like electricity, so does that mean that I get to miss out on publishing this on time or whatever.
And I think it's something that's not really talked about because a lot of the main publications or people who get clout or—it's so funny when people send me examples of like, Oh, look at how these people are using Substack and yo, I don't even have the ability to paywall Substack, a lot of people don't even know that: having Stripe is a privilege in itself. And I've been very vocal about how it's frustrating; it does take at times, an emotional toll, but it's not like I can be crying and just sitting down, being like, Oh, look at how unfair life is like no, it's like, you have to work with what you got. So, yeah, I mean, that was a long-winded answer to your question. But yeah.
Alicia: And how do you deal with—because I mean, we'll get to obviously, my normal questions and everything—but how do you deal with people probably assuming you do have a team, right? And people assuming that you have all these resources? It's an interesting space to be in, because as you said, you can't even paywall your Substack because of their weird national borders that they maintain—
Andrea: Yeah, I don't even get it. I'm like, Why the hell do you tie your platform to just one thing? It feels like excluding the majority of the people. It's a f*****g paradox: You're supposed to be an equalizing career, whatever, but it's not really true.
But yeah, it's so crazy, that at the same time validating, I literally had people say, I thought you were a team of 20. Like, I thought you were an actual publication. Like, there's no way that you could be doing all this, like as a one-person team, like, I had people telling me like, I can't believe that—I refuse to believe that, because it's not possible.
And the funniest thing that happened to me was at this conference Expo West that I got a free press pass to, and I was going to be a speaker at a panel there. So I was there and I was walking and I remember someone coming up to me like, Oh my god, you work for Snaxshot? What part of Snaxshot do you work at? And I was like, That's so funny. I even joked that I should have brought all these different changes, like clothing changes. And I could have dressed up like different people…
When you have a fire lit up under your ass, you have to wear all these different hats because it's your default mode. And I think to me, it's just been extremely validating that you think, like that people think that this is, like the work is so—that I have value and that it’s got that much quality, that people assume that there's more people behind it.
But at the same time, I want to highlight just how much respect I have for people who have to do everything themselves because they don't have the resources. And also they have to deal with, on top of being underresourced like that, they have to deal with like f*****g infrastructural problems. To me, those people are like: mad respect. Who gives a s**t, you know, if you're, like, in The New York Times, whatever…like that, to me is like, okay, cool. They are a f*****g corporation, whatever. But like, I'm more about mad respect for the people who have to be doing their work on top of all these other things that serve as obstacles.
So I don't know, I feel like I love to tell people like, Yo, if I could do this with the bare minimum, and on top of that, f*****g things like not having electricity, what's stopping you from doing it, dude? Like, seriously, especially Americans—like just f*****g go and do it. And I talked to Gen Z a lot about that, because I'm like, Stop letting people tell you that you have to be struggling and working without pay to get yourself somewhere and that they have to give you permission to make your space in this world. And, I think that I have also been able to prove that as someone who's living outside of a usual hub of where like, you know, media is a thing. And to show people like, I've scratched my way in dude. Yeah, it's possible, so anyways—
Alicia: But I love it because you're such a success story for—and like you're saying, there are so many limitations that I think we have to be talking about when we're talking about, to use that construction, these new ways of ‘supposedly’ equalizing the field. Because you know, Substack gives itself a lot of credit. We're on Substack platform; Substack is paying for this podcast to be edited. But, Substack is using a payment processor exclusively that isn't available to everyone.
And you know, for me, of course, Substack has been such a great opportunity for me to make my career, basically. But at the same time, you know, I'm aware that because of that, I think more people should have access to that around the world, too, because also considering you're going to be able to make money from currencies that might be valued more highly, for whatever reason, than your local currency. And you'll be able to really like…do something, you know, for yourself in a way that—that's what this should be about. It shouldn't be about the same people in the same places being able to continue to make money.
Angela: And I'm not gonna lie, I feel like Substack is lending itself to perpetuating that, more than the other way around. I love your story, I feel like to me, and I keep saying now, I feel like, you were also sort of an inspiration of, whoa, this person is literally breaking through from like, the established sort of ‘circle jerk’ of same things. It's true.
And, you know, I feel like I love to be able to see that happening, and that I can see people that I want to sort of emulate sort of the same thing, where it's like, when I start, it's natural. And I remember, I don't want it to be the same, Oh, people are pitching to me. And they think that they can flood in and, you know, whatever.
I have actively remained with that sense of like—I don't do sponsorships, I don't do advertising, because I'm like, How do I break this model? And how do I even, if it's hard, how do I test it to keep some sort of—how does it look like community validating a medium? How does it look like when I'm actually able to speak freely, without having some sort of conflict of interest, or whatever, or feeling that I have to censor myself?
And I had publications come to me and ask me, like, Why don’t you pitch for us? We're talking like really big ones—I'm not gonna say names. But I've literally been like, after they've talked me through the process of pitching and the editing, by the time that you're done with it, that's not me. You literally trickled away the authenticity from me.
So it's not valuable to me, and I have had some sort of—I don't know, for some reason, the younger generation, really loves to read Snaxshot. And I have literally 17-year-olds, coming to me, and college students, whatever. And I have had publications tell me, we want to bring you in, and we want you to pitch stories, whatever, because we want to see if we can draw that younger audience. And I'm like, Yo, you can't buy that s**t; it has to be like an authentic thing. And if you can't, if you have to continuously be extracting that and like, how do I keep getting more from you, without giving in return? You're not gonna make it with this new generation, because this new generation is all about more of, Let's level here. Yeah, you know, we call the b******t—
Yeah, it's been very interesting to see how Substack emerged as a creator thing, but no hate, no disrespect. But all the people I mean, I subscribe to the emails and all the stuff that I get, it's like—this person was a New York Times food reporter and now it's like, Oh, the food coverage, whatever, this person is coming from, then it's the same people who already had the platforms in the first place. So you know, Substack, obviously, I'm on that platform. Because, you know, it's easy and convenient for me, unfortunately, you know, obviously I had to find loopholes around trying to find ways to monetize it. But yeah, I feel like I would love to see more people, more success stories from people who weren't already in this industry in the first place.
Alicia: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, and it's really interesting to me how self-perpetuating those things are, and like you're saying, maybe we're gonna see a change in that from the younger generation. You know, what are you—because I love that you're very in tune with what people want, obviously, that's your whole job. And also seeing these patterns and these trends in a way that isn't tacky. Like that isn't like, it's not like these, you know, press releases I get where it's like, This is gonna be the flavor of the year because McCormick says so, but you really have your finger on the pulse in a real way.
And what are you seeing? Are you seeing that, you're saying this—that people are getting back into maybe wanting to see that kind of homegrown authentic, maybe weird—
And I was thinking about this because I was reading an interview with Hilton Als, the writer from The New Yorker, on Dirt, which is another great newsletter, and it was about his Instagram and how it's like very old school in that he'd kind of just post whatever—he doesn't think about the algorithm. He posts kind of any image he wants to, long caption, short captions, not thinking of it. And he said, you know, the culture was different at a different time. And when I was growing up, you know, I read magazines to find out about things I didn’t know yet. And I feel like now, a lot of the cultural tide and the coverage has turned to be about telling people what they already know. And like, you can't write about things that are an unknown quantity. And so how do you approach this?
Andrea: Oh my god. You hit it like—this—just like, yes. Because I had this on my mind because Taylor Lorenz, I also love the way that she basically made her own beat. She wrote about that, she's like, Journalism should not be about telling people what they already know. It should be about the stories that don't want to get—like that people don't want you to know. And I was like, That's it, dude! Because I literally [wrote] about this. I'm like, Why are we regurgitating the same s**t? I think that's why the appeal of it: well, no one's saying this and I appreciate the ability to be able to do so because it is important.
So one of the latest issues that I wrote was on how I believe that Expo West and all these fancy food conferences are actually a way of gatekeeping diverse founders, because they're so expensive. And you know, the majority of them, who the fuckcan afford $20,000 for the starting cost of a booth, you know? And so I wrote about this, and I just really let it out. And I was like, Dude, no one goes there to see—you cannot go predict what's coming up next there. Why? Because it's f*****g gatekeeping to like, people who already have the means for it. And I wrote about, and the title’s called, “This Could Be a Future,” because I'm like, our future should look diverse. Not the same f*****g people who just—the ex-CMO of Pepsi went and launched a f*****g snackbar, like, that's not the future. It shouldn't be.
And so you know, I wrote this really just heartfelt, like my experiences. And I was like, no disrespect, you know, but to be honest, it felt like these conferences are losing the relevancy, whatever, especially amongst the younger generation. And one of the reasons why is because they don't see themselves reflected and represented, which makes sense. So, I wrote about that and every other Medium piece was “Five Trends That I Saw At Expo West!” [Laughter] Dude like, by the time that people can afford $20,000 worth of a booth, these companies already have venture money; they're already in Whole Foods—it's not a f*****g trend. You can't go and say… So I just got kind of pissed. That's just you regurgitating the f*****g obvious.
And so like, yeah, I 100 percent think that you hit the nail on the head right now. It's like, we lost the ability, one, to think, the ability to say so like, these publications can't say s**t because they're so constricted with ad money, whatever. I do love how Dirt has used that web3 dynamic to improve upon, how do you go about financially sustaining media? Like, you know, a media that's different. That's not archaic [or] tied to engagement and views or whatever. So yeah, I think what you said is so f*****g important. I'm glad we brought this up. Because yeah…
Alicia: Well, I mean, to get to Web3, too, because I wanted to talk to you about this, because of course, people are very, you know, make a mocker. I make fun of it too and I'm skeptical, of course. But there are people like Daisy Alioto from Dirt, like you, who are talking about Web3 in positive terms. And I'm like, I think I'm definitely missing something if smart people are saying this… But I want to hear from you about what's going on, basically.
Andrea: Yeah, no, no, no, no. Skepticism is necessary in all things, by the way. And when I wrote the piece about it, I was like, We do need necessary—it does have its necessary criticism. It does. 100 percent. I'm not your crypto bro about to shill you into some f*****g like, you know, like scam or whatever.
So, literally, the thing is that you have to see this less about the hype. Web3 is not McDonald's putting outa f*****g NFT of their McRib. Like, who the f**k wants that, right? To me, Web3 is about, how does this dynamic improve upon, or even better, disrupt whatever it's trying to be used for? I'll give you—I guess I will say the rise of the DAO activism, like, why don't we take community and add economics into it in a way that's more transparent? And it's not tied to red tape, right? Because like, you go and try to open a bank account, like all the stuff that you have to give, whatever. So, to me that's one reason why this type of organization makes sense in the first place, right?
Then second, I've seen people use this application in a way that's trying to go against, you know, the structures in place that continue to prey upon—I'll give you an example: Farmers Market-verse. At first your like, what the f**k is this? There's like farmers and whatever and you think like, just some sort of like, you know, another JPEG scam, whatever. But the reality is, like the thesis behind this, it's a bunch of small farmers who said, We'll use the capital we make from these NFTs that we're selling, and we have our own treasury, and they take some to mitigate the cost of running the organization. And the main idea behind it is to put a battle against ‘big agriculture.’ And so they are using that dynamic to empower themselves economic-wise. And, you know, really be more of like: Okay, we are aware of the collective and how do we help each other out? And it's not also tied to anything that's local.
And so, you know, I spent some time in their Discord. And I really loved it, because you can tell that there's that intentionality of like, help thy neighbor, right? They have, they choose, they do voting, and they choose, I think, each month or I don't know what the dynamic is now, but they choose, who do we help? Like, whose farm needs help? Like what organizations that are really trying to help our mission, can we benefit… It's like, literally an online farmers’ market and like, they post about what they're doing or whatever. And to me when I see that I'm like, that's the beauty of it.
Austin Robey, one of the founders of Dinner DAO, which is like this dinner club that's Web3, he wrote about how DAOs and co-ops have similarities and what they can learn from each other, it's an incredible piece—highly recommend it. And then even Dinner DAO, which is a supper club that meets like this sort of dynamic. I love the idea of like, dude, we’re taking something that's very simple, but we're making it, we're improving upon it. So like, they're launching their second season soon. And what it entails is that you buy sort of the membership as an NFT. And it comes with, you get assigned a table, a group of people, and you get an allocated amount, and you can use that in however you want. Whether your group wants to use it all in one f*****g fancy restaurant, or you guys want to have like multiple meetups, whatever—that's pretty cool. You know, and you don't have to be worrying about whose card is going to be used, whatever—it's more about, like we’re doing this, and we're exploring the concept of what it looks like to use this dynamic to have an experience of community around food.
There's another example, Friends with Benefits, which is the most well-known crypto-community that has been profiled now by The New York Times and all these other publications—and I'm part of it. I was graciously donated a membership, because I obviously could not afford it. But the community came together, a couple of people from the community came together and they donated whatever was needed for me to be part of it, which I greatly appreciate. And I have experienced their events and stuff and so, firsthand. And the latest proposal that they have as a collective is to buy and restore this like Chinatown, LA restaurant, and they want to convert it to a venue, whatever, but they want to use all the funds, or the stuff that they gained from that, not just to use within the community, but to properly restore something that's a historical place in downtown LA.
You know, like those kinds of things, to me, they serve as a—look what we can do without all the red tape of having to subscribe as an organization, and everything can be traceable through the blockchain, which is basically receipts that can be viewed by everybody that has access to the internet.
And, you know, there's another one, a guy that works in the spirits industry in LA, who's coming up with a project that is going to help bartenders in general to be able to, like pursue their passion and whatever else or you know, they're wanting to develop, and it's going to be sort of its own fun, but it's going to be tied to a physical spirits bottle.
I 100 percent agree that there's a lot of skeptics, like the fact that you are spending half a million dollars on a f*****g JPEG. Well, that's ridiculous. I'm more bullish on the things that are really being disrupted, that are giving me a better hope of—we don't have to be like, strapped again to Stripe; Web3, crypto helps that in so many more ways, where it's like, the regulation isn't as tight. So like, look at Dirt, they're exploring how to make a medium that is not dependent on advertising revenue, whatever, that's more in pro of whatever the community is wanting.
Do I believe it's gonna be a solution to everything? No, but I think it's an improvement and an exploration of what does it look like when we don't subscribe to archaic structures? Right, that we know that they're decaying, right? And people think for example that Twitter is the one to blame for a horrible attention span or fear-mongering, whatever. Yeah, well, I studied communications; I can tell you the history of 24/7 news, like it was not about keeping people informed. It was about, How do we share more f*****g ads on TV? Oh, we keep the news going the entire f*****g day. I feel like we just have to be a lot more like, conscientious, it's not going to be like one day everything solved. But I am very in pro ‘if this is giving me the ability to see what lies beyond having to succumb to these structures that are so predatory, then f**k it, dude,’ what else are you gonna—what else can we do? You know, like—
Alicia: Exactly, and that makes sense. And it's interesting, because I think this is a way I'm starting to think about things a little differently, too. Where it's like, just because the narrative tends to be that one thing is going to solve every problem that we have as a society doesn't mean that we have to think of it that way. You know, because I was on a panel last week with like, a grass-fed beef rancher, and lab meat—Isha Datar from New Harvest and other folks who are working, you know, to try and fix the way people eat meat in the United States, basically.
And I, you know, I came away from it, thinking, you know, Why am I always taking such a hard line about these things, when maybe what we do need is to just stop pretending there's a silver bullet for climate change, and for our relationship to meat and say, let's use a combination of approaches to solve for this problem? It’s like, let's not just, you know, we don't have to say lab meat is the answer, because it's not because of scale, because of still using energy that's fossil fuel intensive, because of—maybe people aren't going to want to eat it, for all sorts of reasons. And also there’s still ethical issues in terms of how they even take cells from the animals. Like, they have to kill calves.
And so and then, maybe, you know, protein cakes, like Impossible Burger and Beyond Meatm are part of a solution, and those SIMULATE chicken nuggets—maybe they're part of a solution, and maybe grass-fed beef as part of a solution. And maybe, you know, heritage pork and all of these things are part of a solution. Maybe these all work together to get us to a place where we stop killing the planet. And you know, and stop overconsuming.
Andrea: I think it's very important, too, to say, why are we also punishing sustainable cultures, and cultures who have historically worked with using every ingredient in the animal, you know, even kosher, which is like, supposedly like a more ethical way of making sure the animal doesn't suffer. And like, why are we casting upon these people, and in the same way…God, you're gonna love this. There's a newsletter called Goula, which is a lot of Latin American writers that are chefs and all these different backgrounds in the food industry. And I read an issue where this guy who's a chef, is talking about his experience in Oaxaca, the mushroom festival. And why I'm bringing this up is because he talks about how the Mixtec is the culture there, they don't call it hallucinogenic. They're like, this does not cause hallucinogens. We don't believe that, we believe that it amplifies your vision. So he talks about like, how are we so [hypocritical] with drugs, we don't even understand, like, the relationship to psychedelics in the Mixtec culture, Aztec culture, stems I don’t know, like thousands of years. It's literally in the Códices, like the Aztec Códices, which is basically hieroglyphics or the codes that they used to use—he talks about that we are trying to frame something that we don't understand, with lack of understanding.
And so I think that the same happens with meat, right? Where it's like, I'm blaming, and I'm punishing a collective when it's—the reality is the meat industry complex is, what, like four or five businesses? So it's like, the same way that the whole carbon footprint came about as an advertising campaign for Procter & Gamble, to sort of put the blame on the consumer and not really focus on the negative externalities of this f*****g corporation that owns what, hundreds, if not thousands of brands that contribute to that, that I think that dynamic, we don't explore it as much.
And I try to bring attention to it just from my background, working in marketing, and having gone to school to study that and study communications and the history of it, and no one's talking about specifically in the U.S., like, how the deregulation of children's advertising in the mid—’80s affected millennials and our overconsumption culture. No one talks about these things as the core root. It's more about like, I have to adapt and you know, buy expensive s**t because I'm bettering the planet. And it’s like inaccessible to the majority of people, you know? Yeah, you're going to Erewhon and you're feeling good about yourself, but who the hell can f*****g buy like a $25 shake, right? Or like now you're going to like McDonald's and you're getting yourself like an Impossible, or Beyond Meat—what, so like, it's vegan, and it's ethical because it’s no animal harmed, but what about the exploitation of the worker? Like, does that make you feel good? Or is that like, do you know?
So I feel like you said, there is no like black or white, it's very much about a gray area. And I think that we're, we're losing each other and fighting in trenches, when we should be bridging further and further toward the solution. And so I think what you said is 100%, where it's at, it's like, there's no one solution for it. Parts of the solution—yes. But at the same time, I would want for us to start sort of peeling back the b******t of these narratives. You know, like, what does it mean that Amazon's plant-based patty— it’s not going to save the world like, yeah, it also has to be like, very much like skeptical that that's going to be what solves our problem.
Alicia: Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, to start the interview the way I usually do, now that we've talked for like half an hour, but [Laughs] can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Andrea: Oh, yeah, well, I mean, I'm still in my city, Santa Pedro Sula, Honduras. I grew up eating beans, rice, plantains—lots of plantains, the sweet kind, more than the other though. As I grew older, I did [get] a knack more for the salty plantains.
But I grew up very close to my grandmother, very close to her and seeing her cook. One of my favorite memories is watching her pick out the beans, big plants, and the little rocks. She would go to the market every Saturday, she would bring us crabs, fishes and stuff; she’d make crab soup. She's from Nicaragua originally, but she came after the Civil War. And she had a lot of connection with food; she was the sole provider. She was not really divorced, but she ended up after the war, like her husband left them, her and my mom and my aunt.
And so they were in Honduras; she was a sole provider, so she was basically the one who did everything, so she did all the meals, etc. And she was living with us when I was growing up and I loved just sitting—it was a kind of a meditative thing. Like you're just sitting there, you're picking apart a little bean. And also undoing the kernels of the corn. And I love when she would bring the corn becauseI didn't know this but maize has different colors and stuff like that. I was like, Wow, you look at all the movies and stuff, especially when you're growing up with only American channels because we don't even have, you know, TV shows of our own, and you grew up with the yellow one. Like you see that everywhere now we'd just be like, Wow, the corn is white and purple? And like all these different weird mashes of color. And so yeah, you're picking up these little things.
And also, she would bring them to a molino—I don't know how to say it, like a mill? And I was like, That's so f*****g cool. Like, it would come in a powder. And she would also do, I don't know what it's called, but it's also like a corn-based drink, but the powder is made to use the drink. But she, yeah, so I grew up seeing the way that she prepared food and just taking a lot of like, even how to make the tortillas and stuff like that, and a lot of her, even remedies that she grew up with, for cramps, or tummy aches, whatever. Like, I don't know, I was very much, grew up close to that.
So that's sort of how I came to be very interested in doing my own things. And, you know, I grew up with a lot of seafood for sure. Because my city is 30 minutes from the coast. We would go to the beach and have fish and—to me, it was never, because you're growing up and I would go to the market, too, on Sundays with my mom and she would be like, go, and I was the shyest person, she’d be like, here's money, go barter with the tortilla lady and make sure she doesn't charge us more than that.
Because, you know, we didn't grow up rich; we were four kids. My mom was like, you know, always very much trying to save costs, whatever. And I love that she taught me how to barter when I was a kid. And I think that's one of the skills that I appreciate so much from her, but I remember going to the market and seeing these kids do tortillas, whatever, and then stuffing them here and there's people with half an avocado open, like trying to show you all their vegetables and fruits and stuff. And like all the fruits are laid out on newspapers, whatever, that's still here, that's still happening—
No, I don’t know. I just feel like I was very lucky, in a sense, even though, you know, I grew up with a lot of different things in Honduras that weren't that nice, to be able to experience that sort of connection to the people who were making the food that I'm ingesting, that I'm putting into my body. And it's such a sacred experience that we don't really think about, that's literally the pillar of our lives—putting food in our bodies, without that process...
And I think that to me, when I think about whether or not I subscribe to the idea of veganism—I get it, I understand it. It's horrible. It's horrific. The fact that you know that the mass industrial complex of this has created this monstrosity, but at the same time, when I grew up, it was more about, you knew the person that was giving you the crabs, and it was much more sustainable. But that was obviously when I was growing up.
Yeah, I feel like I grew up very much experiencing sort of an array of flavors, obviously very acidic. Citric has always been where I gravitate towards. Spice. And yeah, I'm very thankful that I was able to come up with that, because I was never a sweets person. I was like, Oh, my God, we have a word for—it’s called empalagado, when you had too much sweet and you just feel super sick, you're like, Ah, I can't. And so I don't know. I think I was born in the perfect place. I have a theory that I used to be an iguana in a past life, because I thrive on sunlight. I have to have sun.
And so I think I grew up where I was meant to, and it also gave me a really rounded experience of what it's like to live in two worlds, especially as a bilingual person, where it's like, one language gives you an access to a different dimension, you know. It's like, whoa, as a writer—I don’t consider myself a writer, I consider myself a professional s**t-poster—but that my voice has a lot more, hits a lot more in this language than, you know, if I were to speak in Spanish. Unfortunately, that's just the dynamic that we live in.
And I have been [advocating] about, like, why do we do this in the first place as a person living in a country where this language isn't needed? But you know, it gives you access to see, and I think that it has given me—this is tying it back to Snaxshot, why I have been able to pick up on stuff. Whereas U.S. people are very myopic as in, we're centric to ourselves beyond anything else, that I'm like, Well, this is all happening in all these different places. Let's see, you know, how, if this is playing out in the UK, is this playing out in Australia, is this playing out in Latin [America]? And then that's sort of how that seer, oracle, premonition kind of thing. Well, it's just paying attention to what's happening around you. Yeah, so I guess, you know, I grew up with an array of, I guess, Latin American…Mesoamerican, I would say, inspired flavors. Coastal, too.
Alicia: And so how did you get so into snacks? Where did the—where did the snacks start to come in for you?
Andrea: Yeah, I would say that, since I do have friends that live in the U.S., I had been seeing—and again, because I can see two different sides of it. I’m like, Wait, like, why is ginger being made into this all-in salve—you know that you can just boil the ginger, right? All you have to do is like, peel it and put it in water and heat it up.
And so yeah, so I feel like I don't know. I feel like after seeing things like “Meditiation in a Can” and stuff like that, I just—because of my background, again, marketing, knowing what goes behind building brands, that I was just like, it feels like we're going through something and I want to know where it's coming from. But at the same time, I wanted to see if it's happening somewhere else.
And so I don't know, it just [became] all about—I remember doing Twitter threads at first and people would be like, Whoa, I would love to learn more about this. And s**t, I may have landed on something.
But yeah, it was more about getting sort of like, am I being catfished by brands? And if so, who was writing about this? And so, I don't know, it started off of that. And it felt like we entered sort of like a parody state, where it's like, I have to label water again, like thank you for letting me know I'm not sucking on bone broth. F*****g marketing, right? I don't know, I just wanted to use sort of that parody. And that's where the persona the SnaxBoi comes to be, which is the Erewhon meets F**k Boy persona, where it's like, you know, that person that spends too much time in the beverage aisle, spending so much money deciding between CBD and Nootropic, or THC adaptogens, like, Bro, like, you should be doing the same, but in therapy. [Laughs.] These are not solutions for your problems...
But so yeah, I just wanted to talk about what I was seeing and, you know, making space for us to talk about, what is an adaptogen? You know, what's the idea behind them? Is that a novel thing? Why is it being attributed to f*****g Gwenny ‘Goop’ Paltrow instead of talking about how it’s been used by so many different cultures for centuries and thousands of years. Why is it that we're white-washing all of [these things]? And we're not understanding that we're trying to get back to our roots, that we're doing it in a way where it's the commodification of knowledge that's inherently human and that's been used by so many different cultures across the history of the world. I don't know, it just felt like the conversation was very much skewing towards the ‘Gwenny Goops,’ instead of, let's figure out where this is coming from.
Alicia: Yeah, there's so much, and I found this out, because when Eater gave me [an] assignment—I wrote about wellness drinks a couple of years ago, and they gave me this assignment; it wasn't really my idea. But I saw these new drinks, the new adaptogenic drinks as kind of a commodification of these older techniques, like you're saying. We used to love kombucha, and like fire cider and like these other things that anyone can make in their house. And then now we're like, No, you need this specific blend of adaptogens. And then I talked to an herbalist for that.
And it's always stuck with me, I talked to an herbalist who is like, You can't willy nilly give people these things. They are powerful, and they will have an effect, but they might not have the right effect. You want to know what you're putting in your body when you're using, you know, herbs that have had real purpose and you want to work with someone who knows what they're doing and to get it to you.
And so, I love that you do criticize this kind of vision of the world, but then you also come at it with such love and appreciation too.
Andrea: Yeah, because you know what, I like to be bridging that there is a reason and validity behind this. Just because scientists told you that psychedelics were like—you know, because I think about that. I think about that a lot, Why is it—and I wrote about this in my psychedelic issue, I was very skeptical—I was like, I'm skeptical that they're pushing for deregulation while there are big silos, that I call it, like all these corporations now set to gain from the deregulation of psychedelics. So you're telling me that something, not for what, half a century now, you've been telling me that is bad. Now that it's convenient to you guys, where we have Peter Thiel trying to patent like guided trips, like, f**k off dude. Like no.
And so to me, it's more about like, Guys, of course, there's validity around adaptogens. But when it's been thrown [around] like a marketing buzzword where it's like adaptogen this, adaptogen that, where I joke that it's not really functional that doesn't come from La Fonction in France then it’s BS, you know, and it's a detriment to the movement in the same way that cannabis has experienced that backlash with the term ‘CBD’ where it's become devoid of meaning. We did the same thing with ‘organic.'
I think to me, it's more about like, how do I do this a service and pro, where it's like, I am trying to parse through the BS, but because there is validity. I think that we also have to mention about the appropriation of where this is coming from, like the fact that everybody's making Oaxaca like a f*****g Mezcal Sonoma—nobody's talking about that! Instead, you're seeing the brands be like, Ooh, come stay at this luxury $1,000 new hotel in Oaxaca, whatever. And it’s like, what the f**k, $1,000 a night in f*****g—I'm sorry, what?
Seeing like brands be too comfortable using ethnic aesthetics, like, I got blocked by Kendall Jenner. I guess that's my claim to fame, because I called her out. I'm like, is she brownfacing? Why is she wearing braids? Why is she wearing a poncho? Why is she on a f*****g, like, horse through agave fields, you're not fooling me—I know exactly what you're doing. And, you know, playing upon these aesthetics in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, that it's normalized, right? Like, that's not okay.
And I think that there are some people like Yola Jimenez from YOLA Mezcal, who are doing it in ways where it’s like, she's not even having to hone in on like, Mexican aesthetics, that you know—that's where she's from. Instead, she's using this rise and popularity of mezcal to empower women in a region where women get screwed over. There's a lot of femicides that [are happening]—that to me is, that's how you do it. And if someone can do it, the same way that you know, Tony's Chocolate came out and said, like, Ooh, yes, it's only one percentage of child slavery—but it's good because then we can point it out, and it's like, F**k you, dude.
Like, there's literally brands right now—there's a brand called Cuna de Piedra in Mexico, based in Monterrey. They work with Indigenous communities that have used the cacao practices that stem thousands of years. Like if they can be like intentional about forcing their s**t. There's another one based in the U.S. called Sonhab—she worked with the Bribri community in Costa Rica. If small brands with lesser resources than you can do it, then f**k you, dude, and your narrative that you’re trying to do some, like sort of service, you know, for the betterment of the world.
So, I don't know. I feel like not just to be incendiary, but it's more about, can we just be having a conversation where it's like, I get it—PR dude, that's a huge thing, but just let me critical think like: Did we not make almond milk unsustainable and you're trying to tell them that 100,000 different plant-based brands are gonna be how we get ourselves out of f*****g extinction? I don't know, man, I would be a little skeptical. [Laughs.]
Alicia: Well, thank you so much, Andrea, for taking the time today to chat. This has been great.
Andrea: Thank you for thinking about me.
And yeah, let me know when we can have a part two, I know we kind of like, went all over the place. But you know, it's a good time. You know, I love—I love when it flows. But thank you so much, Alicia.
And thank you so much for the work that you do. You're also helping pave the way for people like me to also, you know, hone in on their own space. So, I appreciate you so much for that.
Alicia: Aw, thank you.
Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

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A Conversation with Angela Garbes
4 maj 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I'm talking to Angela Garbes, the author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy, and the new Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change. We discussed how her past as a food writer continues to inform her work, what mothers who are creative workers need to thrive—spoiler, it's basically what all workers need to thrive—informal knowledge building, and the significance of having an unapologetic appetite as a woman. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or adjust your settings to receive an email when podcasts are published.
Alicia: Hi, Angela. Thank you so much for being here.
Angela: Thank you so much for having me, Alicia.
Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Angela: Sure. I grew up in rural Central Pennsylvania. So—people can't see this—but this is roughly the shape of Pennsylvania, my hand. And I grew up here in what I call the ass crack of Pennsylvania. And it was a very small town, about 4,000 people. And I was one of very few people of color. And my parents are immigrants from the Philippines. You know, I would say that from a very young age, I was, like, born different. But, you know, we have a fairly typical…like, my parents are both medical professionals. So we had a pretty typical, I would say, fairly typical as you could get, middle class upbringing.
And as far as what we ate, I look back on it now and I think of it as like a perfect combination of like 50 percent American, quote unquote, American convenience food, like a lot of Hamburger Helper, a lot of Old El Paso soft shell tacos, a lot of Little Caesars Pizza, a lot of Philly cheesesteaks.
And then the other half we ate Filipino food: sinigang, adobo, arroz caldo, tinola... and, you know, I remember my dad, like, hacking up pig's feet, you know, I would come downstairs and he'd be cooking up things like that. And so when I look back on it now, I think it was—I mean, I love Filipino food so much. But I also, I mean, I love all kinds of food. And I kind of eat anything. And it's partly, I think, because I was just exposed to a lot of things.
But my parents, you know, we lived in this really small town, and they couldn't get all of the ingredients that they wanted to make traditional dishes. But they kind of improvised with what they had. And because they were so committed to cooking Filipino food, sort of against the odds, I would say, you know, we did a lot of…there were not vegetables that [were] available, like you couldn't get okra or green papaya. So we would use zucchini, and, you know, frozen okra to make sinigang. But it was such a way for them to stay connected to their cultures and I feel so grateful to them because what they did was really pass that down to me, from an early age. I was like, Oh, yeah, this is—this is my food, like, this is who I am. And I've never lost that. And I've always loved [it] and, yeah, so it was sort of this wonderful, healthy mix, I think.
Alicia: For sure, and, you know, it was so interesting to realize, because I don't think I'd realized it before, that you were a food writer. [Laughs] Until I got into your books, I was like, Wait…
And Like a Mother, your first book, starts out like, so…like, such a rich piece of food writing. And I'm like, Wow, now I understand. And then I realized, I'm like, Oh, she is a food writer. So you know, you've come to write your two books about motherhood, but you know, you're also a food writer, and you're writing about food in these books as well. How did you become a food writer?
Angela: First of all, thank you for saying this now because I miss food writing. And I think at heart, I am a food writer. And I think it informs, you know, the way I portray sensory detail and physical experiences. But yeah, so the way I became a food writer was sort of, it was really my entry into writing. But it happened…the year was 2005, I think. And you know, I had gone to college and studied creative writing, but like a lot of things, I just thought just because I liked doing something doesn't mean I get to do [it], right?
And I think that's a lesson that a lot of writers could learn... [laughs] So I didn't work in these like writing-adjacent dying industries, you know; I worked as an independent bookseller. I worked for a nonprofit poetry press—which is still going, actually I should say, and then I worked as an ad sales rep at an alt-weekly. And, you know, I obviously wish that I was a writer there, but I had no designs on writing. I was, you know, I partying a lot with the ad salespeople, and we were just— I mean, alt-weeklies are— I'm so proud to have started all my writing in my career and adult life there. It was a good time.
So I was working in ad sales. And at the time, David Spader and Dan Savage, who are the editorial people, they said, “Hey, do you want to write?” I was leaving to take another job. And they were like, “Hey do you want to submit a sample food writing piece?” And I was like, Me? And they were like, “Yeah,” and I was like, why? And yes, and why. And they both said, “Well, we know you write, we know that you have a writing background” because I was friends with a lot of writers. And they were like, “But you're just always walking around the office, talking about where you went to dinner, talking about what you cooked, talking about what you ate, and like, everyone in the office wants to go out to lunch with you. Everyone wants you to invite them over for dinner.” And I was like, Oh, okay! And so then I just did it as a one-off.
And something clicked, where you know, I had been writing fiction, I had been writing bad poetry, but when I started writing about food, I was like, Here's everything that I was thinking about, like food to me—and this is what I think it has in common really with motherhood, and mothering really—is a lens to see the world. And it's a lens into—I mean, the sky's the limit about what you can talk about, right, or what you want to talk about. And so, I mean, when I started, it was like, here write a review of this place, that’s doing mini burgers at happy hour, right? And I started doing restaurant reviews, which was very service-y, which, in some ways I hated, but in some ways I'm grateful for, right—meeting a weekly deadline, and like thinking about your audience and being of use, that's something that I think about all the time still.
But um, yeah, I mean, when I started doing it, too, I felt really—I came into it, absolutely, with a chip on my shoulder. I was like, Okay, so I'm Filipina. I never hear about Filipino food. Why do we call places holes in the wall? Right, like, that's racist. Why are we willing to pay $24 for a plate of pasta but people get up in arms when someone wants to charge $14 for pho? You know, I feel like this is where I was coming from. And there wasn't really a lot of space for that, I will say. So there was—I felt a little limited. You know, I think about sometimes, what it would be like to start my career now. I feel like people have created a lot of space. It's not like just the space has opened up.
But the scene has changed. I took a forced hiatus from food writing, because of the Great Recession, where they were like, We don't need freelancers anymore. I came back to it, though—what year was this? It would have been 2012; 2013 and 2014, I was pregnant. And I had actually decided, you know, just because I'm good at writing doesn't mean I get to do it. I need to figure out something more practical to do with my life. So I had applied to go to graduate school, actually to get a master's in public health and nutrition. And I wanted to work with immigrant communities to help them have culturally appropriate diets. You know, like, not everyone was just gonna eat kale, which is what people—or shop at the farmers’ market.
So yeah, I mean, I took classes at the local community college. I took biology, chemistry, all the s**t that I didn't take as an English major in the mid ’90s. And, yeah, I got accepted, but then when I was pregnant, The Stranger, the alt-weekly, called me and they were like, Hey, we're hiring a food writer, and are you interested in applying? And I was like—this chance is never going to come around. And so I was like, Yeah, I'll take it.
And so this was, this is a really long answer, sorry, [this was in] 2014, and I started back, and it was restaurant reviews. But it was also when $15 an hour was going really strong here in Seattle. And I really wanted to explore the labor aspect of that, and what was that like for workers…and then my secret goal, I had a great editor who was Korean-American. And she and I were like, yes, like, every two weeks, there will be a picture of a Brown or Black person to go with the restaurant review. And so it was all this stuff. Like, I felt like I finally got a chance to do what I really wanted to be doing. It was like, moving towards that.
And then I wrote this piece about breastfeeding, which, at the time, they asked me to pitch a feature. They're like, You've been here on staff long enough, like what do you want to write about? And I was like, I definitely need to write about breast milk. No one in the editorial room was like, it was just like, it landed like a dead bird and I was like, Well, I kind of want to do this for myself. I felt it was very much an extension of my beat. Because I was like, here I am. I'm thinking about food. I'm producing food. I am food. I'm eating food. And so I wrote this piece and ended up going viral, which is how I got the opportunity to write my first book and I wanted to take a leave of absence because I really wanted to come back to my job. And they said, No, we're not going to hold a job for you. We're just going to piece it out on contract. And so then I kind of had to figure out what I was going to do afterwards. And so then I was like, maybe I'll just try writing books. And that's my very long answer into how I got into food writing, it was like, the right place at the right time talking about it. Because yeah, that was just like, it felt very— It was just my life.
Alicia: No, I think that that's such a common—obviously, I talk to a lot of people. Like, why food, how food, how did that happen. And then, a lot of the time, especially with women who wanted to be writers, myself included, we didn't see it as an option necessarily, but when we came to it, everything kind of fell into place, which is what happened for me too. Like, once I started to focus my life on food, everything made sense, because I was doing like, copyediting and working for like, tiny literary magazines, and just thought I was gonna have like, a weird literary career, hopefully.
And then I just started cooking one day and just never stopped. And like that, it just changed everything. I'm writing about this right now, actually, like how gender plays into this and whether, you know, the idea of being allowed to love to cook when you're a woman and that sort of thing, which actually, I wanted to ask you about, because there is a fabulous chapter in your new book, Essential Labor, called “Mothering as Encouraging Appetites” and it's so much about our gendered relationship to having an appetite, you know, like whether whether a woman, whether a girl is allowed to have an appetite and how you are actively encouraging your daughters to be okay with their appetites.
And it reminded me of when I was a kid and like, I had this friend, who I took dance classes with, and our moms would be like, Oh, you're gonna have to like, date a rich man or something because you eat so much. And then this was like a joke about how like… when I recalled this memory, it's not a joke my mother would make. So I'm assuming it was the other mother, but um, it was just this whole thing.
Angela: But it's definitely like an ambient joke, right?
Alicia: It’s an ambient joke, yeah. And this chapter certainly reminded me of that. And I, you know, I was really lucky to grow up without anyone ever questioning my appetite in a real way. It was always something to be proud of a little bit, to be a girl who ate a lot. Like it was okay, in my world, at least. And so, yeah, I just wanted to ask, what was what was your inspiration for putting this piece in this book, specifically, and how that worked, because it is about the labor of feeding, but it's also about the labor of, like, self-acceptance and and excavating ourselves from these societal expectations.
Angela: I mean, I want to back up a little bit to what you're saying about how when I started writing about food, and when you started writing about food, a lot of things started to make sense, right? And I felt that way, very strongly, like, inside of myself, but it felt like there wasn't quite an audience that was keyed into what I was trying to say. And I will say, at the time that I started writing about food it was very, like, you can have an appetite, and you can write about loving food. And you can be—there was a lot of, you know, like, I think people use the phrase like the, quote, golden era of food blogging. And to me, it was never really that; I didn't feel like those things. I didn't feel represented in that. It was a lot of, you can have a tremendous appetite for baguette. Right? But, um, no diss to baguette, right? But it was very Francophilic. And it was very, like, be fit and be white.
So I don't, I just don't really understand. I didn't, I couldn't square having the sort of appetite and having the body that I had with, you know, quote, unquote, mainstream food writing by women. I want to say that because I think that that's true for a lot of women of color. And I think that that space is thankfully growing. But I think it's because it's an insistence on taking up space, and an insistence on not being pushed to the margins, which is really what the motivation of that chapter was. I felt like there's so many things I have been thinking about in terms of food and that like, I mean, that chapter to me is very much food writing. I was real jazzed when I was writing; I loved being able to describe the flavors, and the Filipino food that I grew up with.
And yeah, like, I wish that I could explain, and I write about this, and I was like, I don't know why I never—diet culture never got to me, you know, and I think for a lot of girls, who are lucky enough to come from a family where it is a beautiful thing to have an appetite, the thing that often happens, though, is around like when you're 12 or 13 or 14, then suddenly it's not great to have an appetite, right? Like or it's a thing to be managed, because everything's changing, everything's expanding, right?
Everything's growing. Before, when you're eating a lot, you're chubby and you're healthy, and suddenly you become fat. And so I was sort of wrestling with that. And also this feeling that my body just never really fit into the culture, into that small town where I grew up in. And then my body is just larger than my mother's who's a very, very small, Filipina woman. And, you know, Filipina elders are the first people to be like, Eat, eat food, eat so much food, come in here, eat food. And then they'll also be the first people to be like, Wow, you got really fat. [Laughs] It's an interesting thing.
So, you know, this chapter was me sort of working out a lot of those feelings and how I did it at a young age, I had just decided, well, I guess—I've never been interested in taming my appetites. And that's not just for food, it's like, for pleasure, for like, you know, I've always wanted another round of drinks, you know, I think I always just decided, like, being a little bit too much, being a little bit fat, that was okay with me, because I don't know how to control my appetite. And I didn't want to; I don't want to say no to that. And then I think there's something really powerful about, you know, again, like my love of Filipino food helped me take up space. And it helped me clarify who I was and how I wanted to take up space in this world. Like, I did not want to quiet that part of my identity to write about food, which also meant that for a while, I didn't write about food, or figured something else out that I would do.
And so when I think about that, I just think about—it is about encouraging appetite in my daughter, but it's really, to me this book is—I hope it's relevant to everyone, you know, for me, a lot of this is like how I mothered myself, into the place where I am now and seeing the way I was mothered and the things that I kind of wish I could have had, and I don't fault my mother for this, but she just wasn't, she just wasn't able to do that.
But the things that I had to mother myself into were acceptance. And that's like, work that I'm still doing every day. But I think you know, we don't write as—I don't hear as much about people who are trying to manage that, and who are trying to take up space, but who still struggle with feeling like, I wish I looked a certain way, even though I'm so proud of being who I am. It's really complicated. So yeah, I mean, appetite and identity and food. And all of that has, it's a very tangled web, in my mind. So this was kind of my attempt to, you know, just sort of unpack and understand.
Alicia: Right, no, and I loved it, because I do think…as women, especially when we're writing about appetite, we're writing about diet culture, and you very rarely hear from someone who makes the decision to just not ever decide to tame the appetite, you know, and what that means and what that looks like, and that's why I thought this chapter was really important, because of that, because for me, you know, yeah, I was like, Oh, I see myself, I recognize myself in this because, yeah, I love to eat, I've always loved to eat, and I'm never not going to eat a lot…[Laughs]
Angela: No, and that's one of the things that I love about your work is that I feel like you are unapologetic in your appetite and in your consumption. But you also are deeply thoughtful about it, like these things are like–they are nuanced. Do you know what I mean? And you'd never, I just feel like we're not allowed—we're supposed to not have an appetite. We're supposed to have an appetite, but somehow pretend that we don't have an appetite, or, I don't know, like, really, I mean, I think also like, when I am indulging my appetite, I feel like an animal. I feel I'm no different than an animal. I'm a human animal. And I just think like, we're not encouraged to do that as women, we're not encouraged to just fully inhabit ourselves. I mean, I think all people but especially women. And so I mean, I love seeing people out there doing [it], we are out here, you know. [Laughs] And this is my like, you know, a little bit of my stake in the ground, I'm planting a flag, you know, there would be no mistake—
Alicia: Well, to talk about the animal aspect of food and appetite and also being a mother, which is that you wrote, obviously, the piece that went viral is about breastfeeding. My only experience in thinking about this, of course, because I'm not a mother, is the way vegans or vegetarians write about the ways in which breastfeeding changes their relationship to dairy, like that's a really common thing.
But I wanted to ask how that topic and writing about that topic and that topic changing the trajectory of your work, how did that change your relationship to food or food production, if it did?
Angela: Yeah, totally. First of all, I wish that you had been asking me these questions when my first book came out because like, I love how you're like, “It's really common for vegans to talk about, you know, dairy and how breastfeeding changed their relationship to it.” And I was like, I'm not aware of that, like, literature…[Laughter] And so I think it's kind of, just that question is really exciting to me. And I wish that there was more conversation around that.
Part of writing, you know, this article about breastfeeding was me being like, why do we drink the milk of a cow? Right? Why is that? Like, that's strange, right? Like, it's strange. And why have we created an entire industry around this? And like, Why do, when we look at a food plate, dairy has a very large section? And that's because of the dairy lobby, right? That's not because of our innate biological needs as human beings, right?
So, yeah, I mean, how I thought about food production, 100%. This, you know, sort of lays the path for so many things that I'm thinking about. It’s work, you know, this is what your body—this is what female bodies are built to do, right? That's just true. This is what sets us apart as mammalians, you know, like, we produce milk to feed our young, but I just went into it so naive, like, it was a job. You know, I was spending the eight plus hours feeding—eight plus hours that I was like, am I supposed to be being productive? Like I'm being productive, like I'm keeping, I'm doing nothing less than keeping a human alive. I'm not being paid to do this. I'm not being given time. I'm like, in a weird office with a noisy radiator, you know, with another woman—our breasts out, just like pumping. Right?
So it made me think about time and how we value time. And it also like, again, like this was all happening when I was writing about food. And there was the fight for a minimum wage of $15 an hour. And my God, how that was so polarizing, and how people just showed their whole asses about how they don't think the workers are valuable or deserving of this thing. And so I think, you know, there was the labor aspect of it that really came into play for me, that made me think about—I grew up saying grace, because I grew up Catholic, right? And when we remember to say grace, my girls do it with my parents. So when we remember to say grace at our house, we say, you know, thank you to the people who grew this food, who picked the food, who you know transported the food, who prepared the food.
So I think now this sort of supply chain of food and how it is produced is something that's always top of mind and like, how do you negotiate having like an ethical relationship to that? I know this is stuff that you have thought about. This is stuff that really came to the forefront, right? And then also balancing that economically because, you know, breastfeeding is, in a country that does not give paid leave, it’s an economic privilege to be able to do that. And then people who cannot breastfeed, there's very little money put into understanding that and seeing is that, oftentimes people feel like that's a failure on their part, not as opposed to like, is it a signal about something about the health of the mother, right? Could we be—this is sort of going off a little tangent, but I think that there's a lot of that kind of stuff, like in the labor of it, and how we value women's bodies. And also just like the general chain of food production, for sure. It 100% made me think of all of those things.
And so now I'm always thinking about, someone made this food, right? Someone produced this food in some way, a being—a living thing, whether it is a plant or an animal, or a person. Yeah, it’s just, I mean mothering and becoming a mother really reframed everything for me. You know, it is that care that my body couldn't help but do, you know, like my body did. And then suddenly, I felt like, it's a very beautiful thing to be able to do this. It's a very important thing. It was very meaningful to me. It was also that I was chained to a chair and chained to a person. And so yeah, I mean, that's what—that's where I'll leave it. That’s another long answer. [Laughter]
Alicia: No, no…have you read the book To Write As If Already Dead by Kate Zambreno? It came out last year, I think you'll like it. She writes a lot about the body and like, I think it has a lot of parallels to your work. But it's also, you know, just more personal I guess, but she writes about having her first kid and then getting pregnant and then and like, amidst the pandemic, not being treated like a human being but a vessel and seeing the labor of the people bringing…anyway, I think you'll like the book. [Laughs] But you know, and there are so many parallels in both Like a Mother and Essential Labor to what I've been thinking about in food: formal versus informal knowledge, institutions versus communities, individual versus systemic, the political role of care…
And so I wanted to ask how the understanding of the significance of something like informal knowledge building when it comes to motherhood affected your perspective on, you know, other subjects as you've said. Motherhood changed your whole lens on the world, but specifically figuring out where, how to learn from community and informal knowledge rather than constantly just taking the word of the institutions.
Angela: Yeah, you know I mean, motherhood was a big part of that. But I would say that it was all, I don't know, I just feel like my whole life is learning. And I love that. And that's one of the things that I love about my life.
I definitely feel like when I arrived at college—so again, I came from a very, very small town in Pennsylvania. And I didn't know about a lot of things in the world, you know, and I was like, I'm gonna go to New York City. I went to Barnard College, right? Like, I arrived there. And everyone there was like, I went to Milton Academy. I went to, you know, I went to Stuyvesant High, and I was like, like, Googling like, “what are the regents exams,” right? Like, I was like that. And I felt so out of place. Y’know what I mean, like, I felt unprepared. And I felt very self-conscious in a way about that. And I also feel like I came into, like a formal racial consciousness, right, and class consciousness. Like, I mean, when I was at Barnard was when I was like, Oh, this is how we re-create a ruling class, right?
Like, what I'm saying is that I had a lot of informal knowledge. And a lot of wisdom growing up, you know, that I kind of trusted and knew. I was always like, why are we Catholic? So, is colonialism…like, what would we have been if we weren't Catholic? And my parents were like, God will provide…like, what are you talking about? Why are we asking these questions, right? And so I've always had it in me to like, question the institution, right, unfortunately, for my parents, and then our family institution for many years.
So I came to college, and then I was like, Oh, it's also reckoning with for many, many years, my definition of success was, you know, grammar, spelling, right? Like, all of that s**t, which is like, those are just rules that some guy made up, right? Like coming into this and wanting to succeed on terms, you know, set by white people, being legible to white people, and being legible to institutions, which I will not deny, like, that has served me well. And this sort of like, ability to kind of code-switch in a way that I sometimes can't even tell the difference. Like, that's just been a part of my life, right?
And one of the things, though, that happened is coming into consciousness as an adult, and just realizing like, Oh, no, like, I was privileged enough to, like, be educated in these institutions to figure out how to slip into these places. And then to realize, like, no, this doesn't, this doesn't speak to me. It's actually not my vibe, right? Like, but what is your vibe, then? So you have to kind of go and like, figure it out.
And I felt sort of free in that, you know, when I always felt really drawn to creative people, but I was never encouraged to, you know, pursue the arts or to pursue creativite work, or my parents were supportive, but they don't really understand what I do. I think to this day, still, it's a little bit confusing to them.
All of this to say that one of the other, before motherhood, one of the big things, and I really need to shout out is my spouse Will, who [when] I met, he was a community organizer. He's now a labor organizer. And there was just something about, we are so different, but when we met, there was a shared values. There was a belief in, everyone's story is important. You know, he was all about, his thing was, people come up, and they speak their truth to power. And that's when I realized, like, Oh, yes, like our lived experiences, our informal knowledge, when collected, just because it's not in a book, just because it's not what's reported, like, it is so real, and it is so powerful. And he really, like his work helped me see that. And I feel like that was kind of the start for me of being like, I want to take what I'm doing, and I want to put it in service of something else. And I want it to be a harnessing of collective energy and community knowledge.
And then mothering with the whole sort of like, ask your doctor even though no one has, no one's done any studies on this and everything that's going on was something someone said in 1890, right, no one’s challenged this wisdom. Meanwhile, the greatest wisdom that came from birthing and mothering came from midwives and female elders. And that's informal knowledge that was never put in a book, y'know, doctors, when we created medicine, when people invented—when white men invented medicine, they discredited the experience of midwives. And at the turn of the 20th century in America, 50% of babies were born with midwives, who are mostly immigrants and Black women, right? This was very much a working class woman's job.
So I mean, this is just my way of saying I feel like my whole life has been leading to this moment, and motherhood, sort of refined that lens, a place to put all of these things, but it's been multiple steps along the way, and it's been sort of painful. You know what I mean? Like feeling like, Oh, I wish I had known this earlier. But then realizing like, Oh, like, but I know this now. And I think there are many people who share these values and who want to put their faith in more informal knowledge, and who don't trust institutions, but don't really know how, you know what I mean? And I feel like that's a journey, like we're all learning. And I feel like, I don't know…I'm old enough to remember when we weren't supposed to know everything. I feel like now there's this pressure to have some sort of expertise in everything. And I'm like, I still don't know what the f**k I'm doing. Like, everything I'm doing is learning, and that's what's fun. That's part of why I like being a writer is just doing homework or whatever.
Alicia: That's so interesting. Yeah, I feel like this is something I've been thinking about a lot, is there is this kind of—you're not supposed to ask questions. You're not supposed to say “I don't know,” you're supposed to, we're all supposed to have sort of absorbed some sort of bastion of knowledge that we might not even know exists about things that we've never thought about before. But like, you're just not allowed to not know things anymore, you're not allowed to be learning. I don't know. It's very weird. I mean, that's more social media than anything else.
But, because I'm always interested in this. So you went to college in New York? How did you come to live in Seattle?
Angela: So when I was in college, my parents—long story short, they had a midlife crisis. And my dad became very disillusioned by managed healthcare. This was 1997, by the way. And so they just decided to make a huge change. Like, my dad was miserable, and my mom was miserable; they're miserable together. And so they decided to start over, and they moved to Washington State. And I was in college, and I was just like, I need to get out of New York. So I was like, okay, and now they seem to be doing better, so I'm gonna go spend a summer with them. And the Pacific Northwest in the summer is heaven, it's so beautiful. And I was like, oh, I’ll like, come out here after I graduate, and I'll stay for a couple months, and then I'll go back and get a job in publishing as an editorial assistant. And that was 1999. And then I just never left.
You know, I spent many years comparing it to the East Coast. And then I just was like, it's easier here. And I used to feel some sort of shame around that. But um, I don't know, it's just more laid back. I feel really—I've written about this—I just don't, I don't want to say that I'm not ambitious. But it's just like, there's ladders that you climb, there's like places you could try to put yourself into institutions, I guess. And I'm just really not about the hustle. I feel like I work really hard and I'm really not trying to work harder. Like, I like my little life.
Before I had a chance to, you know, publish books, having a job as a staff writer at an alt-weekly, it was like—that was great. Like, you know, I feel like it's easier to do, I don't know, community building can be—I don't want to generalize too much. I just like being in a city. It's a young city. It's a weird city, in some ways. It's changing. But um, yeah, but I like the West Coast. I think I'm—
Alicia: I'm always interested in how people leave New York, because obviously, I'm from Long Island, but I spent a lot of time in New York City. And so then, because I left in 2019, but like, didn't really think about it, about what I was doing. So I'm always like, What was the choice? What were the choices that led you away from New York? [Laughter]
Angela: I think it was the thought that I would come back. And I think there's always a little bit of like—I couldn't go back. You know, like, it's all the same, like things are there. They're not going away. But New York also still has the same ugly, modern, new high rise weird, like townhome architecture that we get here in Seattle. It's not, you know, not to be I mean. I went to college in New York from ‘95 to ‘99. And, you know, I go back now and I'm like, This is so different. I was like, you know, it wasn't even like dirty New York, y'know. But yeah, I think I just like being a little bit outside things.
How was it for you? Like, do you feel like returning or do you feel like you're home? Or do you kind of feel like it's all open?
Alicia: I would prefer to stay here in San Juan ’cause it's an easier life, like you're saying, and I talked to Jami Attenberg about moving from New York to New Orleans. And same thing. It's like, it's just easier, and for me, especially as a food writer, I feel like it gives me a lot more to talk about and I don't feel like I have to go to the same restaurants as everybody. And like, obviously, I don't even think I could move back until everything goes differently with the housing situation. Like it's just such—I mean, it's happening everywhere. But I'm just like watching on Twitter, and everyone is like, my landlord just raised my rent $700, $1,200. And I'm like, I'm never going back. I can never go back.
But I mean, we have that problem here, too, because it's become like a tax haven. So there's like, all the real estate is absolutely mind-boggling. And like the daughter-in-law of the governor is sort of instrumental in it, which seems like a problem, so— [Laughter]
But, yeah, so everywhere has its challenges. But yeah, I feel really good. You know, having gotten sort of away from New York. You know, when I left New York, I was bartending and writing. And here, now I just have a newsletter. So, I'm working a lot less hard. [Laughs]
Angela: I mean, I think there's something to be said to of space—physical space. I have a house, you know what I mean, to have physical space, which is also, it's not necessary, but it does lead to mental space. You know what I mean, things feel more expansive here in a way that like, I can go on a long walk, the mountains are 45 minutes that way—wait, sorry, going West. Sorry, the East actually—
But I think there's just something there where I feel. I don't know. I just—there's something here where I just feel like I can be myself in a way that—I'm less like, thinking about myself in the context of other people and other things, like I could just sort of be in an easy—
Alicia: Exactly, no, no. And that's really key. Obviously, like I'm homesick a lot. But I, then I just go back, you know. And then I'm like, I'm sick of this. Goodbye. [Laughter]
But also, to get back to your book, in Essential Labor, you talk about the flattening of creative identity that came through being a mother in the pandemic, do you think that it is possible to change how work and caregiving are structured and perceived in the U.S.? And specifically, what do you think mothers who are creative workers, thus doing work that's kind of already devalued in our society, what is really needed to thrive?
Angela: That's a great question. I do think it's possible. I have to think it's possible, because—I'm glad that your question wasn't, do you, like, do you hope that this is, you know, like, I find it hard to be, I find it hard to be hopeful about it in this moment. But I mean, I wouldn't have written this book if I didn't think it was possible. And, you know, maybe it will take a very long time. But I think we are due for, I mean, the United States has never reckoned with all of its original sins, right. But one of them, you know, one of the biggest ones at this point, that's like a foundation to it is that care work doesn't matter and has no financial value. So I think, you know, we had these moments, there was the advanced check, tax child credit. And then also, when we were doing direct stimulus payments, that was not specifically like, here's pay for mothering and care work. But, here's pay for keeping yourself alive and keeping people alive, which is what care work is.
So I think that people are—that conversation is happening, I think, you know, part of writing this book was, there were all these, there were so many people who were suddenly awake to, like the child care crisis is a pre-pandemic problem, right? Like that childcare workers are three times more likely to live in poverty. The fact that until your child is age 6, in the United States, like you're on your own, to figure all of that out, and suddenly a lot of white affluent women, to generalize, were realizing that, you know, when care structures fall apart, when your nanny and childcare and babysitters go away — they are left to do all of this work. And that to be a woman in America is to be defined by a condition of servitude. And that was a hard f*****g lesson. And people reacted in a way that they were rightfully so, really angry. And part of writing this book was, I was like, this is going to go away, right? Like when schools reopen, people are gonna think we solved the childcare crisis, right? When things are not inconvenient, when people can start outsourcing that care, and we're gonna lose that momentum.
And so to a certain extent, like, why I also believe it's possible is because I know that for myself, and for other people, like, I will never shut up about this. This is something that is foundational and essential to our country and how it functions and until we properly value that, we're going to have an inhumane and dysfunctional society. So yes, I think it's possible. In this particular moment, I feel that it's a much longer fight, and then it's going to be a much harder fight. I don't want it to be a fight, but that's that's where I am on that.
You know, and in terms of mothers who are doing creative work, I mean, I just think of all people doing creative work again, like, care is an issue that, obviously, yes, I'm writing about mothering but like, care is the work of being a human being, you know, needfulness is the state of being a human being. And so, you know, if I'm just like, allowed to say what I would like to do is like, we should just give people money. We live in a very rich country, there is enough money to do this. If we gave people a universal basic income, a guaranteed adequate income, which is not a new idea—you know, people were working on this, the National Welfare Rights Organization was doing this; they came close to getting it under Nixon. If we paid people money, if we gave people money and guaranteed a floor of what a decent life is in America, people could be creative. You know, people could do their creative work, people could mother, people could still be really f*****g ambitious and try to get a six-figure job, like six-figure salary job, like, they could still do that.
You know, and I think that that's, you know, we made up money. [Laughter] We can, like, if we can make up a new system, you know, that, that gives people—you know, I did this interview for this the future of things, it was like the future of work. And I was talking about this, and the producer was like, So in your world, when you like, meet for drinks with your friends on Friday, and someone asks you how work is doing and you're like, well, Tommy's like, struggling with potty training. And I was like, No, dude, like, in my world, you meet your friends for drinks on Friday, and they're like, how are you? Like we don’t talk about work—we just talk about like, what are you doin’? Right? And so I think that, yeah, like, I think so what we need to do is like, guarantee—I mean maybe it's not just an adequate income or guaranteed income, maybe it's just like, health care, where you like, leave, like, they need people need to, like be able to live a dignified life, that doesn't involve work, you know, that is like, not defined by work that just that allows them to exist. That's what people need. And that's not just mothers, and not just mothers who do creative work that we need that. We need that. I mean, I think it's really like for me; it's for everyone.
Alicia: Yeah, yeah, no, no, I mean, these are all the same answers I give when people are like, How do we fix the food system? And it's like, you have to make sure people have a good life. And then, that they don't have to work two or three jobs just to eat crap, and that they get to cook with, I mean, if they want to [they can] eat whatever they want, but like, you know, you get the option to cook, you know. Right now, it's like, so much of that moment, I guess when you started writing about food, that moment of like, go to the farmers’ market and eat kale and everything will be fine. It really stopped short of talking about poverty, it stopped short of talking about the systemic, obviously, disadvantages. It's like, some people won't be able to do this—sad for them. And then like, moving on—
Angela: Yeah, look, we don't talk about how poverty is a condition we have created —it's an unnatural condition. We made this, right? And there's so much, I mean, also like the farmers’ market thing. Like, what is it, maybe now it's higher, but it's something like 6 or 12 percent of people get their produce from a farmers’ market here. I mean, so not even like, forget, like how much money you can spend. It's just such a small—you're not tackling the system. And that's not to say they're not great and you should keep money in local economies. Like I think it's all of those things. But yeah, we're not even getting to that.
And we're not talking about the profound way that we assign morality to food, like people who are poor make bad choices about food. Those are choices created by poverty and scarcity. Like, anyway, this is not like a…I think you and I are on the same page about this.
I think it's like the conversations that we have about food are so not the conversations we need to read. Right, like we spend a lot of time on that. And I think the same is true for care and mothering, right? It is an issue that affects everyone. And it is an issue, it is systemic, like we're talking about, I think we're both talking about giving people a decent life, which doesn't—we've come so far from that, that it seems really radical to be like, let's just, you know, take it back a step. You know, like, it'd be like—money is made up, are you with me? Like, that seems really destabilizing to people, but it's just a truth. And I think like we just drifted so far from it, that it's really, it's discouraging.
Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm hopeful, I think that now people are more, even if it's just jokes or memes on social media, people are more willing to say— people are more willing to say that the all of this is bizarre. Like, even if it's just—today, we're talking on Tax Day, which is—I feel like vomiting because I still haven't done mine. But the idea that people are now talking about, why does the government let it be so difficult and complicated when they know how much we owe because they have the documentation and, you know, what are we actually even paying for? Like, I think it's important that we have a forum now for those like people to have that conversation, even if it's a joke, most of the time.
Angela: One of my favorite things that I've seen recently is like, I mean, I saw it on Instagram, but it was a tweet, you know, that whole thing. But it was like, you know, humans really could have had stargazing and like pottery making and drumming, and now we have credit scores, and like, you know, but this idea that, like, we could just be f*****g living. Now it's like, we need money we need like, I just, ugh—
Alicia: Yeah, we do need a general strike, and to not pay anything, not pay our taxes, not pay our student loans, not pay rent, just like let's stop and get this s**t sorted out before we keep moving.
Angela: Yeah, I mean it’s really…we shouldn't be privatizing human rights. We could have this conversation, like in a circle for like, a few days, and it would be great but we should probably move on… [Laughter]
Alicia: No, no, no, of course. No, well I just wanted to ask you what are the other things you're thinking about that you want to write about? I do love that you characterize being a writer is ongoing learning, you know? So what are you learning about these days?
Angela: I'm learning about—so again, since I started as a food writer, the fact that I've now written two books on motherhood and mothering seems like a great surprise in my life. I mean, I think it's very—it's been great for me. But I mean, this is really just one aspect of my identity. But right now, the things that I'm really drawn to are not privileging one kind of care. I mean, I think care is a conversation we need to continue to have. And so I want to explore care. Like, so I've been thinking about it in terms of, you know, raising young children, but what is it like to have everything from like, you know, how do we encourage people who are not parents to have meaningful relationships with the youth and the elders? Right, like elder care, disability care. And then also, how do we build, one of the things that we lack, our institutions don't care about people; care is not a value that's at the center of institutions. And so I'm interested in exploring, how might we make that happen? And so care in general, an expansive and inclusive and surprising view of care, is one of the things that I'm thinking a lot about.
I'm thinking a lot about the concept of service. Service, to me, is very clarifying. I think my work as a writer is about learning. But what gives me meaning is that it is definitely of service to people. And that's one of the things that I cherish about the feedback that I've gotten from people. And so this idea of service, and how we can encourage that, and people are exploring that.
And then the other thing that I'm really into is middle age. You know, I'm about to be 45. I never—and I don't mean this in a fatalistic way, but I just never really imagined myself at this age, and realizing that my imagination really was pretty short. And I feel like I have to believe and I do believe that, you know, some of my most interesting transformations are still ahead of me. And so there's really not a literature of middle age for women, there's like some menopause-y stuff. But the choices that we make, and I don't know, there's like in the pandemic, too, I've done a lot of self work and therapy. But I've also, like—I haven't been able to escape myself, even though I've tried very hard through various attempts and substances. But I feel like, I don't know, if I'm about to be 45, like I said, I just feel like I don't feel confused about who I am. And I really like that. And I'm kind of curious, like, where that goes.
Yeah, so those are the things I'm thinking.
Alicia: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today.
Angela: Yeah, of course. Thank you.
Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

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A Conversation with Jami Attenberg
27 apr 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I'm talking to Jami Attenberg, the author of seven novels, including the best-selling The Middlesteins. Her latest book is a memoir called I Came All This Way to Meet You, which grapples with ideas of success and living a nontraditional life. We talk about the ups and downs of the writing life, along with her move from New York to New Orleans, why she chose to write a memoir right now, and how the pandemic has shifted her relationship to travel.
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I'm talking to Jami Attenberg, the author of seven novels, including the best-selling The Middlesteins. Her latest book is a memoir called I Came All This Way to Meet You, which grapples with ideas of success and living a non-traditional life. We talk about the ups and downs of the writing life, along with her move from New York to New Orleans, why she chose to write a memoir right now, and how the pandemic has shifted her relationship to travel.
Alicia: Hi, Jami. Thank you so much for being here.
Jami: Hi. It's so nice to meet you.
Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Jami: Yeah, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I’m 50, so I grew up in the ’70s. And I'm Jewish, and so there was an emphasis on deli when we could get it. There wasn't a lot of deli going on out there where I grew up. I grew up in Buffalo Grove. So closer to Skokie is where they, where you can get deli.
And then, a lot of Italian food. A lot of pizza. I don't know if you've ever heard of Portillo's before. That is an amazing Chicago chain, and the Italian—Oh. I want it right now, just thinking about it. They had this croissant sandwich with Italian beef that was really delicious.
My mother would be upset to hear me say this, I do not recall having a lot of emphasis on healthy food in my household growing up. We were also latchkey kids. You come home and you sort of scramble for what you could find in the house, that kind of thing. I mean, there was food there.
So, I don't know. When I look back at it now, I just think it was that there was not a clear path to, not a clear aesthetic necessarily. It was a lot of what was around.
Alicia: Yeah.
Well, it's interesting that you say your mom wouldn't like that. In your memoir, you write about her making chicken noodle soup from scratch and insisting she'd done it. And it's interesting, because it brings up obviously—memoir, where your memories don't match up with other people's memories and the question of that. How was it to reconstruct those kinds of things? I liked that in the book, that you enacted the problem of memoir in the memoir with this kind of like, ‘Whose memory actually is the memory that's the memory?’ [Laughs.]
Jami: Well, I have a brother. So I think he would back me up on certain things. And he's a wonderful cook, and he’s very health focused and really into the farmers’ markets and has a big tomato festival in his house every year. It was like a goal of his to kind of learn how to cook and be connected with food in a different way. I mean, I'm not blaming my parents for it. They had, of course, a million jobs and things going on.
So I mean, I tried to be as honest about it as I could. I mean, I think my mother genuinely wants to have cooked, made chicken noodle soup for me from scratch. I do not recall it at all. I don't think that happened. So when that did happen, it felt kind of special. I mean, she probably hadn't cooked for me as an adult and in a really long time. That story where she is looking after me and making chicken noodle soup, for me, probably happened when I was in my late 30s. I don't know how much you go home to see your family or what that looks like for you. But for me, I had lived in New York a long time and my parents lived in Chicago. And I went back maybe once a year, and when we would see each other we could go out to eat. Big going-out-to-eat family.
Alicia: Well, you write in the—that you're not a great cook, but you are a superb dinner party guest. And food and drink are present in the memoir of course, but they're also present in your fiction. So, how would you kind of characterize food in your life now that you're an adult, fully formed and all that?
Jami: I mean, sadly, unlike my brother, I don't, I'm not—Yeah, I didn't take on the challenge like he did. Yeah, I don't have much of a repertoire. Yeah, I make a lasagna every so often. It’s winter and I'll be like, ‘Alright, I'm gonna make lasagna, veggie lasagna, and I'm gonna drop some at friends.’ This year for Christmas. I just made a ton of spiced nuts for everyone. And like, so once a year I get excited about doing—
I throw a lot of parties though. I do that. I had, right after everybody got booster shots for the first time, I had a big oyster festival in my backyard. And it was really wonderful. I mean, it's just definitely a way for me to commune with my friends. It's just really important to me to connect with people. Everyone's happy. We like to sit down for long meals. I live in a city that's got a great food culture. I lived in New York City for a long time. And I have a great food culture. I just was there last week and had dinner with some girlfriends at Ernesto’s, which was wonderful.
Every part of the dinner was wonderful. But then at the very last minute, we got dessert too. And there was this fried brioche. I don't even know how to explain it. We were talking about it, still this morning. But the fried brioche, it was kind of creamy in the center. It was kind of french toast, but something at—something else. It was so good. And we’re probably going to remember that fried brioche for the rest of our lives. It was really special.
Alicia: Well, and so much of the memoir is about success and how it's difficult to define. And you can publish books and have no money. It was important for me to read, I think, at this juncture in my life, where I was like, ‘Nothing means anything, necessarily, until it means something.’ I don't know. [Laughter.]
How do you define success? How do you feel about success as a concept as a writer?
Jami: Well, first of all, let me say that, I have told you this before that I'm a fan of your newsletter. So I'm sort of following along your kind of existential crisis that you, that is sort of rolling out, in particular, the last couple of newsletters. And I don't want to be that person who's like, ‘It gets better,’ but I think it does get better. I don't know how old you are. And it's fine however old you are, but I think—
Alicia: I'm 36, yeah.
Jami: I think it gets better in your 40s. I hate to say it. But I have given that advice to so many people in their, in that age, where you're like, ‘I've been doing this for so long. When does it just get a little bit easier?’
And I think the answer is, as a writer is it got easier for me after I'd written four books, which is like when I was 40, 41, something like that, was when I'd had that moment where I was able to—and also there's just like this catch-up period where you're constantly waiting for somebody to pay for something that you've written. And it's like, ‘How do you ever get ahead of that?’ And at some point, you sort of do get ahead of that. Hopefully. I'd make no guarantees or promises to anyone.
And so to me, I think that your question was notion of success. To me, right now, because I have a book contract, and I have—I can spend the next year writing that book, that I feel safe for now. And you're always kind of leapfrogging to the next, whatever the next project is. I mean, someday I might run out. And I might be s**t out of luck.
And I don't know, if you ever really get to take—it's the only thing I envy about an academic existence, is that they get to take sabbaticals. Yeah. And I mean, I guess it's for us, on our own, I think it would be about applying for grants or something like that. I don't actually, don't think residencies are really a sabbatical. The only thing that gives you, that buys you time, is money. Which is, then you have to do more. I know. I get it, I get it. It’s hard. And then I feel bad. But then it's like double I know, I know. It's really tricky.
I think it slowed down a little bit for me, or got a little bit easier. I mean, part of that was that I moved to a city that was more affordable. Yeah, I had looked around when I was 45. So I've been down here for six years, I looked around and was like, ‘I can't work any harder than I am. I can't do any more than what I'm doing. I'm not really gonna make any more money than this unless something magical happens, like somebody makes one of my books into a TV show. I'm operating at a pretty good level. I'm still not saving any money. And I'm still not getting ahead. So what's the problem here?’ And it was New York City. So no, I love you, New York. But it’s bringing me down. We have to sort of start making certain decisions as we go, get older about it. And you can always go visit New York. Or wherever.
Alicia: Well, New York is also my home, so yeah. But I get to go because that's where my family is. So I get to go back. But it feels so weird now, not living there anymore. I don't know how it feels for you to go back. The visiting is strange to me, to visit a place you lived for so long.
Jami: Well, I don't go to Williamsburg where I lived for a zillion years. I just don't go there because—I do sometimes, because my dear friends own St. Mazie’s, a bar—restaurant there. So I'll go over there and say hi to them. But I don't go to the old apartment building that I used to live in. I know it's very different there now. I just go to see the people that I love, wherever that might happen to be.
I just feel like such a country mouse when I go there now, too, because the buildings are so tall and it's so annoying and there's—it’s so expensive. It's all the things that you can work around if you live there. But when you visit, it's harder to avoid those things. And I'm not even complaining when I say any of those things at all. I had a great time there last week. It's just a sharp contrast to my existence. So I don't know if I could ever go back there. I mean, maybe you could ’cause your family's there. But I don't I wouldn't be able to take that step back, ’cause my life is maybe too quiet now.
Alicia: Yeah, no. It feels very different now, life in general [Laughs.] having moved to a smaller quieter city, yeah.
Jami: Do you feel happier now in that, in—with that?
Alicia: Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot happier. I didn't know it was possible. Grew up on Long Island, moved to the city. The big thing you're supposed to do is move to the city. And then, I didn't think I'd ever leave or live anywhere else. And now, I just have such a more relaxed life. I can think more, I think.
I think there's a reason I've had not success, but more success as a writer leaving New York, because I—I'm not constantly, especially as a food writer, going to different restaurants and stupid things. And then, feeling I have to eat the things that everyone's eating. [Laughs.] I'm free. I'm free from having to go to whatever new place people are going to, like Bernie's, I think it's called. [Laughs.] [Note: I meant Bonnie’s!]
Jami: But even as a non-food writer, I used to feel I had to go to all those places. And now I don't feel that. I don't feel that way anymore. I still have really good friends in New York who are really intuitive, or culture writers. And so, I can sort of keep track of where I might want to go through them. There's no reflection on me. It’s nice.
Alicia: It’s great to be free of that. [Laughter.]
Jami: Yeah, I don't know what I miss. I keep trying to figure out what I miss exactly. The only thing I've ever missed is the people.
Alicia: Yeah, the people, the culture. Going to a museum. There’s museums here, but they're not those museums. I miss public transportation. We don't have public transportation here. And that's what I miss, I think.
Jami: I just want to do one more thing, which is it's just about—I just think we, as writers or as creative people, I'm trying to—
I'm starting to write this talk about how to carve out a creative life. I think as we get older and our priorities change, we really just have to go—we have to go all in on something. We have to if we want to really make it as an artist.
And you can sort of see the people who—and this is not a criticism of them—but the people who say, ‘Alright, I'm actually not going all in as an artist. I decided I wanted to have a house in the Hamptons, or I've got three kids now.’ You can also, by the way, be an artist and have three kids. You know what you're choosing. There's no wrong answer. It's what is right for you, whatever works for you.
Alicia: Yeah. It's interesting you’re writing a talk on creativity—I've been thinking about this and wanting to write an essay, because I've been listen, listening to a lot of podcasts. My dog is afraid of these birds, these local birds that kind of swoop in, so we've had to not go to the dog park while they're nesting. And so, I've just done these really long walks with the dog listening to On Being. I've never listened On Being before.
But like everyone says, you realize when all these patterns of things that people say about creativity and how to make it happen, and it's—there's these patterns of like, ‘It is work, it is labor to be creative, and you have to make these choices to do it.’ Whereas when I think, when we're—When I was growing up, I always was like, ‘Oh, to be creative has to have this magical quality. And it has to strike you like lightning, and it's not work and you don't sit down and do it every day.’ [Laughter.]
Jami: I just was on some panel where we were talking about this. It is a magical quality. But you have to show up in the first place to receive the magic. And that's the work part of it.
Alicia: Yeah. Yeah.
No, and I love the line in I came, I Came All This Way to Meet You where you say, ‘I had to be a good writer. And I had to be a good salesperson.’ And it's interesting, because you just kind of plainly said the thing that I think we're not supposed to say about being a writer and the tension of selling and writing and creativity and how these—How are you feeling now about those things as a relationship?
Jami: I'm looking down as we're talking, ’cause I'm looking at my notes, ’cause I was thinking about it a little bit this morning.
So I would say there's two things. One is that having been in the publishing industry for—My first book came out in 2006. So 16 years of it. I recognize that when you put out a book, it's more than just you. There's a marketing team. There's a book designer, there's an editor, salespeople. There's the assistants. There's everybody who does it. And so to me, them and also coming from a place where my dad was a traveling salesman, and my parents owned a retail store as well. I'm probably the perfect person for that to be sympathetic to this. Although frankly, I'm not a team player. I'm really about other people succeeding at their jobs. I appreciate it when people succeed at what they're trying to do.
So I don't have a problem with doing certain things that are sales oriented in order to support my work, because I feel it's not—Me writing it is one piece. That's the art part of it. But once I sell it, then it's a product. That's a really seamless clear transition to me. When it's done, it's done. And now, what can I do to help you? And hopefully, you're gonna do things to help me. And so, we all have to work on it together. And I think that that has been beneficial to my career in a lot of ways. And I think it makes it, ensures that I continue to get published, because people know that I understand what the game is.
Yeah, at this point in my life, through trial and error, I figured out things I don't want to do and things that I’m willing to do. And then also, the things that I'm good at doing. And I've been public facing for a long time. You had that thing in your newsletter recently about being public facing and reels, which is—I can't tell you how many people I know who are like, ‘F****n’ reels!’ And I'm not doing them. I just sort of refuse to do that. But I don't think I have to do that.
But anyway, I've been public facing for a long time. And I've given too much of myself, certainly online. And then I've walked it back, meaning not, meaning I've regretted that, what I've done. And also my life is way less interesting than it used to be when I was 29, writing about my sex life online or whatever it was I was doing then.
But basically, I would say actually, summer 2020 was the kind of a turning point for me, where I was like, ‘I do so much stuff online.’ I have this, the 1000 Words of Summer that I do, which is I have my own newsletter, obviously. And then I do 1000 Words of Summer thing, where it's 15,000 people. Everybody's writing. And I was doing Zoom teaching sessions and things like that. I was really, like everybody else summer of 2020, just losing their mind. And I really had to sit down and reassess what I was doing, what I wanted the internet to do for me. I was just saying this morning on Twitter that my goal is always to get more out of the internet from the internet gets out of me. So I had to really sit down and figure out what I was, what information I was willing to put out there, what I wanted to accomplish, all this kind of stuff, especially because we were really living—we had been living online. And now, we're really living online.
And so, I made a list of things I was, topics that I wanted to put out there. And I talked about, to myself, about how, what kind of help I can provide? Because that's really up to me. I mean this in a non-cynical way. But I think that if you can figure out ways to be positive online, and be helpful to other people, then it is beneficial to your career, or the—think of it as a project, right? The project of my life more than career, because there's plenty of things that I do that I don't make a dime off of. But they are all part of this huge art project of my life.
Ok, I think that's all I wanted to say about it. [Laughs.] We can talk about it. But do you know what I mean? It's really about, yeah, wrestling control of it and say, and not looking at what anyone else is doing. But looking at what your skill set is and what makes you feel good. And I like entertaining people. My dog makes me feel good. I know it’s a total dopamine rush. But people like my dog. And that's fine., that's yeah. I just would rather be positive online than not positive online.
Alicia: No, yeah. I think I'm learning this too. That doesn't help anybody to be s**t talking or negative. And it's hard for me [laughter] as a mostly negative person.
Jami: Yeah, and you’re a truth teller. I'm a truth teller, too. It's not that I'm not ever negative. I think you have to be honest about it. And especially as a thinker, a participant in culture, that kind of thing. But where you focus, you really choose to focus your energy.
I sound very hippy dippy. [Laughs.]
Alicia: No, you don't ’cause it's real. And yeah, we've been on the internet for so long now, at this point, everyone, I think. But it's so different now. And I think that's the tension that I'm always teasing out, is that I used to have a relationship with the internet, like you were saying, where I got so much more out of it than it got out of me. And now that definitely changed.
Considering how to reassemble a positive relationship with the internet, where it doesn't feel like a vampire to just open an app, is really important. I mean, I guess, or people who weren't on the internet all the time are here. And they have a voice, and they think that they need to—the way people are and be nasty and think that that’s ok. And that sort of thing.
Jami: It's out of control, but it's also it's too—it's so far gone that it doesn't even matter. It’s beyond me. So I'm just like, ‘Whatever.’ I'm just gonna do the thing that I do, and that's fine. And they can do what they're gonna do. And I can't save the world. And I can only just put out what I can put out because it's too—I'm not their mom. Or whatever.
Alicia: But there are a lot of people looking for moms on Twitter. [Laughs.]
Well, why did you want to write a memoir now after so many novels? I heard you talking about this on The Maris Review a little bit.
Jami: I don't know why I did it. No, I know why I did. I'm very shut down about it, I have to admit.
So it came out on January 11th. It's April 4. So it's been out for a little bit. I basically put it out, did everything I was supposed to do for the month that I came out. It's also two months beforehand. So I do interviews and all this other stuff. So it's really two to three months. It used to be, in the old days, that you would have a book, you would do a bunch of stuff a month before it came out. And then, you really would talk about it for 2, 3, 4 months. And now, the cycle is everything happens before and then one month after. And then, the next thing steps in. Even the biggest sellers in the world. Hanya Yanagihara’s book was massive. And I think after a month, it was like, ‘Ok, she did everything she was supposed to do. Right, who's next? Who's next on the list?’
So yeah, so anyway, I put in a lot of effort around that time. And then, I immediately went offline for the month of February and worked, which was delightful. I wasn't on Twitter. I wasn't totally screen free. It felt real, real good. Now I'm back on a little bit. And I'm not really answering your question. I'm gonna answer your question, eventually. So now I'm back. And I'm going to start doing some touring again and think—this summer, I’m gonna do some stuff. And I have some speaking engagements and things like that. So I think I'm sort of back in the game. And I thought I would have perspective on it.
I couldn't write another novel, because I had written seven. I needed a break from writing novels. So my way of taking a break, we don't get to take a sabbatical, was just to write a memoir. Fortunately, I had sold the book before that right before the pandemic hit. So I at least had that project to work on, and it was really poor—I thought I was gonna be writing it here and there. I'd be traveling, whatever. I just had a book come back. And instead, I was just really living with myself at home, really no escaping me while I was writing a memoir. I was a lot.
I definitely think, because I was about to turn 50, that was part of it. I had some perspective, finally. It was really kind of spanning maybe 20 years of my life, my writing career, mostly focused on my writing career more than anything else. Left a little bit to childhood here and there, a little bit to the modern day here and there. I thought I had only been writing part of the truth the entire time that I have been reading nonfiction, 20 years of nonfiction, alongside 20 years of writing novels. And I thought that it would be worth it to try and explore these essays that I wrote that were 1200 words for the back of New York Times Magazine. What does it look like if they get expanded? How do they all fit next to each other? A lot of these chapters were like five essays that were not chopped up but had a very kaleidoscopic effect in the writing of the book. And then there were things that I thought were really important that I would have sworn would have been l huge focal points in the book, essays I'd written that ended up being just like a paragraph. And then I was done with it.
It was really an interesting experience in that way. The process of it was actually, I learned so much from the process of it. I learned new things about my writing. I really just thought I needed to try something different, a different genre, and I thought I was ready to write about myself. I don't ever want to look at this book again. And right now that's how I feel. Yeah, I don't even know how to respond to it. I think I get that way with all my books. And then I look back a couple years later, and I'm like, ‘I knew a big word,’ or whatever. That’s a really fancy word that I put in there. How did I even come up with that? I don't know what it means now.
Yeah, I don't know. I can't wait to see. I will say that I'm getting really positive responses to it from people. I'm sure there are people who hate it. But I have been getting really nice emails that are different than the emails that I usually get for my fiction. Because it's me, so they're responding to me personally. Please do send me a nice email about my work. I'm happy for it to have meant something. You don't sort of, don't know how to respond to it. I really thought I was not particularly likable in that book. And I am fascinated that people emailed me and were like, ‘I'm pretty sure we would be friends.’ I’m like, ‘Are ya? I'm not that good. Did you read the same book? I’m kind of shitty. Are you sure?’ Anyway.
Alicia: I didn't come away thinking you were shitty. So I don't know. [Laughs.]
Jami: I suppose we all are.
Alicia: Do you think it would have been different if you weren't writing it during the pandemic? Did you anticipate it being different?
Jami: For sure. Because there's the present tense of the book became—I thought I would be writing it while I was traveling. Because I had had six months of touring planned out, because in my old life, it was—that's what I did. I had a book come out, and then I toured for the next year, with little breaks here and there. And then, I'd write here and there. And so I thought, 'I'm gonna be writing this while I'm traveling.' And that's gonna be part of the process.
And instead, I was writing it from a, I think, a wistful or more full place where I might have—If I were traveling and exhausted and had written it, I might even have been more critical. Instead, I was like, 'Remember that time? I was so happy there, wasn't I?' that I think that was different.
I think everyone had—Not everyone. Can't speak for everyone. I think a lot of people that I know had some come to Jesus moments over the last couple of years about who you are, what you're doing with your life? What kind of person you are? What you can handle? How are you a part of your community? How do you feel about your community? All that kind of stuff. And so that, I think, played into it in a way that I wouldn't have had to think about if I were still on the road running around.
I'm certain it would have been a different book. I'm certain of it. And so then, you write the book that you can write.
Alicia: Well, has this time changed your relationship to traveling? Because you are moving in the book. Also in life, of course. You're traveling so much. Do you feel differently about travel now?
Jami: I will say, maybe it was my sabbatical. Even though I wasn't traveling. If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have been like, 'Great. I don't ever want to travel again. It's fine.' I feel I needed the break. And now, I'm so hungry for it. I can't wait to get out in the world.
I'm doing a European tour in two weeks. And I just kept adding vacation time in there. I'm gone for three weeks. And I think I have seven events in three weeks, which means there's a couple cities I'm going to that are just kind of for fun. That's just for me. And I will be super broke at the end of it. But I don't, kind of don't care. I don't know. I will have to write a little bit more than I want to.
The only thing is that I write a lot in the book about how—There's a big chapter about my flight anxiety, and I had really pushed past it. And have found now that I'm flying again enmasked that it has returned. I'm doing a whole layer of work on that that I hadn't anticipated having to do. I thought it was fine. And then I had set up meetings, all these systems into place when you have anxiety. A lot of those systems aren't really available to you when you're wearing a mask. And when other people are wearing masks. And so, that's my only challenge.
I think I'm gonna spend way too much money in my life on upgrading my seats. I just had this whole Twitter thing where I posted about aisle seats versus window seats. 20,000 people responded to it. Because I'm such an aisle person. But window people are super window people.
Actually window people have their own form of anxiety, too. And that means to them, it feels like it's a cocoon and it's safe and everything like that. And it ended up being kind of exposure therapy for me in this weird way of seeing all these people talking about their feelings about where they sit on an airplane. Twitter was helpful for me in that way.
But I still don't know, those middle-row people.
Alicia: Very, very, very odd to me. I have to be in the aisle. I don't like to have to bother someone to get up. I would rather be bothered by someone than to be the botherer. I think that's the question really, is would you rather ask or be asked [laughs] to get up? I don't know what psychological meaning that has really, but it seems like something.
We talked about this though, yeah. How has New Orleans changed your life other than it being an easier place to live as a writer?
Jami: I now have a little house here. So I like that when you own a house, your life changes in certain ways. You have certain kinds of responsibilities. It makes me feel safe to have a mortgage, because I rented for so long. So I think being a homeowner means something to me.
I would say, I see people more. I see friends more. I really appreciate now that I have the opportunity to see people in my community all the time. I miss a little bit maybe of the anonymity in New York, where you could walk out your door and not see people and just go out about your day and make the choices that you want to make. And here, it's you walk out your front door, you're gonna run into three people you know. Especially with the dog. All the dog people know each other. Everyone lives in houses versus large apartment buildings, and things like that.
It's just different. It's a much tighter and closer community. The weather's better. It really doesn't mean a lot to me to have better weather. New Orleans has many, many problems as a city, but I still love it here. I definitely feel happier here. Definitely feel happier here.
Alicia: Well, how do you define abundance?
Jami: Well, I'm looking out my window, and there's just a huge loquat tree that is just full of orange. And I can walk out there right now and pull the fruit from the tree. And that feels like abundance to me.
Alicia: Well, for you is writing a political act?
Jami: Yes, of course. Of course. What else are we doing here?
Alicia: Usually asking people cooking, is cooking a political act? I want to be fair. They usually say yes, or no.
But people, they'll say that 'me being in the kitchen isn't political.' Speaking of academics, I did a conversation with a professor, an English professor who has a novel out. And we were talking about this, and she was saying how there's so much labor involved in cooking. And I think that when people talk about cooking not being political when they're in the kitchen, and I think that they're doing a disservice to their own work.
Jami: I was thinking about how earlier you were talking about writing being labor, and there actually has been an internet discussion as of late about being a novelist being unpaid labor.
I just have to say, no one's making you write a novel. No one's making you do any of this. You're choosing to do it because you want to. You chose it. You chose a hard path. We chose a hard path. But there are other paths that are even harder. And the fact that you even have a choice is amazing to do it.
Sorry. I was just being a mom there. I was like, 'Oh, my gosh. I sound like such a mom.'
Alicia: Yeah, no, but thank you. Thank you for being here.
Jami: Yeah, sure. My pleasure.
Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe
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A Conversation with Daniela Galarza
13 apr 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I'm talking to Daniela Galarza, the writer behind The Washington Post's Eat Voraciously newsletter, which goes out Monday through Thursdays offering suggestions for what to cook for dinner. We discussed how she went from pastry kitchens to food media, writing recipes for a broad audience with plenty of substitutions, and walking around Walmarts to see what kind of ingredients are available everywhere.
Alicia: Hi, Daniela. Thank you so much for being here.
Daniela: Hi, Alicia. Thanks for having me.
Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Daniela: I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, a few different suburbs. And my mom immigrated to the U.S. in her early adulthood, and my dad from Iran. And my dad moved from Puerto Rico to the mainland in—when he was 9 or 10 years old. And they met in Chicago and realized they had—I guess, they both loved to cook. Or they both loved food. And so growing up, I ate a lot of both of those cuisines, and also a lot of things that they kind of made up together.
And then, when I started going to school, I started—my brother and I, who’s younger than me, started complaining that we weren't eating enough American food. I loved the Puerto Rican food and the Iranian food that I was eating. It's interesting that I, as a kid, just wanted macaroni and cheese and, from a box. And, I don't know, hot dogs, and—What else? Oh, and baked pastas. I wanted all of this Italian American food, which was so foreign to my parents. And they did their best to try to figure out what we would eat. That manifested in really interesting mas- ups. My dad's take on spaghetti and meatballs was spaghetti, really, really overdone spaghetti in, I think, a canned tomato sauce, and then a fried pork chop on top. And it would get cut up for me. Yeah, there were a lot of translations into American food that I ate.
Alicia: Wow.
Well, and you've had such a long and varied career in food. So I wanted to start at the beginning. Why food? And how did you start your professional career?
Daniela: I don't know how I always knew I wanted to work in the food, in food, somehow doing something with food. I think I always gravitated towards the kitchen. It wasn't always a happy place in my home. I just loved eating.
Something I get from my mom that I'm more aware of now is a pretty sensitive sense of taste. And I think that that contributed to my enjoyment of eating different foods and different cuisines, whether I was cooking them myself or eating somebody else's at a restaurant or at their home. And that enjoyment—
I remember my parents. My dad was a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority. And my mom did many, many different jobs when I was growing up. And it was very clear that both of them worked to work, to pay the bills. And I came away from that experience never wanting to work a 9 to 5 and never wanting to work to just pay my bills. I wanted to figure out how I could work, how I could do something I loved and make a living out of it.
And initially that was me wanting to go to culinary school. And I had a lot of notions of like, ‘Oh, I'll open a restaurant.’ Or ‘Oh, I'll be like a TV chef like Julia Child,’ whoever I watched on PBS growing up. And my mom had these very strong feelings about like, ‘Oh, you want to be, want to cook for people?’ And in some cultures that—there's a stigma. There's a class attached to that kind of service industry work. And I remember being so puzzled by that when I would hear that from family members just not understanding it at all.
Until I went into working in restaurants and saw how restaurant people are treated, saw how you were treated if you worked in the back of house at a restaurant in general and the assumptions that are made about you. And then, I understood her words a lot more. But I still had a lot of fun doing it.
Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, so you started out in kitchens, right?
Daniela: Yeah. Oh, I didn't answer the second part of your question. Yeah.
I started out working in restaurant kitchens. My first job was working at a local bakery, selling the bread. And then my second job was at Williams-Sonoma as a food demonstrator in the local mall. And when I went to college, I worked in local restaurants to help pay for books and lodging. And that's when I started getting into pastry. I found some local pastry chefs that took me under their wing, and I got really excited about it and was a pastry assistant for a really long time.
And then, after I finished college, I studied food history in college and found a number of really great professor-mentors while I was there who encouraged me to stay on the scholarly food path. They thought I would become like them, and I would teach food history or food anthropology. And then, I would write books about my research. Just that whole time, I was just like, ‘No, I'm gonna go become a pastry chef. I'm going to get this degree; I'm going to cross off my list. And then somehow, I'm gonna figure out how I'm going to pay these student loans back by working in restaurant kitchens.’
And so after I graduated, I went to the French Culinary Institute in New York City. And I had to work full-time while I was doing that. A way I found a job in New York was I just read. I started reading all of William Grimes’ restaurant reviews and looking for the ones that mentioned pastry chefs. And I cold-called all of those restaurants and just said, ‘I'm moving to your city. I need a job in a restaurant kitchen. This is my experience. Are you hiring?’ And most of these places hung up on me until one of them didn't. And I mean, I don't know if they still do trails, but I did a two-day trail where I worked for free for two days. And they observed my work and hired me. God, I had a job. I could move to New York, and I could go to culinary school. And I finally thought I had found my place—It's like, ‘I graduated college. And I found what I was, what I've always wanted to do. And I did it.’
I worked in pastry kitchens in New York, and went to France and studied a little bit more in France. And then got offered a job doing product development in Los Angeles. And I never wanted to leave New York. This was a really good opportunity. And it was also an opportunity for me to finally have health care benefits, which I hadn't had before. As you know, they're very rare in the restaurant.
I went into that, and then the recession hit and this company basically went under. And a friend of mine at the time said, ‘Have you thought about writing about food?’ And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it had been years since I thought about writing about food.’ I hadn’t thought about writing about food since I was in college. Yeah, they told me about an internship at Eater LA that was open, and I went and applied for it. And that's how I started writing about restaurants and food.
That was really long.
Alicia: No, I love it. Because it gives me a better sense of—I knew you did all these things. But I didn't know how you know the chronology of everything you've done. And so now, it all comes together.
You've stayed really invested and interested in pastry. What keeps you so excited about dessert?
Daniela: When I was in pastry school, I didn't have a clear sense of what the North American public thinks of as pastry and how it fits into their daily lives and how essential it is. And then when I went to work in restaurant kitchens, they—that's where my first sense of pastry as a business came out. At the time, I was told by a number of restaurant people that the average restaurant sales for rest—in restaurants in New York City was about 30 percent, which was considered high nationally. So 30 percent of people that walk in the door of a restaurant were ordering dessert. And I just thought, ‘Oh, my God, that's horrible! It's so low.’
And it's about, if I'm devoting my whole life to this—but I also knew it from a practical standpoint, where it just so happened that the first restaurant I worked at the dessert sales were 90 percent. And that was because it was mostly a tasting menu. And the restaurant was known for its desserts as this sort of spectacle, and it was something that the chef really promoted. And so, I had this really early skewed introduction to how many desserts people would order at a restaurant. And then progressively in my career I realized, ‘Well, people are, just don't order dessert. They're always on a diet. They’re always making excuses. They’re too full.’
And I was the person at the end of the night. All the line cooks are cleaning up. It's 10, 11 p.m. The kitchen closes, but pastry stays open because people are having their after-dinner drinks. And then, they're gonna order dessert, or you hope they're gonna order dessert. And so, you have all your mise en place. You have all of your beautiful little cakes and the souffle ingredients and all of the things you have ready to go. And then they don't order dessert, and you have to throw it all away.
And I was crushed. I was constantly crushed when people didn't order dessert. And then, you're walk home at 1 or 2 in the morning, walk 50 blocks home and would just be bummed out the whole time. And after that experience, few years of experiencing that, it just underlined for me the labor that goes into pastry, I feel is so much, can be so much greater than the labor that goes into savory food. And I want to value that.
I find it exciting just because it's—Pastry is so many things, has so many different ingredients and involves so much chemistry. There's so many different components. And I feel it intersects with a lot of different arts, like architecture and the fine arts, and creates emotion for a lot of people in ways that savory doesn't always. And so, I appreciate it from that perspective, too. But I always think about the person at the end of the night that's waiting to see if you're going to order a slice of cake or a custard. I want to order it from them. Make sure they feel appreciated.
Alicia: I love that.
You mentioned that you got that job at Eater LA after working in kitchens, working in product development. How did you transition? Because studying food history in college, of course, you have this bank of knowledge. And then, you have this wealth of experience of real restaurant labor. And you have this real knowledge, culinary knowledge. And so, how did that all translate when you ended up at Eater?
Daniela: It was a rough transition. I hope nobody goes back and reads my archives, I hope. I just want them to disappear forever.
I mean, I was a terrible writer initially. But I was fortunate in that some of the people that I worked with—and Eater at the time was very small and scrappy. There was so much competition. There was always this feeling we have a chip on our shoulder ’cause we're just a blog. And so, we've got to really prove ourselves. And I don't know, I really glommed on to that. I don't know, I've also been sort of scrappy in my life and just had to make things work. And I think that I identified with that. I identified with ‘work long hours and do everything and don't get paid any money,’ because that was my entire youth and early adulthood. How to do it. I don't think anyone should have to do that.
But that side of things, that's how I started reporting. I remember, we were always trying to be first on everything. I was just really good at talking my way into restaurants and asking if I could talk to people and asking a lot of questions and being curious. And I don't know, all of that, fortunately, came pretty naturally to me, because I didn't study journalism. But the parts of writing that didn't, and sometimes still don't come naturally to me, are just the practice of putting sentences together and building a story. I think I'm always gonna be learning that. I'm still learning that. I still feel like I struggle with it sometimes.
But so, it was this progression from Eater LA. And then eventually, LA Weekly called and said, ‘We could pay you!’ Because I was working for free at Eater, and I said, ‘Wow, ok, yes, please pay me.’ And LA Magazine called and said, ‘Yes, we're hiring,’ and they paid a little bit better. And then, Eater came back to me after they got bought by Vox Media and said, ‘Well, we have more money.’ Because I basically said, ‘I'm not going back unless you can pay me a living wage.’ So they did, and I moved. That's when I moved back to New York from L.A., was to do that.
I mean, while I was sort of cobbling together this new, going from restaurant industry to journalism, I was working many small part-time jobs. I was working in marketing. I was working in consumer product PR, which was just a very bizarre space and weird time in my life. And I was working as a private chef. And so, I was doing a lot of different things at the same time. Oh, I was also doing farmers’ markets on the weekends; I was selling products for people that made pestos and tapenades and cheeses and things like that. So yeah, I was working many jobs all the time. [Laughs.]
Alicia: Right. That's such a hustle, my God.
Well, and then you've been at Serious Eats and now at the Washington Post. And it seems you're doing a bit more recipe work right? In the last few years?
Daniela: This is the first full-time job I've had where I'm doing recipe development, and I'm so appreciative of it because I feel it ties all of my interests and skill set together. It was something I was looking for, was why I left Eater.
Eater at the time didn't publish recipes. And they were really adamant about that. And I had pitched a number of avenues and ways for us to get into that space. They were shut down. And at the same time, I started getting contacted by other editors at other publications. And I was really curious about what it would be like to work for other New York publications. And so, I went freelance for a year and that was frightening. And also, I learned a lot—learned so much more, interestingly, about editing during my time freelance writing for other editors than I did at Eater.
And then the Washington Post posted a job for a newsletter writer, and I really didn't think the world needed another newsletter. [Laughter.] I still kind of don't think the world needs another newsletter. It's shocking to me that people subscribe to my newsletter. Joe Yonan, the editor there, sent me an email and said, ‘You really should apply for this.’ And on the last day when the application was due, I remember I went for a walk around the block with my dog. And I thought like, ‘If I wrote a newsletter, what would it be like?’ And I wrote this application email and I got the job after a long interview process.
Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]
Well, how do you balance that now? Because you really are focused on the newsletter, but the newsletter is really intense the way you do it. It's Monday to Thursday. It's recipes. But it's also a ton of variations on those recipes for people who have different needs or different allergies. And then also, you're giving the context for the recipes as well, whether it's from a cookbook or it's from your own understanding. And that seems so much work.
How are you kind of balancing all of that now? And how has it been to have to be really kind of relentlessly creative in putting out this newsletter all the time?
Daniela: Yeah, that's a good question. It is a lot of work. And I tried to think about it as, manage the—
I guess when I feel burned out on the writing part, I go into the kitchen. It's using different parts of my brain. Just a weird way to say it. Sometimes I need to sit down and type my thoughts out. And sometimes I need to go into a kitchen away from a screen and put my hands in something. And that balance is really, I think, really helpful for me and really good for me, because I come up with ideas while I'm cooking. And then vice versa.
Some people, I think, still think that I'm developing four recipes a week. No, that would be insane. I'm not doing that. I'm only developing one new recipe a week. And I develop those recipes throughout the month. And then I hand in a batch of recipes at the beginning of the month. And they go through an edit process and a testing process. And then, they get shot. They're styled and shot by a great team, shot by photographer Rey Lopez. And I just love his photos.
And I'm so grateful that I get to work with this team of people who really help me remember that I have to keep this thing going. They're all these people who are depending on me to keep this thing going. Otherwise, I so admire people like you that have your own motivation. If I didn't know there were people waiting for my work in order to do their work. I don't think I would do anything. I think I would stay in bed all day. And it's this fear of letting people down that keeps me—Yeah, I do. really enjoy my work. And I'm really grateful I get to do it.
Alicia: How do you keep that fresh and provide so many substitutions too? Where did that idea come from? And how do you kind of conceptually think about that? How do you figure out where in the recipe, there's room for variation and play?
Daniela: I think that is something that came up organically as I was writing the newsletters. And it was initially inspired or prompted by the fact that the newsletter started kind of in the early days of the pandemic, or less than a year into the pandemic. And so, people were still really concerned about going to the market more than once a week, or more than once a month in some cases. And there was a lot more caution, and there was still an availability issue. The Washington Post also reaches an international audience. And so, when it was springtime for, let's say Washington, D.C., it was not springtime in Perth, Australia.
I had information coming at me from many different places, many different sides. I knew initially, from the very beginning of the newsletter, I wanted to offer as many meatless options as I could, because it's just a way I'm trying to eat myself. And so selfishly, I was wanting to challenge myself to think more broadly about the way I eat and how I can, let's say, satisfy my cravings for certain things and maintaining a level of nutrition, but not always default to meat as the center of the plate.
So, I started doing that, building off of what I learned. I lived in a vegetarian co-op in college for two or three years. And I learned so much from that crew of people. Shout out to the Triphammer Co-Op. I actually don't think it exists anymore. But it was a great, incredible group of people that were very committed to being vegetarian and vegan, and challenged my thinking as a person who grew up eating meat. That was my first introduction to taking a vegetarian diet, a vegan diet very seriously. And I learned so much from them. I learned all of the building blocks of what I know about vegetarian cuisine from them.
And when I started writing this newsletter, I was thinking a lot about that. And I was thinking about how much I wished I could still talk to those people, and then just decided—it just sort of started to flow. Or it was like, ‘Alright, if I made this. If I got this recipe in my inbox, and I thought, ‘Ok, this sounds good, maybe I'll make it. But I'm looking in my pantry. And I don't have, I don't know, let's say all-purpose flour. I'm out of all-purpose flour, or I'm out of onions, or whatever. What would I do?’
And I think that most people who cook, who are very confident in the kitchen, and most people I happen to talk to like this the way we're talking? I think we know these things intrinsically. I think we know, ‘Ok, if I don't have lemon juice, I can use white wine vinegar. I can make it. I can make things work with these very obvious substitutions.’ But I also have a lot of friends who don't know how to cook at all. And I think about them in the kitchen. I think about them holding their knife, or I think about like, ‘Oh, if they saw this recipe, they would just assume they couldn't make it because they don't have rice in their pantry right now.’
And I'm just like, ‘Actually, maybe I can outline this in a way that's sort of easy to parse, and hopefully not too obvious for all the people that know how to cook, but also gives people ideas if there have an allergy to something, or they find cilantro doesn't taste good to that. What are the ways I can offer them ideas around that?’ And that has turned into this signature of the newsletter. I get dozens of emails every day from people who are like, ‘Thank you so much for putting that in there.’ I didn't consciously start doing it. It just started to happen. And I'm glad it's resonating with people.
Alicia: Yeah, it's so interesting to find—when you are so obsessed with food, and you have kind of done all the trial and error over time. I mean, for me, I've learned how to cook through trial and error. You've learned how to cook in an actual formal setting. But for it to come really naturally, and that you think about these things is so obvious. It is a really delicate balance in recipe writing to speak to the people for whom it isn't a natural thing to substitute—
I made a Sohla recipe from Bon Appetit, an eggplant adobo, and it had pork in it. And I was like, ‘Alright, well, I'll just—I'll substitute that with minced mushrooms. And I'll just add more oil, so that there's fat there.’ But other people wouldn't think of that because they'll just be like, ‘Oh, it has pork in it. If I don't want to eat meat, I'm just not going to make this.’
And so that's why I think that your newsletter is so important, because it really does show people that thought process. And I think once people start to learn that, what can be substituted or what can be replaced and where there's room for adaptation, then their regular cooking is just going to get better because they're going to start thinking that way, too. Basically you're lending people your brain [laughs], which is a really great—the way you do it is so cool. And I love it because it makes it so clear and so simple.
And I do think the Washington Post, maybe, it probably becomes more natural to you guys to be a little more open to meatless food, because Joe is the guy writing the bean cookbook and the plant-based cookbook and everything. [Laughs.] So is it kind of understood at the Post that you guys do these kinds of adaptations, or what is the conversation like if you can give any insight into how you guys talk about eating less meat or or giving those options?
Daniela: I mean, definitely think you should talk to Joe about it at some point. There really aren't conversations like that. Joe’s certainly never going to come out and say, ‘We can't publish this recipe because it uses this ingredient. And this ingredient is problematic, because whatever.’ He's just not that kind of person. He's a very open-minded person. And he's also just not naturally a judgmental person. I mean, he's definitely the best boss I've ever had. I'm not just saying that. It's one of two reasons why I'm still at the Washington Post, I can say that. And I so appreciate his openness.
It's more than when we talk about recipes, when we talk about what we're going to be making, he's so enthusiastic about his dishes. And it comes across in his writing, of course. And I think that rubs off on all of us in general. I think that approaching something from a place of enthusiasm, rather than limitation is a real—just so encouraging. It feels more encouraging to me.
Alicia: So I wanted to ask, you've lived in a few cities. How has that shaped your perspective on food and writing about food? Because yeah, you grew up in Chicago. You moved to New York. You lived in L.A.. Do your parents now, are in Arizona?
Daniela: Yeah. They're in Tucson. And I've been living with them in Tucson for the—almost the entirety of the pandemic, or almost two years now.
And I will say, the assumptions that I want to say that maybe rural America makes of the coastal cities are entirely correct. And I say yes, just from having lived in those cities and been in those bubbles, and essentially still operating in those bubbles. And then living in Tucson, which is a much smaller city. I mean, it's landlocked, and it's also—It's west coast, but it's Southwest. And it has its own brand of politics. And I think it is a fascinating place to live, if all—if you've only ever lived in very, very large cities, because it really outlines for me the ways in which I'm biased, and the way I can make assumptions about anything.
I mean, the way it plays out in the newsletter is when I'm developing recipes, I do actually go to Walmart and look and see what ingredients are available there on a regular basis because Walmart is the biggest supplier of food in the country. And it is still where most people are shopping. And if an ingredient can't be found there, it's—there's a good chance that the person reading the newsletter might not make that recipe. And I want to make sure things are available to people.
Big guiding light from the beginning of the newsletter, and when I first—the newsletter concept was not my idea. That was Liz Seymour's idea. She’s a managing editor at the Post, assistant managing editor at the Post. But the way I conceived of executing her idea of this daily news, daily recipe newsletter was that if it was under the brand Voraciously, what does eating voraciously mean?
And what it means to me is this really open-minded sense of what you're eating. I didn't want to just make whatever, 30-minute pasta dinners every night, obviously. I eat a variety of foods, and I eat from a variety of cultures, and I want it to represent all of that too. So it's a balance between understanding that not everyone lives in big cities.
And I do hear from people who live in really small towns, and I constantly ask them, like, ‘What's it like?’ I want to know more. There's someone that emailed me who lives in a really remote place in Wyoming in a mountain town and can only go to a store once a month. And they just describe it as so peaceful. And honestly, that just sounds amazing. Sounds amazing to me.
Alicia: I love that you go to Walmart, because, while obviously I'm like, ‘Walmart sucks, is evil.’ But at the same time, I understand that.
The Walmart de Santurce is always packed, and they have a surprising variety that I think maybe if you never go to a Walmart you don't know that they have it. I found Brooklyn Delhi Curry Ketchup. I found Woodstock Farms pickles. They have a non-dairy section. Whenever I have to go for something random like a bike pump or a tube, I go and I look at all the food. And it is really interesting to see that it's actually not at all what people would assume. They also have local foods that they'll sell too. They adapt to what the culture is where they are, which it's not a black-and-white thing where they're forcing Kraft foods upon people or something like that. It's a lot more nuanced than that, which is super interesting. I think someone should write about how Walmart does food buying.
Daniela: I agree.
And yeah, I want to reiterate, I go and look at what Walmart sells. I don't actually shop at Walmart.
Alicia: It’s ok if you do. [Laughs.]
Daniela: But it's because I have a wide variety of places I can shop where I live. Tucson is not such a small city that there aren’t dozens and dozens of markets. But I respect the fact that a lot of people shop there, because they do have really great prices. I mean, really, it's a really affordable place to buy food, particularly if you're feeding a large family. If I was feeding a large family, I would definitely go there and buy an extra large bag of chips. Because, man, that's a good deal.
Alicia: No, no, no. I mean, the food costs are insane right now. Everyone's doing Reels and TikToks about how much less food they can buy right now. Gas is super expensive. These are the things you have to think about when you are a recipe writer, is really, what are people actually going to have? And what are they going to have access to, and what's going to be affordable. I'm going to do a pantry series for the newsletter too. I'm thinking about that.
But also, just by nature of living in a small city on an island have limited options. I don't have maitake mushrooms, as much as I would love to eat a maitake a lot. I can't get them. I can’t always even get organic tofu. I have to get just non-GMO tofu. And these are such little things, but they're things that I really took for granted all the time.
And I think a lot of people take for granted all the time, is it—when you're living in New York or something is that you can go to a glorified, one of those glorified, gentrified bodegas and get Miyoko's vegan butter. I have to make a very special trip if I want to do that. There's so many things I have to consider when making decisions that I never used to think about. It makes things way more interesting if you do that, if you think about, like, ‘How can I break something down to its absolute essentials, and still make it really, really good?’ I think that’s where we're, where you get to change people's thinking about what it means to cook at home, and how delicious and how accessible that can be.
Daniela: Exactly.
I want to go back slightly to something, that point of something we were talking about earlier, which is that this idea of giving people these other options and substitution suggestions opens the door for them to learn about how they want to cook and learn about—I mean, obviously learn about these options.
It was also, for me, kind of a rejection of this notion that I think food media has had for a really long time that you must make the recipe exactly as written, or it might work, won't work. I think there was a lot of steering people away from trying things a different way, because then they're gonna come back to the publication and say, ‘This recipe didn't work.’ I think that there is a lot of almost satirical cases of this, where people are writing in and being like, ‘I made this meatloaf, except I didn't use any meat, and it didn't work, you know?’ And it's like, ‘Ok, well, obviously, it wouldn't work.’ But there are ways that you can make substitutions.
And I think that it's also giving people permission to trust their instincts a little bit. I guess I don't make any recipe exactly as written, usually. And maybe that's because I'm more confident in the kitchen. But I can also see my friends who aren't as competent in the kitchen looking at a recipe and say, ‘Well, it’s telling me to add a whole tablespoon of salt. Maybe I don't like it that salty. I'm not going to add a whole tablespoon right now.’ I can see them making their own judgment calls. And I want to give them permission to do that. Because I think that's when you feel empowered in the kitchen, you feel more confident. And that's when you open the door to sort of a more exciting cooking life, I think.
Alicia: Of course, yeah.
And so I wanted to ask you, how do you define abundance?
Daniela: You, helpfully, sent these questions in advance. And I've been thinking about this for a while now. And I think just coming at—I mean, I still feel we're in a pandemic. And I have felt very closed off from my friends and family, some other family that I'm not living with. And I felt disconnected from the social environment.
And so, I think of abundance as eating with other people. Really sharing a meal with people and relishing the experience of talking to them, whether it's about the food or something else, that makes me think of just a table, a table full of food, but also full of people. I miss people.
Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act?
Daniela: Well, I think yeah, I think any kind of consumption in a capitalist society is political, can be political. But I also think that sometimes when I'm cooking—and this is again, before the pandemic, when I was cooking for people—I was cooking out of love. I was cooking because I wanted to make ‘em happy. So maybe I wasn't always conscious of the decisions I was making in terms of where I was buying my food or what I was buying or what I was cooking, or whetherIt was cooking on gas or electric, whether I was cooking in a stainless steel pot or aluminum. All of these potential decisions were fading into the background. But in general, it is a political act.
Alicia: Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for coming on today.
Daniela: Thanks so much for having me.
Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe
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A Conversation with Robert Simonson
6 apr 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to “From the desk of Alicia Kennedy”, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I’m talking Robert Simonson, a contributing cocktail writer at the New York Times, Punch, and other outlets. He’s the author of many cocktail books, including one of my favorites, A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World
We discussed how he went from theater critic to cocktail writer, the methodology behind 2016’s A Proper Drink, launching his newsletter The Mix, and the non-alcoholic beverage scene.
Alicia: Thank you so much for being here, Robert.
Robert: Oh, it's my pleasure.
Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Robert: Yes, I grew up in a small farming community in Wisconsin. It had the name Eagle with about 395 people in it. And my parents had moved there for a change of pace and their lifestyle, and we lived on a working farm. So my mother had a huge vegetable garden and my father raised pigs and other animals, so I kind of grew up knowing where all the food came from, all the vegetables came from our garden, all the meat that was in the large freezer in the basement, had once been living on our land, and we sent it away to a butcher and it came back.
So I guess this kind of gave me a sort of a trusting attitude towards food, which is perhaps not well founded or well founded and how you look at it. I was very lucky in that respect. My mother was a good cook. She made a lot of, you know, home meals, mainly Germanic, the kinds of things that you would get in Wisconsin. And of course, you know, you eat a lot of cheese out there; you eat a lot of bratwurst. One thing we did every summer that I did not realize was special until the last ten years is, we took one of our pigs and we roasted it whole over a spit and we invited all the family over and we had this day-long pig roast. I think at the time as a kid, I probably thought it was pretty gross. But now of course, you know, that's, that's a very cool thing to have.
Alicia: [Laughs] Well, when did you end up coming to New York then?
Robert: I came to New York in 1988. I came here to go to graduate school at Hunter College.
Alicia: Nice. And what did you study? Did you study journalism?
Robert: I had studied journalism and English Literature at Northwestern University in the Chicago area. And I came here with the quixotic idea of getting a master's degree in dramatic criticism, which is not, you know, a going concern, not a way to make a living. But that's what I wanted to do. I really wanted to be a drama critic. My family is a theater family; they're a group of actors, directors and designers. I've… I've always been a writer, I knew I would be a writer from the age of 11, or 12. So that seemed what my role should be, although later on, I tried playwriting as well.
Alicia: What did you take from dramatic criticism that now sustains you as a cocktail writer? Because you really, you've spent most of your career writing about cocktails, right?
Robert: Yes, about 16 years writing about cocktails. There was a brief interval with wine, and before that, 15 or 18 years writing about theater. At first, I didn't see the parallels, but then they were very clear and right in front of me. Obviously, the bartenders behind the bar, many of them are former actors or current actors, but they are all performers, they are on a stage, we are looking at them, we are evaluating their performance, enjoying the show. The theater has a long and rich history, I always like the historical aspect if anything. And cocktails have been around for a long time, more than 200 years. So there was that history to dig into. There are a lot of traditions and superstitions; there are a lot of rituals surrounding both theater and the bar. So there's actually quite a lot between the two. And now… now in retrospect, I can see why I would have made what would seem like a very unorthodox career transferred from theater to cocktails.
Alicia: How did that transition happen? What got you actually started in writing about wine and cocktails and going more in that direction?
Robert: I think after about 20 years of writing about the theater, I was, quite frankly, burnt out. The theater is a very small world, even in New York, and I felt I had written all the stories I had interviewed all the people I… I hadn't seen all the plays, but I'd seen hundreds upon thousands of plays.
And I thought to myself, you know, does a person have to do the same thing their entire life? I knew I had to write but I was… I was tired of writing about theater. And I just looked around, like I said, I did wine for a while. I was always fascinated with wine. I educated myself and wrote about that for a while. But then I found out that the wine world is kind of stuffy, frankly.
And also there were… there wasn't a lot of opportunity there. The people who write about wine are quite entrenched, and they don't really open the door for a lot of new people. And then I discovered—this was like 2006, and the cocktail world was just discovering itself, and at least bartenders are reclaiming cocktail history, bringing back all these classic drinks, opening cocktail bars. So I was able to kind of get in on the, you know, so called ground floor on that. I'd always been interested in mixology and cocktails. Again, this was a thing that was in the back of my head, I didn't really realize it. But my parents always, you know, steadfastly honored cocktail hour, my mother drank old fashioneds. My father drank martinis. I'm from Wisconsin; drinking is a big part of the culture.
And so I was fascinated with how you put those drinks together and where they came from, and where the names came from, and all that stuff. And so I made that switch and I'm glad I did.
Alicia: Well, and your book, A Proper Drink: the Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World, is one of my favorites, because it caught me up to date on all these things that I had missed in the cocktail world, and then kind of came into it late. What was the research process for writing that book? Because it really is such a deep and extensive historical record, but also has a real narrative thrust to it as well.
Robert: Yes, that was the second cocktail book I wrote, after The Old Fashioned at that point, it was in the middle of the 20 teens, it was about 2014. And I was looking around and having this historical bent in my mind, I was thinking what history is happening right now in the cocktail world, in the bar world. And nobody's really writing it down.
I mean, they're writing it down piecemeal, article by article, but they're not taking the broad view…long view. And part of what we were all doing as cocktail writers was trying to rediscover the past because it hadn't been written down very well. So we were going back, like, who were the bartenders who created these cocktails? Why do we drink martinis? Why do we drink old fashioneds? How do you make them all that kind of stuff? So I thought, Well, let's not, let's not go through that again… let's write it all down while everyone's around, and everyone's alive, and the bars are still alive. And you can interview everyone. I went to 10 Speed Press, which is my publisher, and they thankfully took the idea I was… I was happy and surprised. And then, of course, I had the task in front of me, which was a daunting task. And so I interviewed more than 200 people in several countries, a few continents. It was just a matter of doing one after another.
You just couldn't look at the entirety. So you started with one interview. And then it went on, I think I interviewed Dale DeGroff first, who seemed like the perfect choice for the first interview. And at this point, I had been writing about cocktails for about eight years, so I knew all the players and they trusted me when I interviewed them before and wrote about them. They knew that I wouldn't do a disservice to them or the history or this culture. I did the interviews and I think it took about a year and a half to do all the interviews. Then of course, you have to transcribe the interviews, which is absolute torture; it took so much time. And you know, just thinking about it right now, I'm exhausted. I could not… I can tell you right now, I could not do that again.
If you… if you had given me this book contract today, I could not do it. It's just too tiring. It's the hardest thing I ever did. But I'm glad I did it and I'm glad I did it at the time I did because as you know, some of the major characters in that book are no longer with us.
So I got to talk to them. But while they… they were still here.
Alicia: Right, and, you know, there is a quote from Giuseppe Gonzalez at the start of chapter nine that ever since I read the book, I think about this quote all the time. But he said when you think of the classical bartender, it's always a tall white guy with a funny mustache. And he goes on to say how that erases people like him, Audrey Saunders, Julie Reiner. And that's been a real guiding point for me, but, you know, how have you tried in your work to kind of write the modern history of cocktails, not just in that book, but in your… in your journalism that you do, really do a justice to how diverse this… this job is really, and how diverse you know, the world of cocktails is. There's cocktail bars literally everywhere now in the whole world where they're all doing different things.
Robert: Yes, yes. That's a great quote by Giuseppe, that moment. Giuseppe was always a good interview, he was always very unguarded, and candid. And the moment I heard that, I thought, Well, that's gold. That's going in the book.
Alica: Yeah. [Laughs]
Robert: And there's a reason I started a chapter with it, I knew it was a good quote. And it was an accurate quote; he was absolutely right. Happily, this world is becoming a more diverse world. I don't think it was when the craft cocktail movement began. All the people in it were just so excited about what was happening that bartenders were being respected again and cocktails were being made well again and seen as the liquid equivalent of what was going on in the kitchen. It was just this sense of discovery that they weren't necessarily looking around and aware of whatever inequities were right within the community. And they were, quite frankly, the same inequities that you see in every other field of enterprise, and achievement. One of the good things, I think, that has happened over the past two or three years is, the cocktail community has begun to recognize that and try to correct that. Bring more diversity, because it was an overwhelmingly male world, and overwhelmingly white world and these were the people who were interviewed. So I'm just as much at fault as anybody.
But, you know, with the #MeToo Movement and the Black Lives Matter Movement, it opened a lot of people's eyes, both within the bar world and the people who cover the bar world. And so you start to reapproach your job, reapproach your assignment and say, like, well, who have I been neglecting? And maybe I should stop interviewing the same people over and over again, and look a little deeper and find someone else, you know, and concentrate on bars that are owned by women, that are owned by people of color, also, to look back into history, and find out those forgotten figures, which were indeed, you know, forgotten, and written out of history. They were there, though. And so it's… it's been our job to tell their stories, bring them back, I still think there's, of course, lots of work to do.
Alicia: Well, you know, you recently launched a newsletter called The Mix, which is about drinks, but it's also, you know, a really, really big mix of content and subject matter. So what was your inspiration for going independent right now?
Robert: Well, so many things changed during the pandemic, during the past two years, I think, you know, the scales fell from everybody's eyes. You know, what their lives were, what their employment was, what… what the greater culture was. Freelance writers are no different. You know, we fight and scrap and, you know, scrape together our living, you know, day by day. And then something like the pandemic comes along, and like, the scaffolds fall down, and then you realize you have no support whatsoever.
Alicia: Right. [Laughs]
Robert: It got harder to get assignments. I don't envy, uh, the editors and publishers; they didn't know what to do any more than we knew what to do. But at the same time, you have to make a living. And so I was lucky, because I was working on two book assignments during the pandemic, and that kind of kept me afloat. For much of it.
But I knew that I had to reorganize my career to, I don't know, just find a new way to go about the same thing that I was doing. And I, quite frankly, I had never heard of Substack before the pandemic came along, and suddenly, there were lots of articles about Substack, talking about people like you, and people like you became an inspiration. You know, I was looking at what you were doing; you were charting your own territory, you were becoming independent and writing about what you wanted to write about. And that was very appealing to me. And it also allowed me a lot of freedom, because I can choose what I want to write about. I think there used to be a lot more generalists in journalism, who could write a little bit about everything. I've always been pigeonholed: I was pigeon holed as a theater writer and then I was pigeon holed as a cocktail writer. It's kind of a miracle that I actually got out of theater writing, because they… once you're in the box, the editors don't let you out.
And I love… don't get me wrong. I love writing about cocktails, and bartenders. It's a very nice box to be in. But it's not the only thing I'm interested in. And now that I have this newsletter, I assigned myself you know, I can write about food, I can write about travel, I can write about regional eating traditions, I can… I can even go back to the theater. I mean, once I left the theater, I sort of burned all those bridges, and they cut me off, you know, no more theater tickets, no more free theater tickets. But now if I choose to, I can. And we've been doing it for six weeks and it's well, you know, it's a tremendous lot of fun. I don't know if you thought… do you find it fun? I find it fun.
Alicia: I find it fun, it's… it's interesting. I mean, like you, I like to write about lots of different things. I started out as a writer thinking I'd be a book critic and so my first love is literature. And so I felt like I never got to talk about books anymore when I was a food writer, you know, and then… but even when I was, you know, writing about food, you know, as a freelancer and as some as not really a contributor, any… to any one place, I got to write about tons of different things, but at the same time, you know, people would be like, well, you sort of dabble in this world, but you're more of this world and then someone else would be like you're really of this world but you dabble in this other world like and so it was always this kind of trying to pin you down, always. So that was that…
Now, as someone writing for myself and doing more essays and cultural criticism, I get to kind of combine everything that I care about. And I think that the reason I've had a moderate amount of success in this format is that people want that; people want to see, like—people love a voice, obviously; this is why we love art—but also people love to see connections between things, you know, we aren’t all people who just, we just go out to eat, or we just read books, like we all do all of these things. And so it's like, how do all of these things that I care about fit together? And I think that the reason we've seen so many writers really take to doing newsletters is because finally, they have a place to do that without editors saying like, no, you only can do this. And the only places I've found where I'm allowed to do that, at a bigger scale, are like literary places that don't pay well at all.
And so, you know, you're doing 3000 words, and doing really what you want to do and like weaving all of these things together, and then you're getting like, you're spending hours and weeks on it, and you're getting not even the equivalent of a month's rent. So at least within the newsletter format, you can kind of set your own boundaries, and trajectory [laughs].
Robert: That's right… I mean… that's why I called it The Mix. I struggled with the title. And The Mix, of course, is evocative of mixology. You know, and I know that most people are going to come to the newsletter looking for that drink stuff. But it's also a mixture of material and hopefully are getting… people are getting that, you know that yeah, just like I'm going to get a little bit of this a little bit of that little from Column A, Column B. And, and then they like that, but it's wonderful, removing all those impediments. All those middle people, you know, between you and the reader.
It's just wonderful. I will say that I have rather stupidly given myself 100 percent more to do. I write… I write twice as much as I used to and it's a little exhausting sometimes. It's a little overwhelming, because I'm still writing for the same freelance outfits that I did before, and I've still got a book too. But now I have to feed the beast, which is the newsletter.
Alicia: Yeah, no, finding that balance is really hard. How have you been? How have you been trying to structure your time these days?
Robert: Well, I've settled upon certain days that I post on the newsletter. And so the day before that is all work. You just wake up every day and you know what you have to write that day, and you get it done. The stuff for the newsletter doesn't seem like work, however, it just seems like fun. It seems like something that you're doing for yourself. I mean, I can tell you, most of the things that I write about are things that I would not be allowed to write about anywhere else. And whenever this story has been something that I really care about, and then really passionate about, or, or I'm just having a great time researching, it's never work.
Alicia: Right now is an interesting moment, though, in the cocktail world, like, how are you feeling about the rise of the nonalcoholic beverage and spirit and why? And you know, how is that? How is that fitting into your work? How is the, I would say, the rise of sobriety influencers as well—it's become a really interesting time to talk about drinking at all, because I don't know if you've found this, because people are really in a strange moment in their relationship with alcohol. How have you been experiencing this?
Robert: Yeah, that's been an interesting trend and it's been going on for a few years. It was… it started before the pandemic came along but it was kind of pushed along by the pandemic. And we started out with low ABV drinks. I kind of think a lot of these things are often pushed by the bartenders themselves. I mean, we perhaps think that we're choosing our own drinking trends, but the person behind the bar decides what's on the list or what they're going to serve. And, you know, it could very well be you could argue that a lot of these people in the cocktail industry, perhaps overindulged for the first decade of this movement, and then they thought they took a, they took an appraisal of their life and said, I better take a few more steps back here, because this party can’t go on indefinitely. So they started drinking low ABV drinks. And then maybe some of them were actually quite a few of them stopped drinking altogether. And they said, okay, how can I have a good time in a bar if I'm not having an alcoholic cocktail? So they've come up with the low ABV drinks.
That's been interesting to see during the pandemic. There was a real swing toward the beginning. We were all in shock, and we're just trying to comfort ourselves. So there was a lot of overdrinking. And then after six months, it was like, okay, let's not drink at all. So it's just, it was a swinging from extremes. I quite honestly did not know how to approach the subject for some time. Because I have schooled myself on the history of cocktails and cocktails are alcoholic drinks. And that's how they were invented. That's how they were made. And the world of the bar—for much of the bar’s history was a place where you drink spirits, or beer, or wine, or whatever. And to a certain extent, I wondered if non-alcoholic drinks weren't better covered by food writers? Because I just kind of thought of them as soft drinks, you know? So maybe this should be written about by somebody other than me.
But lately, I've begun to take them more seriously, look at them more closely. My wife recently decided to stop drinking for a while and so it became important to find good things to drink. And so I had to go out and she had to go out and find what were they offering in terms of non-alcoholic spirits? Every time we went to a bar, she would order the non-alcoholic option. And of course, I tasted all these, and then you, you come to find, you know, what are the faults with these things? Where are the good ones? Who's doing it well? Who’s doing it badly? Where do we have to improve? And I now see, one of the most important aspects of the genre. I think, to a certain extent, these things can only be made as well as they can be made, but I think the more important role they play is that they invite everybody into the bar.
So everyone comes in the bar, everyone gets their special drink, they're comfortable, they have a good time, and they can hang out together, as opposed to hanging out in separate places. So I like the social aspect of it that has changed things in recent years.
Alicia: For sure. And you know, I'm not in New York anymore, so I feel very detached from what's going on. So now that we're kind of coming out of, I don't know, I feel like I don't want to say we're post-pandemic, of course, but I do want to say we're coming into a new phase, I guess, of the pandemic. And so, what's exciting about bars right now in New York, where are you finding excitement?
Robert: Well, bars have had to reinvent themselves in so many ways. We lost a lot of great bars during the pandemic here in New York, and the other ones have struggled mightily. I'm sure that they're still reeling. Actually, I think it… is it today, or was it yesterday that they lifted the vaccination requirements at restaurants and bars, which I personally think is a mistake. But that's how it is now and so they're gonna have to struggle with that as well. How are they changing, what's exciting? Right now, everyone's just so excited to go back out again and there are a lot of new bars opening, obviously, almost no new bars open for almost a two-year period. And now there's a kind of flood of them. And so there are conventional stories to cover, as there used to be. I think the smart bars are trying to figure out how to do business differently and better, because they realized their relationship with the government was broken… their relationship with City Hall, their relationship with customers was based on a lot of perhaps unhealthy assumptions and habits. Changes in how they deliver the menu. I've seen in real time, they offer a lot more non -alcoholic drinks, like we were talking about. It's been a big wake-up call. I don't think running a bar is—well, it never was really a carefree enterprise… running a bar is really, really hard. But I think there are more worries now. And it's just, it's also too early.
Somehow after going through the pandemic, it feels frivolous and a disservice to talk about drinking trends. Like, you know, blue drinks are hot, you know, yeah, who cares? You know, we've got bigger fish to fry. You know, there are a lot more important things to write about.
Alicia: Well, that's actually really exciting to hear, because I can't wait to see what does change about… about cocktail writing and bar writing now that we've been through this and restaurant writing as well, because I think, yeah, when when you read a piece that kind of ignores all this context that we now have spent two years mired in, it feels very out of touch. And so like, how are people going to get back in touch with the audience? Is the audience going to be okay with talking about different things like labor issues, and you know, the policies that affect bars and restaurants, etc., etc.? So, it's going to be an interesting time for sure.
So I usually ask people if cooking is a political act for them. Do you cook a lot?
Robert: I do cook a lot, and I cooked a hell of a lot during the pandemic. I'm pretty good.
Alicia: For you, is cooking a political act, then?
Robert: Well that’s a good question. On one level, it's not because most of the time I'm cooking for my wife, or my son or my stepson. And so it's just a loving act, you know, a family act, but you do choose what you want to cook. I'm lucky enough to get a lot of cookbooks coming through the mail from 10 Speed Press and Clarkson Potter. And so I've been looking more at cookbooks of cultures that I'm unfamiliar with, or written by people of color and saying like, like, I've never made a dish like this, why don't we try?
And so that's been eye opening, and very rewarding. So I guess you could say, in that small way, it's a political act.
Alicia: Well, thank you so much for being here today and for chatting with me.
Robert: Oh, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

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A Conversation with LinYee Yuan
30 mar 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
Today, I’m talking LinYee Yuan, a design journalist as well as the editor and founder of MOLD magazine, which approaches food and the future from a design perspective. It’s one of the most innovative food magazines out there, with a global scope and an honest relationship to unpleasant realities like hunger, waste, and even fecal matter.
We discussed how the magazine came to be, how its point of view has been forged, and its trajectory from the microbiome toward its sixth and final forthcoming issue about soil.
Alicia: Hi, LinYee. Thank you so much for being here.
LinYee: Hi, Alicia. I'm so thrilled to be here with you today.
Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
LinYee: I grew up in Houston, Texas. I am a first generation Chinese American woman, and I basically ate all the things that kids in the ’80s ate in the United States. So Lunchables. I was obsessed with Cookie Crisps. I did the whole Pop-Tarts, all the things. But the difference is that my mother is a dietitian. And I just grew up knowing that those things were kind of foods that were just kind of special foods. So I would often go to friend’s houses to access those things.
And because I'm Chinese American, we would typically eat some kind of Chinese-ish every night. My father is a man of ritual. And so, he's not super into being very exploratory with his kind of daily meal. So often growing up, my job when I got home from school–’cause I was a latchkey kid, ’cause it’s the ‘80s—my job was basically to make the rice. So I had to go into our chest freezer and dig out cups of rice, wash the rice, and then put it in the rice cooker. So that was very much kind of my experience growing up.
My father was an avid gardener. And because I grew up in Houston, Texas, we had access to the water. And his other passion in life, besides gardening, is fishing. And so oftentimes, we would have fresh vegetables, fresh fruits from the garden, and fresh fish that my father had caught and then scaled and then cleaned and put them in the deep freezer. So that's basically how my parents still eat today. They do a lot of fish. They do rice at every meal. When the season is right, they eat a lot of vegetables and greens from their own garden. But we also would do at least a weekly trip to Chinatown to get Asian greens and other pantry staples that I grew up eating.
Alicia: And so, what first interested you in food? Can you give us kind of a bio, a rundown of your career?
LinYee: Well, I've always been interested in food, in the sense that food was always the centerpiece of any sort of familial gathering. As a child of immigrants, we would always make an excuse to come together over a meal. So whether that was just kind of weekend dim sum with my aunties and uncles and my grandparents, or going to my grandmother's house for a meal or something more celebratory. For example, now as adults, my family, we meet for Thanksgiving. And so, that's kind of our central purpose for meeting. Everything always revolved around what to eat.
And so, I think that food always meant more to me than just a source of sustenance. There was always kind of a reason for celebration when it came to food. And it always meant family. And it always meant joy and connection.
And so professionally, I have worked in magazines basically my entire career. And I was never really interested in food media and the way that we understand it today. I wrote about design. I wrote about culture. But the food media wasn't really something that seemed interesting or accessible to me. I wasn't really interested in restaurant reviews or recipe development even.
But what I was interested in, especially in the kind of 2010s, was this culture of restaurant pop-ups. And so being from Texas, living in New New York, especially in 2010, there was no proper Texas-style barbecue here. And this was the kind of age of the Brooklyn Flea. And so basically, the moment I had access to a backyard in my personal space, I bought a smoker and started smoking brisket for friends with—over the summer. So I would host a little party at my house. And then I would just, I would smoke a brisket.
And one of my friends who was also from Texas, who is also Asian American and first-generation was like, ‘Hey, we should just do this at the Brooklyn Flea.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I just never thought about that. But ok, I'm down to try.’ And so we launched a little Texas-style barbecue business, and started slinging brisket sandwiches at the Brooklyn Flea. And so, that was kind of my first entry into a more professional understanding of food, besides being a waitress when I was in college and that type of thing.
But again, not really interested in the traditional modes of working in food. I wasn't interested in opening a restaurant. Food has just always been part of my understanding of who I am and how I navigate the world and why I travel it. Why I would visit certain neighborhoods in New York, or even with friends at that age. And still today, we always gather around food.
Alicia: Of course.
And so, how did Mold come to be?
LinYee: So I was working as an editor for an industrial design resource called Core77 when I started seeing a lot of really interesting food design projects. And they were primarily from students, often, or they were speculative in nature.
But at the time, most design websites weren't covering anything to do with food design, because their focus was really on furniture and lighting, interior objects. And so I was like, ‘I love food. I'm interested in food. I am a design journalist. I'm very well situated to actually write about this.’ So I was like, ‘Well, let me just start a little nights and weekends project’ where I would write about these interesting food design projects that I would come across that didn't really have a lot of space in other places for publication.
So Mold was just a nights and weekends project. I reached out to a friend who connected me with a designer. And I was like, ‘Hey, can you give me an updated Blogspot template, or maybe a Tumblr template for this project I want.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, actually, I can just design a whole website for you. It'll probably take about the same amount of energy.’ And so, I worked with him on creating a kind of vessel for these content ideas. And that was basically our online presence for the first seven years of Mold. And so, it kind of immediately became something that felt real. And that was the start of all of it.
Alicia: That's so fascinating. Well, I worked in magazines, too. But I come as a writer from writing about literature, or writing about food, specifically on restaurants and the recipe development. So this whole other side of it that is more mainstream.
And then recently, I've been reading so much about, not just with Mold, but also these writers, usually from the Netherlands, I don't know, doing, really thinking about food systems regionally and how design fits into all of that. And how architecture is a food systems issue. And things I hadn't thought about at all, because I never thought about those things at all. They weren't in my mental wheelhouse, I suppose.
It's been so fascinating to find these actual connections, and I—it just seems such a lost possibility to talk about them more broadly, or in a way that's more accessible. It seems a lost opportunity for food media, specifically, not to be talking about how food fits into design and fits into landscapes.
LinYee: I mean, it's insane because design is such this, a bit of an obscure profession in a lot of ways. Because on one hand, everything is design. Literally everything in your built environment was designed by a human. Somebody made a decision about the materiality, about its shape, about the way it was going to be produced, how it was actually going to—the system that not only makes the thing, but then gets it to you in a store or in your home is also designed. The system in which we live is designed. So everything that surrounds us is designed.
Yet nobody talks about design as a lever, as a kind of invisible kind of layer into the world that we live in. I think often because design is about complexity. The way that we're educated, especially in the United States, is not about complexity. It's about creating a lot of dichotomies. It's about enforcing binaries. It's about telling stories around ways that things cannot change. And so, I think that by introducing design as this kind of wildcard within the conversation about food, it makes people nervous. Because it's hard to explain why we have apples 365 days out of the year at every single grocery store, deli, bodega, whatever. You can get an apple, or one species of banana everywhere, all the time. So why is that? It's a huge question that nobody really wants to answer.
Alicia: It is so much complexity. And you're right. That is something we're trained not to do. I think the only time people in food media talk about design is to talk about a restaurant, how it looks. And that's literally the extent of it.
LinYee: Yeah.
Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]
And so the one fascinating thing to me about Mold, and it's something that I'm—you can find in literature, you can find in art criticism, but you don't really find in food—is that it has a global scope. It's something that food magazines based in the U.S. tend to not be open to. Whetstone, always, is an exception, of course.
LinYee: Stephen’s incredible.
Alicia: Incredible.
And so, you claim the phrase ‘the future of food,’ too, without it being solely about food tech. Which is something I've been thinking about so much, which is how this phrase has become, to be the synecdoche for this one way of looking at the future in food.
And so basically, how did Mold’s point of view come about to be global in scope, to be about the future, but to be so broad, basically, in what it will look at?
LinYee: So I started just being interested in food design as this weird emerging corner of the design world. And through the work of writing about a student project that was actually a poster project, I came to learn about the coming food crisis. And so in a lot of ways, this student project by an Australian designer named Gemma Warriner really did the job of what she had set out to do, which was to tell the story around the coming food crisis to raise this flag, that the United Nations basically warned that if we continue eating the way that we do today, that we will not be able to produce enough food to feed all 9 billion people by the year 2050.
And that fact totally just stopped me in my tracks, I had A, no idea that there was a coming food crisis. B, didn't realize that it was literally like 30 years down the line. At that point, it’s 35 years or around the corner. And I was like, ‘That's within our lifetime.’ And there was consciousness around climate change at the time. But it's not the way that we talk about it, and the urgency that we talk about it today.
And so, that student project completely shifted the course of the editorial focus for Mold, from being kind of a general interest in food and design into being kind of a warning bell to designers that, ‘Hey, you actually have the professional tools to offer solutions at various scales for this coming crisis.’ And so, that has been our focus and our mission since.
And I think that the global scope of that is in a lot of ways the global nature of design, where oftentimes best practices and ideas from many different disciplines influence the way that we think about design. And also design, in some ways, it's kind of a—it's more of a scaffolding in a lot of ways. So designers are A, trained to ask the right questions. B, work in this very interdisciplinary way.
And the future of design really lives in this idea of designing with people or designing with others, whether they're living or nonliving entities. And then there's a lot of space for that conversation, where that is not a—there's not enough space for that conversation in a lot of other fields. Just kind of planting my flag in the future of food was a way of signaling that we are facing this coming food crisis, but also to say, ‘Hey, we cannot address this in a kind of techno-bro kind of way.’
Design has always taught us that in order for something to be successful, it needs to be aspirational. It needs to be joyful. It needs to speak to the human condition. It needs to be emotional. And I think that those things, again, are kind of woven into the fabric of what design understands the world to be. And so, it's always grounded me in the fact that our solutions cannot be merely technological, especially when it comes to food. Food is not just a source of nutrients. Food is so much more, as your audience totally understands. And so, that's why I didn't think food tech was the sole answer.
The other thing is that, let's just be honest, that food tech being heralded as the kind of future of food is about perpetuating systems of capitalism. Who owns food technology? I'm interested in design solutions or solutions that are grounded in systems that can be owned by people that are not—You don't have to pay somebody else to participate in this thing. But you have autonomy. You have agency. You have sovereignty to determine what your food future looks like for yourself, for your community, for your family. That's not the way that technology in the way that we think about it today works. It's very much about top down control. It's very much about hierarchies of like, ‘This is what you're going to eat,’ and this is how you're going to eat it.
I mean, at the time, people were really excited about hydroponic greens grown in warehouses. And they were like, ‘That's the future of food.’ And I was like, ‘First of all, I am a person who doesn't eat salad, period.’ I mean, I do sometimes in the summer when I'm feeling a certain kind of way. But it's not part of my typical diet. And I'm sure, because I'm Chinese American, it's not part of a lot of people's diets. Basically, most of the people in the world are not eating salad every day. So I realized very early that those technological solutions were not for me. They want to try to solve for me. And once again, just being a little bit outside of that kind of, I would say, I—the person that those technological solutions are designing for allows me to be like, ‘Well, what else is there?’ and ask more questions.
Alicia: No, it's really funny that you brought up the garden, the hydroponic gardens, ’cause that's exactly how—that was my kind of introduction to food tech, and then, and the solutionism of it. And I was like, ‘But what is the end result of this? Is it we buy lettuce subscriptions? Am I going to have a Spotify subscription for lettuce?’ And just, ‘is that what you're envisioning? I don't understand what the purp—How is this literally the future of food?’
Also, a lot of that hydroponic lettuce has no freaking flavor whatsoever. What actually are we trying—’cause I used to work at Edible Brooklyn. For a few years, they had this event called Food Loves Tech, which was just my absolute nightmare. And so yeah, just trying to deal with that perspective on the future of food. I was like, ‘None of this makes any sense.’ And then, it just kind of got worse from there.
I think we're hoping, in a moment of a little bit of clarity around it. I don't know. This is what I'm asked to talk about to college students, like, ‘Wait? Are we supposed to be thinking about food like this? Is there another way we can think about food?’ So I'm hoping that we're kind of over the hump of food tech solutionism, because it is—It was a very troubling moment, and people made a lot of money off of it. People are finally kind of seeing the wizard behind the curtain of it all in terms of—Yeah. [Laughs.]
LinYee: I don't think that there's a single silver bullet for the future of food. And if you are somebody who eats salad every day, which is a lot of people in the United States, it's a great thing to be able to grow salad greens hydroponically. You're probably not eating them because you like the taste of radicchio. You're eating them for a different reason. So it's ok that maybe it doesn't taste the best salad you've ever had in your life or—
But I also am interested in how can we stop replicating the same extractive models that we have been working in over the last 100 years, this kind of industrial capitalist model? Where does that stop? And where can we find new models, or reach back for older models of producing nutrients, producing food that is culturally appropriate for the populations that are eating it? That reflect the actual capacity of the land that is being used to produce it? And I think that those questions are much more interesting than saying, ‘Ok, lab-grown meat or salad greens grown hydroponically is the only answer for the future of food.’
Alicia: Right, exactly.
Well, Mold has had—as you know—Mold has had five print issues so far. How has the point of view of the magazine changed or not changed over the course of that time?
LinYee: So I think that this kind of interest in regional local solutions for our, models for our kind of new food systems, this interest has really come into sharp focus over the course of the last five issues. So if you look at the first issue, the order—The issues have been organized by scale, and in loosely, so from the micro to the macro. So the first issue was about designing for the microbiome. And the second issue was about designing objects for the table. The third issue was designing food waste. The fourth was about designing for human senses. And the fifth issue was about seeds, which we could talk a little bit more about later. But the idea was to go from the micro to the macro.
And the first issue, there's a lot of kind of speculative projects. And I think that it was important to have more provocative ideas in the first issue, because it was a way to kind of capture our audience and engage them in these questions because they're visually interesting, but also asking you some hard questions about what your vision of the future of food should look like. But through writing about all these things, I realized that the most important thing is for us to actually have a relationship with our food, which is such a simple idea but one that is so divorced from our typical reality of eating and procuring foods.
And so, now that we're kind of five issues in and then we're working on our final issue, right now, the focus on, ‘Well, let's ground these solutions in something that works for you and me, living in different places and recognizing that the solutions are probably going to be very, very different.’ There is not a single solution for the world.
And there shouldn't be. That mindset is also a very kind of colonial understanding of the ways that work. So if we can just break out of this idea that there's going to be one answer for everybody, how does design that supports the kind of multiplicity, the complexity of living networks? And that living network includes the microbes in the soil, the pollinators in the air, the food itself that's being grown in the ground or not in the ground. All of these things are all networked together in this kind of what we think of as the food web. And what is the human place in all of that? How can it be more equitable for both—Or not both. Everything involved in this? Well, so that's kind of the progression.
The nice thing about publishing an independent magazine without any sort of advertiser or kind of outside pressures is that we get to take that journey for ourselves. We get to come out the end and be like, ‘I'm in a totally different place than when I started.’ And I'm totally cool with that. But this is the thing that really gets me out of bed in the morning. These are the kind of intellectual—but also, I would say, life and death questions that I am most excited about talking about.
Alicia: I love that so much. Publishing independently, I think, is the only way to answer, ask those questions. Only way to really be engaged with the world. [Laughs.]
LinYee: And thankfully, we have new models and media that allow for that, because as you know, just a couple years ago, people were like, ‘Media is dead. Print is dead.’ And through that kind of fire, we have come with all these new, more interesting independent models that support independent people, independent ideas. And I'm so thankful for those conversations.
Alicia: Absolutely.
And one of the things that strikes me in reading Mold is that it is a food magazine. It's about food, but it also acknowledges hunger. And it acknowledges the unpleasant aspects of food and the unpleasant aspects of food systems. And whether that's waste that is wasteful in general. Whether it's hunger, whether it's literally the fact that we excrete our food after we eat it—
LinYee: Well, s**t is food. [Laughs.]
Alicia: S**t is food! And so—[Laughs.]
I mean, we've talked about how you've developed your perspective on these issues. But are there other publications, other media, other writers? Have you seen a different approach to food system issues emerge? And how have you gotten new insight, new perspective from, in food?
LinYee: Well, I think that the kind of reckoning of the last couple of years as mainstream food media has really brought a more, I'd say, global and diverse group of voices to the forefront. And I think that that's been very exciting for me, because we mentioned Whetstone earlier. But I love that Stephen has a South Asia correspondent for the work that he's doing. And even larger mainstream publications that we don't necessarily have to name are diversifying their editors and writers. And I think that's so, so critical just to have different voices that are going to reflect the reality of what it means to eat and drink today in the United States.
What would be really revolutionary would be to have people from various classes, actually, being able to participate in more mainstream food media? Food media comes with this understanding that you have access to all these things. And that's not true for the majority of people living in the United States. And so, what does it mean to have a complete, joyful meal for Americans or people living in the United States who don't have access to a grocery store in their neighborhood? Or a relationship with a farmer? I mean, what can food media do to support the idea that every person living in the United States should have access to—that would support both agricultural systems that are really floundering in the United States? A lot of small farmers are not making it out of this pandemic, with the people who actually need those nutrients.
There's just so many ways that, I think, by talking about the food system as this kind of naughty, complicated place that is designed in a very inequitable fashion, just starting from that place of understanding would allow for so much more conversation to be had. A big difference, I think, between when we started and today is that many mainstream publications are recognizing that we are facing a food crisis. It's something that they might be wedging into the larger conversation around climate change, which makes a lot of sense, because agricultural production is one of the largest producers of greenhouse gasses. But also architecture and building and construction is one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas.
I mean, obviously, climate change is this urgent thing. But the way that we eat is very much entwined and entangled in this conversation. The fact that food media isn't ringing this bell every day is very, very disappointing and also, I think, a huge disservice to the people who read and enjoy media.
Alicia: Yeah, no, it's hard.
I did an interview last week that—when it comes out, that'll be very weird. But I was asked, ‘Why do I talk about sustainability and making one's food life sustainable, as though it is challenging? Why do I say it isn't easy to be sustainable?’ And I was like, ‘Well, because most people are floundering economically. Most people do not have the time, the access.’ And she asked specifically. And I was like, ‘Well, eating, caring about your food is a privilege because it is time expensive. And I think that you do a disservice to not talk about that time expense.’
And I think about that with how I write recipes, which is—A baking recipe is a different thing, because it's always going to be something kind of frivolous and unnecessary and whimsical. And that's what it's supposed to be. But when you're talking about a food item that you use to sustain yourself, it's like there's no reason for this to be unnecessarily complicated. There is a way to write recipes that tastes really good, but that are broken down into the bare necessities of what you need to get a certain flavor or a certain something. Basically I think that aspiration and accessibility can coexist. You just have to approach it in a way that is mindful of the constraints that most people live under.
LinYee: Yeah.
And the capitalist constraints, right? Not to be harping on the capitalist system we live in. But I just think that if we're going to talk about the food system, we have to talk about capitalism. Because capitalism is telling you that your time should be focused on working. You are a worker within the capitalist system, and before our work was actually caring for our families and producing edible things to eat. And that was the work that we did.
And so, if you really want to get into it with the time constraints, I have two very, very small children, so completely understand the challenges of what it means to feed your family with time constraints. But also, I'm interested in what it looks like to cook in a non-extractive kitchen, where we use things like solar cookers, or rainwater catchments, or thinking about kind of the circularity of the systems. And those things, in theory, are incredible if you live in a sunny place that also gets rain. But cooking on a solar cooker takes a really long time, and a lot of planning that you don't typically have the mind space to actually consider.
And so yeah, I mean, I really feel for single parents out there, people who have multiple mouths to feed in their homes while working while trying to make time for themselves. It's an impossible task within the system. I think food is one of the best ways to be able to talk about these things, because it is—it affects everyone. It is a source of joy, typically, for people. And it's easier in a lot of ways to talk about how you make rice and—than it is to talk about the system in which it's produced. So starting to tie it by talking about what it is that you love to eat, and why is a great way to have these long, larger conversations around what the future of the food should look like. Because realistically, we should all be able to have a kind of voice in that, shaping what that is.
Alicia: Exactly, yeah.
We've touched on it, but in the broader food media, because Mold is so singular and unique and cool in its design, what—Where do you feel that design and food media, outside of your own magazine, like are—Where could these intersect in a way that does make these subjects comprehensible for people or, where could food media be better about design?
LinYee: I think that just A, recognizing that design is a factor in our food and our relationship with food, I think is a great starting place. Because there is a kind of focus on design as this tableware aesthetic, or what we talked about as interior design with restaurants, which also, there's a place that could be really radical and interesting. But it's not that accessible. And those aren’t necessarily the projects that are being spoken about.
Because as we mentioned earlier, construction is a huge contributor to climate change. So what does it mean to build a place in which you are ingesting natural things into your body—Or maybe unnatural things. Whatever. But literally bringing things into your body to be, become the person you are? What does it mean to do that in a space that is equally considered as far as its materiality, as far as it's designed for the physical hands that are producing those dishes, or cleaning the dishes or cleaning the space? What does that look like? I just think that by focusing on the-
Well, just recognizing that we're living in a very, very designed world is a huge starting place. I mean, Mold looks the way that it does, because our art director and designers are just incredible human beings. Eric Hu, Matt Tsang, Jena Myung, they really have created this very unique visual language for the magazine. And through their work, we have been able to reach our primary audience, which is designers. We want designers to pick up a copy of Mold, recognize that it is a design artifact to engage with and kind of dig into the more, I would say dense, naughty, complex conversations that are happening within the publication. And it's really through their design choices that that has been able to happen.
And so, I just want to recognize that the magazine itself is very much a collaborative effort between our contributors, our editors, our art directors, our designers, to produce this really—I would say, we're kind of hard to pin down. We don't really fit in the current ecosystem of food media, which is great. And we don't fit in the ecosystem of design media, either. We kind of have our own little planet somewhere in all of that. So I'm totally okay with it.
Alicia: Well, that is interesting, though, because I do—Why do you think food occupies such a strange space when we're talking about it as a cultural subject? Because it does touch on all of these things. There are political aspects. There are economic aspects. There are labor aspects. There are ecological aspects. There are design aspects. Like most aspects of culture, it touches on a lot of things. But food isn't taken as seriously as other parts. Do you disagree with that? Do you see food as something that is taken seriously as an area of cultural critique and study? Is it not? I consistently feel people don't take food seriously, but do take other things seriously.
LinYee: Yeah, I agree. I think it's because food is multisensorial. And it's something that's kind of been historically relegated to the work of women. And so, I think that for those reasons, it's oftentimes not taken very seriously. I mean, our just weird society is just like, ‘Oh, anything that brings you pleasure? Can't be serious,’ right?
I love sharing this little nugget of information, which is that eating is the only thing we do besides having sex that engages all of our senses. And it's a truth. And it speaks to how important it is to ground food and joy and community in being fully multi-sensory. Because we, as humans, are designed to experience it that way. But I think because of that, often, it's relegated to this kind of soft, murky place of feelings, you know? And that’s not considered serious.
It's also just so fundamental. We can give a biennial to architecture, right? It’s in Venice. But once you talk about the biennial of beans, which is the thing that I want to produce and make in my life, nobody wants to talk about that. It's the foundation of the things that we do, every day we eat.
Alicia: How do you define abundance?
LinYee: This is such a critical question in the world that we live in today, because I think the concept of abundance is a very radical concept within a capitalist system. Because capitalism tells you that we—luxury is about scarcity. It's about what I can afford that you can't afford. There's only so many of these things, these wedges, and I have to own one.
Whereas if we look to nature, we see that there are models of care models of network systems, trust and interdependence, that consistently tell us that nature is abundant. You think about a single seed creates a single plant that then creates hundreds, if not thousands, of more seeds. If that kind of scale of one to 100, or 1000, doesn't indicate abundance, then I don't know what does. If we can all understand that implicitly we are connected to one another, there is more than plenty for everyone. It's just about understanding the systems in which that interaction, that interdependence is nurtured and cared for as opposed to squashed and us living in these weird isolated bubbles.
And that's a very long definition of abundance. But that's how I think about it. I look to nature to kind of help me understand and remind me because I'm not always living in an abundance mindset. The other day the Spanish fashion house LOEWE, they dropped a Spirited Away collaboration. And I was just on the Internet window shopping, I was like, ‘Ah, I just went $5,000 so I could buy this T-shirt.’ I'm not a perfect example of that.
But we do what we can. And honestly, just gardening, every season, planting seeds every season, knowing that some of those seeds aren't going to germinate. Some of them will, some of them won't survive when I put them outside. But then the ones that do survive will give me more seeds for next year. That cycle is just so humbling, and just a reminder that if we can just trust a little bit, that there's a lot more to access in the world that we can maybe understand in this moment.
Alicia: Well, and for you is cooking a political act?
LinYee: Oh, without a doubt. I didn't fully understand this, or have the language for it, until I read this zine that came out in 2020 from Clarence Kwan. And his Instagram is
thegodofcookery. And he is a Chinese Canadian creative director, but also cooks at a Chinese restaurant on the weekends. And he put this little zine out called Chinese Protest Recipes. And it just reminded me that cooking the food of my family of my ancestors is a form of resistance. Sure, I love to cook whatever thing is in vogue. Sheet pan dinner is great. I do serve that often for my family.
But when I cook the food that reminds me of my grandmother and serve that to my children, it's a way of saying that like, ‘This cannot be homogenized. This can't be taken away from me. It can't be taken away from my family or my children.’ And I think that that is a great reminder for all of us, that what we cook and what we feed our families, what nourishes us, can and should be an act of resistance.
Alicia: Thank you so much for taking the time today.
LinYee: Oh, thank you so much. It's just been such a pleasure to speak with you.
Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

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A Conversation with Eric Kim
23 mar 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I'm talking to Eric Kim, a staff writer at The New York Times food section and author of the just released cookbook Korean American. I've admired Eric from afar via social media, as well as his beautiful essays. And it was a thrill to finally get the chance to talk to him and find out that he comes from a literature background, which explains the beautiful writing. We discussed how he came to food, the way his cookbook took shape during the pandemic, going viral with gochujang glaze, and his relationship with meat.
Alicia: Hi, Eric. Thank you so much for being here.
Eric: Hi, thanks for having me. It's so great to finally meet you.
Alicia: I know. It's so great. I'm meeting so many people that I've wanted to meet for a long time. [Laughs.]
Eric: Yeah.
It's kind of funny. I won't say the person's name, but we have a mutual friend. And anytime I want to say something to you, I say it to this person instead of just—I should just DM you and be like, ‘Man, that latest newsletter was great.’ But instead, I just tell your friend and hope that they tell you.
Alicia: Yeah. I mean, we can be friends. We can be friends. That's ok. [Laughs.]
Eric: So great to meet you, though, seriously.
Alicia: For sure!
Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Eric: Yeah, sure.
I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in the suburbs. My parents moved there in 1983. And they've been there since. And I was there till I was 18.
And I ate mostly my mom's food. She was a cook. She cooked a lot of Korean food, Korean American hodgepodge dishes. And I think when I got old enough to drive especially, but even before then, when I kind of was tall enough to stand at the stove, my brother and I were latchkey kids. We ate a lot of convenience foods. And I think that's a big part of my life and my nostalgia. It's become a theme in my work, because I just love these memories of these frozen meals actually span so much farther than myself. And I think about this all the time, actually, my—the way my micro life has macro resonances. And so you just say one thing, like ‘Remember this?’ And then thousands of people are like, ‘Yeah, me too.’ And almost always they are children of immigrants and I think that is something I have discovered recently. And I feel it's a real power. It's a power to harness, I think. It's really nice.
Oh, and just like in terms of dishe. I vaguely specifically remember this one after school snack that I ate a lot, which was the broccoli cheddar chicken hot pocket, which is the best one and kind of very substantial. It's got some vegetables in it, but what I would do is I would take the first bite and then squeeze it out onto a bowl of rice and ust mix that up. And then later in our, later—our Thanksgivings had this broccoli cheese rice casserole dish. It was like I was manifesting that or something as a kid. And now, it's a regular staple in our—on my Thanksgiving table.
Alicia: Yeah. The combination of broccoli and cheese, I have to admit, is just unbeatable.
Eric: Sublime, for sure. Delicious.
Alicia: I used to get the Stouffer's with broccoli. When I had my first job, I would put that in the microwave because I made no money. So I'm like, ‘Alright, I'm gonna go to the supermarket, get a Stouffer's mac and cheese with broccoli. And because it has broccoli in it, it's fine. It's healthy.’ [Laughs.]
Eric: It was a classic. I mean, what a genius move, because that—once you eat the macaroni, there's still sauce. There's so much sauce. And so, kind of having that broccoli moment is really lovely. That's funny. Yeah.
Alicia: Well, you're one of those food writers who is a really good writer too. Not to say that there aren’t many. [Laughter.] But what came first for you, writing or food?
Eric: Oh, man. I've actually never been asked that. That's funny. Well, food. Yeah, for sure. But I didn't have consciousness of it until after writing.
So I think about this all the time. Maybe this is a good story. But I was doing a PhD in comparative literature, and I had just taken an oral exam. It was kind of the big moment before you go off and write the dissertation. It's after your third year. And so what happens is all your friends show up outside the door of your exam room. And it's almost a formality, at least at the program that I went to. And you get flowers and you get a laurel, a thing around your head. And kind of that's your badge of honor, a rite of passage.
And then I didn't pass mine, though. I was one of the few people who didn’t because I was horrible at speaking. And yeah, it was this huge wake up call for me because I'd wanted to be an English professor since 10th grade of high school or something like that. And there I was, kind of like halfway through a program that would let me do that. And I got a low pass. They called it a low pass. When I walked out of that room, my friend had this huge bouquet of flowers, and then slowly lowered it.
My advisors were like, ‘You can either leave. You can leave the program with a master's degree, or you can take the exam again and then continue on to the dissertation.’ And I think at that moment, it was the first time in my life I really just realized that wasn't for me, the academia. And that writing was for me, though. And that was the part of the program that I excelled at, I think. And there was even a writing portion that was good that I did well on, apparently.
And I remember looking at the room. And it was these four white men. I was like, ‘What happened? How did I fail this? Why didn't you prepare me?’ And I didn't ask it like that. I'm sure I barely spoke. I was like, ‘You said that the written portion was good, right?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, the written portion was good. But the oral part is really important.’ I think it was in that moment, I was like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna want to pursue the thing I'm good at.’
So I didn't know what that meant yet. But what happened was, I called my brother after I was in my suit, or whatever the—it was probably the first suit I'd ever bought or owned. And my brother was kind of like, ‘Hey, Eric, you were never happy there. You love food. You're talking about food all the time.’ And at the time, I was Instagramming. That was my food blog mostly. Those Instagram captions, I would just write as long as I could until I hit the word limit. And that was sort of how I got started with the food writing, I think.
And then, so my brother made me realize that food was always there. It was the one constant. And I happened to have an old boss at Food Network who was able to give me a job. And that's how it all started. So it's kind of a bit of both. It was writing first, but the consciousness—It was food first, but the consciousness was later. Yeah.
Alicia: What made you want to be an English professor? Who did you like to read?
Eric: Hmm. Oh, yeah. I mean, you can see it on my bookshelf here. But it's sort of my love for Michelle Branch. [Laughs.] Which I don't hide. But I think about this all the time, when you're so young and you have no frame of reference for anything. And then something comes at you. And it just really sucks you in. A certain song is super catchy. And then that person’s second song is super catchy, and that third song. And then you just realize, ‘Wow, I just really like this person's music.’
And then, for me, that was 20th century American literature. Throughout high school, just kind of breezing through my English classes and not really paying attention to it ’cause math was so hard. And all these other things were harder. And so, I just kind of didn't take it seriously.
And then there was a moment in the 10th grade when I looked back on my favorite books, and they were all from John Steinbeck. Or they were all from a very specific time period in American and American literary canon. And I was like, ‘Okay, I guess this is it. This is my Michelle Branch of books.’ So yeah, I pursued that in college.
And I just loved college so much, which is such a lame thing to say. But I had a great time in college. And I had really lovely professors. The English department at the college I went to was just so supportive. And they were great. I just figured why not keep doing this, you know? And so, yeah, I kept doing it. And enjoyed the part of being a student, but I think I didn't enjoy being a PhD candidate. That was a very political thing, very performative. And I sucked at talking. So I was really bad at it. I was really bad at acting.
Alicia: Yeah, I can relate.
But you came to food media. You were at Food Network? How did you get into the recipe writing aspect, which you've had such success in?
Eric: Thank you. It happened randomly, I think. Oh, yeah. Like most things, it seems random. But then when you really narrate yourself, you can narrativize the trajectory.
But so for me, it was Food52, the job after Food Network. I was mostly an editor at Food Network. And then, I became a senior editor at 52. And was sort of a really just—It's a messy startup place. It's a very disorganized kind of place, which meant that you could do whatever the hell you wanted. And so, I really felt that there were a lot of opportunities if I wanted them, and so there was no one—It's a really self-starting kind of place. So if you're a self-starter, I think that helped me when I went. When I was there. I was like, ‘I'd like to develop recipes and write about them.’ And so, I did that once in a while.
It was a column pretty quickly, actually. I had this theme that I was really interested in, which was cooking for one. And ‘cause I was so depressed and lonely, I think that's where I kind of practiced. And I practiced on real readers, I guess. The recipes are pretty popular. And they did well.
And I think what, the one thing I believed in always was that my food tasted good. I knew that I had something, I think in Korean, you would call it son-mat. It's called hand taste. But it's this magical quality of—it's called nafas in Arabic. I knew that I had something where my food just had a taste. I knew that when I put it in front of people, I loved seeing their faces light up with that first bite. That's how I knew that maybe I had something.
And so, that was a good playground for it. And every week, I was able to see people's reactions and kind of watch them incorporate these dishes into their everyday lives. And so these readers became sort of my—they were my lab rats.
And I think people don't realize maybe that wasn't that long ago. So I got to the Times and it became my permanent, my daily job of—So I cook every day now. And I'm flexing that muscle, or trying to hone in. I'm definitely learning so much, because I have so many people above me who are way more experienced. And they're teaching me every day. And it's just, if I forget about my past-
It seems random that I'm doing this now. But the other day, actually, I was looking—I went to archive.org. And I looked up my old website, which had this one section. It was mostly an academic website, a CV kinda. But it had one section that said ‘cookbook,’ and it was just where I put recipes, things that I cooked. And a lot of them were just Nigella Lawson recipes that I really liked and that I wanted to have down somewhere, cause I would have dinner parties and friends would be like, ‘Whoa, what was this?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, it's this thing. You can just go to my website and cook it or learn how to cook it if you want.’
But I went back because I'm developing this loaf cake. And I had a cake that I would make all the time. And I sort of started from there. It was awful, by the way. Years later, I baked it in my own kitchen. And it wasn't very good. And I worked on it. But so, I was always writing recipes, I guess for years. And even after high school, I started a blog called Air cooks. It was a Blogspot. I just had been bouncing around just these food blogs. And so, it's always sort of been there.
And it wasn't until the Food Network job though, actually, where I really learned how to write a recipe. Because my job was—I was called Digital Asset Coordinator, Recipes. So my job was to data entry from the Excel sheets that we got to the website. And so, I sort of saw this one style of recipe writing, which is pretty—they're very neat over there at the Food Network. So that's how I learned how to write recipes from that job. I would say, yeah. And then, I got to practice at length later in life.
Alicia: Well, I promise that we're going to talk about your book, but because you mentioned her I wanted to ask about Nigella. How did Nigella become someone you look up to, an icon for you? How did that happen?
Eric: Oh, my God. Now I'm actually nervous, because I know she actually was—she listens to your podcast. She's a fan of yours as well. And so Nigella, turn, maybe turn off your, turn off the podcast at this moment, if you will.
She's someone I watched for the first time on the Food Network, like many people. I think it was either a syndicated version of Nigella Bites, or it was Nigella Feasts, which was the Food Network program that they developed for that book, which actually is my favorite book of hers. And then from there, I made one of her recipes, I think, and then that made me a fan for life. It's like the Michelle Branch songs. I made the next one, and then the next one. They were all perfect. And they all tasted good. And I think it's because she's a good writer that she's able to translate those flavors to the home cook.
And so, I think I just started following her. I bought her books, and then they were making me cry on the train to my Food Network job and then to my other jobs, and I kind of had this realization that I think this is something I'd like to do. I'd love to make people feel something. So I just, I'm a huge fan.
And I think when I first met her, I was so shocked. It was at a 92Y conversation. I met her. I was so shocked that I barely said anything. She was really kind to me, and she wanted to sign my book. I had three of her books in my hands and I was embarrassed. She signed the first one, and I started walking away. She was like, ‘No, I'll sign the other ones.’ I was like, ‘No, it's ok. It's fine.’ She's so generous.
And then, the second time I met her was actually for her book release for—Hmm, which book was it? I think it may have been either Simply Nigella or At My Table, maybe. But she was at the Food52 offices. And that was her launch. That was one of her parties in New York. And I had just accepted the job there. So I was meeting my colleagues for the first time and seeing my office for the first time and meeting Nigella and talking to her. And I just started bawling. [Laughs.] Sorry, this is so embarrassing. I couldn't hold it in. I remember exactly because it's—I just started crying. And she was like, ‘I don't know whether to feel good or bad that I've made you cry.’ And on top of that, my ex-boyfriend was with me. And he's a good friend. But it was just—It was also awkward. And I felt so lame. And then, she was really kind and generous, of course. But so, I was embarrassed.
So after that, the very second piece I wrote for Food52 was about cookbooks that make me cry. I told the anecdote through my writing, and I made myself look better in the writing. That event was really embarrassing. And anyway, since then, she's sort of been checked—I think she reads my columns once in a while. And that always surprises me. I try to keep my distance, ‘cause I'm still—I haven't changed. She's still my hero. So it's a lot of pinch-me moments, I think.
And anyway, she's a big reason why I'm here.
Alicia: Yeah, yeah.
No, I feel like crying just listening to your story, because thinking about—No! Just how generous she is, and to young—I mean, I'm not young anymore, but to anyone who's coming up, she just really is so generous. And that she responds to everyone on Twitter who makes her food or asks her a question. So, it's not something you get used to. She brought up a piece I wrote that came out the middle of last year, last week. And I was like, ‘She remembers my piece!’ [Laughs.]
Eric: Yeah. It's wonderful. It's wonderful.
It's hard though, for me, because she is someone who—And again, Nigella, hope you're not listening. She's a big culinary influence of mine. I learned a lot about just regular cooking from her. How to Eat was monumental for me and for the world. But I would say that, because of that, it's really hard not to write her into my pieces, because that is my education. But I don't, because I know that she reads them sometimes. I just don’t want her to think I'm obsessed, and—which we all are.
Alicia: We all are, yeah. [Laughter.]
Eric: She is very kind. That's the most important thing, I think. And that's the difference, I think, yeah. Her emotional intelligence really just jumps off the page.
Alicia: Absolutely.
Well, and to finally get to your cookbook, Korean American, it is beautiful. It's about homecoming. It's a love letter to your mother. [Laughs.] I can't wait to see a physical copy, because I have a digital one.
But how did you decide to approach your first book? How did this all come about?
Eric: It started off completely different. I was looking at the Publishers Marketplace announcement recently, just being all nostalgic. And it said, The Essentials of Korean American Cooking. And I was just like, ‘Oh my god. Can you imagine if that was the title?’ I don't know what I was thinking.
But the original proposal was sort of this really deep reported culinary cultural history of Korean American, Korean food in America, the history of it. And I was gonna really travel and do the thing.
But what ended up happening was we had a pandemic. We were in lockdown, and the book changed course completely. And it also was really appropriate, though, that it changed course. And I had to turn inward, and I had to make it about my family. Because not just logistically, but I kind of realized that in order to tell the right story I had to be really specific. And to be really specific, I had to go into memoir. And that was a relief when that happened, honestly, because that is my—the thing that I'm most comfortable with, I would say. And so, that's how that happened.
And it was really fun too, because I was still able to kind of do the journalistic thing. But my sources were my parents. And it was fun to get to really dig in and see what they remembered, because it was really that, just mining their memories. Because my memories aren't that deep. They go back a few years, but not that—as far back as their food does.
Alicia: You write, ‘It's an American impulse to follow written down recipes to a T,’ which I loved, because I—for me, it's really difficult to follow written recipes. I've gotten better at it actually. But there is that fear of instinctual cooking. So how do you approach writing precise recipes for such a big audience? ’Cause not just for the Times, but for this book? It's going to be a big audience of people cooking. How do you do that? [Laughs.]
Eric: Right. Yeah.
That was the irony, right? The way my mother cooks is not with measurements, and then—as with the rest of us. So, having to measure something that I've always felt was immeasurable, even that quality of my mother's hands, the way her food tastes.
Melissa Clark actually, she was making my kimchi jjigae after—I published a version of the kimchi jjigae last year in the Times. And she wanted to make it, and I was just trying to give her tips. ‘Do this and this and this, and taste and do this.’ And the recipe tries to—What you do in those moments as you give precise measurements, but the rest of it's up to the person's palate. And so there are tasting notes, like ‘Add more if you want more of this.’ And so, you need to leave room for that kind of movement.
But I remember in that moment, I just really wanted to kind of 3D print my tongue or something or have it be this USB drive that I can just give to her and be like, ‘It's supposed to taste like that.’ You have to resort to prose. That was a challenge with the cookbook.
But in my day-to-day development, I owe a lot of that to Genevieve Ko. She's my editor. And she just kind of helms the NYT cooking recipes. And she just really knows how to translate it so that it's equal for everyone.
Oh, I have a good story, actually. My very first recipe that I developed with her when I got on staff, it was the creamy asparagus pasta. And that one was just very loosey goosey. It was my style of just taste as you go. There's a moment where you boil the pasta in a kombu broth, like a dasima broth. And so it just looks like a very seaweedy dish. And at first it was like, ‘Fill the pot to a certain amount.’
But she said, ‘I think it should be a very specific number, should be a specific cup amount,’ because—I don’t know about you. But when you make pasta, you probably don't measure the boiling water, right? She was like, ‘I want it to taste the same for everyone.’ So that's why it says very specifically to boil this number of cups so that the broth has the right amount of concentration of the dashima, the kelp. And then because that broth is also used to finish the pasta, so it’s this transfer of flavor. It just had to make it as approximate as possible, while still leaving room for people's taste buds, because everyone tastes differently and everyone's ingredients are different too.
Alicia: Right.
Well, the gochujang glaze for the eggplant became this huge staple in my house. Well, I first made it because I wanted to interview you. And I was like, ‘Well, I have to make a recipe of his, and so I'm going to start with this one because it's already vegan. So I don't have to do anything.’
But my husband who is really—I mean, he'll be upset if he hears this where I'm like, ‘He's very difficult, He can be very difficult to cook for sometimes.’ It's good, though, because lately he's cooking a little bit more. And so, it's becoming more of a thing we do together, which is good, because I think I was actually losing my mind a little bit. The pandemic was making everyone lose their mind with cooking, where it's like, ‘I'm done.’ I thought this was the thing I like to do most. And now I'm just totally at the end of my rope.
But your recipe really reinvigorated my cooking and reinvigorated my kitchen. And we're very happy and we use it on so many things. And I know it was your first recipe to go viral, right? What was that like?
Eric: Yeah, I guess so.
Trying to remember. That was during peak COVID, I guess. It was the peak of it. And I was at my mom's house. And I remember when it was assigned, it was just ‘eggplant banchan’ on it. It wasn't a thing yet. It was the one that I wanted to kind of play around with. I kind of asked her. I was like, ‘Hey, what are some eggplant banchan, umma? I have to write this story.’ And she was like, ‘Well, your grandma likes this one. It's called gaji bokkeum.’ There's also a gaji muchim, but it's basically—she steams the eggplant, and then she tosses it, dresses it in a sauce. And it's usually like this sesame oil thing. But she liked to do gochujang. And she told me that that's something my grandmother really liked. So she would make it for my grandmother all the time. And I thought that was really interesting.
So I kind of did my own take on it by frying it. And there's this thing called pa gileum, which is scallion oil in Korean cooking that's really prominent now. It's maybe popularized by this guy Baek Jong-won, I think that's the thing. Yeah, it's kind of the Emeril Lagasse—oh, we don't like doing that anymore, right? The Julia Childs?
Anyway, yeah, I think I made that dish. And I brought it up to my mom's room. That was sort of the process. She'd be like, ‘I'll help.’ And then, she doesn't help. And then she goes to her room. I would bring it to her room and be like, ‘Ok, it's time to taste this.’ And I remember that first bite, she was like, ‘Whoa, this is something. You should open a restaurant.’ That's like it. When she says that, it means it's good. And Koreans always want you to, Korean parents always want you to open a restaurant for some reason. I'm like, ‘That’s not who I am.’ [Laughs.]
I didn't know that it would resonate with people, because—I don't know. I think that that was the biggest surprise to see it on Instagram. That was when I kind of felt the power of Instagram. Yeah, that share function. And then I saw all these people buying gochujang for the first time, and it was so great.
And I tried to do the same thing the second time, because I thought, ‘Oh, that's great. I got a bunch of people to buy gochujang. That's kind of my point, or my hope.’ So I did gochugaru salmon, hoping that people would buy gochugaru. And I think a lot of people did, but a lot of people ended up making gochugaru salmon from the gochujang they bought from the eggplants. [Laughter.] It worked out and it's all fine.
There's always a reason for these recipes. And I'm glad that it's the eggplant that did well, yeah.
Alicia: Of course.
Well, you describe your mom's garden in detail in the book, and you refer to yourself as a carnivore. And so, I wanted to ask about this. What is your relationship to meat as a food writer, as a person? [Laughs.]
Eric: Great question.
Something I think about every single day, recipe developing, you're just sort of—There are so few reasons for meat to be in something, unless it's a roast or something like that. But yeah, so I’m always thinking about that, how to take out that fish sauce or take out that little bit of bacon that maybe I made it for myself the first time.
Hmm. To answer this, I think I would go back to the way my mother cooked. And I think the Korean dishes that we liked as Korean Americans, Korean American children, a lot of meat, it's—All the meat dishes are the things that you kind of liked. And you'd go to potlucks, and it's kind of that marinated bulgogi that you leave in the freezer, and you bring that to a potluck and—or you fry it outside on the grill at a church picnic. And it's always this paper plate with the rice, and then that sticks to that plate like crazy. And then, the bulgogi on the side. That was a big component of my food growing up.
But I would say that I sort of started eating less meat as I got older and pickier. And when I was younger, I actually didn't eat that much meat. I was always too skinny. And my mom was always worried. And she was like, ‘Eric doesn't like meat.’ So when we’d go to Korean barbecue, I would eat the egg—the gyeran-jjim, which is that steamed egg. I would eat all the vegetables. And I loved rice and the tongdak chicken.
My palate’s changed so much. And I would say that it—it's recently that I forgot I even wrote that I was a carnivore. But I think it was professionally. Once I started cooking professionally for recipe development and work, I kind of realized that you're always thinking about food, and all the other angles around food and the politics of food. And so, I'm much more conscious of it now. I think I'm eating more meat than I would be if I weren't doing this for work, because I'm kind of the one who develops the meat recipes usually. It always ends up being that way.
Sometimes when I'm pitching something, Iwant to give someone a really easy chicken recipe. And that service is something that really matters to me. But I mean, the dark side of this is that after developing that chicken recipe, I'm so sick of chicken, I'm so sick of meat. RIP. It's really hard to eat that much meat and you have all that leftover food and it doesn't go to waste. So it goes in my stomach. And so my relationship to meat has changed in the sense that I think it's a matter of just pitching fewer meat recipes, but that's not always-
Alicia: It's not always possible.
Eric: It's not always possible. But I don't have to pitch a short rib dish or anything. It depends on the story. And I follow the story, but I am very grateful when it's a vegetable kind of dish because I know I can at least just eat a lot of that and feel a lot better.
So yeah, my relationship to being meat is really weird and probably a little disordered. But we'll tackle that in another interview. Or you can ask questions if you want.
Alicia: I mean, I ask about it because—Well, one because you said carnivore, so I had to. And then two, because people do have a complicated relationship with meat. The first iteration of my podcast used to be called Meatless. And it was literally really focused on how people feel about meat. But it gets really complicated, like talking about it with people. But at the same time, it's interesting because people do bring up this—it just gets so heavy for people. And I'm like—Yeah. [Laughs.]
Eric: You're the one person I would love to talk about that with, because I just think—I love the way you write about vegetarianism and veganism. You recognize the nuances, and there's class involved. And there's privilege. And I just think that's all part of the story.
And another way to talk about this, which is what's the point of that line, I think, if I’m looking back, thinking back on it, which is that chapter unveiled itself to me. Not to sound annoying, but it—there was a Korean barbecue chapter, and I replaced it with Garden of Jean. I replaced it with a vegetable chapter because I kind of just realized that there were so many more interesting things I wanted to write about and explore and develop. Not to mention, we were really—we were all so full all the time.
I wanted a moment to celebrate those really special vegetable dishes, kind of like the discovery of that eggplant, you know? That I made in my kitchen. On the one hand, it's the chicken breasts I’m really sick of eating. But it's also, on the other hand, it's I have a newfound appreciation for vegetables now. Because as I'm developing them, I'm discovering new things about them. And that's really, really exciting. And that chapter was the most fun to write. So it's the one where I got to really, really kind of go off.
One interesting story actually is, so this whole thing about appetite and being a recipe developer who constantly has to taste your own food. I was doing this crispy tofu dish for my column at the Times. It’s a great tofu dish. It has a sweet and sour sauce that tastes like McDonald's. And it's great, but after eating that much tofu. I don't know if you can tell, but my apartment’s tiny. So my apartment was so disgustingly flooded with just oil fumes. And I needed to feel better. So I made a vegetable soup with some of the leftover tofu that wasn't fried, and it was broccoli and vegetables. And then, it was chicken broth. I have Better Than Bouillon Chicken. I love that.
And it was such a good soup. So I pitched it. I was like, ‘This is such a great creamy, broccoli soup that doesn't have cream in it.’ Yeah. I was like, ‘Oh crap, but it has chicken broth in it.’ It was greenlit. I developed it. And I was like, ‘This is easy. I'll just replace it with vegetable broth.’ Nope. No, it didn't taste good. I made 10 pots of that stupid soup. I was so sick of it. And yeah, each time it was vegetarian, vegan, but it just eluded me. I think that stubbornness of that soup, it really empowered me to just—I had to take a break, though, ’cause I was so sick of it.
And then I discovered this.. And I think the recipe will be out by the time this airs. But I remembered a column that my former writer, and friend and—Kristen Miglorious at Food52—I was her editor at, on Genius recipes, there's a column at Food52. And she wrote about another writer of mine, actually. Yi Jun Loh, he's a Malaysian writer, wonderful. He had this coconut water ABC soup. So ABC soup is a Malaysian chicken soup, usually. He discovered that coconut water, tomato, carrot, and onion produced a really delicious broth full of umami. And it makes sense, hits all the right notes. There's that bone broth quality from the coconut milk, the cloudiness. Whatever they call it, a lot of qualities are in that coconut water, like just literally the thing you buy at the bodega.
And so, it was this magic elixir that was much simpler than all of the rest of the versions of the recipe, the broccoli soup that I was trying. So I kind of went that route. And then, it was just like magic. I made the soup one last time. And it was so flavorful, so full of umami savoriness and all the qualities, all the glutamate crazy. It was so flavorful. I had to dilute it with water. And so I love the story of the soup, because I think it tells a story of my relationship to cooking with vegetables, which has been one of discovery and joy because it's so new to me, as a ‘self described carnivore,’ whatever.
It's so funny that whenever someone points out something I've written, I just completely don't remember writing it. And yeah, I don't know if you feel this way. But I feel there's this thing where you blacked out after you write anything.
Alicia: Yeah, I never want to be reminded, ever. No. It goes, and then it's not mine anymore. And then it's something else. I mean, I don't understand how writers—I respect it, because I respect all hustles. But anyone who can make a Canva graphic of their own words? I can't do it. But people do it. I can't see my own words that way. I can't see. I could figure out what might be a good pull quote, I guess, if I had to. I can't do my own pull quotes. It just feels vulgar. [Laughs.]
Eric: No, I totally agree. That's such a thing. I don't think everyone's like us, actually. But I think, I would love a psychologist to sort of examine but, why? Why certain writers black out like that? And I think it's probably self preservation or something like that.
Alicia: Well, I think if you're writing personally—yeah, and if you're writing personally, and you're really trying to get at something or you're excavating your own emotions or whatever, the only way to get yourself to still put it out there is to detach from it, I think, in some way. I mean, you're gonna have a book come out, literally, in a few weeks. That's very personal. And you're not going to be able to be attached to how people respond to it. Because, no. [Laughs.]
Eric: Yeah.
I'm really grateful to my editor and my publisher. They were very kind to me and generous with time, because I think I had trouble. This book was so hard to write. It's so personal, of course, but I think that's why—Each pass, I would read it. And I'm someone who, as a writer, I will use up as much time as you give me. That's the amount of time. That's why I had no idea this staff writing job would be excellent for me, someone who needs deadlines, who needs to be pulled away from the writing, before I overwrite. And there's so many moments when my editor will, after the second pass, second edit, she'll just actually take out everything I've added because she’s like, ‘It was good the first—It was better the first time. Stop.’ And I think that's a real lesson. I need to learn how to kind of let go sometimes.
Yeah, this book went through it. I asked for an extra pass, because I just needed more time with my words. I wasn’t ready to let go, and it was so hard. And then, they were very kind and did that. And now, the book’s coming out a little later. But that's fine.
Alicia: My book is coming out later. So the supply chain push has delayed everything.
Eric: And the one thing it's that my book isn't is on the bottom of the ocean. So I'm quite grateful for that. I feel so bad for my colleagues, yeah. [Laughter.]
Alicia: It's horrible. [Laughs.]
Well, the photography of the book is really beautiful and bright and vibrant. How did that aesthetic emerge?
Eric: I think this is maybe the first time I get to answer this question. But Jenny Huang shot it, I think many know her in the industry. But she and I met at Food52. She was shooting a couple of my columns and kind of hit it off. And I think from there, we just maybe got dinner and kind of became friends. And she was also kind of just starting out, really. She had changed careers. And I won't tell her story. She should tell her story. Her photos were different. I loved even at Food52 that I could look at it, a photo, and be like, ‘Oh, that's Jenny. I can tell there's a crispiness. There's a Vermeer glamor.’ Vermeer's my favorite painter.
Really, her photography really spoke to me. And I just love that you could look at it and be like, ‘That's Jenny Huang.’ And that's what I want, who I wanted on my team. Because I feel that way about recipe development; I feel that way about writing. I feel that way about talent. Yeah, I think people think talent means level of skill or something. But I actually think it means voice.
And then not only that, she just really went into this with—The art direction was her, 100% her. It was barely me. I kind of was way too busy to worry about art. I was sort of like, ‘Yeah, Jenny, this is your book too. I'll do whatever you say.’ And so, man, she asked for really specific tables. And I had to a specific traditional dress, and she asked for things. And I was kind of annoyed. And then once we were on set and we shot them, I was like, ‘Oh, I see.’ So I think after the first day I was sort of like, ‘Ok, just don't ask questions.’ She always had a vision, showing every photo you see in here. Well, not all of them sometimes. There's a lot of serendipity in the book, but she's already thought about how she wants to angle.
But there's a photo—it’s the kimchi-jjigae—of my mom kind of having lunch. And I can't talk about my mom because, always makes me cry. But she knew that she wanted my mom in a hanbok and to be eating lunch, and it took—for it to be a certain angle and kind of from behind. And then, we saw the picture and we're just like, ‘Wow, that was in her head.’ I think that's why she's a good photographer. It's in her head first and then knows how to get it onto the page.
And I just like that she also thinks about cultural context. So there were moments in the book where she scheduled the shoot. It wasn't dish-dish-dish-dish. It wasn't a food media shoot. It was more of setting scenes, so that she could like a documentary style, kind of go around. And that's how Korean food is.
She's the one who described it like this. So I'm sort of paraphrasing her, but she described it to me, Korean food has edges. When you're setting a table, there's a banchan, there's a rice, there's a stew, there's a meat, there's a lettuce plate. And in a cookbook, in my cookbook, all of those recipes are on different chapters. So she wanted to show the edges of—If you were to cut and paste, you could find the same patterns and see, you can create a whole. But I think in order to show some semblance of connectivity, she was, she did that on purpose, kind of showing the edges of dishes. And I thought that was just so brilliant, and really different. Because I, having white photographers shoot your food your whole career. And sometimes, getting it wrong, on accident, but just because I'd be like, ‘That's not how Korean people eat it,’ or that's not—’No one would do that.’ She was incorporated into her art direction. And so yeah, forever grateful to her no one else could have shot this.
The whole team, I really need a credit. Oh my god, Tyna Huong was the food stylist. And she and I met at a party with Jenny, actually. And so the second I met her, I was like, ‘Ok, she's the one.’ And I just knew I wanted her to style the book. And then Beatrice Chastka is a wonderful prop stylist who works with them. They're kind of this trio. And I couldn't break up the trio. So that's how it happened.
Alicia: That's amazing.
I mean, it does look so different from so many cookbooks that are out, coming out. It's vibrant. [Laughs.] Whereas I feel there's so much whitespace on covers now. And it's like, ‘Stop. I can't take it anymore.’ [Laughs.]
Eric: Yeah. I did not want any whitespace on that cover. I was super adamant about that.
Alicia: Well, how did you maintain this creative energy while writing the book and working? Like, this is my question for everyone lately, because it almost drove me insane, personally.
Eric: This was your last newsletter, right? That was like such a great—
Alicia: Yeah, a little bit, yeah, about productivity, yeah.
Eric: Productivity. This is something I've been working on. Because during the pandemic is when my workload kind of quadrupled. I was a freelancer for a year before I started at the Times, but even at the Times, I was sort of dealing with book stuff after hours. And so, it was really hard to find moments of rest. There was no time.
And what was really influential for me was my friend, Rick Martinez. I'm not going to pretend—His name does have a last name. He and I started this process together. Our books are coming out at the same time with the same editor. It was a lot of stars aligning, and we kind of quickly became phone call friends. We would call each other during the book writing process, because it's so lonely. And one thing that he said that was really influential for me was to take moments of rest and moments of joy. No matter how short that is, even if it's five minutes, because that's, that is restful.
And I really have started to see this kind of be true in other parts of my life. My partner and I, he lives in Philly now. So we're still technically long distance. And so, whenever we kind of realized that we only get two or three days together, where before I would have been sad about that, I realized now that time is a circle and that it's the quality of the time that matters, not the quantity. And so for me, it's the quality of the rest and the joy that matters, not the quantity.
So yeah, I take power naps all the time. I had a bulgogi video come out where I was super busy during the shooting of that whole thing. I look tired. I look really messy, and my hair is not gelled because—and then a reader attacked me. They're like, ‘Eric always looks like he just woke up from a nap.’ And actually, it's true. I always am waking up from naps because I get through. So I get through on five, six hours of sleep every night. That's pretty good.
But it's hard. It's hard to find time to slow down when there's just not enough hours in the day. And with this job, this new job, I just—It's so fun. It's a really fun job. And I want to be doing it all the time. But I just kind of had this realization that I need to take moments of rest to sort of make sure that I can come back and be and do good work. And yeah, once I realized it was—it had to be part of my routine. I tried to incorporate it more, but it's not always possible, you know?
Alicia: Well, how do you define abundance?
Eric: Yeah.
So I know you asked this to other people, too. And I like to listen to a lot of podcasts to see those answers. And I'm not sure if anyone's done this. But this stumped me a little bit. So I looked it up. I found out that the Latin root is abundantia. Sorry, I don't speak—I never took Latin—but which means overflowing. And I thought it was really interesting that the last definition, it wasn't about overflowing. It's the quantity or amount of something present in a particular area. And this usually refers to natural resources, carbon and nitrogen and bees or whatever. And I realized that this is—
I like that definition. Because it describes abundance as a finite number. And I think, yeah, there's a colonial or environmental reading of this, which is abundance is something to be cherished and not exploited. And I think it's important that with anything in life, whether it's a cultural document or whether it's the environment, the climate, I think. Treating it something that should be preserved and sustained rather than something that's overflowing. I think that attitude about the overflowing fountain, it's really dangerous and very colonial. And I think that's what abundance means to me.
Alicia: Well, that's always what I think I'm trying to get at, is that a little bit—Well, because I do think there is an idea of abundance, as just having a lot of choices in the supermarket, if we're talking about food context. And then I think that that is a colonial concept, is that ‘Oh, we have to have—’ I mean, look at the Defense Production Act, calling meat processing workers, essential workers, that is a colonial idea of what it means to have enough, because it means that other people are living in danger. And yeah, I think what I'm always trying to get at is the idea that abundance is the ability to share, basically. [Laughs.]
Eric: I love that. And the way to share that is to not overmine, so to speak.
Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act?
Eric: Yes.
So, I think this is also something—I was gonna be honest, I also looked this up because I was thinking about how I wanted to answer. I'm really bad at on the fly, I guess. But I appreciate that you ask everyone this, so I knew it was coming.
But I think cooking is a political act, because politics are about power. That's the one question that I'm always answering. I'm always answering questions about cultural appropriation specifically, but when it comes to other kinds of politics of gender, or labor, I think food and specifically cooking can be—It's an opportunity to influence change. I'm not gonna say I think of my recipes as things that change or that are political, inherently.
But I think editorially, as someone who's been on plenty of it, on plenty of editorial teams, I know how political it is to decide to make space for a specific type of cooking, a specific type of food, specific look. I've been told in the past that my food was too brown, I've been told that my contributor’s foods were too brown and that they needed a little green or parsley. And that centering of a very specific type of cuisine angers me, and this is—there's nothing more political to me.
And it's been my life's mission after that experience in our really messed-up industry to try to kind of move the needle. And I just freaking love my team. I love my editors. And I'll have a brown dish, and no one will be like, ‘This needs parsley. This needs a sprig of scalings.’ No one's telling me that, because they're just like, ‘This is the way it looks. This is the way millions of people eat this. And this is now our new center.’ And I think that's super important.
Alicia: Well, thank you so much for being here.
Eric: Thanks for having me.
Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

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A Conversation with Sandor Katz
16 mar 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
This week, I'm talking to Sandor Katz, whom you likely know from his books Wild Fermentation, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, The Art of Fermentation, Fermentation As Metaphor, and now Sandor Katz's Fermentation Journeys, which maps fermentation practices around the world, to show how traditions that preserve abundance have been maintained. It's perhaps my favorite of his books, because it tells so many stories through fermentation and introduces you to so many people around the world.
Katz has become a legend for his work, but he maintains humility as a conduit of knowledge rather than a keeper. His approach is a real inspiration to me. It was wonderful to get to talk to him about how he organized this book by substrate rather than nation, that why he names the ills of neocolonialism, and a lot more.
Alicia: Hey, Sandor. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
Sandor: It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Sandor: Well, I grew up in New York City, on the Upper West Side. And we ate all kinds of things. I feel very lucky that my parents liked different kinds of foods. They liked vegetables. We ate lots of different kinds of fresh vegetables.
But I mean, I would say that my mom did most of the day to day cooking. She had her repertoire. I remember she liked to make pot roast. Sometimes she made great lasagna, but also lots of kind of simple things that she would leave me a note as I got older, just to reheat something. ‘Set the oven to this temperature, put this in the oven.’ My father also liked to cook. He was more of the classic weekend chef. But that also meant that he could be—He was very creative in his cooking. And he's 87 years old now. And he still loves to cook.
And we were in New York City, and we ate Chinese food a lot. China-Latina food, the Cuban Chinese restaurants, we ate them a lot. My mother's parents, who I was close with growing up, were immigrants from what's now Belarus. And my grandmother was a great cook. And she would come over from time to time and make blintzes for us, I mean, she would make dozens of them. And we’d eat some fresh, and then she’d wrap them up and put them in the freezer. And we would defrost them and fry them to eat them. She made a chopped liver. She made matzah ball soup, gefilte fish, all these kind of classic Eastern European Jewish foods. We ate really beautiful versions of them at home.
Alicia: And you've written mostly about fermentation now, to kind of fast forward in life. But I also love your book The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, which came out in 2006. And I wanted to ask, because I recently reread it, how do you feel about the food movement it described in 2006 now in 2022?
Sandor: Well, I guess one thing I would say is that it doesn't describe a food movement. It describes a lot of different, grassroots movements. And I mean, I guess, some of them have been more successful over time than others have been. I mean, I think very much, it's not a centralized movement with a singular aim. I think people who get involved in grassroots movements or organized around food have a lot of different ideas and a lot of different objectives.
I mean, certainly the local food movements have been very successful. And there's a lot in most parts of the U.S. at any rate, there's a lot more variety of locally grown foods available. In some places, I think that there have been more successful efforts to make that accessible. I've visited some farmers’ markets where they take EBT card, and they have some sort of a grant so they're able to double the value of the EBT purchases. So at least in some places, people have been making strides towards making that higher quality locally produced foods accessible to people.
In the seed-saving movements, I mean, I think that there's sort of been amazing strides. And a lot of different people doing seed saving at different scales with different emphases. But I’m really inspired by this project called Truelove Seeds. I buy a lot of seeds from them. And they're working primarily with immigrant and refugee gardeners and with African American farmers and trying to save and spread seeds of different kinds of culturally important crops.
If we look at the big picture of centralization of production and retailing, that's only getting worse. If we look at issues of wasteful packaging, that's only gotten worse. So I mean, I think, as much as in 2006, more so than in 2006, we need grassroots activism around food.
Alicia: To get to your latest books, Sandor Katz's Fermentation Journeys, it begins with drinking palm wine in Africa and talking about how traditional techniques are so different from the sterile, literally and figuratively, approach in the West. And this inevitably related to how people respond to fermentation, as well as alcohol.
And so, how in your work have you adapted the traditional, more organic approaches to talk to an audience that might be skittish about fermentation? You talk about this in the book, when you go see the Chinese Chef Guan, who stirs in mold that forms on the top of his pickles, when many people new to fermentation would throw the whole crock out.
Sandor: Well, I mean, honestly, this is really what drew me into fermentation education. And the first time I was invited to teach a fermentation workshop was—which was in 1998, just because I had gotten interested in fermentation and not particularly had any fear about it. It really struck me at that first workshop, when one of the students picked up a jar of the vegetables that we just shredded and stuffed into the jars. And she said, ‘How can I be sure I have good bacteria growing in here, and not some dangerous bacteria that might make me sick, or even kill somebody?’
And I started to realize how easy it is, for people who've grown up with the idea that bacteria are so dangerous, it's easy to project this generalized anxiety about bacteria onto the process of fermentation, which actually is and always has been a strategy for safety in food. So I feel that's part of what drew me into fermentation education was the idea of demystifying this process for people.
So I'm always trying to tell people that like, ‘Oh, you can just skim off the top layer if it gets funky.’ But I also like to let people know that they have options. There do exist very effective technologies for, let's say, protecting the surface of your fermenting vegetables from oxygen. I tell them why I don't use them. Because if you like to smell it, and taste it as it develops, every time you open it up, you're letting the air and the oxygen in and kind of defeating the purpose of your specially engineered vessel or system. But there are options. And people who are really squeamish about that, they can ferment anyway. And there are ways that you can avoid that. But I also try to emphasize that, really, it's harmless, and just skim off the top layer. Don't throw the whole thing away.
Alicia: Right.
Have people gotten a little bit more, as fermented products have become kind of more commonplace, especially in the US. Everyone's eating kimchi all the time. Everyone's drinking kombucha. Have people gotten a little more easygoing about fermentation, or a bit more interested in it?
(9) Sandor: Well, sure, sure.
I would say since roughly 2011, maybe every year I've seen lists of the hot new trends in food that include fermentation. That always makes me chuckle a little bit, because fermentation is ancient. The products of fermentation have had enduring appeal. And if you think about ferments like bread, cheese, beer, wine, vinegar, they were just as prominent in our great-grandparents’ time as they are now. It's just that more people are aware of the process by which they are created. They're aware of fermentation. And I think that has everything to do with the microbiome and growing awareness that bacteria are not just our dangerous enemies, but they actually are our symbiotic partners, and we need them in order to function well. But people don't always know when to welcome them and when to fear them.
Alicia: Of course, yeah.
Well, I'm so struck. And this, I think, is related to the fact that fermentation is this ancient practice that no one can really own. But your writing and practice has such an openness that reminded me of Samantha Saville's concept of humble geographies, which asked geographers to pursue knowledge without assumptions of mastery.
And so I think that in this book, you really approach a humble geography of fermentation globally, without pretense, without expectation. And I love that humility is reflected in calling yourself a fermentation revivalist rather than an expert. And so, why has that manner of working been important to you? And how did you develop your approach to being a revivalist of fermentation?
Sandor: Well, I've never heard of this phrase humble geographies before. But I feel humbled.
I was 30 years old when I first learned how to make sauerkraut. I'd been eating sauerkraut and pickles since I was a kid. But my interest in fermentation really came in the middle of my life. And there are sort of so many people living in different cultural contexts where it just was part—Fermentation practices were just part of the landscape the whole time. And they're watching their grandmothers ferment something and their mothers ferment something, and they learned as a kid how to do it.
So, I mean, I do feel humbled. I mean, I have developed this sort of wide ranging, sort of broad knowledge of fermentation. But in any particular format, I mean, there are just so many people with more experience than me. And that sort of forces me to be humble.
Now, in terms of calling myself a fermentation revivalist, I mean, I guess that really came about because I have such a strong feeling that fermentation has been such an integral part of how people everywhere make effective use of whatever food resources they have available to them. But in recent times, as more and more people have moved away from direct involvement in the production of food, fermentation has largely disappeared from most people's households and from easy community views, so it sort of becomes mystified by disappearing into centralized production facilities.
And then people sort of project all of this, I guess, technical mystery. ‘Oh, it must take a laboratory. It must take a microscope. It must take the ability to absolutely control conditions’ and imagine that they can't do it. So what I'm trying to revive is people's intimacy with this process. And people feeling it's something that they can bring into their culinary practice.
Alicia: Well, you bring up abundance often in the text as the origin point for so many global ferments. And do you think it's possible to reclaim that concept of abundance in the West to be less about having ‘choices,’ and more about using every bit of things, sharing. There's a clear focus on gift economies and friendship as a means of knowledge building in the book that celebrates a different kind of abundance than what we're sold in the U.S.?
Sandor: Well, yeah. I mean, I hope so.
I mean, I really perceive what I'm doing, I—Fermentation, for me, is not the ultimate point. It's a means of reclaiming our food. And reclaiming our food means me coming closer to the source of its production. And I mean, for me, that means having a garden and trying to really primarily eat out of my garden. And share when I have too much of, and ferment what I have too much of to use at a given moment so that I can enjoy it down the road.
I mean, I think of it in terms of just reclaiming a relationship to food, that food is not sort of simply a commodity that you can get according to how fat your wallet is. Food is something more than that. Food is our connection to the biological world that enables us to physically sustain ourselves.
Food is a relationship to cultural lineages. I mean, sure, in that context. I mean, I would love to see people think of abundance in this sort of different way. What are the food resources that are around me that are abundant? ‘Ok, there are all these oak trees dropping chestnuts. How can I sort of learn how to turn that into food?’ I mean, I just think that that's so important because that's what food is. And all of our elaborate systems that we've set up, turning food into a commodity turn out to be extremely vulnerable. And we're seeing sort of more and more disruptions to that.
Alicia: Colonization, cultural continuity, documentation. These are cited as significant concerns of yours in your fermentation work. And they seem, are so fundamental to food as a whole. And so I wanted to ask—And then, you've been publishing for nearly 20 years. Have you seen the dominant food narratives change to reflect the significance of how colonization and cultural continuity are necessary parts of talking about food?
Sandor: Well, I mean, I'm not sure that I could say that I've seen the dominant narratives change, but certainly I'm seeing a broadening of the voices that are talking about food. And I'm seeing more people who are kind of bringing up the ways in which food is related to these sort of larger historical processes that form us and form our society.
I mean, I think that there's a lot of people, whether it's in the form of articles and books, whether it's in the form of videos that people are posting on YouTube. But I definitely think that there are much more varied voices that I'm finding, and I don't believe that they are sort of the dominant voices at all. But they certainly are present.
Alicia: Sure.
And your introduction mentions the ills of what you call our neo-colonial period. Poverty. Social and economic marginalization. Mass incarceration. Why was it important to you to name these explicitly in the book?
Sandor: Well, I mean, I'm writing about all of these cultural traditions, but I think it's important to acknowledge that not every cultural tradition has been able to have as much continuity as certain other cultural traditions, because we're part of these sort of larger historical processes. If you were in a native culture, where there was an active government policy to sort of destroy the culture by taking children away from their families and forcing them into schools to assimilate them, well, it's a lot harder for those cultural traditions to be able to continue because there's been such an active agenda of destroying them.
Alicia: And I think that's related to how the ferments in the book are grouped by substrate rather than national approach, which kind of demonstrates differences and commonalities between how these various cultures approach fermentation. I wanted to ask if you could elaborate on your choice to group the fermentations that way, and how you basically organized such a breadth of information?
Sandor: Well, I mean, I certainly started the project with a geographic outline and imagining that I was going to organize it geographically. But as it went on, as the project developed, I guess I realized that my strength is connecting the dots. And the fact that I've had this broad exposure has enabled me to compare and contrast how people in different cultures that are fermenting vegetables are fermenting the vegetables. And honestly, there's more similarity than there is difference. But there's a lot of very particular distinctions.
And it just evolved that way, so that rather than being, ‘This is my trip to China, and this is what I learned there. This is my trip to Colombia. And this is what I learned there.’ It just felt it worked a lot and certainly illuminated the fermentation processes a lot more to weave them together in a more thematic way.
Alicia: Well, yeah.
And another thing I was struck by is that you had acknowledged the incompleteness of your cumulative impressions from your travels. And so, I wanted to ask if you have advice for other writers, documentarians, people who are working in cultures that aren't necessarily their own, on how to approach being honest, I guess, about how you are documenting the work and the people you've met?
Sandor: Well, I think you just said it. I mean, you just have to be honest. [Laughter.] I mean, when you're going into a situation where you're brand new and other people have been doing this all along, they're the experts and you're just the witness. So I mean, I just think that that's the reality.
I see writers who are just trying to always assume the stance of the expert. But I mean, I just think that's ridiculous. I mean, it makes me bristle when I, I've been introduced as ‘the world's fermentation expert.’ And that, that's just utterly ridiculous.
As I said at the beginning, I mean, I started exploring fermentation when I was 30 years old. I've been doing it for about half of my life. But the world is full of people who have been making idlis or dosas, or in Puerto Rico making maví, or lots of different formats, just as a, as an every day thing in their lives. And all of them know more about the particular ferments they're engaged with than I know about any of them.
Alicia: I think that's such an important lesson, too.
Sandor: Yeah.
I mean, if I have an expertise, I mean, it's just that I have this sort of broad general exposure. And it's always incomplete. I do not believe that it would be possible for a human being to possess encyclopedic knowledge of fermentation practices, because they're so disparate. And it's not a unified set of practices. It's these very disparate practices that really only in the 20th century did we realize that they were unified by the fact that they all involve the activity of microorganisms that we didn't know about.
Alicia: For you, is cooking a political act?
Sandor: Well, I mean, not intrinsically, certainly. I think it can be, but I—As I was saying earlier, in the context of reclaiming food, that's what can make cooking or other forms of food preparation of a political act. It's the spirit that we bring to it, not the act itself.
Alicia: Well, thank you so, so much for talking today.
Sandor: Ok.
Well, thank you for your excellent questions. And also thank you, just thank you for your appreciation of a lot of the nuance in my work. I really appreciate that.
Alicia: Oh. Thank you. Thank you.

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A Conversation with Sarah Lohman
9 mar 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I'm talking to Sarah Lohman, a food historian, and the author of Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. We discussed how she went from art school to historic cooking, making a career as a blogger, and how she defines American for the purposes of her work.
Alicia: Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for being here.
Sarah: Well, hello, Alicia. Good morning. [Laughter.] I feel we’re both still a little just rolled out of bed. Yeah, I did put a face on for you.
Alicia: Thank you, I put a face on as well. I was completely ready to have this conversation and was sitting at my laptop at like 10:50. Like, ‘All right.’ And then at 11:01, I looked up and was like, ‘No!’ [Laughter.]
Sarah: It's fine. I'm just here with my tea. Just getting a start on the day. We're just gonna have a lovely chat, as per usual.
Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Sarah: Sure.
So I grew up in Hinckley, Ohio, which is a rural town about, oh, like 30 miles south of Cleveland. So Northeast Ohio. So I actually grew up in the house that my dad lived in from a teenager onwards. My grandmother gave it to my mom and dad the year that I was born. And so, that was how my family was able to have a little bit of property. And when I was growing up there, it was really pretty rural. I didn't have any really close neighbors, and we had a couple acres of our own.
As far as what I ate, some of it was regional and some of it was at—the crap that we got fed in the ’80s and 90s that I look back on, and it's just totally remarkable. Do you remember things like Squeeze-its and Gushers? And I'm like, ‘I guess we just didn't know better back then.’ But those were real foods that we ate.
And my mom was an exceptional cook. But it was very Midwestern. We did do some lasagna. We did do some chili, nothing particularly spicy. And then, kind of the regional cuisine in Northeast Ohio is very Eastern European. So there was also a lot of pierogi action. There would be some chicken paprikash, some beef stroganoff, those kinds of things.
I think the most sort of resonant experience I had with food growing up is that my mom was an award-winning baker. So basically, as soon as I could stand, I was baking with her. Iit's funny, I didn't realize that baking was hard until food reality TV started coming out. All the chefs were like, ‘Oh, no, I don't bake, I don't bake.’ So it was really valuable to me to get that experience first and do the ‘harder side of cooking things.’
And then as I got a little bit older, my parents both went to work when my brother went to college. And so, it was sort of my job to come home from school and start dinner. And so, that was the moment that I started to learn how to cook.
Alicia: Wow.
And so yeah, that's a really interesting mix of things. Because people associate, I think, the Gushers side of ’90s youths with other new processed foods, I guess. But it seems you had a real mix of home cooking and eating the—
Sarah: Oh, definitely.
I also feel many—at least in my world growing up, many families households are—I think a lot of families’ households are a blend. I think that we do a lot of culture and class shaming by saying, ‘Oh, you only go to McDonald's, blah, blah, blah.’ I mean, we can go into all of that, too. Yeah, of course, my family went to McDonald's, because how else you get a 6-year-old to shut up? McDonald's. And they wanted you there. And we’d go play on the playground afterwards, too.
But yeah, my mom also cooked meals from scratch for me, because this was still the era where some people had the luxury of having a parent at home full time, which I feel is really hard for someone who would even, who would choose to want that and choose to want to spend time with that child. I feel economically, that's becoming less and less available. So my mom got to raise us up until I was in eighth grade, when she went back to work. And so, that allowed her the access and the ability and the time to be able to make meals from scratch as well.
And kind of interestingly, her mom didn't really cook very much. Her mom did a lot with sort of processed food. But then, I don't know, my mom moved out to the country and just started baking pies and making stew from scratch. Something came alive inside her. And to this day, she's still an incredible cook and incredible baker. There's no stopping her from doing an all-out Thanksgiving or Christmas meal, even if it's just going to be the three of us eating it. And she’ll the table too. I think that’s her favorite part.
Alicia: Aww. That's really great.
And I talk so much, I think, about—in writing and in interviews and stuff—it's like, how do people eat differently? And it's always that answer is, you give them the time and you give them the access. And that's such an important thing to talk about, I think, in terms of our food upbringings.
Sarah: Absolutely.
And I feel that the time issue is one that I especially get very irritated with. I remember seeing a video a couple years ago with two very famous male food writers that are making a roast chicken with roasted vegetables. And they're like, ‘This only cost $14.’ And ‘Oh, isn't this so hard to do? People think this is so hard.’ And I'm like, ‘A*****e, you have no idea. You have no idea what it's like to be raising two jobs. You have no idea what it's like to be a single parent, and you have no idea the real choices that people are making. And you're just like, ‘Oh, just people hate making chicken. They're so stupid.’ It just pisses me off.
And then of course, the caloric content when you're like, ‘Man, I'm hungry. I've got all these kids to feed.’ Of course, you’re going to pick fast food as opposed to making a roast chicken with roast vegetables, which I had for lunch. I'm starving two hours later. It's just such a lack of connection to everyday people.
But also, I think in my case, it was just the ’90s and you bought your kids Gushers and Fruit by the Foot. And that's just kind of what you did.
Alicia: Right?
You fell in love with historical food while working at a living history museum as a teenager and went to art school. I wanted to ask, why did you go to art school?
Sarah: Well, I didn't really think history was my career. I ended up at that job because my mom worked there. And so when I turned 16, she was like, ‘You're too old to stay at home all summer. You’ve got to get a job.’ And I was like, ‘Ok, well, I'll apply at Hardee's and work with my friends.’ And she was like, ‘No, you're coming to work for me.’ She was a manager there. So I got the job. And I was, didn't want to. I wanted to go be with my friends and not do this super-nerdy thing of working in a museum in costume.
And it ended up obviously changing my life. Mom was right. Because the people that I worked with were such just exceptional, passionate individuals. And for me, I just wasn't in history in high school because you're not really learning about the lives of people. You're memorizing dates, and it's always very war-focused as opposed to any of the life that people led in between, right? You're learning about sort of governments and dates that this happened, duh-duh-duh. There's nothing there that makes you think that history is populated with human beings.
Yeah, but museums, like the one I worked at, or probably more famously people know Plymouth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg, they are focusing on social history. So day-to-day life. And then in the house there that I worked in with my ‘family,’ there was a wood-burning cast-iron stove. And so, that's when I just loved working with the fire and with the stove, with this really kind of simple piece of equipment. And we were also working from historical books, too. I started to get the sense of what that era in history tasted like, and being able to read old recipes like that.
But I went to art school because I liked art. And that's what I sort of excelled out when I was in high school. And I was lucky that there was a really, really excellent art school near, far enough away from home that I could move but close enough that I wasn't too scary.
So the Cleveland Institute of Art. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. But that was my plan. And then interestingly, it sort of led me back to food history. I majored in a digital arts major with a fine arts minor in food and—not food, in photo and video, which obviously I do a lot of food photography now.
And it was a five year program. So I had to do a thesis project. And so I ended up doing an installation of what today would call a pop up restaurant that served colonial-era food for a contemporary audience. So although after that I sort of dropped it for a couple years ‘cause I was sick of it, it clearly was this combination that I had. I realized I had this sort of unique perspective, because of my—already for a couple years, had worked in this very strange work environment. And that I'd had this background in food and cooking at home, and it just kind of came together as part of this really great program that I was in.
Alicia: How has that art education influenced your career and food?
Sarah: Hugely.
It's funny because when people ask me ‘what I did in college,’ and I say that, ‘I went to art school,’ go like, ‘Oh, you’re really using the degree,’ which is just what people love to say to people who went to art students anyway, which I think is b******t.
But I mean, in a very practical way, it has helped me immensely in that as part of my degree I received training in terms of working with freelancers. Working with clients, I should say. So being able to run my own business in a certain—just learning things, invoicing. That was all part of what I was learning.
So when I wanted to quit my full-time job and start working for myself, that was much less intimidating. And I designed and launched my own website, because I knew both graphic design and some basic HTML when I first started blogging. Obviously, photography is a huge part of being in the foodie world. Whether you're blogging, or now, of course, a lot more on Instagram, or writing for a commission, you're often required to provide your own photographs. So my photography skills have been hugely helpful.
And when I'm sort of working with people who want to get into food writing more, that is often one of the hard, most difficult hurdles, that food writing and food photography are often sort of intertjoined. You're building that Instagram audience. So I'm feel very, very, very lucky to have that background too.
But I think in a bigger way, that sort of community and my professors that I work with, it, they encouraged you to think big. To think conceptually, to think of projects. And so, even formulating this idea of back when I got started: what if I did start a food blog and I looked at food history, and used to connect to the present, instead of doing all even the concept of doing this thing that I didn't really have any other—I didn't have a mentor at that point. I didn't have a concept of what my career could look like. Even just thinking about it and getting started on it, I think came from the education that I got in college, too.
Alicia: Right.
And you moved to New York, where that was—where you kind of got started doing this sort of work. Why was New York the place for that, at that time?
Sarah: I mean, I think a couple things came together.
I mean, I mentioned to you earlier, too, that really professor—I was in my fifth year, and I'm doing this restaurant. And it’s all very crazy. And he was the one that was kind of like, ‘You need to go to New York. There just isn't space for what you're doing here right now.’
I went to school in Cleveland as well. And especially in 2005, when I was graduating, Cleveland wasn't doing great. People were already talking a lot about brain drain and college graduates leaving the Midwest and going to the coasts. It sounds harsh to say there wasn't the opportunity there. Because in a way, I did move back to Cleveland for a couple years, from 2018 to 2021. And it was because there were really exciting things happening here. And actually, because a lot of people had moved, went to the coast, got new ideas, and then brought them back to the Midwest. There's hugely positive things happening in Cleveland now.
But I think to me, the tipping point was I'd never lived anywhere else in my life. I’d been on one trip out of the country at that point, which I felt very fortunate for. But my family just didn’t have the money to do a semester abroad or anything. I was working. I was paying for a lot of things myself. And I just thought it was really important to live somewhere else and get a different perspective on the world.
And sort of a soft landing, I'd had a couple friends that moved out there the year before. And then really fortunately, I had a professor that said, ‘I'm from New York. I keep an apartment out there. If you ever need a place to stay for a month, just let me know,’ I was like, ‘Actually, thinking of moving there.’ So I had a place to stay when I first moved out there. And then I also then had roommates, and it just sort of happened. And then I ended up spending 13 years there.
Alicia: Wow.
And now that you've left after being in New York for so long. How has that influenced your work?
Sarah: Yeah.
Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day, because I really became an adult in New York City. And I do feel kind of douchey now being like, ‘Oh, but I live—I've lived here for a long time.’ [Laughter.] I moved when I was 23. And I left when I was 36. So that to me. I mean, obviously that's a time, a lot of growth. And a really incredible place to do that, as you know, being from New York yourself.
But honestly, I decided to leave at the moment when I was really happy. I felt I had done it. I was a success in the city and my life was happy there. And it was the moment that I was happy as opposed to some great disappointment of disaster that I was like, ‘Ok, I'm ready. I'm ready to go. I've done this. I'm ready to go.’
So the first move, I decided to come back to Cleveland. My parents were still here. And it was in a way a test to see if my business could exist outside of New York. This was pre-pandemic, moved in 2018. But I moved somewhere that was both close enough that I was still planning on coming back to work every week or two months and seeing if—
I mean, God, when I moved to New York City, if you had an out of state or out of city telephone number, you couldn't get a job. There was so much of this very insular—you have to be in New York, have to be a New Yorker. That was the most intimidating part. You'd have seen like, ‘Can I still do events in New York? Will people have any respect for me?’ Obviously, a lot of that has changed since the pandemic. And if there's any positives to come out of it, the fact that you don't have to be located in a certain place, whether you want to be or not to do your job.
So it was my first kind of experiment with it. And it did end up being a lot more traveling back and forth to New York, which could be really exhausting. But also part of the reason I moved at that moment to is I knew I was about to start a new book project. And I wanted to try living somewhere with a lower cost of living, and just a different pace of life. And I just knew that I didn't want to live in New York anymore. So I knew there wasn't going to be any sort of big regrets. Just wasn't quite sure what the next step was.
So I was in Cleveland for three years. Well, a little more than. I’d said two to three years when I moved out there. But then there was this pandemic thing. I don't know if you heard. And I was really relieved to be there, too, because I could be there and support my parents, which would have been so scary. And I'm sure has been so scary for a lot of people.
And like I mentioned to you, I just moved to Las Vegas at the end of August. A great new opportunity came up. I really love the city. I love its natural wonder. And so now, it's a little bit more of seeing like, ‘Ok, a lot of my money comes from doing live events,’ which obviously weren't happening during the pandemic. But it's also become sort of a weird time for doing online classes. People are sick of being online. But I did just come back from New York to try to do first in-person talks and events since the pandemic started. And people are also still a little hesitant to show up in person. All of it's understandable. I'm sick of the loss of connectivity that we get through Zoom too. But it makes total sense. If someone feels under the weather, they're not going to show up for class.
Things have sort of hit a weird moment, but I'm just trying to ride it out. Hopefully, one day be able to expand the branded events a little bit more to the West Coast, too. And I don’t know, Alicia. I'm all about learning and experiences. And part of that is just I want to live in a different part of the country so I can understand that better, and maybe sort of understand our country as a whole better, too.
Alicia: For sure.
And so, I know you started out writing about food as a blogger, you—Four Pounds Flour. How has your relationship to being a food person online changed since you started in the industry? Because it is, like you said now, probably a lot more visually focused than it was. When people were bloggers. You could take a real shitty picture and use it. [Laughter.]
Sarah: You're not gonna get those Instagram likes!
And that's the coming from art school, too. I wasn't just like, ‘My content has to be good.’ So I didn't really think of myself as a writer. I still don't, in a way. The writing, to me, is a means to an end, a way to have a conversation about food and to express ideas. So coming from art school, it was like, ‘No, my photos are absolutely not going to look shitty.’
I'll tell you this. And bless him. My friend Jay, who I haven't talked to many years—Part of the article process is going through the critique process, which, I think, is honestly one of the most valuable skills I learned there. And so in my fifth year, and I'm in my major, and we're this really tight group of people. And I'm working on opening up this pop up restaurant, I’m and doing a website. And so, I did food photography for the first time. And so I had this critique of my food photographs, and my friend Jay went, ‘That's looking like some Chinese food. China, frankly—’ How do you say it? Some, he said, ‘That's looking like some Chinese fast food menu photographs.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, nooooo.’
So it was this real kick in the pants. I mean, I think maybe the closer equivalent is it looks—it looked a little bit more like the collages that you see on the sides of bodegas. That kind of photography I was doing. Because it is a really specific skill to be able to get in there and understand. Just portrait photography, or landscape photography, or animal photography, are all very separate skill sets. Food photography, there are certain tricks that you had to learn.
And so I really had to push myself to get better very, very quickly so that I didn't have Chinese takeout slash side of the bodega. Which, by the way, I'm obsessed with bodega collages. And also noticed the aesthetic is changing recently, the last time I was in New York. Maybe that's a different definition. So to me, the visual elements were extremely important. And I knew the food had to look delicious, or at least interesting. Is every photo on that blog that I wrote from—what 2008 to 2018? Is every photo a banger? Absolutely not. But I do feel proud of that.
It is super visual. But interestingly, a lot of my work has now shifted away from individual dishes to more broader storytime about food as culture. So my photography has become much more documentarian of the travels I’ll do and the people that I'm meeting, and then the foods that we're eating together.
So the transition to Instagram was super natural for me. See, this is the thing. I'm not in Writer Twitter. You're so in Writer Twitter and Food Twitter; I just kind of lurk and retweet. So in some ways, again, even though I have a book out. I’m working on my second book that started as a blogger. I'd never think of myself as a writer. That’s what I try to say when I’m—when somebody asks me what I do for a living. And I don't really want to have a conversation, but it still doesn't work. And they're like, ‘What do you want to write about?’ It's fine. [Laughs.]
Alicia: Can you tell me what your next book is about?
Sarah: Yeah, I can.
So I'm looking at foods that are on the verge of extinction in America. And I traveled all over the country to talk to different people who were the shepherds and the harvesters and the farmers of these different foods.
And the reason the foods are becoming endangered are for a variety of reasons. But I think most importantly, that all these foods are tied very deeply to, often, a people and a place. And the peoples that they belong to are peoples that within America have been historically and systematically oppressed. And so, that's one of the ways that America colonizes, is by taking away culture, which means taking away food.
And it's looking at what happened, and honestly a lot about the history of American colonialism. But also, the stories of survival. Survival and thriving, too, and how these different peoples throughout America had been able to hold on to these foods, too. And then a little bit of call to action. My hope for this book is that the people and the products that I'm featuring will get the attention, the money, the support that they need and want. Maybe even the legislature. I'm hoping that this book serves these people and serves as a platform for their voices, too.
I don't want to get into too much detail because I'm still writing it. Once it’s in the publication process, you can talk and talk and talk about it. But yeah, at this point, someone could probably write it faster than me. I don't think I'm a slow writer. It just takes time, Alicia. You know the work.
Alicia: I know. It sucks. It's the worst thing I've ever done. And I am a writer and I hate writing a book. I mean, I hate writing a book because for myriad reasons that I probably shouldn't talk about publicly, but—
Sarah: It’s exhausting. I mean, I'll talk about them for you. It's mentally exhausting. It's physically exhausting. I mean, it gives me anxiety. I'm thinking about it all the time for multiple years of one's life. The financial support isn't there. You said something on Twitter that I was like, ‘Same’ so hard that you—Paraphrase. You said, ‘Writing a book takes a lot of thinking. But how do you have time for thinking when you need to pay the bills?’
And that actually, with both of these books, is the hardest part. The money runs out. People are gonna get in advance. Yeah, well, lasts me about eight months of living and doing the research. It all got invested back into the book. I'm not living the high life here. And then you have to work, because you still have bills to pay. So where do you find the time to get the space, not just to write but to think about these ideas of making a great piece of work when you're also doing whatever you need to do to get those bills paid? You're working two full-time jobs when you're writing a book. It’s absolutely exhausting. It’s exhausting.
Alicia: Yeah.
The third of my advance that I've gotten so far, it wouldn't have paid my rent for two months. Yeah, it sucks. I don't know. I shouldn't have agreed to it.
Sarah: It absolutely sucks. And then yeah, I kind of did a second one. ’Cause I was like, ‘Wow, I don't know how to make money.’ And after this, I really have to give it a think.
In some ways, I feel guilty, because obviously, this is—What we're talking about is aspirational for probably a lot of people who are listening to this podcast. I mean, I've spent 10 years of my life on two books. And yeah, I'm really proud of my first book. And I think that the second book is going to be something that I'm proud of, too. I've gotten to work with great editors, and we've made something great together. And I think that the book has done something—
I think that the big benefit of it, and probably the way you're motivated to do it, is that we can put something good and thoughtful into the world that will—I hope with my first book, too, bettered somebody's life in an indirect way. Just created more understanding around food and culture in America.
But man, am I poor. I'm single. I should say to everybody. And happily so. This is where I want to be. Now I live with a housemate, but I was living by myself for a while. And I just read some big article about how society isn't designed for people to stay single who want to stay single.
And so, it's really hard. It does feel like, really, an accomplishment every month that I do it where I'm like, ‘Yeah, rent, paid you.’ And it's hard to sort of juggle that between people's perceptions of me. And you probably feel the same way, too, where it's like, ‘I'm successful. I've got a book out. I've got some name recognition.’ I'm not a major food celeb. That's totally fine. But I think people need to look at what I'm doing. They're like, ‘Yes, that's what I want to be doing.’ But everybody—Phew. It's tough some days. It's a real haul.
And I don't want to say that love makes up for money. To get through those times of real stressful uncertainty, you really have to be—love and be invested in what you're doing. So definitely after this book, I have to really think about what I want the next step of my career to be because it's just incredibly exhausting. This will be another five-year process from proposal to publication. The financial stress is real. The artistic physicality of writing a book is really draining and uncertain and difficult on your sort of mental health.
But I got to meet amazing people and do amazing things that I wouldn't have had the excuse to do otherwise. And I think that that's the addiction and the appeal that keeps bringing me back. If I pitch this book, that means I get to go to this place and meet these people and meet them on their level and in their space and in their life. And to me, that is really—it's the access that being a writer gives you, both that people might be open to speak to you but also the allowance it gives myself to be like—
I went to the Navajo Nation and volunteered at a festival that celebrates the Navajo-Churro sheep, and assisted this cook and butcher in butchering a whole animal. I'm sorry. Course you're vegan. [Laughter.] I forgot about that. I’m so sorry.
Alicia: I’m a vegetarian, it's ok. [Laughs.]
Sarah: Oh, I actually am too. But for me, learning about, meeting people where they're at is also about learning about their food in every single aspect. I had never butchered an animal before. And especially someone who has eaten meat and does still occasionally eat meat, I feel—I've always felt that experience is really important to be with that animal.
But I never, I'm not just gonna pick up and volunteer fly to Arizona and then drive for hours to volunteer at a sheep festival. And I do want to do that. If someone asked me if you want to do that, it’d be like, ‘Absolutely.’ But writing it in this book allowed me to do that. And now, I've met people that I feel so connected to.
And I'm just rambling now. But, yeah.
This book is really special. I feel connected to the people that I interviewed and spent time with in a way that I didn't get to do in the first book. And in this really meaningful way. So that's amazing. That's a moving life, right?
Alicia: [Laughs.] It is great. I am too bitter about the book process.
But I also like to talk about it because I do feel as writers, we feel a little bit like we owe it to the fact that we make a living being writers to be nice about it. And I think that that's not fair necessarily to people who are coming up and get a, an idea of it as something—I grew up looking at magazines and looking at the contributor page and being like, ‘These people are living the great life.’ And now, I know that that's not true. [Laughs.]
Sarah: It’s f*****g hard.
And you really have to fight to get paid. I mean, especially now, both the amount of money paid for both articles and books has just dropped in the past 10 to 20 years. And a lot of it comes from online. For some reason, when your words live online as opposed to on the page their value’s less. Which doesn't make any sense. I'm gonna write just as good, no matter where that's appearing.
And I don't think that the publishing industry as a whole actually supports great art right now. I mean I appreciate that every publisher has got a couple authors that's making bank, and that they're essentially taking the gamble. It's literally gambling on us, where they're investing money. And they're gonna see if they get their investment back. But I have been with two publishers now. I have never felt financially supported. My third publisher, I feel supported in many other ways. But money is one of the most important ways to be supported.
And I also don't like this culture of you’re an artist, you can't talk about money. I got bills to pay. I got food to buy. How do you have space to create good work when you don't feel secure in those things?
I teach a nonfiction book proposal and publishing process class with a friend of mine who published an amazing book about bedbugs. She's a science writer. And one of the things we talk about is we're also very brutally honest about what this process is like, what your financial situation is going to be like, especially as a new author. Unless you were already a super famous name, you're not going to be pulling in the big bucks on your first book. The fact that you might never see royalties. My first book, Eight Flavors, has done really, really, really well. I have not seen a dollar.
That being said—and this will, I think, happen for you Alicia—is the best part about it, maybe even more so than the getting to go out and connect with people, not writing the book, is that then for at least a year after the book comes out, you get to talk about it. You get to engage in this conversation that you don't have to give any introduction to, because people have read the book. And you can engage with people about these concepts. After the first book, I got to travel for almost two years. There's no official book tour. People are surprised about that nowadays too. But now, they'll do a media tour.
But for certain authors, public speaking becomes a part of your job. And I got to speak in a huge diversity of places. And that was really amazing, getting to talk to people about this work that I had done and have these conversations that I've wanted the book to prompt feels so good. And then that, for that one year, you're also just in the money. There's just money coming everywhere. And then you’re like, ‘You know what? I could do this again. I could do this again.’ And the cycle just repeats. And now, I'm 40. So this is why we have to figure things out going forward.
But when your book comes out. It's going to be amazing. You're going to have great conversations and—about something that I know you're really passionate about, too. And then that will make you start to think you can do it again. And then you might.
Alicia: Ha! [Laughs.] The next one will be very, very different.
But in your book that actually is out there that people could buy and read, and hopefully get you royalties, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine—
Sarah: But in the end, I don't care enough. Now that the work is out there, it's like, ‘Get it from your library. Buy it secondhand. Borrow it from your friend.’ To me, in the end, now that the work exists, the money part, in my mind, should not be on the reader. It should be the publisher, right? And the full system that doesn't support artists. Now the book exists. Don't steal it. Don't steal this book. Buy it from a small, independent bookstore, if you want to. Yeah, get it from your friend’s shelf. I don't care if you enjoy it.
Alicia: I actually did buy yours second hand at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn. Or was it Book Revue in, on Long Island? I don't know. But it has the price in pencil, so I know I bought it second hand. [Laughs.]
Sarah: I'm totally fine with that. I think that’s lovely.
Alicia: [Laughs.] But I wanted to ask how you came up with parameters for your definition of American cuisine.
Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's the idea that I wanted to play within this book, because I think American cuisine is famously difficult to define, right? And if people do define it, it's in this really negative way. ‘Oh, it's all McDonald's, all hot dogs and hamburgers, or whatever.’
And I think that internationally, that's often what people think of American food. And I think that Americans often do that to themselves. When, in my experience, I find quite the opposite, that there's a lot of worry about American food becoming homogenized. But it's so often that I'm doing an event and people will come up and be like, ‘Oh, have you tried this local dish? And do you know about this thing? And if you go to this restaurant–’ People are so immensely proud of their local culture and cuisine. So I think a lot of American food is based on physically, graphically, where you grew up.
And then of course, I think that saying American food is hot dogs and hamburgers presents a very narrow and, dare I say, racist view of who an American is. Because I'm an American. You're an American. Someone whose family immigrated from China in the 1840s is now fourth, fifth, sixth generation American. Someone who came from India in the 1960s is American if they want to define themselves that way. So it's both a, you mentioned the word sort of erasure when we were talking about this. Using that narrow definition of American is erasure of all of the facets and complications of who Americans are, right?
That being said, the fact that—acknowledging the fact that we were a really diverse country, I then got curious about how individual ingredients. What cook doesn't have black pepper and vanilla in their kitchen? So how can someone come from this huge variety of backgrounds—And I mean, when you travel around this country, it often felt like I wasn't going to different states. It feels like I'm going to different countries that both have their own idea of like, ‘This is what America is,’ but one state over, it's completely different. And they’re speaking a different language one state over, too.
So why, then, are there these handful of ingredients that both define us and that Americans consume in massive levels compared to the rest of the world? Why do we have a particular love for these? I think American cuisine can be delightfully undefinable. I think that the idea of cuisine, of a certain way of eating and doing things has a more specific definition. And I think then there can be lots of arguments about what is or isn't American food. And I think that that's all a fun, interesting conversation to have. But so, then I got curious about what does unite us? And apparently it's a few pantry items. And why.
Alicia: Right, right.
Which is so interesting. And I loved when you wrote about Food Network. Again, as a person who, born in the mid ’80s, watching Food Network, reading Food & Wine, reading Travel + Leisure as a kid was how I understood food other than what my mom was cooking. And you point to how they kind of led to this increase in sales for whole black peppercorns versus powdered.
And I think that that's such an interesting thing, because we don't think in the U.S.—Or even I, as a food writer, it's difficult to talk about what ingredient people use that is actually, I don't know how to sit—But people don't use things in their whole forms necessarily in an American kitchen. It is a rare thing to grind your own coffee or grind your own peppers. But for whatever reason, whole black peppercorns really became a thing. It was a joke on SNL that, the huge waiter with, the waiter with the huge pepper mill. ‘Tell me when.’ [Laughs.]
But people take for granted the whole peppercorns now. But I wanted to ask, I don't think it's Food Network anymore that's influencing how people eat. What do you think is influencing how people eat now?
Sarah: That's a great question.
I mean, the Food Network stepped in to fill such a gap that wasn't, that was there. A lot of food magazines, at that point, even in mid ’80s were super high end, let's say. Or very, very low end, Budget recipes. And the Food Network just sort of normalized cooking, and normalized olive oil. And just these whole and fresh ingredients that weren’t out of reach in any way, that you could get at your grocery store, that it didn't cost that much more money that we weren't using. It sort of leveled up home cooking in a lot of ways too. Even for people who mostly were just watching it, as opposed to try and replicate every recipe.
I mean, I think that the major food influence right now is Instagram. And I think that there is some negative aspects to that, in that ugly food is delicious. And Instagram really only elevates beautiful food and incredible colors. I try not to be a crabby, elder millennial. Just hates things ’cause they're new. But something really bothers me about venues that are clearly just setups for Instagram pictures. You know what? I just like honesty and logic in any viewing. And so, I don't want food to be set up so that it looks good on Instagram.
And I see that in retail and restaurants. They're like, ‘Well, this is going to be our Instagrammable dish.’ But then on the flip side,then I’ll get that. I'm like, ‘Oh, it's gonna be such a tight Instagram photo. I’m sure I’m gonna love it.’ So in some ways, it can be a really negative influence, I think, ‘cause if we're just thinking about—Obviously, we do eat with our eyes. But if we're just thinking about the visuals, we're missing the whole ugly, delicious panoply of amazing foods out there.
That being said, it has sort of a positive things, too, because a lot of those really vibrant colors are coming from East Asian ingredients. And so, now things like ube and matcha—Matcha, I did predict being an up-and-comer in Eight Flavors, but I never would have called ube being a thing now, which is not only beautiful, but really delicious. And so, even though I think there can be some negative aspects to just judging food visually, I think that it has allowed us to not ‘ew’ when something is an unexpected color, which I think is a very Midwest, white Midwest, to do, to be like, ‘Eww, why is it that color?’ I think that embracing the beautiful, the beauty in food that often comes from around the world. And I would say particularly East Asian countries do these incredible exclamations of color with their ingredients and flavor and appearance and trompe l’oeil, and all these amazing presentation things that I love seeing embraced in American food, because that also means that those people are being embraced as Americans.
Alicia: Right.
Well, that leads me to my question of so many of the ingredients in the book are so many ingredients that we have come to kind of consume in the U.S., aren't indigenous to the U.S. And so, you write that in the conclusion that it's our lack of tradition that is allowed for this diversity. And of course, diversity is good in every aspect, but at the same time, I'm always wondering now, what is the difference between assimilation and erasure of origins of food. And what is lost when something becomes American versus retaining its identity at origin?
One thing I've been talking about with my husband because he's applying for PhD programs right now in history, and he's going to focus his research on rum and Puerto Rico. And we were talking about people calling coquito ‘Puerto Rican eggnog.’ And then talking about how is that erasing the idea that it probably has roots that are deeper than U.S. colonization and industrial canned products coming. But it's so hard to find that. But then the story ends up just being like, ‘It's eggnog with coconut.’
And especially now that you're writing about Indigenous foods, but what is that difference between assimilation and honoring origin?
Sarah: Yeah, couple things to comment on. And I'll see if I can start on a larger thought here.
I do think that assimilation and erasure are the same thing. I think that when, we are for a large part, especially the last 100 years being an immigrant nation. And so when someone comes here and you say, ‘You have to speak English, you have to cook this way, you have to dress that way.’ That is both assimilation and erasure. And I think that's a horrid concept. And I think that it's a way that, luckily, immigrants have been able to resist in different ways, too.
But I spent many years working at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum teaching immigration history about the Lower East Side, but in this broader way. And we did these tours in a way that we could also learn from the people's experiences on the tour. And maybe one of the most heartbreaking things that got sent to me said to me pretty frequently is that someone whose parents were, for example, whose grandparents are from Italy would talk about how they were so sad that they didn't know how to speak Italian because their grandparents would not speak it in the house. They’d refuse to and they're really upset they didn’t get that cultural connection, but then will turn around and talk about how immigrants from Central America don't want to be American and don't want to speak English.
And luckily, I had a job where I could call people out. That was part of the process of like, ‘Oh, didn't you tell me earlier that you duh-duh this?’ So I hate that turning around and shitting on the next person, because it just means that we all sort of lose. And luckily, because of the stubbornness of Italian immigrants, we have this really incredible Italian American food way here to go get, to experience and enjoy.
But one of the downsides, though, of having a culture that is made up of people all, from all over the world coming to this country, is that we also have erased Indigenous foods and Indigenous ingredients. And that was done purposefully, again, because the American colonial government wanted to come in and take that land, and just push Indigenous peoples into the least desirable sections, or in some case, people—It's an incredible story where people were able to stand their ground and stay, remain on their sacred land. In the face of the deception, manipulation and violence of the American government, that was a very, very difficult thing to do.
So we have an incredible number of native ingredients and spices, plants. And in some ways, it has spread all over the world, like tomatoes, and peppers. But I'm seeing a resurgence of American spicebush, which is a native spice from the Midwest and the East that has notes of clove and nutmeg and allspice in it, that's just a plant I could probably go into the woods and find right now. But we’re totally unaware of it, because it wasn't cinnamon. It wasn't these spices that were revered in Europe.
That being said, too, Indigenous people have also adapted and brought in new ingredients and new animals and new ways of living. Indigenous people in the Americas are incredibly adaptive. And so, they took the best parts of the colonist’s culture and the parts that suited them, and then made that a part of their culture too. So of course, all of modern Mexican cuisine, a lot of that has to do—
I guess the biggest thing I can say is that the Americans didn't have many domesticated animals. And so, that was one of the biggest ways that Indigenous people's lives changed. And Indigenous food changed here, too. But of course, also, there's no way we can also say, ‘Well, that's not real Indigenous food.’ For example, coming back to the Navajo. They've been shepherding the Navajo-Churro sheep for 400 years. So we also tend to have different ideas of tradition. If a white person does something for 100 years, it’s traditional, but if a native person does something for 400 years, it's like, ‘Oh, we just took that from the colonists.’
So all that aside. I think that there's also a really positive ways to think about it. Because we are such a jumble of people, both in our country and our cities, we get to look in each other's cooking pots and go to someone's house to experience a new recipe, or Google a restaurant in our neighborhood. So there is also this mutual sharing of food, and I think in particular flavor. It's always like, ‘What is that spice? What is that ingredient?’
And I think that's why I was drawn to looking at individual flavors, individual ingredients, because often it's not necessarily the whole dish that comes into our broader culture at once. It's the sriracha sauce or it's the cardamom. It's this introduction of something that's new that we begin to play with. And when I say American, too, its broad American culture. You see that same kind of playing with a new ingredient for someone who is white Midwestern, or Mexican descent in the southwest. It is this broader idea of a grilled cheese sandwich is delicious, probably no matter where you're from, so that everyone gets to play as opposed to the dominant culture, I think. And maybe think about it as more mainstream than dominant.
Alicia: No, no, that's super fascinating. And I think that that's a really great way of thinking about it. Because I do think that the conversation has been really skewed, especially online and food conversations around, what is cultural appropriation? And a lot of people will say, ‘Oh, does this mean I can't cook tacos in my house if I'm not Mexican?’ And it's like, ‘No, of course. That's great. Everyone should eat tacos.’
Sarah: Just don’t claim you invented the taco!
It seems very simple in some ways, right? I mean, one class I taught, I wish I'd gotten this woman's name. But we were talking about the importance of attribution. And we're talking about it specifically in just recipe writing. I was like, ‘Even if you were just inspired by somebody else, why wouldn't you attribute that person and create a community? Why is there this pressure that we have to—No item of food is new. It's all inspired. No item of art right is new. It's all inspiring to be something else.’
And this writer in my class turned to me and said, ‘When in doubt, shout it out.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, when in doubt, shout it out.’ If you're worried that you’re appropriating someone's culture, shout it out. Credit somebody.
But also, if you're worried that you're appropriating someone's culture, maybe don't do whatever it is that you're about to do. Is this appropriation? It probably is. I think that cooking within someone's culture is an incredible way to learn about someone else's life and mode of living, especially at a time when we can't travel very much right now, right? Because it's not just the food and the flavor. It's the process of making it that teaches you about how other people live. And that's an incredible bond.
And interestingly, speaking of American erasure and assimilation, food is often the thing that people are the most prejudiced against. 100 years ago, we stopped eating garlic, because Italian and Jewish immigrants smelled like garlic. And that was seen as a negative. The ’80s or the ’90s, kids coming from India or South Korea, or opening up their lunchboxes and getting the ‘ew’ and all they want is Lunchable. So there's definitely that side of it.
But at the same time, those same kids grow—Italian food exists because of stubbornness. We have an incredible amount of Korean food, Korean American food now. There's also a stubbornness in giving up our food culture that then ultimately benefits everyone. It's one of the things that almost a dominant culture allows people to maintain. But also, thankfully, it's one of the ways that we can make incredible connections with people, even if we don't speak their language or believe in the same faith. Sitting around the dinner table, experiencing those foods, we all taste, we all eat, we can all talk about food. And it's really an amazing thing.
Alicia: Right.
And I wanted to ask, because working on my book, a lot of narratives around vegan and vegetarian food for the last 50 years, has—it's been historicized as a white thing, which is just so wildly inaccurate. Even within the United States, this is—there is diversity in people who eat ‘alternative natural foods’ or eat a vegetarian diet.
And I wanted to ask, how do you—what are your techniques? What are your methods for helping you see beyond the narratives of the dominant culture, or the dominant historical narrative? Because also, a thing that is perpetuated because we're creating so much content online. I've perpetuated this myself, is that we're just writing stories. And we're grabbing a random source, and we're just repeating it. So as someone who's actually digging into history, what is, what are some good resources? What are some good techniques for not just perpetuating stories that are incorrect?
Sarah: Yeah.
I think that the biggest way I want to frame this is just because they're the easiest source to find, doesn't mean that they're the best source. Going into the book that I'm currently writing, someone is going to perceive this as racist. But here I go. I wanted to make an effort to include as few white men as possible, because when you do a Google search for anything, the first hits that people with the most media attention, that people with maybe the most sort of money and power and businesses, are going to be white men in this country, because they are the dominant people and have been for a very long time. Does that mean that that white man is the best resource for you? It absolutely doesn't. So the easiest, the most powerful, even the most written about person may not—and in fact, probably is not the best person to talk. Does that mean never talk to any white guy ever? No. Absolutely not. There are white guys in this book.
But just making that promise to myself made me keep pushing and not be satisfied with the first answers that I got. Because even in maybe that first phone call with that white guy, they start talking about other people who have inspired them or who they support or who they're linked to. If I just stop at that one phone call, I wouldn't get to all those other people that actually that guy thinks is really important to talk about.
There was an Amazon review for my first book, which you should never read. But of course I did. And someone said, ‘It seems like she went out of her way to be inclusive in this book.’ And the answer is, yeah. [Laughter.] Yeah, I did.
But also, I also wanted to tell the real history, which is an inclusive history. That's why I study food history, because looking at what we eat finally allows us to access the stories of women and people of color in a way that traditional histories do not. And traditional histories are several generations of both saying that white male history is the only important history, and also because only white men were allowed to do things for so f*****g long in this country means that we never get to acknowledge that everybody else was there too. That we were all there at the same time.
So my advice is to keep pushing. Don't go with the first Google search. Don't go with the first phone call. Keep pushing till you find the person you're like, ‘Whoa, this is it. This is where the story is. This is how I can understand this deeper.’
That being said, I think part of the issue is that the money doesn't support that kind of writing, whether things get repeated again and again online because maybe you're getting 100 bucks or $150 to write your 250, 500 or 800 word. Or maybe you’re not not getting any money, because you're trying to break into the industry. So when you are making negative dollars per hour to write an article, of course, you're going to take that first Google search. And of course, you're on deadline. And of course, your editor just pressure you to copy something else if they're not a very good editor. So that's how those stories get supported. So it also takes a certain denial of like, ‘Oh, man, if I didn't do this much work, I would be more financially stable.’ But that's also just not the right thing to do.
So it really is a battle and it's not easy, and the system is not supporting good journalism right now. That I think is the biggest issue.
Alicia: No, absolutely.
Well, for you is cooking a political act?
Sarah: I've been thinking about this a lot as I know this is your question.
I think for me, it is a cultural act, which is a political act in its own way. When we cook, when we cook from home, when we cook within our own cultures, it is an act of preservation. It can be an act of defiance. I mean, sort of speaking about veganism, a friend of mine who is a devoted vegan, which I really do respect, said, though, that he thought that everyone was gonna eat this way in the future and this is definitely the way that we should be going.
And at that point, I had just come back from the Navajo Nation. And I'm like, ‘You're gonna go to these Indigenous people and tell them that they can't eat meat anymore, because it's bad for the planet, despite the fact that this particular animal has been a part of their culture and their religion for 400 years? So that's not like a colonizer attitude at all.’ So I realized at that moment that food is religion in a lot of ways. It can be directly tied to religion, but it is such a big part of culture to march in and tell someone you can't eat that way, is—it's really destructive. That can be erasure, too.
So just, I think sometimes living your life and eating the foods you want to is this political act, but I think that most people would see it as a cultural act. An act of preservation. And especially around the holidays, that is the time when even people who are maybe many generations removed from an immigrant or enslaved or colonist ancestor, that's when they're cooking the foods to reconnect to that story and to their own history.
Alicia: Thank you so much, Sarah.
Sarah: My pleasure! Yeah, I got really riled up about some things. [Laughter.] I may have offended some people. It's probably fine.

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A Conversation with Kristina Cho
2 mar 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I'm talking to Kristina Cho, author of the cookbook Mooncakes and Milk Bread. We discussed how studying architecture has influenced her recipe work, moving from the Midwest to California, and why it was so important for her to pay homage to the Chinatowns of the United States.
Alicia: Hi, Kristina. Thanks so much for being here.
Kristina: Hi, so excited for this podcast.
Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Kristina: I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, technically, the suburbs, but my grandparents—And it's also where my mom and all her siblings grew up, but they grew up in Chinatown of Cleveland. And so, I ate a lot of Chinese food growing up, which makes sense. My family is a Cantonese Chinese family from Hong Kong. So I ate a lot of Chinese food.
But I also ate a lot of, I don't know, I would say the classic Midwestern staples, ’cause my mom was always interested in learning how to make, I don't know, I guess American food and figuring out a way to make it palatable for my family that loves Asian flavors.
Alicia: Well, how would she do that?
Kristina: So there's two recipes in my mind that always stick out to me that are kind of this really interesting fusion.
She makes this really great meatloaf, which I haven't had in a long time. But we had meatloaf a lot growing up. And her glaze on it, rather than just ketchup or whatever else you put in it, she would do ketchup in oyster sauce mixture. And she would put bread crumbs and green onions inside of the meatloaf. So it had a lot of that sweetness and also the umami flavors from oyster sauce.
And also her—I call it Mom's spaghetti. Or Chinese spaghetti. Again, it's ketchup again. I think my mom probably growing up was like, ‘What's ketchup? I need to figure out how to use this in everything.’ She loves it. But her version of spaghetti, spaghetti bolognese was ground beef, ketchup, oyster sauce again. And later on in life when I described it to other people, there's a Filipino version of spaghetti that's very similar to it. So I just find that recipe very interesting to compare with other people's kind of immigrant history, Americanized version of classic American recipes.
Alicia: And you grew up cook—around cooking and food. And it's always been a significant part of you, your life as you write in your book Mooncakes + Milk Bread. But writing recipes down is kind of an entirely different set of skills from just eating or cooking.
And you credit your training as an architect with your ability to test recipes to perfection. But when it came to writing instructions for home cooks, how did you get your voice together to communicate your style of cooking?
Kristina: It was quite a journey. I don't think I initially had my recipe writing voice at the beginning of my cookbook writing process. And it kind of just took me a few months throughout that whole writing process as I develop recipes to kind of figure that style out.
’Cause you're right. Growing up in my family, no recipes were written down ever. It was just kind of ‘go by feel.’ Recipes were passed down orally. And I think working in architecture, a lot of it is just kind of creative, developing different concepts and ideas. But then there's the more kind of a practical side, when a building goes into construction; you document it in a very meticulous way so that someone else knows how to build it. And so, I think I took that mind-set into recipe writing, kind of noting what details are important for someone that I don't know what their kitchen is like and giving them everything that they need to be able to execute this recipe successfully.
So I focus a lot on indicators. A lot of times recipes have times, but I'll say ‘until golden brown.’ And just talking to other people, it was just really important for me to emphasize cooking towards indicators. Everyone's oven’s different. Yeah, that was important to me.
And also kind of writing recipes in a very warm way. And it's only way that I know how to write, is to write in my own—how I would speak. So I wanted the recipes to sound like I am there in the kitchen with you to assure you that everything's going fine. So if anything, while I was making it—the Chinese sausage and cilantro pancakes are a good one. I like to say in there that while you're rolling it, if a bit of cilantro bursts out of your dough, don't panic. That is supposed to happen. So I tried to note where like, ‘Oh, someone might freak out here. I need to add a note to make sure that they’re ok.’ [Laughs.]
Alicia: Right.
It's so hard to do, too—And that's such an amazing skill to have, is to know where to account for someone else's state of mind or someone's oven. It's really difficult. I mean, I'm kind of new to writing recipes down for people. And it's really nerve racking and it's really interesting, the questions you'll get that you never thought of, but from—
Kristina: Yeah.
Alicia: Yeah.
Has that helped you as well, is knowing where people kind of falter and ask for advice?
Kristina: Yeah, absolutely.
The book is out into the world. I can't really change anything that's on the pages. But my DMs on Instagram, I kind of treat it as an open hotline for people. And I probably shouldn't. I should probably separate that a little bit and not be on it so much answering people's questions. But I honestly live for it. I love hearing other people's experience making it.
There's just one kind of maybe a little bit of a finicky cake in the book. It's a Malay cake. And she was baking it at a high altitude. And I was like, ‘Oh God, I don't know. I have zero experience with baking anything at a high altitude.’ So she's kind of picking her brain with figuring out what would happen.
I love that stuff. I love troubleshooting, figuring out the little details. And I think post–book release, learning about all these things out in the real life of how these recipes were truly executed in the real world, I think, will just make me a better recipe developer too. And if I write a second book or another baking book in the future, all of the stuff—that is very, very valuable.
Alicia: Well, and you were kind of talking about this in discussing your mom's twist on different classic Midwestern American recipes. But I always think of the Midwest, ’cause I'm from New York, as having its own distinct food culture, too, which it does, obviously. How does it influence your cooking style, if at all?
Kristina: I think the biggest thing that growing up in the Midwest has affected the way that I cook is that I find it very difficult to cook for one to two people. But I do it all the time, because I just live with my fiancé and my dog. So it's just, I guess the two and a half of us. I don't make scratch food for my dog.
But I naturally just love to cook for a lot of people. That's where I feel most comfortable. I like making family-style meals, or multiple desserts to share. Everything's family-style. You need options. And I think growing in the Midwest, even if you didn't grow up in an Asian American family, that's just how the Midwest is. Potlucks. school functions are bringing a bunch of casseroles and tray bake things, a ton of cookies. I think there's a very kind of warm and hospitable food culture in the Midwest. I think there's a deep appreciation of kind of fluffy doughy breads, and a lot of cheese and cream cheese that I love and have carried that on to adulthood. [Laughter.]
Alicia: Yeah, and now you live in San Francisco, which you also credit with influencing your cooking style. So how has California kind of built upon that style you developed around your family and also among friends, in growing up in Ohio?
Kristna: Yeah, it's such an interesting hybrid of all these different influences based on where I live. So I actually moved out of San Francisco last year, but I live in the East Bay now just adjacent to Berkeley. So I'm still in the Bay Area. And I think even doing that move has kind of changed my food a little bit.
But just solely California, I think it—I think in a way it has almost spoiled me in the way that I cook, because we just have such incredible produce. Any fruit and vegetable I could ever imagine is here, and it's so incredibly fresh. And there's a lot of amazing Asian-owned farms here. So I have access to just, I don't know, heritage variations of bok choy and stuff. It feels there's an abundance of all this thing, all these things I can work with.
But I try to maintain a really realistic approach with the way that I recipe-write. I know not everyone's gonna have this access to this very specific variety of bok choy or cabbage. But I think just being in California, just—it's a really wide palette of stuff that I could kind of experiment with. And I used to be kind of a picky eater when I was a kid, but now I have just this love of vegetables and like fresh produce and fruit throughout the seasons. And I think that's how California has changed me.
And also just being in California, where there's so many different cultural backgrounds and so many restaurants that represent that, my own knowledge of food has just expanded so much just by living here.
Alicia: Well, and your book Mooncakes + Milk Bread is a love letter to Chinese bakeries and Chinatowns everywhere, including the Cleveland Chinatown where your family had its restaurant when you were growing up. Why was it important to you to give these places and their recipes their due in a cookbook?
Kristina: I think because these restaurants have been somewhat overlooked for a super long time. So my grandpa had a bunch of restaurants throughout the years, some in Chinatown, but the one that I actually grew up in, it was his last restaurant before he retired. He actually picked it, picked the location based on where my parents bought a house to raise my brother and I, which is in West Ohio. And so that was his last restaurant.
But our tie to Chinatown and also our love of just Chinese food and restaurants, I think that was just something that needed to be celebrated. And it's kind of shocking to me that even the year 2021, there's been more opportunities to highlight it. But I think that it deserves so much more celebration. Chinese American restaurants have been such an important part of, I think, general culture. Even entertainment, Hollywood culture, a background of different movies and things like that. But to be celebrated in a very real way is special. And I think that's why a lot of people really relate to this book, because they finally feel like it's seen.
Alicia: And it's such an illustrative book about, with techniques. Your hands are in it pulling on dough, or ways of illustrating the movements that you would make to make a certain type of bread. So what inspired your level of visual explanation?
Kristina: So it's actually interesting, ’cause a lot of people have brought that up. They're like, ‘I haven't seen a cookbook with so much step by step, visual guides before.’ And for me, it wasn’t even a question about whether or not I would include these things in there. I just naturally when I was—I shot all the photos myself. And so it was really great, that as I was recipe testing, I could kind of be like, ‘Oh, I should probably shoot this process too.’
And I think it was important for the success of a lot of these recipes. Because since this is the first comprehensive book that covers a lot of these Chinese bakery recipes, there's not a lot of frame of reference for a lot of people. Every recipe in this book has at least a photo to demonstrate what the final thing should look like.
But in a different type of baking book, if someone just had a version of chocolate chip cookies and maybe there was no photo with it, I think people could still visualize what that would look like. But then with some of the breads, or how to laminate the pancakes in here, if you're like ‘I don't totally understand what that means?’ As hard as I tried to make the written recipe as clear as possible. I'm a visual learner. Just having the photos in there to show how many turns and what a coil looks like? Again, it encourages people to make the recipes more when there's something like that to help you.
Alicia: And I mean, people do tend to be really stressed about baking. But you have such a down to earth voice. And through that illustration and that kind of level of detail, you really do make each recipe approachable even if it has a lot of components.
And has baking always come naturally to you. Has that always been something that you were good at?
Kristina: I think it's a complicated answer, because I love to also cook the savory. I almost would say that that comes even more naturally for me.
But I love the process of baking, because—and I think you've already alluded to it. You can probably tell by just reading the book, I’m very process driven. I love figuring out the success of individual components and figuring out how they work together. Again, it's that architectural mind-set in a way.
What really got me to love baking was that when I was in middle school, I kind of just got really obsessed with figuring out how to make the best cheesecake or really fudgy chocolate cake ’cause those are things that my family didn't know how to make.
And when I set out to make those things in my kitchen, it was the one time in the kitchen that I would be alone because my grandma wasn't there and my mom wasn’t there trying to tell me like ‘Oh, you should do this and this and this.’ ‘Cause if I was trying to make dumplings, I would have 50 opinions about how I should mix my filling or my dough. So I think baking for me has always been therapeutic in that sense, that allowed me that kind of quietness to kind of really figure out my own style and methodically think about each step of a recipe.
And I think that part of baking comes really natural for me. I feel I'm haunted by the process of making French macarons because, I have like a 30 percent success rate with them now. So I wouldn't say that all parts of baking come super natural to me. I still have my fair share of fails and struggles of different recipes.
Alicia: Well, they're very difficult. And I feel the weather is always going to be either on your side or not with them.
Kristina: Oh, totally. I feel when I made them in my apartment in San Francisco, I was like if the Muni bus barreled too hard by my apartment while I was making them it would mess them up. [Laughter.]
Alicia: But what also helped you to focus on bread and yeasted dough? That's also an aspect of baking that people get very stressed out or aren't, don't find approachable.
Kristina: Yeah, there's something about the word ‘dough’ that just strikes fear in the hearts of a lot of people for some reason.
When people have asked me about advice on starting to work with dough, I actually tell them to work with a non-leavened dough first just to kind of get the feel of what a hydrated dough should feel like. And obviously, of course, it's if you have a good recipe. And so in the book, if you tried making the dumpling dough or the pancake dough in here, they're very similar. And that's a really good way and low stress avenue to kind of get used to kneading dough and knowing what it should feel like and handling it.
And then if you feel a little bit more comfortable, you can start going into the milk bread or the other kind of yeasted doughs in there. Some people like to just add instant yeast into their dough and just call it a day. And it is really easy if you feel comfortable and know for a fact that your yeast is alive. But for some reason I've been burned. Different yeasts say that it was alive or it didn't expire yet.
And even though I add in there, I didn't activate. And so, I think just getting used to using active dry yeast and blooming it in warm milk or water and seeing that it's literally alive and bubbling? I think that's a first step in kind of just feeling comfortable like, ‘Ok, this thing that is the deal breaker for my bread is alive? I'm good now that it’s really bubbly and stuff.’
So it's definitely a process, but I have a pretty extensive intro to the milk bread recipe that kind of, ‘Here are all the different parts.’ And things that you should look for. Again, just making sure people feel comfortable.
Alicia: For sure.
You mentioned social media earlier about how your DMs on Instagram have become sort of a recipe hotline. But I was noticing that you kept your blog up, that you have a huge following on social media and on Instagram. How are you balancing that? And what is your day to day life now, now that the cookbook is out?
Kristina: My life is sort of all over the place, but in a good way.
So yes, I still have my blog,
https://eatchofood.com/
. And I feel there's this strange shift that people don't really have blogs anymore. They have newsletters and things like that. And I think it's all the same. It's just on sort of a different platform. And I think I'm going to have the blog forever, just ’cause it's been a part of my life for so many years now. And in a sense, diary entries in a way because I have to keep them very personal.
But for a really long time actually, I was really consistent about sharing a recipe or even two recipes a week. And I think that since the book has come out, I've been just a little busy. I still have recipes that come out maybe every other week or so. But I think it's just a really great stable place to kind of house all these recipes that I produce for free for people.
But I don't know. I try to be really good about balancing my social media and my cookbook writing, work balance and all that stuff. And I think right now because it's the holidays, it's a little crazy. I feel at the end of the year, for any profession, it's always really busy ‘cause you're trying to wrap up loose ends. But I think especially in the recipe development world, everyone wants a million recipes for their holiday baking, whatever and all that stuff. And so right now, I'm kind of in a rush to develop a bunch of recipes before I go home for the holidays.
But I try to divide up my days. I'll have full recipe development day, so that I'm in that mind-set. I block out full days where I am editing photos, editing videos, for Reels or TikToks. And then I do that. And then full days where I'm writing. That's just kind of how my mind is wired. I can't bounce around. It's really hard for me to—especially when we're writing. When I was writing my book, I had to lock myself in my bedroom. That was the only place I could actually write. I locked myself in my bedroom all day to write a bunch of headnotes until I couldn't anymore.
So that's normally what I like to do. I wish I could say that I'm normally that organized. [Laughs.]
Alicia: No, I have the same struggle. It's trying to do newsletter days. I have a book deadline next month. So I'm—Yeah, it's the—Yeah. [Laughter.]
Kristina: You'll get there. It'll be done.
Alicia: I agree. I'll get there. It will be done. But at the same time, it's like, ‘How?’ How? So I'm always asking everyone like, ‘How are you keeping it all together? How did you do it?’ To try and understand how we're all supposed to balance these tens of thousands of things all the time.
Kristina: Everyone's just spinning in circles just trying to get it done.
Alicia: Exactly.
Well, this is a question I ask everyone lately, but how, for you, would you define abundance?
Kristina: That's such a good question. [Laughs.] It’s probably very insightful for whoever you ask for.
I almost see abundance as being content in what you have, if that makes sense. I think having too much is not exactly abundance in a sense, because having too much, for me, overwhelms me. And so I think abundance to me is one, feeling comfortable in what I have, feeling comfortable and content with what I have in terms of my life, my people, and maybe the groceries in my refrigerator. Just having the perfect, perfect amount that there's no waste and not too little.
Alicia: Right, right.
It's interesting, because people either define it that way, which is how I think of it, or people are like, ‘No abundance is the gluttony of the American superwealthy.’ [Laughs.]
Kristina: That overwhelms me. That makes me feel uncomfortable. I actually hate when I—Well, I sort of love a big grocery store. Because it's not something I'm used to in the Bay Area. I love seeing like, ‘Oh, you have 20 different varieties of oats here. That's amazing.’ But in my own house, when I feel I have too much stuff in my kitchen, I feel trapped. And that's not necessarily what I feel abundance should make you feel. You should feel freedom, if that makes sense.
Alicia: Exactly. [Laughs.]
Yeah. For you, is cooking a political act?
Kristina: I think in a way it is. I will have to admit that I don't think I'm as vocal as I should be with different kind of my political beliefs. But in my food, I think it's my own way of kind of subtly expressing the way that I feel in terms of the cultural politics of things. Especially in the last year when there was so much Asian hate, especially in the Bay Area and stuff, my food, for me, is a way for me to share my pride in my own culture with other people and for other people to also share in that pride. I did a dumpling fundraiser, just to raise money for Bay Area Chinatowns and stuff like that. And so that's how I like to use my food as a political stance.
Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today.
Kristina: Yeah, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation.

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A Conversation with Jenny Dorsey
16 feb 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.
Today, I'm talking to Jenny Dorsey, a chef, food writer and executive director of Studio ATAO, a nonprofit think tank that works on changing inequitable systems in food and beyond. We discussed how she went from business school to kitchens, cultural appropriation in fast casual restaurants, and launching a newsletter as a way to find her voice in writing.
Alicia: Hi, Jenny. Thank you so much for being here.
Jenny: Thanks for having me.
Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Jenny: Yeah, of course.
So I was born in Shanghai, but I grew up in New York. Both my parents were getting their PhDs at Albert Einstein University up in the Bronx. So I feel when I was little, I ate a lot of just food at home. My family was definitely the ‘Why would you ever eat outside? You're wasting money’ sort of vibe. So everything was at home.
There was a lot of eggs and a lot of breads. And of course, every meal has to have a veg. So I kind of grew up with a lots of vegetables and never really understood that idea of like, ‘Vegetables are gross. Kids don't like vegetables.’ I think pea sprouts are my favorite vegetable in the world. Ate a lot of tomato and egg growing up; I think that's a classic Chinese staple. So things that were easy for young 20-something-year-old parents that had no cooking experience and worked all the time to make.
Alicia: [Laughs.] Did you grow up in the Bronx, or did you grow up in a different borough?
Jenny: Yeah, we grew up essentially in the student's compound within the Bronx. So there was some other, yes, children of fellow students that I hung out with. I felt we occasionally were actually able to go out and be with the rest of the Bronx. But a lot of times we were kind of confined in this little area, and so didn't really honestly get as much interfacing with the world outside as I think would have been beneficial to growing up, unfortunately.
Alicia: Yeah, no, I remember Albert Einstein College from driving past. I went to Fordham. So I remember just being like, ‘Ah, the signs.’ That's all I know of it. I'm like, ‘Oh, the signs for Albert Einstein on the Pelham Parkway.’ [Laughs.]
But that's so interesting, to grow up in that kind of environment with—and that's interesting, because I think when we think of the Bronx, we think of Arthur Avenue and we think of so much food diversity and that sort of thing. Do you go back now?
Jenny: Sometimes.
I mean, I try. But I feel I don't even know. Yeah, I didn't know to know. I feel sad about that all the time. I feel elementary school, at least I was able to go to public elementary and kind of learn about the fact that there are such a diverse group of folks up in the Bronx. But so many times when we were just in the student compounds, we’re so sheltered from everyone else. You don't interact with anyone.
And I think this is now, in retrospect, when I have kind of conversations around race and class and social status and immigration with my parents, they were so busy being students, heads down, that they had no concept of what was kind of happening, which is unfortunate. But I think that is—that's kind of a manifestation of how so many things happen here in the U.S., is that you have your own little silo and you don't realize you're in a silo until you're out of it. And that can take years. That could take your entire life.
Alicia: Right.
Well, what was your route to getting into food and becoming a chef?
Jenny: So, I had always been a food person growing up. I loved eating. I planned all of our vacations around eating. So when I was little, my parents really liked going to Vegas. This is after we had moved to Seattle. We weren't going from New York to Vegas. Because of the buffets, and there's a lot of food. And it was fairly inexpensive to go and have a good time. And so, I remember—I think I was like 10. We were going to Vegas, and we never gambled or anything. We would just go and eat at buffets. And I'd be like, ‘This one has this and this one has that. And it was all about the food.’
And so, my mother and father had always been like, ‘Yeah, you kind of like food. But that's not a real career.’ It was never really encouraged or allowed, I think. So I never really thought about food in that way. Just saw it as a hobby or a thing that I want—I liked and wanted to do, but not as a thing that I should pursue, so to speak.
It wasn't until after I had started my first job out of college. I was in management consulting, and realized, first of all, how miserable I was, but specifically because I was within fashion and luxury goods. I had this kind of sad moment where I realized so many of the people higher up on the food chain than me, they were filling their hearts, their metaphorical hearts, so to speak, with just stuff. And I could see it. And you never want to be in a position as a really junior person where you look at someone who's supposed to have their s**t together, and seems to have it all, and you just feel really sad for them. And that's how I felt all the time.
And I don't want to editorialize on their behalf. Maybe they're super happy. But what I interpreted was a lot of sadness. And then I realized, ‘I don't like this job. I've never liked this job. I don't know why I wanted to be in this industry. I think it was for the glitz and the glamour. But inside, I'm really unhappy. So what can I do about it? What is the thing that makes me happy?’ And naturally, it was like, ‘Ok, I'm going to go cook. I'm going to go take this advanced cooking techniques class at the Institute of Culinary Education.’ At first, it was just recreational. But soon enough, I was like, ‘I want something formal. I don't want the sheltered student experience again. I really want to be fabricating my lamb. I want to be breaking down the chickens. I want to be making the stock, not just have stock delivered to me from stewarding.’
So I ended up going to a full diploma program at school and wanted to give myself a chance in the industry. Ended up leaving—I was going to Columbia Business School right afterwards. Ended up leaving that and was like, ‘I just need to figure out—I need to at least give it a chance to try and see where I end up.’
Alicia: Well, and then do you think that your training and your experience, even if it wasn't what you ultimately wanted to do, and then some studies at Columbia Business School, do you think that they influence your work in food now that you are working in food media? You're also working in activism. You've founded Studio ATAO? Do those things still crop up? Do they still kind of aid your thinking?
Jenny: Yeah, I think a lot of what I saw at culinary school really shaped how the work that I do now just seeing—first of all, poor representation of how things are taught.
And just the lack of, I think, empowerment that culinary students and, in general, a lot of more junior-level workers within food, restaurant, hospitality, beverage are often imbued with, because you're constantly being told that your opinions don't matter. You don't have the right to stand up for yourself, and that the system is just like this. We were constantly indoctrinated in culinary school that you just got to go to these stages, and you're never going to get paid. And you're gonna to work a gazillion hours and make $10 an hour to start. And that's normalized. And that is a huge problem if we're normalizing literally hundreds of thousands of students to that sort of mentality every year. So I don't think I had the vocabulary for it then. But a lot of the micro- and macroaggressions that I faced in culinary school really informed the desire to even try to do this work.
And in a, I guess, a positive way, by interactions at business school—which I don't want to hate on too much because I did marry someone from the business school—but business school was such a jarring and terrible experience in that I was like, ‘Wow, are we really just out here to compete and make money?’ This kind of idea of constant scarcity, constant competition, it's so toxic. And what is the real value that we're trying to add to society at large?
But I think it's hard to get into that kind of mode when you're surrounded by people who are just telling you about their Goldman Sachs résumé, or telling you how great they have it because they made so much money last year. It's so easy to get into this keeping up with the Joneses sort of mentality.
And I think shifting from graduating from culinary school, and then three days later going to Columbia Business School, that juxtaposition made me realize these were two different worlds. We're not talking to each other. Because we're so siloed in both respects, there is so much—there's so much that we should be doing. We could be improving both industries or industries under Columbia, and then food hospitality in general. But right now, we don't even understand the problems each other are facing. And we don't have any empathy for them. So how, what do we do about that? How do we bridge that gap?
Alicia: Right.
And so, when did you start to move toward food media?
Jenny: It's kind of a strange, roundabout way, I guess.
I first went into work at restaurants, kind of had to do that as part of my culinary school externship, started working in corporate food R&D. And I think from all the just toxicity that I've absorbed over those years, wanted to find some sort of outlet to write, write about it, talk about it.
And as you're aware, it's really hard to land some of those more difficult reported pieces off the bat. So I had this, to start with the rigmarole of doing basic recipes, and then maybe a little bit more covered recipes with headnotes. And then slowly was able to move into ‘Oh, I really want to tackle really complex or uncomfortable topics within food media. Who's going to give me an opportunity to do that?’
And I think that journey also uncovered a lot of these problems that we have with the media of like, Who gets exposed? Who gets airtime? What kind of writing and language do we pay credence to, and which ones do we not? Ran into that constant issue of, ‘Can you really cover issues that aren't Asian American?’ So I think that journey continued to inform like, ‘Oh, ok, food media is a place that we can talk about it. But it's also not the end all, be all of how we're going to bring about justice or change.’
Alicia: Right.
And do you think things have gotten better since you started to work in food media?
Jenny: Heh. I don't know.
I would love to hear what you think, because I feel like I get this question. And I'm always like, ‘I want to say yes, I think so.’ But a lot of times, I am not sure. Because I feel optically we are saying and doing a lot of the right things. But I think systemically have we really made those big changes? I don't know.
Alicia: Right.
Well, my perspective right now is very skewed because I'm very focused on my newsletter. I think I've stopped really paying attention to food magazines, for the most part.
I get Bon Appétit in the mail. And I read it, and I—it's very thin these days.And I don't say that to insult them. They have a huge reach and everything. And they've really hired a lot of writers that I really enjoy. And so, that's really great. But we're not seeing that much.
Maybe this is the thing, and I would like to ask you about it, because this brings up a lot of your work with Studio ATAO, I think, which is how much does representation count if the stories and the narratives remain sort of the same? So what is your perspective on when you can have the representation, but maybe things don't really change at a deeper level?
Like you were mentioning, there's this pervasive idea in the media that people who, non-white people can't write about anything but their own background. And that is very pervasive. That continues. That I haven't seen really change in a real way. And so, in your mind, how much does representation count for in food media?
Jenny: Yeah.
I mean, I think representation is always going to be important. Of course, it's important that if you're a new reader to Bon App or Food & Wine, and you're flipping through the pages, and you see a face that looks like yours, of course, that's always going to be good. But I think what, when I say optically, we are doing that.
However, the power dynamics of who picks those people, who gets to greenlight the pitches, who gets to shape the pitches, who gets to censor some of the words, that sort of chain of command is the multiple steps behind representation that I would like to see more change in. And there's a lot of obstacles to all sorts of those things.
One of the things that we had been tackling through these two white papers with Well+Good and The Kitchn for the last year, so over the—over 2021 is how do we hire more BIPOC in these diverse leadership roles? And a lot of the problem’s that HR is saying over and over again is the pipeline is empty. There's no BIPOC in the pipeline. And yet, it's like yes, and no, right? I'm sure there is. But there probably isn't as many because BIPOC are regularly not promoted at the same cadence. They don't get the same titles, etc. So the pipeline probably does look a little bit empty.
And so then it becomes ‘Well, is that one institution trying to hire additional diverse leadership going to be the person that trains that leadership? Are they going to start working with BIPOC students so that they can move them up the promotion ladder, so that in ten years, you're going to have an exe editor that naturally is BIPOC?’
That's a level of commitment that far exceeds just finding a BIPOC woman and promoting them. It takes a lot more planning, it takes a lot more investment, time, money, energy. And I think that's kind of the, where a lot of organizations are doing the ‘Well, that's not on us. That's an industry problem. That's not for us to solve.’ And that's what makes me nervous in terms of long-term change.
Alicia: Right, right.
There's similar problems in terms of class or education level where the same—you have a whole team of people who have the same economic background, the same type of education background. And I think that also really comes through in terms of the content, which—and that comes through in terms of who you're speaking to, as your audience is like—
And that's a really interesting thing when you're writing about food, because the people you're writing about in restaurants, etc., are going to be probably super different from the types of people in the magazine office. And that's such a disconnect. That's a big loss, too. That's a loss for who your audience can be, like, if you're not even necessarily speaking to the people who work in, to the concerns of people who work in restaurants. That's a real loss.
And it's a big problem to deal with. And like you were saying, it's a problem of a lack of commitment from folks in these higher-up positions to put in that effort to find those people and to really be a mentor to people, even if they look different, come from a different kind of place, come from a different kind of education. And that reluctance, it shows in how much people are really engaging with the work and it shows in what the work is. Because I think that it's been a really big loss of opportunity to talk about restaurant workers in a real way in the media, especially since the pandemic. I feel like it's been a bit—that distance has been very apparent lately.
As someone who has worked in restaurants, how has this time been for you as someone who does work in the media, but also has that experience?
Jenny: Yeah.
I think it's tough because you have folks who are on the ground very concerned with day-to-day, like, ‘Is my restaurant going to stay open or not? I don't know if I'm going to get this paycheck or not? I don't know what's going on with unemployment.’
And then to ask them to also know kind of the fancy language terms that often are used when writers write for other writers, there's a huge disconnect, when you're supposedly supposed to be helping them understand, navigate this landscape. Because what we're getting in terms of directors from the government was confusing enough when we're talking about PPP, or we're talking about if some PPPs can be forgiven, or whatnot. There's already this barrier of people being able to access some of those funds, even if they were meant for everyone. Before we even start talking about how undocumented folks were not even able to access that, but yeah.
And then when you're covering it as a food media publication, who are you really interviewing? Are you taking the time to really interview people on the ground, versus talking to a PR company that represents a restaurant group that can easily pull you a couple sous chefs to interview versus getting into the kitchens and really asking the garde manger who's been there for 10 years, or the porter on this—and asking them like, ‘Hey, how are you dealing with this problem?’
I think that's a level of disconnect food media's always faced. I don't know how to fix that, because folks are not getting paid enough to cover their stories. They don't have enough lead time to write the stories that they want to write. There's not enough fact-checking that's happening. I don't know. It's a domino effect of all the problems from the top down.
Alicia: Exactly, yeah.
Well, with Studio ATAO, it’s a nonprofit think tank where you’re executive director, there's been a very broad approach to changing inequitable systems. And so, I was wondering if you can explain its founding and the work the nonprofit does.
Jenny: Yeah.
So Studio ATAO is a community-based think tank. And what we mean by that is, how do we conduct research? How do we create spaces where we can really listen to the needs and recommendations of community members that are most affected by various different inequitable problems, and actually champion and put energy and money and time to support their recommendations from the ground up instead of trying to implement solutions to fix these problems from the top down?
And I think, because of the very complicated convoluted nature of the nonprofit industrial complex, which we can get into if people want, as well as think tanks, which kind of get wrapped up in all of that, and academia as well, a lot of times you have philanthropists and big level donors who see a problem. And they have their own take on what the solution is.
The example I often use is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done a lot of great work in the world. But there's a lot of critique on how they handle child classroom access. And they're focused on getting small class sizes, which arguably, small class sizes probably is great. But was that the number one thing that communities with not great educational outcomes wanted to see in terms of structural change? Maybe not. Did they bother to ask anyone and figure that out before kind of putting all of that energy into it?
And so what we've really tried to do is, first if we see a problem like equitable representation of the media, talk to the people who are getting affected by that and say, like, ‘What are the changes you want to see? Is it more leadership at the top? Is it changing pitch guidelines? Is it more transparency? What is the thing that you think would most make the biggest impact to make your life better, to make you feel your work is more equitable, that you have a space to have your voice be heard in some of these sort of companies?’
So, that's kind of our approach in general. And our main thing for this year and next year is looking at gentrification and hospitality, which is a whole can of worms.
Alicia: That is really exciting though, because that is such a complicated topic. I am so excited to see what you come up with.
Yeah, no, I'm reading a lot about gentrification because of where I live—well, so I'm from New York. So there's gentrification there in New York City. But here in Old San Juan, it's just so rapid and virulent, and it's having such a huge impact on the culture. And it's just a really, really, really intense situation to live among. Yeah. It's happening so rapidly that I don't think anyone is thinking—Well, locals are thinking enough about what it means. But in terms of the politicians and everything, there's just really no concern or no regulation, and just selling everything.
And in terms of the food, it actually has—people always think of the impact of gentrification on the food, and that it becomes more bourgeois and inaccessible, and the impact here has interestingly been that the food is worse. And so, because locals can't open places, because it's too expensive, it's harder to get the capital to do so. And in general, the stat is 85% of food is imported to Puerto Rico. And so usually, we have really poor quality onions in the supermarket, the garlic is from Spain, etc., etc. So there's one or two good local restaurants in Old San Juan, and then other than that it's food for tourists. It's fast food. There's one local fast, a couple of local fast food places.
It's a very interesting thing, because you always hear that, like, ‘People bring the money, and then they bring gentrification.’ The way you tell that is through the food, but—or it's through the coffee, maybe. [Laughs.] But I mean, coffee is already part of the culture, so they can't really do anything with the coffee.
And so, it's just an interesting dynamic, because it's just—it's the opposite of how I was told, or had always read that gentrification works with food and with hospitality. And so, I'm super interested in this topic right now because there's so much to understand that hasn't, that isn't as simplified as people make it out to be. And so, I'm really excited to see that work that you guys are putting out.
And you do such interesting work around how cultural and political realities impact food and the way people get it. You wrote about cultural appropriation in fast-casual restaurants for Eater. I wanted to ask, how did that story idea come about? Why did you see fast-casual as worthy of serious critique? Because I was like, ‘Oh,’ reading it. And I read it when it came out, and I was reading it again to interview you. And I'm like, ‘Does anyone really talk about fast-casual in a rigorous way?’ And people should, because it is the way a lot of people are interacting with these cuisines.
Jenny: Yeah.
I think a lot of what I wanted to—well, maybe not just for that piece, but that that piece had a whole just fallout. Let's just put it like that, just an insane amount of hate mail. But I think what I wanted to do is point out these systems that we interact with in our lives, where we're normalizing things.
And fast-casual, I think, is often not scrutinized because we kind of dismiss it. We see it as a quick bite to eat. What harm is Chipotle doing if I'm just giving a burrito there? And whereas that we put a lot of worthy and important attention on things like Lucky Lee’s, or Lucky Cricket. And those absolutely should be critiqued. But why not the thing that you're quickly grabbing to go? Why not the thing that you are probably interacting with way more than this random restaurant in Minnesota that you might not ever visit? I think because of Internet outrage culture, it's easier to be angry at these kind of discrete things, versus acknowledging how these small little occurrences in your everyday life actually end up shaping your worldview.
I think back to as a culinary student, as I mentioned earlier, it's not that anyone comes out and tells you, ‘You're garbage and you're not worth more than $10 an hour.’ It's just something that you implicitly learn over the course of your time there. And I think that's a lot more insidious and toxic. And we really do need to be not only pointing that out for ourselves, but getting, I think, surfacing that for people who are still going through it, the next generation of students. So that they can identify it when their mentor tells them that, when there's—when their instructor tells them that, when their career counselor says something like that.
Alicia: Right, right, right.
Because we're talking about a lot of serious things, and now I'm sort of—I think we've sort of enacted maybe the thought process of where you launched a newsletter to do more personal writing, loose writing. Because you are known for the very rigorous looks at diversity and discrimination in the food industry. How has your experience been doing a newsletter so far?
Jenny: Yeah.
I mean, newsletter’s been so strange. But I think the big thing I've learned is just how differently I'm writing for the newsletter versus for any publication, and just how much of my voice I'm really tailoring. I think I just didn't notice because I never wrote for myself. So I know the kind of tone I need to strike for Serious Eats or for Washington Post or whatever. You read enough of their work, you get it.
And I'm not discounting that kind of writing. And I very much enjoy it. And I'm going to continue reading the New York Times. But now I kind of see it—I'm like, ‘I'm not gonna structure my sentences like that.’ I love to have long things that are in parentheses that probably shouldn’t be in parentheses. Instead of feeling that is a problem or that is, there's something inherently wrong with that, it's like, ‘Oh, that's actually a quirk that I like to write in.’
I remember years ago, I wrote this piece that was very personal. And my editor shat all over it, and was like, ‘Stop anthropomorphizing your food.’ It was this whole thing. And that piece is fine. I'm fine with how it turned out. But I look back. And I feel like, ‘Again, see, this is those small things that get normalized.’ Editors say that all the time. And I was like, ‘There's something wrong with my writing style,’ versus ‘Oh, I'm just not writing in the tone that they want.’
So the newsletter has given me a little bit of that perhaps needed confidence to say, ‘These are my personalities.’ As a writer, I am allowed to find value in them, even if it's not well suited for a bigger publication. And also explore things that maybe some people don't want to talk about. I wrote a thing about fanfiction, and fandom. And that was really fun. I just had a good time writing about it. And so, I put my energy and time into that. And I hope that people care. And I think people, the response was like, ‘Oh, I never even thought about this before.’
And this is that problem with food media, or media in general, if you can't prove that people will care about it to start. You can't ever land the pitch. But once you actually get it out in the world, people did care. I don't know. Yeah.
Alicia: [Laughter.] No, that's so interesting!
And I've found the same thing. And in my newsletter is like, ‘Oh, there is an audience for cultural critique, it—of all these food issues, but also for personal essays about why I eat oatmeal every day.’ It's such a shocking thing, I think, because we have been trained to think that we have no story unless people are already talking about it. And it's like, well, by the time people are already talking about it, it's like the story's boring. They've taken the story and they've gone with it, and then it—you have to find a new angle on it, and that sort of thing.
And I think there's so much value in—and this is, I guess, what we sort of lost over the last—in the 2010s, the blogs kind of died out. And then we lost this really more informal and raw and voicey way of writing on the internet. And we had social media, but at the same time, it's very different. And so, I think newsletters are giving a little bit of a more informality and space and structure to the fact that people really do want that kind of work and want that kind of thinking and miss that kind of like, ‘Let me just hear what someone's thinking about something, even if they've never thought about it before.’
Because that's true. If the writing is good, and the writing is punchy and interesting, people are gonna read about anything. And that's, I think, something people have lost in this obsession with SEO and views, etc., etc. I published something on Monday that was just my thought process over a couple of weeks. And it's gotten 30,000 views in two days. And so it's like, that's not bad. [Laughs.] For just a person thinking out loud, I think that there is more space for that. People want that, then—I don't know. It is interesting.
And my advice always to younger writers—and I've sent it twice today to two different people [laughs]—I was like, ‘You do have to write for editors,’ because now people think that they can just start a newsletter and then boom! Career takes off. And it's like, ‘It's probably not gonna happen.’ Even though it hurts a lot of the time being edited, especially when you're just starting out and you have to learn and you have—
But at the same time, you have to figure out that balance for yourself of where you're comfortable with an editor taking away from your voice, and sometimes where you can push back and that sort of thing, or when and where you can do a long parenthetical that maybe someone else would take out. You have to have that understanding of the rules in order to break out of the rules. It's interesting to hear you say that the newsletter now has given you a whole new lease on writing, because I think that that's true. And I mean, I don't want this to sound like gatekeeping or whatever. But I do think you have to learn the basics first.
Jenny: Yeah, I think it's important to understand where every—but where everybody's boundaries are. It's very difficult as a person who's starting any career, writing or otherwise, to set those boundaries for yourself. So the best way we usually go about them is by emulating other people's boundaries. So I think it's really valuable to have an experience at a corporate entity or a small organization or nonprofit, whatever, because you start seeing how different people approach the world.
And similarly, with writing, if you don't ever get edited, you're never going to see other people's criteria of what they think good writing is or what they think good editing is or what they think something voici or newsy is. And then, you don't—you kind of can't set those parameters for yourself. And you also can't really discover what you—I know what a voice EP sounds like. Maybe I just don't want it to sound like that, because that's not what I'm feeling right now. But you can't really have that kind of self-reflection without having the experience first.
Alicia: Oh, that's such a good way of putting it. [Laughs.] I'm gonna steal your work. [Laughs.] The next time, I'm gonna send a copy of the transcript.
But I wanted to ask, because you do so much. You're writing for other outlets, you're writing your newsletter, you do—you still are doing recipes. You still are working with Studio ATAO. What are you hoping for this year, 2022?
Jenny: Yeah, I think the big theme for myself personally this year is to create more and to create things that bring me joy. Because what I think is very hard for any sort of creative type, whether a writer or a chef or whatnot, is at some point because of money, because of the world, you start creating things for other people so much so that you kind of forget like, ‘What actually brings me joy? I have no idea sometimes.’ I'm sitting around in my kitchen like, ‘What do I want to make today?’
And sometimes I do have the envy of people who are pure content creators, and they go in and they're like, ‘I'm going to create content. What do I want to make?’ Because I feel so much of that has been taken from me, because I have to think about what other people want. And not saying that content creators don't have that outside pressure as well.
So that's number one for me for the newsletter, is how do I explore things that I care about? If 100 people read it, so be it. It wasn't for them anyway. Ithink it's really hard to have that mentality. And I'm already struggling with it three weeks into the year. So we'll see how that goes.
But for the studio, the big thing is sustainability. We have been actively trying to resist being part of the nonprofit industrial complex, to not have all our funds come from big donors or corporations or grants and big philanthropists. But it's very difficult to not only make sure that we can employ people, but give them the employment length and the benefits and whatnot. And we're really struggling with that. And it's kind of a what do we have to sacrifice in order to have some of the runway that we want without compromising our values?
And I, we’re struggling through that, to be totally candid. It's just an ongoing struggle. I don't know how to fix it, because the whole system is broken. Everyone's heard this before. So I won't belabor the point. But I don't know how to make it better. I think we're just trying to do less, and figure out if the—we have four initiatives for this year. How do we do them the best we can with what we have?
Alicia: Right.
And is it on Patreon?
Jenny: Yes.
Alicia: Ok.
Jenny: Yeah, you can support on Patreon. You can also give one-time gifts. We really would prefer most of our comes, coming from the community, because obviously we don't want kind of this big overlord telling us we can't say this, or you can say that.
Alicia: Right, right. That's very important.
So how do you define abundance?
Jenny: I think it's feeling you don't have to worry. Abundance means kind of that absence of scarcity. So you don't have to worry about—the thought of being hungry never crosses your mind, right? It's the absence of that worry at all.
I grew up in a very privileged environment where I wasn't worried about hunger, and I wasn't worried about shelter. And I don't know what it feels like to truly be actively worried about that. And I think that is a feeling of abundance in its own way. I don't think it's necessarily about having more. It's about like this—yeah. A lack of worry.
Alicia: Right. I love that. I love that definition of it.
And for you, is cooking a political act?
Jenny: Yes. I think cooking is always a political act. And it doesn't have to be—And I think how people define political, of course, varies. To me, it's like it's always an expression of all the systems that be.
For example, last Thanksgiving, it was the first time that we had a Thanksgiving after my father-in-law had passed. And my family had come down. My husband's family comes down. Cousins were there. And I made an active effort to make sure to make food that people have probably had never had before, so that what—
Did they totally fit into the classic American Thanksgiving table? Probably not. But there were things that I knew that they probably would not be able or not have interest in going to those restaurants they experienced themselves and could give a little bit of texture and nuance to the conversations, which already there's kind of a cultural gap, right? Because we have different cultures. We have different backgrounds. People live in different places.
So I think food served as both a connector in that way, but also as a way to kind of challenge people. And I think that is very political, where it wasn't like, ‘Hey, let's talk about Biden in this dish or whatnot.’ [Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.] It was more just like, ‘Let's talk about all of these interesting systems that brought this dish to be here.’
Alicia: I love that.
Well, thank you so much, Jenny.
Jenny: Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me.

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A Conversation with Preeti Mistry
9 feb 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
Today, I’m talking to Preeti Mistry, a chef, host of the podcast Loading Dock Talks, and an activist for equity in hospitality.
We discussed how they ended up a chef and closing their really well-received Oakland restaurant Juhu Beach Club, being on Top Chef, launching their podcast as an antidote to the whiteness of food media, and more.
Alicia: Hi, thanks so much for being here.
Preeti: Thanks for having me.
Alicia: I think it's wild that this is the first time I'm interviewing you, because I feel like we've been following each other on Twitter for a long time. [Laughter.]
Preeti: I know! I was thinking that. I was like, ‘I don't think we've actually had a conversation that wasn't in 140 characters or DMs.’ [Laughs.]
Alicia: Right. [Laughs.]
Well, I'm excited to finally have that conversation. So can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Preeti: Well, I was born in London, and then we moved to the U.S. when I was five. I mean, I pretty much just ate Gujarati vegetarian food, traditional Gujarati vegetarian food, which is like dar, bhat, rotli, shaak, which basically means dar is dal. Bhat is rice. Rotli is whole-wheat flatbread, and shaak is just whatever vegetables are in season or that my mom cooks in various different ways, from things that are super saucy and spicy to things that are more of like a dry stir-fry. Could be okra and potatoes, which I was not a fan of as a kid. I liked the potatoes, not the okra. Or spinach, or eggplant, or cauliflower. You name it.
And then, I really craved everything that wasn't that. I was super curious about what my family calls ‘outside food.’ And I always wanted outside food. I was just curious. I just wanted to know what other things, you know? You watch TV, and you're like, ‘What is Ponderosa? What happens at a steakhouse? I need to know. Red Lobster.’
I mean, especially the meats and seafood and stuff that I never experienced at home, or at anybody else's home. And my parents were not about to take me there. At least I mean, you don't know. But my parents were not going to take me to those places. I mean, mainly because we didn't have enough money to go to Red Lobster and my mom would just never even step foot inside. She’d just freak out. She's a very staunch vegetarian. My dad eats chicken and lamb and some other random things. I helped him try a scallop once. He was pretty excited about it. He enjoyed it.
But yeah, I mean, so then it was like McDonald's, Taco Bell, that kind of stuff when it wasn't traditional Gujarati Indian food. And we would go out to Indian restaurants, which was the first time I tried all these things that people think that somehow Indian people eat at home, like chicken tikka masala and naan. Newsflash, my mom doesn't have a tandoor.
And just yeah, Mexican, Italian. I don't know if you've heard that before. But generally speaking, most Gujarati Indians that moved to the U.S., the two foods that they generally gravitate towards when not eating Indian food are Mexican and Italian, mainly because they can be made vegetarian relatively easy. And also because they tend to use spices. Obviously, Mexican more so with the heat. And then, my mom is just like, ‘Make me a pasta, put vegetables in it, add chili flakes. I'm happy.’ [Laughter.]
And then for us, it was like, ‘Oh, we could order other stuff.’ So it was, ‘I want to try the chicken fajitas or shrimp cocktail,’ or just all kinds of things that we had never tried before. So, pretty classic Midwestern fast food with a mix of everything from scratch vegetarian Gujarati Indian cuisine most nights.
Alicia: Well, how did you go about getting a culinary education beyond the staples of what you grew up with?
Preeti: I didn't learn. I didn't really have an interest in cooking. I just saw it as another chore and women's work, and I didn't necessarily see myself in my mother. I didn't look at her and think, like, ‘I'm going to be like that one day.’ And so, I wasn't really interested in cooking as much as curious about food.
So it wasn't until I left home. And Ann and I, my wife, we moved to San Francisco. And then I just started getting really bored of outside food. [Laughter.] And so, I started cooking. And that's all how it all started. I just started cooking. I would go to the now famous Bi—Rite grocery store in the Mission and look at what the vegetables were and what was in season, and they had really great fresh pasta, so I'd buy some of that. And I was starting meat, because I was vegetarian for a period of time in my late teens and early 20s. So it was the gateways. It was ahi tuna, salmon.
So I would get out of things and experiment with cooking them. A lot of Williams Sonoma, Deborah Madison, Mollie Katzen kind of cookbooks. And all my friends were just like, ‘Holy s**t. You're good at this.’ And it wasn't cool then in the late ’90s. Twentysomethings were not having dinner parties and cooking. Just not at all what people were doing. So we were kind of an anomaly that we would have fancy dinner parties and tell people what wine to bring, and that they needed to dress nice and do the decor and everything.
And so I mean, eventually, enough people were like, ‘You should pursue this.’ I wanted to be a filmmaker. Since I was a teenager, I wanted to make films. And I was working in film at a film arts nonprofit. So I really was like, ‘I don't know what the hell I'm doing.’ And then it just was like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna try this.’ I don't think I ever thought growing up that cooking for a living was a career, that was an option, or something that people did at all. Again, it was the late ’90s. Food Network was just starting out. There wasn't the level of celebrity chef culture that we have today. And so, I just was kind of like, ‘Ok, well, I like this. It seems to come naturally to me, makes people happy. I guess I'll give it a try.’
So it was just, coincided. I made a five-minute film, and it was in film festivals. And then my wife got this opportunity to work in London. And it was just a perfect break for me to try something new. And I talked to people at the British Film Institute and stuff like that. And they were like, ‘We'll take you as an intern, but you're not gonna get a job.’ I'd graduated from college. I had a couple years of experience of working. I was an assistant. Yeah, it was the perfect moment to be like, ‘Ok, I'm going to do this different thing and see how that goes in London.’ And then, whatever. I can always come back to working in film in San Francisco if I want.
So yeah, I went to Cordon Bleu. It was weird. Mostly a lot of Americans and Japanese. I met the most wealthy people in my life. And yeah, it was just a total 180 from the world I'd been living in. I'd been living in this gay bubble of college-educated critique people, people were into activism and queer politics. And all of a sudden, I was in the basement of a five-star hotel peeling ten cases of artichokes with these kids who are five years younger than me, but have been cooking for four years.
Yeah. Changed it all.
Alicia: And so from there, did you start—you started working in kitchens?
Preeti: Yeah.
I worked in kitchens in London. It was really hard. I had a really hard time finding a place. And I mean, it's really not until the last four years I feel, since #MeToo, that I've actually connected with the fact that some of the failures that I had weren't necessarily my fault.
But yeah, I had a tough time finding a place that I would fit in. Here's a funny story. I don't know if I've ever shared this on a podcast. It'll be an Alicia Kennedy exclusive. I really wanted to work at the River Cafe in London, because I thought of it as the Chez Panisse of London. And so I, as you do in the year—this was like 2002, I think, 2002 or ’03, before the internet and things like Poached. You take your cover letter and résumé and you go to the restaurant between lunch and dinner service, and you ask for the chef. And they come out if they want to talk to you, and they might put you to work right away, etc.
And so, I went and did that. And April Bloomfield was the sous chef at the time. And so April came out and talked to me and was rather impressed with my letter, with all this flowery stuff about wild rosemary and Meyer lemons growing in California and how I was so excited about working on all this stuff. And she was like, ‘Right on.’ And like, ‘Cool. Someone will call you in a couple days.’
Nobody ever called me. [Laughs.] And I just think it was just one of those things. I called whoever Chef Ruth’s—I called her assistant once a week for two months. And then I was like, ‘This isn't happening.’ [Laughs.] And then, I found out later they just don't hire anyone right out of culinary school. Every single person, station is somebody who's has a level of experience and ability. So, for what it's worth, they don't hire very unskilled labor, which is what I was. I was educated but unskilled. [Laughs.]
Yeah. But eventually I found my place. I found a place called the Sugar Club. I was the only woman in the kitchen. They called me hermana. There were no British guys. It was Kiwis, Japanese, Venezuelan, and all the prep guys and dish porters were Ecuadorian. Yeah, but the main sous chef, who’s still my friend, Julio Flames. He lives in Spain, he’s Venezuelan, and his buddy—I call them the fabulous Venezuelan twins—Raoul is still in London. And he's actually a famous graffiti artist now. So, we are all doing ok, the three of us. [Laughs.]
Alicia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Laughs.]
Well, how did you end up on Top Chef, then, in 2009?
Preeti: So we moved back to San Francisco in 2004. And I again struggled to find a place. My chef wrote me this glowing letter and was like, ‘Shoot for the top.’ And so, I went to all the fancy places. Again, at that time, it was like you—I looked at Zagat, and what were the top ten restaurants. [Laughs.]
And I ended up at Aqua, which was horrible. It was just awful. It was just mean, scary chefs screaming expletives at you 24/7 for absolutely no reason. I mean, I just felt unsafe. And I have the words to say that now. I didn't have the words then. I just failed.
Anyway, I ended up at Bon Appétit Management Company, which is a great company that does food service for a lot of corporates. But I was at the museum. So I was the executive chef of the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor, which was super fun. I loved it, again, to prove the theory of when you're fully seen and supported, you could actually do really well. I did really well there. I was the catering chef. Within seven months, I took over as the executive chef of the whole operation and quickly became the CEO’s favorite. I catered a couple weddings for him.
Then we lost the account, because—it was all contractual stuff between the museum and Bon Appétit. And so, they were trying to find places for us to be. And they didn't have an executive chef job for me at the time. This is a very long way to tell you how I ended up on Top Chef, but I swear it's relevant. [Laughs.]
Alicia: I think it's great. [Laughs.]
Preeti: I mean, essentially, I was super busy. And I was running two museums and a catering business for two museums. I had no time at all. I never would have been able to leave.
And so, they put me as Executive Sous Chef at the ballpark, the steakhouse at the ballpark, which was also under Bon Appétit Management. The consulting chef who—she showed up for management meetings every couple of weeks—was Traci Des Jardins. And then the executive chef was Thom Fox, and he needed help. And baseball season was starting. And so in the words of the CEO, Fedele, said, ‘So I'm going to park ya here. [Laughter.] And then, we'll see what we can do.’ And I was like, ‘Ok.’
And they were amazing. I mean, it was great. And so basically, it was like I was the number two. And so, there was a way for me to be able to leave for five weeks, and not be a huge hindrance to the business or just an impossibility.
So I went. And it was horrible. [Laughter.]
Alicia: Well, I mean, yeah. So how did that change? I mean, it seems it was a life-changing thing. But was it, really? ’Cause I mean, everyone knows how things look from the outside is never how they actually are.
Preeti: I mean, I think that the thing that was life changing about it is that a lot of people all of a sudden knew who I was. And after I got through the embarrassment and agony of doing really shitty, and having a lot of media outlets say really shitty things about you when they don't even know you. Let's remember, Eater was super f*****g snarky back then. They were not the lovable, amazing, ‘we get the industry,’ supportive people that they are right now. They were just mean. [Laughs.] They were just super mean.
Yeah. I mean, once I got over all that, I was just like, ‘Ok, well, the one thing I have is that everybody knows who I am.’ And so, even though in my opinion, there's—chefs around the city could cook circles around me. Regular people don't know who the f**k they are. The industry does. But the average American has no idea. But now they all know who I am. Yeah. And so I thought, ‘Ok, well, I'll just—’
And honestly, it was really hard to find a job. I left Google because I hated it. And they were just making my life hell, and they weren't supportive. They were just embarrassed and like, ‘Oh, you made us look bad.’ So I was like, ‘This sucks.’ Yeah, it was really hard. I was kind of blackballed for the first time. And that's when I started the pop up in the liquor store across the street from my house. I was just like, ‘I'm just gonna do something. And hopefully, people come. And hopefully, they like it. And we'll see what happens.’
Alicia: Yeah, yeah.
Well, when did you have the vision for what you wanted to do to express your own self as a chef?
Preeti: I think it was, it started when I was still at Google. I mean, I always knew I wanted to cook Indian food eventually. I wanted to learn professionally how to cook and work in restaurants and all that stuff. And I mean, obviously, Bon Appétit was great in terms of the management side, of P&Ls and all that.
But I think at that point when I was like, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’ I think I kind of felt I had cooked for enough people and other people's food that I was ready to start expressing my own point of view. And I think it was a constant work in progress.
I had no idea. I feel chefs today, that are so much younger than me, they sort of come out of the gate and it's like they know exactly what they're doing. And it seems they have this exact vision of what their cuisine is going to be. I opened the pop-up in a liquor store with three sandwiches, samosas, and a mango lassi. And I was like, ‘Let's see what happens.’ And then when there was some leftover something, I was like, ‘Oh, let's turn it into this,’ and just had the idea in the moment. And sometimes, it became a flop. And sometimes, it became something that became a signature dish that stayed with me for years.
I don't know. I started getting the feedback from my friends outside of the industry that were like, ‘You're cooking your food now. I can see it. I can see what you're doing. And I can see that this is its own authentic expression.’
And fast forward a little. I would say the hardest part was probably 2014, ’cause we opened the restaurant in 2013. So we were open the whole year. We opened in March. I wasn't ready to leave the restaurant to other people. And so, we closed it for two weeks and went to India. My wife and I just co-owned our restaurants.
I mean, I think we both kind of agreed that what people really loved about the restaurant was not what I thought it was going to be at all. As I said, I started with sandwiches and a samosa. And the whole thing was Indian street food. So in my head, I thought, I'm gonna just do this kind of replicable fast-casual model of all these sliders and fries, and just this fun kind of Indian play on Indian street food.
But what we found in the first nine months of running the restaurant is that the community that we were in, in Oakland, they were really stoked that there was an Indian restaurant where there was actually a chef that they could talk to that was connected to the local seasonal ingredients that was inventing new things. And that was the thing that really struck people and our regulars.
And so, what became the pressure point for me, it was kind of basically this moment of like, ‘Yeah, we have to push this more. We have to, for lack of a better word, continue elevating what we're doing.’ I don't love that word. But the concept to me is like, ‘What is there beyond sliders and masala fries?’ And it was daunting, because I hadn't really thought about it.
And then we were in London on our way back from India. And I was looking at the year-end stuff, because it was December, January. And Eater does that thing where they ask people like, ‘Oh, what are your sort of thoughts about next year, and who's up and coming, and what's hot?’ And this and that. And Kerry Diamond said something like, I'm really looking forward to seeing what chef Preeti Mistry does at Juhu. I was simultaneously super stoked and terrified.
You put one foot in front of the other and you start seeing what happens. And then, I think probably by the summer, I looked back in 2014, and was like, ‘Look at what we've created. [Laughs.] This is really something. And we did it. Now we can keep doing it.’ And I think that there's a way in which once you get past that initial holy s**t, ‘People are expecting so much more of me than I thought I was prepared to do.’ And once you break past that initial anxiety, it's really like, ‘Wait a minute. This is fun.’ I get to kind of decide and do, and everyone's following along and is like, ‘Ok, yes, we're with you. Go for it.’
So I mean, I think that eventually worked out. But yeah, it was scary for a minute.
Alicia: [Laughs.] I think that that's so interesting, and that that is always a compelling way for something to evolve, is that kind of organic creativity, that spontaneous creativity. I think that that's always a lot more compelling and has a lot more longevity, maybe, than someone who does come out of the gate saying, ‘I know exactly who I am and what I'm doing and exactly what I'm supposed to be.’ And I think that that, I think there's always a bit more excitement in that in the spontaneous and organic way of going about creativity.
But that might be because I don't plan anything. So, [laughter] I have to see virtue in it.
Preeti: I just think there's more beauty in parameters and confines. And I mean, if there's anything that we've learned over decades and decades of—the best art comes out of some amount of struggle. And to me, I feel I do my best work when I'm being chased by a thousand-pound gorilla. All of a sudden, inspiration strikes. [Laughs.]
Alicia: Yeah.
No, my book has only come together in the last couple of weeks, I think. And it's due next month. So, exactly, yeah. [Laughs.]
Preeti: There you go.
Alicia: Well, I know you closed the restaurant in 2017. And you’ve been interning at a farm. You've launched a podcast, Loading Dock Talks. I wanted to ask if you think that there is maybe more potential for you now to change the way that this industry works, and how accepting it is of people who have historically been marginalized in the industry? Is your role as a facilitator and more of a cultural figure than restaurant chef, is that your future? Do you think you've kind of taken those roles on?
Preeti: I mean, a lot of it has just been really happenstance, you know? I mean, we closed Juhu—it was actually 2018, very beginning of 2018. So we rounded the year and closed in January. Part of that was—we were like, ‘Yeah, we're gonna open another one. We're just gonna open a bigger snazzier one.’ And then, pandemic.
But I think that for me, the biggest thing that's changed is between those two things, so the beginning of 2018 and beginning of 2020, I would say the biggest thing that changed for me is like I really was on this mental thing of like, ‘I need one more run. But look, I want to have one more restaurant or concept or something that I put out into the world where I feel I can really—’
I don't know. I felt I still needed to prove myself or something. And through the pandemic, I just feel I reached this point where I'm like, ‘I don't f*****g have to prove. I don't care.’ And then I think, from there, starts to open up your brain in this way where it's like, ‘Well, what is the point? You can't make money at running restaurants. You run yourself ragged.’
I mean, we were trying to finish the deal to sell the place. I remember my wife saying this to the broker, like, ‘This is a life or death situation.’ And the broker kind of laughing, and then my wife was just like, ‘She doesn't f*****g get it, does she? I'm worried you're gonna end up in the emergency room.’ And I was just like, ‘Yeah.’
I mean, it was rough. I was working nonstop. And that thing that you're really transparent, and you're like, ‘Hey, everybody, we're going to sell the restaurant, but not right now. But please, stay with us. [Laughs.] Don’t leave me.’ It's a tough tightrope there where it's sort of like, ‘What are you gonna do? Fire me.’ So yeah, I was working more and more and more.
But now I just look back. And I'm like, ‘So you don't make any money. You work your ass off. Why?’ I don't need to make food solely for being like, ‘Hey, look at me. Look at what I can do.’ And having people be like, ‘Oh, wow. Ohh ahh.’ I need it, whatever I do, to have more meaning than that. Whether that's the creative meaning, which I feel also in that realm, and we can talk a little bit about this more if you want.
But I'm sort of definitely departing in a lot of ways from what I, the food I've been cooking for the last decade. And a lot of that is just again evolution. And I look back and I'm like, ‘Yeah, in 2011, when I started the pop up, people were like, ‘The f**k is this? [Laughs.] It was just like, ‘What?’ And when I opened the restaurant in 2013, I'd say myself and maybe Mirawa and Chai Pani. There were very few people that were doing anything different, outside of the-
I’d just search the Internet to see what other people are doing, not out of a competitive way, of just, ‘Who else is doing something interesting?’ And it would be like, oh, you see some cool inventive thing. And then it'd be like, ‘It's pretty much just chicken tikka masala inside paneer. They just gave it some different bells and whistles. It's just still the same thing. They're not really doing something different.’
But now I feel there's a lot of people all over the country and the world that sort of have a different understanding of what is possible with Indian food. And it can be in a lot of different lanes. And you can have a butter chicken calzone and Indian tomato achar on avocado toast or whatever. And those kinds of things were just really bizarre a decade ago. And so, now I also just feel like, ‘Well, why should I just keep making that same stuff? I'm ready to do something different.’
Alicia: Yeah.
What are you ready to do?
Preeti: I'm kind of getting really into just traditional Gujarati food. It's coming from a few different places.
One is something I think you probably might remember, I've been very—and probably—know I've been very critical as a view of Daniel Humm, Eleven Madison Park and what's going on with a lot of the fine dining and plant-based food. And I said something on Twitter a while back where I was like, ‘10 courses. Daniel Humm against my mom. She would destroy him.’ And then I was telling my wife later that night over happy hour. And then I was like, ‘Wait a minute! I could do that.’ I mean, I'm not gonna have some fancy restaurant in New York with an abused beet on the menu. But, I mean, that's one of the inspirations.
Another one is the farming and just getting—I'm not volunteering anymore at the farm. But I've just gotten a lot more involved with farms in general, because we've stayed here in Sonoma County. We're actually moving. We're moving in a week and a half, because we're staying. So we're moving to a slightly bigger house and yard and also just a little more convenient, because right now we're in the woods, so everything's 30 minutes away. So we're just moving a little bit closer to civilization. But staying in Sonoma County in a very—it's a country house. It's cute. It's very exciting. I feel so grown up.
So yeah, I mean, I think that's part of it, too. Seasonal Gujarati cuisine is something that, again, which is something else I've been about for a while, is sort of people don't think about Indian food when they think farm to table. I remember having this experience with guests. Oakland's, all these cute hippies would come in and be these cute old white people. And they loved everything we were doing and would be like, ‘Oh, well, you don't do anything with rhubarb, do you? I mean, that's not really an Indian vegetable.’ And I'd be like, ‘Actually, I made a strawberry rhubarb chutney. You want to try it?’ Because I like rhubarb. And I live in California. And it's what's at the farmers’ market.
So I think that, for me, probably focusing more on slightly more serious Gujarati vegetarian food. Maybe some meat, but I've done a lot of meat cooking with Indian cuisine.
And then the last desire is really getting to this point of realizing that, without sounding too morbid, at some point, the people who have the keys to the kingdom have all these recipes in my family won't be with us anymore. And who is going to make sure that we keep those recipes? I sort of look around all my cousins and siblings, and I'm like, ‘I'm pretty sure it's me.’ [Laughter.]
Yeah. So, yeah. I've been working with a lot of wineries, doing wine pairing, but also really just focusing more on—
At Juhu at one point, I was like—when I say getting a bigger snazzier space, it's, I wanted to do more. And we had so many limitations. We just had such a small space. The kitchen was tiny. We had no walk-ins; it was all reach-ins. And we were doing like 120 covers a night. So it was really like, ‘Crank it out!’ It was like, ‘Yeah, more manchurian cauliflower, manchurian cauliflower for days. We can't make enough. We will sell out every night.’
But it was like, ‘’Crank it out! Get that cauliflower in the deep fryer and toss it with the sweet and sour sauce.’ I mean, and all the food is delicious, but I just—I longed to have the opportunity to do things that take a little bit more time and care and nuance in their plating, in their technique of how they're prepared, etc. And that was just not really possible with the type of staff I, that I had, who were all, aside for maybe one or two people, pretty green to the kitchen, etc. It was just not possible. I've been wanting to do something more focused.
And I'm not against fine dining as a whole concept. There's just so much b******t I see and read and experience. I have ideas for dishes that are more complicated than deep-fried cauliflower all the time. I just don't necessarily realize them in the current environment that I'm in. And so I think, figuring out and finding-
There's one project. I can't tell you who—I am working with a rather large winery on a guest chef series that will be me and two other chefs. And we're basically doing a five-course wine pairing menu. And it's basically the—everything that I've been talking about in terms of one, people thinking of both wine pairing and farm to table as the Super European thing. Doing five courses that are all Indian, or and then the other two chefs will also be from non-European cuisines.
And some different projects like that, where it's really just getting to, I don't know, getting to create something beautiful without breaking your back. I hate to say it. I was joking with a friend who's in fine dining the other day, ’cause I do have some friends in fine dining. Not everyone in fine dining hates me. And I was like, ‘I might do something that's a little more fine dining.’ And they were like, ‘It’s not that bad.’
And I was like, ‘I just want to get paid well and make nice things.’ And if I can figure out how to keep that somewhat accessible, so that it's not totally something that's only accessible to the one percent. And also, again, just the original passion, motivation for me behind Juhu was, There's all this food that people have no idea about. All they know is naan and curry. And that was a whole thing, was wanting to bring different, cool, interesting, fun things to people. And I feel this is the same thing.
I mean, my mother harassed the hell out of me last Thanksgiving like 20 times with questions about a carrot ginger soup, where I'm like, ‘I don't understand this. You have like a cookbook’s worth of recipes just in your brain. You can literally make like 7 to 10 different types of breads. And you can cook all these vegetables and make all these dals and all these different snacks and steamed fermented cakes and fries and stuff. But you're confounded by this, because it's all just in your brain.’
It's second nature to her. She doesn't even have to think about it. And the moment she actually has to think about something because it's outside of her wheelhouse, it's like, ‘Oh, I don't know what to do.’ But when I think about that wheelhouse, I'm just like, ‘It's just such a vast, you know, sort of chasm of knowledge. There's so much there.’ I mean, knowing me, as my mother would say, ‘You and your creative ideas.’ Of course, they probably will not be exactly her food. But there's just so much more—
I know some of the chefs on the East Coast in New York and stuff have been really understanding Indian cuisine beyond tikka masala, through Dhamaka, and Surbhi just opened Tagmo. And those guys also opened a South Indian place, which looks amazing. And I feel like people are starting to understand different Indian cuisines.
My theory always has been one of the reasons that Indian cuisine never gets the glow-up is because hierarchically in terms of class, the higher class you go, or caste, the more vegetarian people are. And the West doesn't understand how to value food that's vegetarian. The goat brains and stuff that are on some of those menus at Adda and those places in India, that's considered some low class, low caste food. It's looked down upon.
So, yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of a weird mindfuck of how people understand Indian cuisine. And I don't really care. I mean, I like goat brains. And I like vegetarian food. I'll eat it all. So for me, I'm just—I want to see the food of my culture specifically—which is very vegetarian, almost vegan, aside from yogurt and ghee—be appreciated and seen for what it is, because it's beautiful. It's delicious.
I mean, there's so many chefs, Indian chefs I know from other parts of the country. Like Asha Gomez. She's from Kerala. She grew up eating beef and fish and all this seafood and, but she's like, ‘Oh my god. I love Gujarati food. It's so, you know?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, I know. It's great.’ I didn't even realize when I was a kid. I was like, ‘I hate this.’ And now I look back, and I'm like, ‘Holy s**t, there's so much interesting, good stuff that people just don't—the Western world doesn't really, totally connect with.’
Alicia: Right, right.
No, it's interesting because I’m looking so much at the way foods are assimilated and erased in ‘American cuisine’ and the ways in which things are valued if they are adapted into that kind of middle-class white pantry. And that's the only way that they obtain value in the United States in the cuisine. And so it's interesting to hear about the idea that Gujarati food can't be, it hasn't had its due because of the vegetarianess of it, because Americans, basically, and most of the West can't absorb the significance of vegetables anyway. So if you make something that translates into the American palate, it has to be very, very specific. That becomes some sort of marker of its worth and greatness, is such a—is everything I think a lot of people are working against at this point. [Laughs.]
Peeti: Yeah.
I mean, I'm working on it. I got some ideas. I'm excited about January, ’cause I'm also getting—through this move, I get a bigger kitchen. So I'm excited to start playing around with all these ideas that right now are just in an Excel spreadsheet.
Alicia: Right, right.
Well, I wanted to ask, too, because you talked to KQED out there in the Bay Area about starting your podcast specifically to create space in the very white world of food podcasting. So there's also been all this conversation in the last year and a half: is food media becoming more inclusive? Is it not?
And so, in general, though, power and capital are still concentrated in the same hands. Gatekeepers are basically the same at the end of the day. What would a more kind of inclusive food media look like to you? What would it be, basically?
Preeti: Yeah. It's hard.
I think one of the big things that I have experienced is just this annoying, trendy, popularity contest. And I've been on both sides. And I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't know. I'd like to think that maybe I've transcended it, that ‘hot or not’ thing. I just hover above it all. I mean, mainly, because I'm just not going to do anything just for popularity or whatever.
Yeah, I mean, when you have the same gatekeepers in place, I think what the problem is that this sort of like, ‘Oh, this person's the person. Now, this person is the person.’ And one of the things that I see—and this is not just true for food media. I think this is true for all media. And it's also true for just any type of business or organization that's trying to keep the same gatekeepers in place, but still trying to be more inclusive.
And that is that they'll oftentimes pick the young, trendy, hippest hottest person to put on a pedestal and give all of this power to when that person, first of all, just got here. Two, has no historical context. And therefore, it does a disservice to a lot of different things. First of all, the disservice it does to that person is it kind of sets them up to fail, and it sets them up as a shooting star that's gonna burn out. Yeah.
It also sets them up in a way where because they don't have the larger historical context of food media, or whatever it is, they're apt to say yes to things and be manipulated in a way that somebody who has been doing this for a while, that also would be of that identity, wouldn't. And I feel like that part is intentional. I think it's very intentional. I mean, this thing that has become a mantra of mine, because it comes up so often, of ‘difficult to work with’ means ‘difficult to manipulate’ is that it's really easy to take that 26-year-old that's the hip cool thing.
And they might be awesome people. They might be totally rad people who have great politics and are super talented, but they probably haven't had enough experience to make the right decisions all the time. And when you're getting that type of attention, and all of this sort of thrown at you, it's also really easy to say yes. Because it's really hard to not accept when people are trying to give you opportunities or feature you, or what have you. And you might not realize that what you're doing is not necessarily the right decision.
And then on the other hand, of course, there's the thing of—yeah, whether it's folks—I'm just a bitter old person—folks like me, and many of my colleagues who've been at it for a long time, or who actually are about it, as opposed to the big thing. I think that's frustrating is also within food media is like, ‘Oh, we need to—someone who fits this identity.’ So they find somebody who fits that identity who that's it. They're not about anything else. They just happen to be brown and queer, and from some cool country that is trending. They might not actually have any real politics, necessarily. And so giving them the mic gives you this really milquetoast version that then just makes all of the gatekeepers pat themselves on the back and feel really great. And like, ‘Ok, check. We've done it.’
I mean, first and foremost, I think what needs to change is there needs to be change in gatekeeping. Period. I mean, I just told you this opportunity that I have, and the first thing I'm doing is bringing on two more BIPOC women colleagues. I mean, that was the whole point of my podcast. Yeah, let's talk to a whole bunch of people that—some people that I interviewed are people that millions of people know, like Your Korean Dad. And then there's other people that not as many folks know, or they haven't had an opportunity to really share their story and their point of view. So for me, that's the first thing.
And then secondly, I think it's really important that publications really look at who's been doing this for a long time. Who has a real point of view beyond just like, ‘Yep, I check the boxes.’ Because I think you're gonna get a lot more out of whatever you do if you actually give people the power.
I mean, jeez, the two times I've been in really large national publications would be because Ava DuVernay really likes me. And we became friends. Both Time magazine, I got to write something. And last year, I was in Harper's Bazaar. It's because those magazines gave someone like her the gatekeeping that a different group of people were allowed to be honored and featured.
I mean, that's really what it comes down to, is you have the white male gatekeepers. And they're like, ‘Ok, maybe you guys shouldn't be picking the ten people of color. Maybe hire somebody as that guest editor or if you're not ready to give up your job and let them do it full time, at least do a guest editor thing. Do an editor residence, and give them the opportunity.’
And then the other side of that is—because I've been doing a lot of consulting up here in trying to help folks be more inclusive. And the other thing that you run into is media needs to take a chance. they're so afraid of taking chances and going beyond the sort of prescribed lane that they're given that—
One of the things I've run into is I've been recruiting chefs for some events up here. And then these people hire me. They're all like, ‘Yeah, we don't want it to be a bunch of old white guys. We're so excited to have you on board.’ And I'm like, ‘Ok, here's this list.’ And then they're like, ‘Mmm, that person is not really a big enough star.’ And I'm like, ‘How are they ever gonna be a big enough star if you never give them the opportunity?’ It's gonna be the same.
I find myself in this thing. And I'm like, ‘Oh, all the people of color are men and all the women are white. And that's safe.’ Yeah, or those people have got the—they got the, broke through. It's this mediagenic thing, too. It's like, ‘Oh, that person's model gorgeous.’ And some of these people are my friends. And I think that they're fantastic. And I'm glad that they're getting all these opportunities. And I also can see why.
Alicia: Yeah, yeah.
No, it's really interesting to me, because I've always wanted to be a writer and work in magazines. And then when I got to magazines, I was like, ‘Oh, wait, we don't care about building up new people. We just care about giving attention to people who've already gotten attention.’ And if you're a new person who gets attention, it has to be fitting in a very specific box in order to get—
It was always really shocking to me, when I would pitch stories about people who were not famous yet, and it would just be like, ‘Well, they're not famous.’ Well, how do I get the opportunity to talk about their work then ever? And you have to just wait. You have to wait it out. And then it's like, ‘Well, what are we doing here all the time?’
There's so many hurdles to get and in your—in front of anyone's face, or get your food in anyone's mouth when, despite the the constant chatter about like, ‘Oh, I want to know what the next big thing is. I want to know.’ And it's like, ‘No, you actually don't, though, because you don't want to put in the work of challenging yourself in any sort of way. You don't want to put in the effort that's going to be needed to find the new people to support them to get—’ It's really maddening.
But it works. It's in both places. It's in media. It's in restaurants. It's everywhere. Yeah, it is a struggle. [Laughs.]
Well, I was on a panel with Reem Assil recently, and she was saying that the media attention also doesn't translate necessarily to material change. And that's a real problem. And I think that that comes with a lack of self-interrogation in the industry, too, of media, where it's like, we're not looking at what the effects of what we do are. We're just kind of doing it and checking boxes. And wherever the chips fall, that's where they fall. And it doesn't matter whether we really affect a restaurant space in a good way with our attention, or a bad way. We never ask those questions. And it's a lot.
But I did want to ask you how you, what you're hoping for in 2022. I think you kind of told us a little bit, but maybe there's more.
Preeti: I'm hopeful for, I mean, for myself personally, which has been challenging for the last couple years, because the pandemic really slowed it down. Which is, I'm so tired. I'm a person who talks a lot. I always have since I was a child, but—my mantra lately is like, ‘I'm so f*****g sick of talking about s**t. And I'm so ready to just be doing something.’ And I think that that part has been frustrating for me, which just goes back to the whole thing of having a business and access to capital and who gets those opportunities, and who investors line up for etc, etc.
So I think that, first and foremost, I think, yeah, I'm looking forward to doing more cooking. And I will be doing some more farming, both personally, because I now have a yard with fruit trees. And also, professionally, activating a lot of different spaces with different folks I’m working with to be growing stuff, to be creating new dishes, to be also adding to the conversation.
I think that's the biggest thing is like, ‘I want to be able to add to the conversation with a thing, instead of just the constant criticism.’ I get frustrated where I'm like, ‘Do I seem like one of those people that just talks a bunch of s**t about other people, but never does a goddamn thing? But that's not true. You know, I did this podcast thing. I got some spices. [Laughs.]’
But yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to just doing. I'm looking forward to cooking and moving the conversation through action and not just words. Which in addition to all the things I just talked about in terms of access and networks, it's also just the pandemic. So we've just been in this place where it's—Ok, it hasn't necessarily been safe unless you're already in that space, and how safe—whatever. Everybody's different in what feels safe for them. So that part has been also challenging, is just feeling like, ‘Oh, I just want to like, do things.’
So I feel, definitely, doing more collaborations. I see a lot of that sort of work with other chefs, hopefully more events and dinners and things on farms. I mean, there's just a lot of cool stuff happening up here in Sonoma County in terms of BIPOC folks starting to kind of take up a very small amount of space. So and the only thing that's really fun about that is that when there’s so few of us, we’re all like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, we need to do this together. Let's hang out. yay, you're here. Yay.’ So there's that kind of thing that's kind of interesting up here.
I mean, I hope that people continue to have this vision that I feel started last year that has continued of a certain amount of folks have become disillusioned with the Michelin star, kind of BS attitude and just smoke and mirrors, pomp and circumstance BS. So I hope that that continues.
I hope that more people get leadership roles that actually know what they're doing. But I'm not super hopeful. Honestly, I feel if anything, the doing is also I just need to focus on doing my own thing and not even worry about the bigger picture, because it’s just probably going to continue to suck. [Laughter.] But then, it’s just carve out your world, whether that's physical or virtual. Carve out that piece of the world that works for you, and that you can be creative and make some sort of positive impact. We can't all change the world, but we can do our little part and just really put energy into that.
I also want to do products. It's one of my many—what's the word—sort of epiphanies or discoveries through the pandemic has been. So working on farming, growing vegetables and trying to sell them makes less money than running a restaurant and is even harder work. And so, then I started thinking about, ‘Well, who actually makes money at this?’ And obviously, the most obvious example would be wine. But a value-add product, which is a term that I learned in the last year and a half.
And so, that's kind of my big interest right now, is really focusing on, I don't need to grow my own kale and potatoes. We get a CSA box. The farm is great. I love them, all those kinds of staples. So when I think about growing stuff, whether it's professionally with some of the projects I'm working on, or personally, which might turn into something professional, I really want to grow things that are specific in order to create added products, whether that's a beverage or a preserve, or a pickle, or what have you. A spice, a sauce. Because I feel that's really the one area where one can be mildly successful and not kill themselves doing it if they do it.
I did have a line—we had the line of curry sauces in 2005. And it was horrible. My wife was a business person, she has an MBA, and she very—I was like, ‘We just need to sell more.’ And she was like, ‘We lose three cents a jar.’ And I was like, ‘So we just need to sell more.’ And she was like, ‘That means the more we sell, the more we lose.’ I was like, ‘Ohhhh. [Laughter.] That’s why you're the business person.’
Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act?
Preeti: Yes. Yeah, I have said that.
Cooking food of my personal cultural heritage is f*****g political. Yeah. 100 percent. I mean, I think that from the lunchbox stories to just our conversation earlier about vegetarian cuisine and how it’s seen in the US, and thinking about my mother and all the stuff that she cooks.
And, yeah, it's a political act because it is in danger. It is literally endangered. Even a lot of Gujaratis that I know that are my age—and this isn't a diss. It's just everybody's different. But their moms didn't cook everything from scratch the way my mom did, like this, where I'm like, ‘Yeah, I made this.’ And they're like, ‘My mom never made that. And we always got it frozen.’ And I'm like, ‘Really? I've never seen it frozen.’ The only thing frozen in my mom's are peas and blocks of tamarind. [Laughter.] Which, why are there brown ice cubes? My mom's like, ‘Leave it alone. It’s not important.’
I mean, honestly, just f*****g existing and opening my mouth. I feel it's a political act at this point in this world, because we can sit here and feel very safe and a certain set of people. And yet, we know what's going on in our larger world. So it's totally political. Food is political. Whether it's about access or what and who is valued, all of that. [Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.] Or who has access to food, which is other stuff that I'm working on here in terms of food insecurity.
Alicia: Amazing.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time today.
Preeti: Thank you.
Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at aliciakennedy.news/. Or follow me on Instagram, Alicia D. Kennedy, on Twitter @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe
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A Conversation with Karon Liu
2 feb 2022· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
Today, I’m talking Karon Liu, a food writer at the Toronto Star. I’ve long been a fan of his work and perspective, which is accessible but has an eye toward sustainability; has humor and deep understanding, but is authoritative in his perspective.
We discussed how he got into food despite never cooking growing up, shifting definitions of authenticity, and being a writer who can convey the totality of Toronto to an international audience.
Alicia: Hi, Karon. Thank you so much for being here and chatting with me today.
Karon: Thank you very much, Alicia. I'm a longtime listener, first-time caller.
Alicia: [Laughs.]
Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Karon: Oh, my God, my origin story. I think my origin story is quite different from a lot of your previous guests. I feel when you ask a food writer what their relationship with food was early on, they'll say like, ‘Oh, I used to gather around the dinner table with my grandma for Sunday night dinners. And it was such an important part of the week. And I would be in the garden. I would watch my mom cook. And it was so important in my formative years.’ And mine is the complete 180.
I think a lot of kids who grew up in the early ’90s were, who were raised on television and were latchkey kids, we just completely absorbed all the junk-food commercials that were blasted at us. So what I think about what I ate growing up, it was all the golden brown, deep-fried junk. So it was a lot of pizza pops, which I think is—the American equivalent would be Hot Pockets. Mini-microwave pizza, Kraft mac and cheese. Sorry to be a Canadian stereotype, but I did eat Kraft mac and cheese growing up. Instant ramen. A lot of that.
But I lived with my grandmother, as well, in our house, and she was an amazing cook. She cooked a lot of really fantastic Cantonese dishes, but I didn't really appreciate it back then. I think a lot of immigrant children growing up in Canada, or in the U.S., they were—they wanted to assimilate into ‘American, Canadian culture’ so much that they kind of looked down or didn't appreciate the cooking of their heritage as much.
And I remember my grandma making fantastic stews, and all these really big beautiful steamed fish and these fermented things and pickles and stuff like that. And I didn't appreciate it because I wanted McDonald's and burgers. That’s what I ate growing up. [Laughs.]
Alicia: Well, I'm the same way when people ask me about this. There is a lot of beautiful, great food that I ate. But I also, all summer, was responsible for me and my brother and would just boil cheese tortellini. I would be horrified—I ate meat then, but when my mom accidentally bought the meat tortellini, I would want to die. And a lot of Ellio's pizza and everything, so. And a lot of putting a hot dog in the microwave. I don't know why I did that. [Laughter.]
Karon: I mean, at least you used the microwave. I didn’t use the microwave, but I didn't know how to use a microwave. I'm trying to, try to remember back then. Because I think my parents wanted me to focus on studying and be great at academics, to—sorry to be a cliché. [Laughter.] Ayy, Chinese immigrant fam with Chinese parents.
I wasn't encouraged to cook. They were like, ‘Study. Study, study. Don't go to the kitchen.’ So I didn't know how to cook. I don't even think I knew how to turn on the stove growing up. I didn't think I touched the stove until I was in my twenties. It was awful.
Alicia: Yeah. I didn't know how to make an egg until I went to college. And I had to learn how to scramble an egg, and I was on the phone with my mother. I was Googling how to do laundry. I didn't know how to do anything. So I'm right there with you. It's okay to grow up not knowing how to do anything.
Karon: But I think it helped us in the larger part. I think our experiences are quite similar, or quite similar to a lot of people right around the world. I think there's more people like us who grew up on junk food and convenience foods, and were taught to not stay in the kitchen and to focus on our studies than who grew up on a beautiful farm and there’s the garden. Whenever I read a cookbook jacket, and it starts off with that, I'm like, ‘I'm out.’ I don’t know how to relate to it.
Alicia: I always come from that perspective in my work, which is just like we do have nostalgia for crap sometimes. But it is funny because the other day I posted on Instagram stories that I love Wendy's barbecue sauce. And so, when barbecue sauce tastes like Wendy's, I love it. And someone was like, ‘That's sad.’ Ok, sorry. I didn't grow up in the south eating—I don't know what kind of barbecue sauce they eat. I don't know. [Laughs.]
Karon: Did Wendy's give you that spon-con deal yet? Or are you still figuring it out?
Alicia: I will not take a spon con deal from Wendy’s. I just mean, I just like that the smokiness and sweetness I think are really well balanced in their barbecue sauce. I don't know.
But you studied journalism. And I was looking at your résumé and you seemingly went right into writing about food. When did you decide you wanted to be a food writer? And how did you make that happen?
Karon: So I went to journalism school. And at that point, food writing wasn't really talked about outside of being a restaurant critic. And those jobs, they open up when the critic retires or dies. That's pretty much it. So I went into journalism school thinking I was going to be a general assignment reporter, which is basically covering anything and everything that happens in the city.
So I graduated, and then I did a few internships, and I realized that general assignment—so covering courts, crimes, everyday city stuff, I was horrible at covering. Breaking news, hard news, I hated it. I hated covering courts, because I was so scared that I would accidently cover, write something wrong or publish something that was under a publication ban. Or going to a crime scene, I was so nervous. It was so stressful. It took so much out of me emotionally, and I just couldn't do it.
I just applied for an internship at this magazine called Toronto Life, which I guess is the—I have to give American equivalents every time I talk about, make Canadian references. New York Magazine would be the equivalent of it. And it's a city magazine. And the week that I started, they started a food and restaurant blog covering what's hot, what's new. Because this was the early—the late 2000s, early 2010s, when the rock-star chef persona, that whole food culture starts to come up. The third wave of independent restaurants, the 30-seat chef-owned restaurants where they played, like, rock music. I sound like such a dweeb.
That genre of the post-2008 recession restaurants came about. So it was a really exciting time for food. And they started that restaurant blog, and I didn't know anything about food but I needed clippings for my portfolio, so I just kind of wedged myself in there. And that's how I got started writing about food.
I don't think I still turned on the stove at that point. I might have graduated to learning how to use a microwave. Still didn’t know anything. But when you're out in the field, and you're talking to cooks and learning about cooking in restaurants, it starts to seep in. So it starts to encourage you to cook and to try different ingredients, and to really just get your, force yourself into the kitchen.
Alicia: In what direction did you go to force yourself into the kitchen? Were there books, were there TV shows, were there ingredients or flavors that inspired you to actually cook?
Karon: I actually didn't watch food TV that much, ’cause I think it just reminded me of work. I think around that time Top Chef Canada came out, and I think I watched one or two seasons when it first came out. And then I just stopped, because it was like, ‘Oh, I recognize that person. Oh crap. This reminds me of work.’ Or like, ‘Oh, I have to call that person back for an interview.’ I was like, ‘No, this is eating into Karon time at night.’ I didn’t like it.
And I think around that time, food internet didn't really take off yet. I think maybe Deb Perelman might have been around at that time, but I didn't know of her work. I think a lot of it was just being in the kitchens and seeing how chefs work and asking them about, ‘Oh, why is this dish like that? Or why do you do this?’ And then when they explained it to me—very patiently, because I'm pretty sure they knew I didn't know anything and they were explaining things to me three or four times, so I didn't get it wrong.
So I think because they reiterated cooking techniques and flavor pairings so much, that it just seeped in subconsciously. When I'm passing by the St. Lawrence Market, which is Toronto's large farmers’ market, I would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that's in season. I remember the chef telling me about it.’ And like, ‘Oh, right, that's how they would do it. Maybe I should just pick up some of this stuff and take it home and try it myself.’ So it kind of worked very organically that way.
I also didn't have a lot of money, so I couldn't buy any cookbooks.
Alicia: [Laughs.] They are so expensive.
Karon: It didn't hurt me that a library was right there, so. [Laughs.]
Alicia: I know you've had some big changes lately at the Toronto Star food section. What has been going on there?
Karon: Yes. Well, thank you very much for letting me plug the new food section.
We're in our first month. We just have a new food section coming out. And it's me and my good friend Suresh, who has been through writing for much longer than I have, at least 15 years. And the two of us, we love eating around the city. And we just love the city so much. There's just so much that I think people don't know about that needs to be celebrated.
The higher-ups at the Star, the big mucky mucks, were like, ‘Hey, you guys like writing about food. Here's a new food section. What do you want to do?’ And we were more or less given carte blanche, and it's just so much fun.
And the places that we always eat are the places in the strip malls, the plazas outside of the Toronto downtown core. In the suburbs, and places like Scarborough, Markham, North York. I'm sure this is the first American podcast where they're, like, the word North York and Richmond Hill were mentioned. Vaughan, Woodbridge, Etobicoke. All these little suburbs outside of the downtown area that most people know about, where all the big expensive splashy restaurants are. Those are the places that I love to eat at and Suresh loves to eat at, but it hasn't really been covered before in a lot of food media here for reasons that—We know. We know. We know why.
Look, we've been given that opportunity to do that. It’s really, really exciting to be able to go to these places, and let more people know about them so that they can go out and eat and explore the city that they think they know but there's still so much to learn.
Alicia: In this job where you're at, The Star, you've done so much. You're editing, you’re feature writing, you're writing restaurant reviews. You were doing recipe development as well. And so, how have you juggled all of that? And what are you looking forward to focusing on now?
Karon: Yeah, it's so much, because unlike the newspapers, in, say, the New York Times and San Fran Chronicle or L.A. Times, where they have a fairly sizable food team, in Canada, it's a lot more bare-bones. Everyone has to wear multiple hats. So I'm just really happy that I get to have a more focused mandate again, just kind of just exploring and eating out and being able to tell the stories of a lot of these cooks and people who work in the restaurant industry that don't really have a voice and be able to talk about different cuisines and what it's like to work in the restaurant industry.
Yeah, it's a lot more focused and a lot more fun. ’Cause before it was a lot, doing a lot of different things and hoping that I didn't screw up.
Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, I think of you and Suresh as well as being more focused on your cities than other food writers. Well, Jonathan Nunn in London, he calls himself more of a city writer. I think the other person that's pointed to as more of a city writer was Jonathan Gold at the L.A. Times. You are really conveying the entirety of a city in your work. You're doing service and lifestyle for people who live there. But you're also sort of defining and expanding the idea of what Toronto is to people who read your work outside of that city.
How does that city inspire your work? You were just talking about going into the suburbs and everything. How do you see the food media outside of Toronto kind of influencing your work, if it does?
Karon: Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. I think that's part of the reason why I don't really do recipes anymore. Because even people in Toronto, when they want a food recipe from a food publication, they'll hit up Food & Wine or Bon Appetit, places that have such a, not monopoly, but they're like juggernauts when it comes to recipes. New York Times Cooking. So it didn't really feel it was necessary for me to go into that, because I don't think people come to me for recipes.
But what I think I can do and Suresh can do is to just really put the Greater Toronto Area, which encompasses North York, Scarborough, all those surrounding suburbs, into an international spotlight, because there's just so much good stuff there. And I think there's very few people doing it right now on such being—or doing it on, or being able to do it on a large platform. The Toronto Star, that's one—I think that's one area where we think that we can really excel at and shine. So we're like, ‘Ok, let's just do that.’
I think Toronto always bills itself as a very multicultural city. And it's been repeated so much that we kind of just like, ‘Yeah, of course, whatever.’ It's a given. But it's not until you go, you're traveling and you're outside Toronto. You're like, ‘Oh, wow, Toronto really is a very multicultural city.’ I think our last census report, more than half of the people who live in Toronto, I think, English is their second language or something like that.
It is wild how many different types of cuisines are are in the city, and how many different types of new cuisines that form when the second, the first and second generation kids take the cuisines of their heritage and combine it with the cuisines that they ate at a friend's house, or the different restaurants that they go to. There's always these new mash-ups that come up and eventually become a very uniquely Toronto tradition. There's always stuff happening, and it's always inspiring me and my food writing.
Alicia: You recently wrote a piece on the concept of authenticity and how Chinese chefs in Toronto are challenging it by doing what you just explained, being authentic to their own lives and experience rather than kind of a historical or nostalgic ideal. How did that story come about, and how does it relate to your own life in cooking?
Karon: Yeah, I think that being a millennial and having a lot more people in my cohort, becoming chefs and opening the restaurants now and being more authoritative in their jobs, that's kind of really helped shift the definition of what authenticity means in cuisines.
So going back to my example of what I ate growing up. It was a lot of junk food. It was a lot of stuff from the food court, where it’s a lot of the Canadian Chinese food, like the chicken balls, the fried rice, the spring rolls and the chop suey stuff. And then if you were to ask my parents if that was real Chinese food, they’d be like, ‘I didn't eat any of this stuff in Hong Kong.’
But for me, it was authentic, because it was what I grew up eating. It's my authentic childhood, my life experiences. Who's to say that all those years of eating, I was not doing it authentically? What does that even mean? So I think that now there's a lot more cooks and chefs in their 30s who grew up eating like I did, and are taking inspirations from that childhood and merging it with the food that their parents ate or something like that, and creating this whole new cuisine and saying, ‘That's what I ate growing up. That's my authentic experience. Who are you to say no?’
And I think that now the definition of authenticity has really changed. It’s no longer referencing a fixed point in time in a specific region. But it's very fluid. And it really depends on who's cooking it and how that authenticity that they're trying to push references their upbringing and where they ate and where they're going and what they cooked with. Because yeah, it's so weird to think that authenticity in cooking points to one region, one specific time. That's not how food works. It’s constantly evolving.
Alicia: No, I did a piece last year on translation. That was something that people brought up, was that when you're not translating the food writing or you're not investing in finding food writers who are on the ground in different countries in different cultures, you are perpetuating these kinds of historic ideas of a cuisine. You're kind of putting them in a box in a museum and saying they can't change, when on the—if you're letting a diaspora define, and also not get out of a box of what their ancestral cooking is, then you're—it's not doing anyone any service. It's putting a cuisine in a museum and saying, ‘Certain cuisines need to go in a museum and other cuisines are allowed to change.’
Karon: Yeah, especially when you're a cook now. And you have so many different influences. I think a lot more people are traveling now. They're living in different cities. There's the internet. The whole idea of globalization, it just really affects so many cuisines. And that's just how it's evolving now. And to ignore all of that, and try to cook the way that things were at maybe one point in your life in an area that you don't even live in anymore. Is that authentic to you? Is it authentic to ignore where you live, where you've worked? Your neighborhood, the restaurants that you grew up eating at, the places where you shop? Is it worth it to ignore all of that, in order to fit some sort of arbitrary standard that a Yelp review wants you to.
Alicia: [Laughs.] Right.
And I mean, in a related way, you've always on Twitter—I've always loved your commentary on the fact that you grew up thinking of soy milk and cow's milk as separate products, and not one being an alternative for the other. Because so often, there's this really ahistorical narrative around these ‘alternatives.’ It drives me mad, which I think everyone knows.
But I wanted to ask how, if you've seen, kind of food media at large, understand what the nuances are of growing up eating a non-Western cuisine. Because I think, like, we're just talking about, I think that even when food media wants to escape its Western gaze, it continues to be a bit less inclusive than it thinks it's being, if that makes sense.
Karon: Yeah, for sure.
I think it's starting to get a little bit better, as more food writers who didn't grow up in a Western household are coming up and saying, like, ‘Oh, no. This isn't weird or new. This is how I've been doing it.’ And it's starting to get there.
But I think in order for more sweeping or permanent changes, I think it's—you have to look at the people at the top. The people at, who are the editors, the publishers, the people who are making those ultimate editorial decisions and choosing who to hire, what to commission, how things are edited, how things are displayed, how things are shot and styled.
[Laughs.] And I say styled, because one thing that always irks me is that more often than not, when I see a bowl of noodles with chopsticks, the chopsticks are always crossed. Or they're stabbing into the bowl of noodles, which is a big no-no in Chinese culture. It's rude or a bad luck thing. That always gets me. Or when you see a pair of model hands, and they're not holding the chopsticks correctly. I'm like, ‘Oh, you're never going to get the noodles holding them like that.’
I think that really has to change. And I hope it's getting there. There's more writers who have more voices. At the end of the day, they're the ones who are at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. They're not the ones that have the voices who are able to make these calls at the end of the day to stop perpetuating stereotypes and misinformation about cuisines.
Alicia: Yeah, no.
And that's, I think, why I always come back to the idea of translation, too, where it's like, ‘Ok, if you're not going to change who's at the top. You claim, still, to want to actually change how things are perceived. Then maybe be more open to like a global—Especially in American food media. Because American food media claims to be the arbiter of taste, and yet it's so siloed and so provincial. It's so provincial. They would send someone to Toronto rather than interview you about Toronto, you know?
Karon: That has happened. That has happened just to me the past summer. You will see it in the New Year. If you're wondering why I'm not in there, just let you know. I was reached out to; I responded; I gave my list of suggestions. I said, ‘Get out of the proper Toronto, come to the ’burbs.’ And I never heard from them again.
Alicia: [Laughs.] Wow.
Well, [laughs] I also wanted to ask, because we've talked about before—I did a piece at the New Republic about how food people who do food as lifestyle should also be concerned about sourcing and sustainability.
And then we talked about shrimp for a different piece about how difficult it is to source well. So when you were doing recipe development, you weren't including shrimp, because you just didn't want to be suggesting people buy this cheap shrimp that has such terrible labor conditions and terrible environmental impacts.
But I wanted to ask now that you're not doing recipes, but you are still kind of an arbiter of taste online for food people, how do you bring balance to what you share online? Because people will see you as an authority.
Karon: Yeah, it's such a difficult thing to do.
I remember once I posted something where I used avocados, I just sliced some avocados on my toast.
Alicia: [Laughs.]
Karon: [Laughs.] Yeah, I'm a real arbiter. I made avocado toast. Revolutionary.
And I think I had someone in my comments like, ‘Oh, that looks really good, but I don't use avocados because it's X, Y and Z.’ I’m like, ‘Ok, yeah.’ So you kind of start going down a spiral, because you're like, ‘This is this. Is this that.’ It's so hard to think about without driving yourself nuts or bumming you out.
And I think you've written about this before, in terms of be as educated and make as informed decisions as you can. So I think being a food writer and knowing more about the environmental and labor consequences of purchasing decisions has really shifted the way how I cook at home, and where I eat as well.
So our house has—I can't remember the last time we bought beef, my gosh. I really can't remember the last time I even cooked with beef. So we stopped. We stopped buying beef. Maybe not so much environmental, it just got really expensive here. Pork, as well. We don't really cook with pork anymore. We go with chicken, which, I mean, I'm sure, Alicia, you can also argue that's also not good. We go through a lot of eggs as well.
People can’t see this. She's tilting her head a little bit, going like, ‘Mm-hmm. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Eggs are great. Yeah, eat more chicken. I'm not judging you at all.’ But I've eaten more seasonally now. Right now, I think the only fruit that I'm eating is apples. That’s what’s in season here in Ontario. And I'm just trying to be as mindful of my eating as possible. But at the same time, I'm not positioning myself as perfect.
What should I do. Alicia? What should I do? Help me.
Alicia: [Laughs.] I think you're doing great. I think you're doing great.
I mean, the funny thing is, and the reason I was making that face, is because everyone—people cut out beef completely. Basically, people are really good at cutting out beef completely from their diets, which is fantastic. But then yeah, of course people eat pork, especially when they go out. Pork is a big thing for when you go out to eat, I think, more than people are cooking it at home necessarily other than different occasions.
But chicken is the thing that people just, once they make a decision to try to eat meat sustainably, they just eat so much. I understand it's part of this—it's part of that transition to thinking about these things, is to just eat a lot more chicken. And I don't think that that's actually bad. I think it's part of that process of understanding the role of meat in your life.
I posted about my Montreal trip on Instagram today and in my newsletter. And I was like, ‘Oh, people are gonna tear me to shreds about all this Parmesan cheese.’ So, I'm at a level where it's like, I can't even have some Parmesan on a kale salad publicly without feeling like people are going to lose their minds at me.
Karon: It's a balance, because I think living in a city like Toronto that is so multicultural, there are cuisines where beef is so integral to so much of the history and the cuisines of it. And for me to be like, ‘No, that's wrong.’ That’s such a douchebag move, right? And who am I to say like, ‘No,’ all across the board?
Alicia: And there are places where beef is sustainable. I know that in Ethiopia, they traditionally eat a lot more beef than chicken. But it's beef that has been reared in a fashion that is actually good for the soil and good for the environment. And it doesn't have that impact the way we rear meat in the United States.
I did want to ask you, you're always eating such good food out and posting about it. And I'm always so jealous. But do you have a methodology for eating out?
Karon: So a lot of it is just Suresh and I, my co-collaborator, I guess, on our food section at the Star, we just text each other. ‘Hey, have you tried this?’ Or like, ‘Oh, I passed by this. Have you tried it before?’
And on weekends, it's—when I go on my exploring trips, and I'll just randomly pick a place, somewhere. And I'll just head there. And I'll do some preliminary research. Very scientific, I just go on Google Maps and type in restaurants. And I just see what's there.
The thing is, a lot of these places that I'm interested in don't have websites or social media presence, so I just have to go there and see. There is some use in Yelp reviews, because it does—I don't treat it as the Bible. But it kind of gives you an idea of what the selection is, what kind of cuisines that they serve and stuff like that.
So I just go there. And I get asked this question a lot, like, ‘How do you find these places? Or how do you determine where to go?’ And I just say. ‘You just go.’ It doesn't mean that it's always good. I don't post everything that I eat. I'm not wasting time posting something that I don't like, right? It messes up the vibe of my grid.
So, you just have to go out and eat. If you see a place that piques your interest, if it's this little storefront, if you see some activity going on or you see a really interesting bakery shelf, or you're seeing people come out with a bunch of takeout boxes, go in and just just ask. Because you never know. Just go in and be like, ‘Hey, this is my first time here. Is there anything you would recommend?’ And I've done that so many times before. And I'm always pleasantly surprised, because a lot of places don't have menus, because they don't need to, because they just spread by word of mouth. People already know what they need.
So you just have to almost kind of think like a reporter and just be very curious about your city, and just go anywhere and everywhere.
Alicia: Yeah, yeah.
Well, for you is cooking a political act?
Karon: Oh, yeah. For sure.
I mean, I think we've talked about considering the environmental and labor consequences of the ingredients that we work with, and sometimes how it sends us into a spiral of sorts. Whenever I talk to people who want to get into food writing, I always say, ‘Food, it's never just a recipe. It's never just 800 words about whether or not this restaurant is good.’ Food is just tied to everything. It can be a labor story. It can be an environmental story. It can be about culture and history, because so many cuisines are formed as a result of colonialism and people making these cuisines out of desperation because they couldn't find jobs elsewhere.
That's kind of how Chinese American cuisine turned out. It was out of desperation, because they needed jobs, or ingredients were sourced because they couldn't find it anywhere else, whether some ingredient was very scarce due to global warming so they had to find something else.
It’s also issues of power, of being, having—being able to have food, unfortunately, is a luxury for a lot of people around the world. And so, you're talking about issues of inequality. I'm going down another spiral right now. This is my writing process. You have to go down this giant path about—it's never just a recipe. It's never just about the food. There's so many different things, issues that overlap each other when it comes to food.
You look at a tomato. It's like, ‘Well, how has it grown? How are the people growing it and harvesting it being treated?’ Here in Canada, we have a lot of migrant workers who have been here for decades. It's very hard for them to get Canadian citizenship or to make enough money or to have worker rights, especially during a pandemic. Oh my god, the pandemic just added a whole other layer of mess to everything in our food system in issues of equality and its supply chains and how the global economy works. Oh, my goodness. It’s a lot.
But yes, to answer your question. It is political.
Alicia: Well, I want to always end on a more positive note. So now I'm asking: how do you define abundance?
Karon: Oh, I'm gonna bum you out again. Sorry.
My definition of abundance has really changed in the last two years because of the pandemic. And by that, I mean, whenever I go to the supermarket, it's always so nice to see endless aisles. And in the produce section, just oranges stacked into like a beautiful pyramid, even though—even if I'm not buying it. I'm just like, ‘Oh, it's so nice to see.’ Or if I go to a farmers’ market, and you see a stall that has maybe four or five cabbages as opposed to this big mountain. I'm like, ‘Oh, that's a little sad looking.’
But because of the pandemic, and the shortages that we had in March 2020. I think it really made me redefine what abundance is and that it's nice to have. I think that you have to walk that fine line between abundance—and that means being able to have options and not have to make concessions—and walking that fine line between that and excess.
I don't know when this is coming out, but it's Cyber Monday today. I’m getting bombarded with all these deals, and it's like, ‘Yeah, it's abundance. I get free shipping, and I have all these options. But do I really need it?’
And during the pandemic, I've—I went to a lot more smaller stores, because the supermarket is a nightmare sometimes. And the selection is smaller, but it's also making me appreciate the different items that I'm getting, because I'm not lost in this endless aisle in this endless sea of options. I'm more mindful of what I'm buying, ’cause I'm also buying less.
And a lot of these stores, they have a lot of products by local Torontonians that would never be able to scale up to sell at a big department store or a big supermarket. So it really makes me pause and look at these products more. And of course, they cost more. It's a treat, I don't consider it as a grocery item. But it really makes me rethink my shopping habits and my relationship around the word abundance. And now I'm kind of like, ‘Ok, maybe I don't need abundance. Maybe enough is a good enough baseline for me to be at.’
Alicia: Yeah, absolutely.
Karon: Does that bum you out? I’m sorry.
Alicia: No, it doesn't bum me out. I think that that's perfect. I think that we have to reframe abundance to mean enough, and to mean sharing and to mean—not just abundance for ourselves personally, but thinking of abundance as everyone has enough.
[Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.]
Karon: Thank you. Just summed it all up in one sentence.
Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. This has been super fun.
Karon: All right. Thank you, Alicia.
Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at aliciakennedy.news/. Or follow me on Instagram, Alicia D. Kennedy, on Twitter @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe
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A Conversation with Frances Moore Lappé
12 nov 2021· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
Frances Moore Lappé, with the 1971 publication of the first edition of Diet for a Small Planet, eventually changed mainstream conversation on food by popularizing the reality that hunger was a human-created problem—not an issue of food scarcity, but of distribution. Now, in the new edition for its 50th anniversary, there is updated information on hunger as well as urgent writing on the climate crisis. (I have a recipe in it, and we partnered to make this conversation public.)Here, we discuss what has influenced Lappé’s work over the last 50 years, how her thinking has shifted, and how we still need to reframe the significance of protein if we’re going to save the planet. Listen above, or read below.

Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé was released in 1971, making the statistic that 80 percent of farmland provides only 18 percent of calories through livestock a rallying cry for better, more equitable agriculture systems. This book gradually grew to sell over 3 million copies and irrevocably changed the way we talk about food, hunger, and culture. Fifty years later, there is a brand-new updated edition, out now, to meet the urgency of our current environmental moment. Visit dietforasmallplanet.org to learn more and get your copy.

Alicia: Hi, Frances. Thank you so much for being here today.

Frances: Thank you so much. I love it.

Alicia: [Laughs.] How are you? Where are you? You're in Cambridge, Massachusetts?

Frances: I'm in Belmont, which is just very close to Cambridge, where our office is. But I'm working at a cottage in my home now because of the COVID isolation.

Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Frances: [Laughs.] I grew up in Cowtown, literally called Cowtown as a nickname, Fort Worth, Texas. And the stockyards were never far from my smell distance.

That was the ’40s and ’50s. And we ate meat at the center of every meal. ‘What's for dinner, Mom.’ ‘Oh, pork chops, or meatloaf,’ it was, that was the center of the meal. And, I mean, we ate healthfully in the sense that my mom never got on to the processed foods. White bread was a really big deal when I was growing up. We had a big, white bread factory on the way to town. You could smell the smell. But my mom always served us whole wheat bread. When she made after school cookies, she always put in a lot of nuts and things that were good for us.

But generally, we ate the typical diet, but we—without the soda pop in the fridge, we never had that. But it was pretty standard.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, as the author of such a historically significant book on diet and the environment, I would think people are curious about how you eat and shop for food on a regular basis. So I wanted to ask what your weekly kind of eating and food shopping and acquiring look like.

Frances: Well, for years now during the summer—and we still are getting them—we are part of a community-supported agriculture. So we get this huge bag of veggies every week, too much for me and my partner to eat, so we share them with a neighbor. So that's a lot of our veggie, fresh veggie intake. We're very big on eating organic, and the only access is primarily Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, as we're trying to get Trader Joe's to carry more organic. But when we don't have our community-supported agriculture, we rely on those sources for fresh veggies.

My kitchen—if you could see it, it has this huge shelf of jars with all the various, the quinoa, the brown rice, the black beans, the chickpeas, all dried. And so, I have a lot of stuff. We could probably live for a few months on what we have on those shelves.

I'm a cook, but I kind of wing it. I really encourage people not to be intimidated by recipes, but just to be inspired and motivated by recipes and think of recipes as just a source of ideas. But not, you don't have to be a slave to them and to feel free to add more or less of your family's favorite herbs and substitute veggies.

It's funny that somebody with so many recipes in her book [Laughter] is not—I’m advocating, ‘Don't be a slave to them.’ I guess I've always hoped that our recipes would be inspiration and motivations, that ‘Oh, I didn't know you could do that with that.’

And I was just talking to somebody yesterday about one of our recipes from the very, very first edition called Roman Rice and Beans. And the concept was to take the basic Latin combo, but just try throwing Italian herbs in there instead of the more traditional cumin and that sort of thing that you associate with a beans and a rice.

So yeah, and just try new stuff. This is not the best thing I've ever made, but just instant—dinner the other night, I had a frozen roasted corn so it's corn, shelled corn but roasted so it has that smoky flavor. And I threw that in the blender with corn—I mean, excuse me—with carrots that we'd gotten from the CSA. And I didn't prepare either. I just washed them, washed the carrots and threw them in the blender with a—and then I added some veggie, veggie, what’s the word?

Person 3: Bouillon.

Frances: Bouillon. Thank you.

I added some veggie bouillon and some liquid, and it made it into delicious soup. I was really pleased ’cause it was—I was using what I had on hand, and it was so fast and it was so healthy.

So that's the spirit of Diet for a Small Planet, really, to free us and to—because when I first moved into the plant-centered eating world, people thought, ‘Oh, you're sacrificing? Oh, how do you make that big sacrifice?’ And I said, ‘Oh, no.’ It was discovery.

Because I was the classic female—maybe it's not true anymore. But in the ’50s, there was just this weight fixation. And I was always counting calories, even though I was never overweight statistically, but I felt I needed to always lose ten pounds. And I think a lot of women feel that way. And so, I was always counting calories in my head. I was a slave to obsession about counting calories. And I'd finish one meal, and ‘Oh, how many do I have left for the next meal?’ It was terrible.

But I just thought that's the way one lives until I started eating in the plant world more. And all of that just evaporated. And my body just wanted what was healthy for me. And I did lose those ten pounds over time, but I never counted calories from that time on. And I've never changed my weight in 50 years, pretty much.

I felt my body was just so much more in tune. And I didn't have any more cravings. I’d look forward to eating but it wasn't that, ‘Oh, I've got to have that’ kind of feeling. And so, it was freedom. It was just freedom for me. Maybe my metabolism is different from others. But all I can really share is my own experience, of course. And that was my experience, that it was a win, win, win, win, win. I felt so empowered, that I was aligning with the Earth, best for my body, best for the world in terms of abundance for everyone. And so, it never felt like a sacrifice.

Alicia: And do you use that phrase to describe your diet, ‘plant-centered’?

Frances: I do now. Because I think that's the most all-inclusive.

Well, I use that. And I use plant- and planet-centered. Because now, we know so much more about the implications of our very, very wasteful use of the land and destruction of rainforest to support the grain-fed, meat-centered diet. So, I wanted to emphasize plant-centered but planet. We're taking the whole planet into our consciousness. And I like that better than vegetarian, because it doesn't send a message.

Alicia: Right, right, right.

Well, there have been regularly released editions of Diet for a Small Planet in the last 50 years. So readers have been able to understand the changes in your perspective, changes in information that you've been sharing. But what are the most significant ways you, do you think that your thinking has changed from 1971 to 2021?

Frances: I mean, I think all of us have learned, or all of us who are attending to this piece of the puzzle, we have learned that how we use our land so greatly affects climate.

And we think about smokestacks, when we—typically, we have thought about smokestacks, about car emissions, when we think about the human creation of this climate catastrophe. But very, very important, very central is the role of food and farming. And it's estimated that our food system could contribute as much as 37% of greenhouse gas emissions, and livestock alone 14.5. And some say even higher. And they point out that if cows were a cow country, it would be contributing about a six, six greatest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. So it's right up there with the problem.

And therefore, the more we align with our bodies, which thrive so much better with a plant-centered diet, we then align with our goal of stopping this climate catastrophe. And we also prevent all sorts of harm to other species.

And I think the two things that I emphasize in the new edition, so much that I've learned is that one, is the climate factor. And the other is that natural historians tell us that we are at the brink of the sixth great extinction. Something like a million species now are threatened with extinction. And that we've lost something like 40% of insect species. So that's huge.

And it's something that I didn't appreciate, when I've—in earlier editions. And so, that's why I call it now this broader—it's not just a climate crisis. It’s an assault on nature that our food is implicated in. And is the real crisis. Because, of course, biodiversity, as I'm sure, is the basis of all life.

In the new edition of Diet for Small Planet, I use the phrase of my hero, Jane Goodall. And she talks about the tapestry of life, and how we have to both stop tearing it and mend it. And so, I use that metaphor and talk about the tears and the tapestry of life. And one of them certainly is this species decimation. And that is through so much of the use of harmful chemicals in agriculture.

Alicia: And also in the last 50 years, what are the books that have come out that have influenced your thinking more than anything? Or what are the most significant texts on environmentalism and the global food system? I see Eating Tomorrow on your shelf.

Frances: Ok, I had jotted down some titles, but maybe I can remember them.

Yeah, Eating Tomorrow by my ally and colleague, Tim Wise. And of course, my daughter's book. Diet for a Hot Planet; I think she was one of the early people to focus on the contribution of our food system to climate change. And Raj Patel's books, Stuffed and Starved. And course, Bill McKibben’s book back in the ’80s, The End of Nature. I can still remember where I was, the time when I first read that book.

So, those are some of the books that have really made a huge impact. I've been influenced also by the work of David Korten. Corporations Rule the World, The Great Turning. He's also a very integrated thinker. So those are some of the people who have been in, close to me a great deal.

Alicia: And one of the things, the common refrains that people say about changing personal—they don't want to change their personal behavior because they're, that's not as meaningful as regulating emissions by corporations and that sort of thing. And I have the 10th anniversary edition of Diet for a Small Planet. And I was on a podcast about cars, the War on Cars, talking about food stuff. But I quoted from your book about how—I should have written down exactly [Laughs]. But you wrote, oh, a change in diet is a way of saying simply, ‘I have a choice.’

And so, I always think of that. And that's what I talked about on the podcast, too, is that I like to get up every day and do and feel I have agency in the world. And that the foundation of my work in the world is my own personal actions. But it's becoming more and more of a common refrain to say that your personal choices don't mean anything, even as the climate crisis worsens. And so, I wanted to ask what your response is to that, to people who say that their personal changes and consumption changes are too small?

Frances: Well, it's just the false frame for me in a way, and I think for so many human beings, that the more that we don't feel like a victim. You said agency. That's it. The more that we feel that we do have power, the more likely it is that we're going to take the next step and the next step. And we'll be attuned, and we'll read what we need to know. And we'll talk to people about it and get people awake.

To me, it's an absolutely false, a false dichotomy. It's ‘Oh, yeah. I'm not a victim. I can make a difference. And every time that I align my life with the world I want, I am stronger. I'm more convincing to myself.’ And I think that makes us automatically more convincing to other people.

I mean, if we preach about climate change, and then they said, ‘Wait a minute, you're running your—’ Oh, you know what? I just heard about leaf blowers. They’re the worst thing ever. They almost were too noisy for this interview, but they turned them off across the street.

But the more that we can align with the world we want, absolutely, the more credible we become. And I think people sense that and they say, ‘Yeah, it's possible.’ I guess that's the thing. If we don't think that change is possible for ourselves and demonstrate that by changing our behavior, then how can we think the world can change?

Yeah, I just really hate that. So I'm all for all of the above. Our institute is very much a player in the democracy movement. And I encourage people that wish to say about President Gerald Ford, ‘You can chew gum and walk at the same time.’ You can be part of the food movement, and you can't be part of the democracy movement. It's not a trade-off, one can alert you to the other.

And ’cause I do believe that, yes, we have to change the laws and the—I like to call them enforceable standards rather than regulations. But regulation will do too. But we have to, as a society, set the rules so that we're encouraging more plant-based eating and we're getting rid of this very, very harmful diet.

Because I'm sure you know, it's not just for the sake of some distant children who have to grow up in a climate chaotic world. But I think everyone should know that processed meat, that is a fifth of all of our meat consumption, is a carcinogen as defined by the World Health Organization. And red meat in general is a probable carcinogen. So it's on every level of responsibility and health and alignment that I think our diet choices are so important.

Alicia: And in the popular imagination—I'm a little bit obsessed with this right now, because I just did a lot of research into lab meat and other types of meat, which—anyway. So ‘the future of food,’ this phrase, people only use it to refer really to technology-based kind of solutions to climate change. And so I wanted to ask, if you were to define or to reframe how people think of the future of food, how would you want people to think of it instead of being something about technology? What is your future of food?

Frances: My future of food is that we are much more integrated. I think of this curious foray into agriculture as a symbol of that or an example of it, that where our food comes from is much more local and personal in that way. And farmers’ markets are everywhere. We have one in our town. And in our office, we have one across the street on Fridays that I love. So one, that we're closer to it. And we're closer to our farmers, and they are honored in a way that they are not today.

And that we have the rules that insist that we're not using chemicals that can make farmworkers sick. I think the statistic is that half the world's farmers and farm workers are poisoned each year. I mean, no. That means that we're poisoned, too, as consumers. We do not need that. And that we are using our resources very efficiently so that we are—I'm not saying that no one should ever eat meat, of course. I mean, that's not the point. I honor vegans and others who take that stand.

But my vision is that, yes, that growing is much more integrated into our lives. Every school has a school garden, so little kids can actually grow food and then eat the food they've grown. So that, and then that we just obviously set the rules to protect our health because we have democracy that's really answering to us and not to the Monsantos of the world, not to the large corporation.

So I just see us much healthier than we are today, and much more just feeling good about ourselves because we—our bodies are more aligned. I mean, just on that point. 60 percent of the calories we now eat have no nutritional value. I mean, and just tragic, if you add all of those who are pre-diabetic to the actual diabetes, it comes to about 45 percent. Almost half of us are either pre-diabetic or diabetic. And that's so debilitating and so life threatening.

So I just see us much healthier, more integrated into our environments of food and food production, and much less obsessed about our bodies because they're working for us. And we become the shape, sort of, that our metabolism and our genes meant us to be. And there are a variety of shapes that are fine. There's no body shaming anymore.

So all of that is what I hope, which is reduced so much depression and ill health. And our medical bill would go way down because something enormous—I don't have an exact number, but billions and billions of dollars of our health expenditures are related to our diet.

Alicia: I wanted to ask also about the idea of lab meat as a solution to meat consumption issues and livestock-related greenhouse gas emissions. I wanted to ask what your perspective is on lab-grown meat, which has a ton of money behind it right now, both private venture capital and also now from the USDA.

Frances: It's such a diversion. Well, I don’t know what I can say about it. It’s such a diversion, because we're still—it's still highly processed, so we're not getting the kind of fiber we need. It's still filled with additives, all of which—we don't understand all of the implications of those.

And it keeps us fixated on one piece of the meal, when it keeps us from this attitude of, ‘I can be a creator in the kitchen, and I—it can be fun. And I can be experimental.’ It keeps us locked into a certain definition of what a meal is, still has to have meat at the center.

And it keeps us obsessed about protein, which we now know that Americans eat about twice the protein their bodies can even use. And I just want to underscore here that, I'm sure you know, we don't store protein, so that if we eat more than we need, it just becomes more calories that we use as if it were carbs or a fat.

So it doesn't really help. And it leaves power in the hands of the corporate sector, so it helps to concentrate control in our food system. Yeah, I guess, fiber additives. All of these questions come into play, and—but most importantly, it kind of keeps us obsessed with meat and protein.

Alicia: No, I agree. That is the—a huge aspect. And I think that's why people, the media has been latching on to it is because people are obsessed with protein. It is still people's first comment when they talk about, ‘Oh, maybe I'll stop eating meat. But I just worry so much about protein.’ And I personally never worried about having—I haven't eaten meat in ten years. There was a point where I was exercising a lot, and I did have to think about it. But for the most part, it's really not that, it's not that difficult.Your body tells you what you need when you're eating what you should be eating.

Yeah, it's such an obsession.

Frances: I hope we make clear in Diet for Small Planet, is virtually every food has some protein in it. Some has more than others. And we know in the plant world, where we really get the protein hit is in the legume world of peas, beans, lentils, and nuts. By the way, peanuts are a legume, I learned years ago. And they're packed with protein, but all nuts and seeds. I love seeds. So they have a lot of protein.

But yeah, those are the main sort of protein, high-powered protein in the plant world. But all veggies have some protein. You don't have to sweat it. And that's what the scientists are telling us: if we eat a healthy diet with a variety of foods, we're covered.

Alicia: And so, even though plant-based eating has kind of gotten more traction lately, it's still considered niche. And I wanted to ask what you think food media's role is in educating the public on issues around food and sustainability and basically all the things you've written about in Diet for a Small Planet, which remain kind of under covered, I would say, in food media, where you're giving res—you're talking to the people who are cooking and shopping for food, but you're not really giving them the tools to understand the implications of what they're eating and what they're cooking.

And so, I wanted to ask, do you think food media has done any sort of job, good or bad, on communicating about climate change and sustainability?

Frances: I don't think I’m an expert on it. Just so much of my focus of my life has been, is certainly in recent years, on the democracy movement.

But I think, certainly, food media can—with every recipe we put out, I think about the New York Times that I read, whenever it's putting forward anything about food to remind people, if that would be easy to do, remind people that getting enough protein is not a problem in the plant world. And this dish that, this recipe, ‘by the way, without any major protein-focused addition to it, it's offering plenty of protein.’

So I think there could be more awareness for sure in debunking the myths that do make people hesitant and just underscoring always the benefits to our health. I mean, I think that's so important, the evidence that plant-based eating actually contributes to longevity. When I started out 50 years ago, the only control group we had, so to speak, was Seventh Day Adventists who were vegetarians. And they had longer lives typically. But now, we have much more evidence of how plant-based diets can contribute both to disease reduction and to longer lives.

Alicia: You said before that whereas earlier editions of Diet for a Small Planet were focused on hunger, now, it's—you're focused on climate change more. What do you think is the next pressing issue that we can talk about in the food system?

Frances: I would say it's not a shift, it's a both. It’s adding the climate focus, the climate, to all of our thinking about food. Tragically, hunger is still very, very much with us. One in three people in the world still does not have access to an adequate diet. The most heartbreaking statistic on hunger is that one out of every four young children suffer stunting, which is a devastating condition that has—it's not just being short. It has lifelong impact on functioning.

But then, making clear that has nothing to do with the actual food supply, because we have about a quarter more food per capita than we did back when I wrote Diet for Small Planet. So, hunger is still very much a human-made tragedy. And in addition to that, the climate crisis is very much worsened by this grain-fed, meat-centered diet, which is a product of economic and political systems that don't reflect the majority view. So, it's all connected.

And that's what's so beautiful about an ecological worldview, is that we can see those connections. In the new book, I quote my dear friend, now deceased, but German physicist Hans—Peter Dürr said to me, ‘Frankie, in biological systems, there are no parts. Only participants.’ And that's throughout all of our social and biological. We're all participants, and everything we do and don't do is shaping the larger tapestry of life.

Alicia: Absolutely.

Well, I wanted to ask to finish, how do you define abundance for yourself, for the world? [Laughs.]

Frances: Well, I think—I never have been asked that question. I can feel my body, and by my body, it's just my shoulders, relax.

Abundance just means that I don't have to worry. I don't have to worry about feeding myself, my partner. If I had kids, I’d just not have to worry that I will have what I need to live a fulfilling life and to be a good parent. I mean, that to me is abundant. It's not about having two or three homes, or a million dollars in savings. It is about knowing that I'm okay. I can really get up in the morning and do something purposeful and be responsible and know that there's, there is enough for me to live healthy and take care of my loved ones. That is abundance.

And there's more than enough in this beautiful, beautiful earth of ours to allow everyone of us to live that way. More than. And that is so tragic, that anxiety and fear is so ingrained. And I think very much that it's that anxiety and fear produced by this concentrated wealth that infects the political system. That's what leads to the finger pointing and the blaming, because we're told to blame ourselves for our struggle, rather than the rules that are created by our broken and corrupted democracy.

It's a spiral, then. If we blame ourselves and feel shame, then we want to find somebody else to blame, and—rather than looking at the underlying rules and norms that have been created that so limit us. So I think the shift of understanding to an ecological worldview is totally key, and letting go of the finger pointing.

Alicia: Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time today.

Frances: Oh, my great pleasure. What fun. Thank you.

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A Conversation with Bryan Ford
5 nov 2021· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
Listen now | Talking to the 'New World Sourdough' author about going from blogging to cookbook, TV, and podcast projects.

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A Conversation with Melissa Clark
29 okt 2021· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
Listen now | Talking to the New York Times staff writer and prolific cookbook author about creativity, learning from chefs, and how to test a recipe so it becomes classic.

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A Conversation with Paola Velez
22 okt 2021· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
Listen now | Talking to the star pastry chef about narratives of success, ingredient accessibility, and creativity.

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A Conversation with Nigella Lawson
15 okt 2021· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
Listen now | Talking to the cookbook author and TV show host about her upbringing, creativity, and being generous on social media.

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A Conversation with Rachel Signer
8 okt 2021· From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast
I met Rachel Signer years ago while we were both freelancers living in Brooklyn. We were at a press dinner for a restaurant called Gristmill, which I just checked on: It’s now sadly closed. We’ve kept up with each other’s careers ever since on social media, and I’m so thrilled to see her memoir—ˆYou Had Me at Pét-Nat, a beautiful and enthralling work that enacts Signer’s restlessness and eventual homecoming—in the world and discuss her life in Australia, where she’s making wine, raising her daughter on a farm, and continuing to show the world the significance of natural wine.
We discuss how she defines natural wine, leaving New York City, how she maintains such vivid memories to write from, and more. Listen above, or read below.
Alicia: Hi, Rachel. Thank you so much for being here.
Rachel: Hey, Alicia. Yeah, thanks. Happy to be here.
Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Rachel: Yeah, I love this question.
I grew up in Arlington, Virginia. And a typical weekday dinner was a dish called salmon patties. And the salmon came in a can. And I think it was probably lightly floured and seasoned, and shaped and then kind of fried in a pan and served alongside peas or broccoli. And I loved it. I definitely really liked that dinner. And I imagine for my parents it was good, because it probably took like 12 minutes to make. And my mother grew vegetables. And I remember in the summer there being a lot of corn, corn on the cob. I remember there being tomatoes, and all of those summer veggies.
And also very important—sorry, I have a cold. Very important meals were around Jewish holidays. So we would have a beef brisket, which I'm pretty sure would have been a Passover dish. Because you don't eat flour around that week, so you tend to have a roast meat. My mom would braise it with Heineken. It had to be Heineken. And she would sip half a can as she cooked. And then kugel, which is an egg noodle pudding. That happens around the New Year.
I also was a vegetarian from ages 12 to 20, which was, honestly, sort of a random decision. I only started reading all of the kind of literature, like Diet for a [Small] Planet, after I'd made the decision. So I don't quite know where it came from. I was not a very model vegetarian. I subsisted on granola bars, bagels with cream, and quesadillas for a long time. That’s what I ate.
Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah. I love that.
And then you came to natural wine eventually. And I'm going to jump a lot. And I'm sure we'll work our way backwards. But I wanted to ask, how do you define natural wine? Because I think it's important to have how you think of it first before we talk about your life, your book, because it is such a huge part of everything, and—including the memoir.
Rachel: Yeah, I'd love to get into it.
There's never enough that can be said about what it is because it’s still not a legally defined term. However, that is slowly changing. France has introduced a category called vin méthode nature, in which they—I think they visit the winery, and they analyze the wines to make sure they meet the definition. And we might see more of that in the future.
But yeah, it needs to be from an organically farmed vineyard. And I'll put that first and foremost, ’cause nothing else matters if the grapes are coming from poisoned farming. So no, herbicides, fungicides. And those are really the main things. Pesticides as well. So organic farmers will use copper and sulfur and lots of plant-based treatments to manage grape vines. And grape vines do need a lot of spraying and a lot of management.
Then we're talking about wine made with very minimal intervention. And a lot of wine drinkers will be surprised to know that stuff is added to wine, because since it's not considered a food, it's not required to list any of those additives on the label. So if you walk into a winemaking store, there's a whole section of stuff that makes your wine taste a certain way.
Before that, there's packaged yeast. And there's nothing evil about adding packaged yeast. It's an altered way to make a wine. And once you start with an altered way, you've interrupted the natural process, and you're going to need to keep adding stuff. So no yeast, no flavorints, no added wood chips, no mega purple. No fining and filtration. So, you're just getting the grapes.
Quite a lot of people we consider natural winemakers do add small amounts of CO2, sulfur dioxide, commonly known as sulfites, or sulfur, a very hotly debated word and topic. And personally I would say when you're getting past 30 parts per million sulfites added, we're not really—I'm not sure it's a winemaker who really cares about being natural. However, I still celebrate biodynamic farming, so if they're adding 60 parts per million sulfites, I'm not so mad.
I'll just add, Alicia, that, especially in the past couple of years, I've really come to think about the idea of being anti-capitalistic as something part of making natural wine, to an extent.
Alicia: Well, can you talk more about that?
Rachel: Yeah. And I think it's definitely in theory, because I don't know when there will ever be something that measures if you're anti-capitalistic. But natural wine is definitely a culture based around personalities and relationships, and kind of passing on what it was like when you visited this winemaker.
Yeah, I mean, if a wine is made as part of a big corporate thing and LVMH is the owner of that winery, I'm not interested. Even if they farmed organically, I'm just not because where's the spirit? I want something where the winemaker touched the bottles and touched the wine.
And even very small, natural winemakers do have someone full-time helping in the cellar. So I'm not under the illusion that there's one person doing everything-everything. That's not the case for us, either, where we make wine. But yeah, I want it to be a small operation because that is more caring for individuals.
And there was a case last year, a winemaker in Puglia that was in the news a lot really showed us what can happen. I mean, that's a massive operation. From the beginning, everyone—a lot of people suspected something was not right, which turned out to be true.
And I think all of that is very tricky. You really have to ask someone selling you the wine for as much information as possible. How are you going to know all that stuff? It’s hard.
Alicia: Yeah.
No. And I love that because I think that we have to talk about, in food and beverage, when someone is scaling up and is readily available, it's always a red flag. It's always a red flag for something to be always abundant, always available in every store. We know that the alcohol we see in every single bodega is not going to be necessarily the best made, the most caring for the environment, the most caring for the labor that went into it.
And that's what I love—I love that about natural wine is that it's so specific, and it's so maker-driven, and it's so place-driven. I got that too from your memoir, which is called You Had Me at Pet-Nat, which follows you from being a waitress and journalist in Brooklyn to a writer and now a winemaker in South Australia. How has delving into this world affected you as a writer and how has being a winemaker affected you as a writer? How has this influenced you and your work?
Rachel: It has helped me so much in understanding the year-long cycle of winemaking. I mean, as a journalist living in a city, you're—generally, you're invited by some kind of regional association. They buy your flight. And you have the privilege of spending seven days in a region seeing a very selected group of winemakers, and you just don't get the full story.
And I've really benefited from doing it myself and seeing other people throughout the year and what they struggle with and the challenges that they face and the choices they make and their attitudes and what—you see it as this delicious wine and this blend, whatever. And from their point of view, that wine started out as a disaster because kangaroos attacked that patch. The grapes were so hard to pick. And then they decided this. They decided that, and then finally got blended with this because they didn't know what to do. And then suddenly, it was good.
And that backstory is really important in terms of what questions I ask people and how I choose to write about them. I think I write about winemaking less and less, and I write more and more about lifestyle and the choices people make, which influence, ultimately, their wines. So it's helped me immensely. It's a really good thing to be, to have your—even if you just had one hand involved in a project, I think it would really help writers definitely.
Alicia: Right, for sure.
The memoir is—in its detail about the wines you've drank over the years—is just stunning that there's so much detail. I was like, ‘Have you kept tasting notes and diaries over this time?’ And how did you re-create those memories in such a specific and vivid way?
Rachel: Yeah, I'm looking at this spot on my desk right now. Because when I moved to Australia, that spot was stacked high with notebooks going back to 2014, when I first went to Burgundy. So almost seven years of journals. And I refused to throw them out, because I was—even then I was like, ‘Maybe I'll use this for something.’ And eventually, I was like, ‘I'm gonna write a book.’
Yeah, I've kept pretty intense notes about all the wines and all the winemakers, and to some extent, personal notes as well in a separate journal. I really recommend that. Have one journal for your personal stuff, and then one for your professional. And I filled in some things with emails, going back to emails with friends and family, like, ‘When did we go here? And when did we go there?’ Photos on my iPhone to re-create things. Yeah, ’cause that's really important.
And in terms of the chapter at Domaine Mosse, where I worked hardest, I basically just spent every night writing in my journal there for like 45 minutes. And I think because it was such a vivid experience also, scenes from that—I mean, I remember those two weeks more vividly than I remember half of my childhood. It's just so vital to me right now.
Alicia: I've lost a lot of journals. I have all of my teenage and childhood journals in the garage at my—the house where I grew up. But I lost a journal from a very important time. And I am still really upset about it. I'm so concerned. It was very thorough notes that I'm like, ‘How am I going to ever re-create this?’ I guess I just won’t. The writing of things does make it more concrete in your mind, anyway. You really do inscribe it on your mind, which is something.
But I was so impressed and actually inspired by those tasting notes. Because I always have this idea that I'm going to be that person who takes extensive notes on things, and then I'm like, ‘I am just not.’ I have pictures of everything I've eaten and drank for the last six years, though, on my phone. So, that's useful. I pay Apple a lot of money for the storage.
But another thing I loved about your memoir is that you don't shy away from describing hangovers, but they're very neutral. You don't talk about being hungover in, like, a self-loathing or self-critical way. It's kind of just like, ‘This is an effect of living this life, doing this job, drinking these wines.’ And I've read, I'm sure you've read people talk about how you don't get hangovers from natural wine, which is funny.
And so, why was it important to you to just to document those effects and not shy away from those side effects of being in this world?
Rachel: Yeah, I think it was important for the personal aspect of my memoir. I mean, as you know, I'm kind of using natural wine in a way to document a personal transformation. I changed a lot in the past few years, and I went to some pretty dark places. And I think when you're in that place, alcohol, no matter what kind, can be a form of self-harm.
And to say that that doesn't exist in the natural wine world is just ridiculous. There's lots of overconsumption and partying. And I've had some amazing times drinking Magnums until 3 a.m.
But yeah, I think it can be a form of a lack of self-care and self-harm. And so, I think I documented that because that's where I was. And yeah, I thought that I was going to be living the dream. And I wanted it to look on social media like I was living the dream. But I was not.
And yeah, I guess a bit more broadly speaking, the idea that natural wine doesn't give you a hangover can have some relevance because I think if you drink a few glasses of natural wine compared to a few glasses of wine from a supermarket, you will probably notice that you feel better. And I've heard that from so, so, so, so, so many people. But when we're talking about someone that drinks natural wine on a regular basis, yeah, they're gonna go out on a Friday and drink a whole bunch of wine. And they're gonna have a hangover the next day. It’s the alcohol that does that.
Alicia: Yeah.
No, it's funny because we've only really—natural wine has only just arrived in Puerto Rico. And so, we've been going a little overboard for sure. So it was funny to read. It's not funny—yeah, as you say, it is a dark description of the time. But at the same time, it's like, ‘Oh.’ It was actually, for me, reassuring in that I was like, ‘Oh, right. Even though I've been told in this wellness way that natural wine isn't supposed to have the same effects, it's like, ‘No, actually, overindulgence of all kinds has the same effect.’’
And you have a real love for Paris that's so well-documented in the book. You're now in Australia. I also left New York in the last couple of years. How has being outside of the U.S. and specifically New York City affected your work, do you think? Not just as being a winemaker, but just that perspective of being outside of a place that—I think once you get out of New York, you realize that it's very parochial and a bit shut off from reality in the world. I don't know if you feel that way. How have things changed for you since you left New York?
Rachel: Yeah, I just think broadening your perspective and living abroad is so important. I don't know if all Americans realize how myopic the viewpoint from within the States can be. I am sure that quite a lot of people do realize that.
But it's been really good to actually just be able to see the world from a broader standpoint. I mean, Australia is such a bizarre kind of place in the world. For us, Japan is more of a neighbor. We have different benchmarks and different relationships with the world here. Southeast Asia is very close. So, it's been really interesting.
I think I just needed to leave New York. And I mean, I've seen a lot of people move upstate as well. New York is so hard if you're not from money. How long can you go on accumulating credit card debt and living in sub-optimal situations and not being able to fully—and I did offer myself some things. I went to the bath houses in the East Village once a month during winter. I used to go to a Chinese body worker on the Lower East Side. I tried, I tried. But it's really hard when you're not making the big bucks.
But I gained so much. Being there and taking fiction writing workshops and journalism workshops and meeting people going to literary magazine events, I took that all with me. And it's just here. It's just with me. And now I get to enjoy other perspectives, people that have grown up in other places and learn about their lives. I feel pretty good about the decision.
The pandemic has been incredibly hard. I haven't been to the States in 2018, haven't seen my family or my friends. I didn't mean to have such a clean break. I wasn’t trying to abandon ship. And we've been back to New York. It was like four days. Went to The Four Horsemen, went to Roberta's, saw a handful of people. And that was it. That's not how I imagined it. So it has been really hard in some ways, too.
Alicia: Yeah.
No, like we were saying before we started recording, that it's interesting that you have to leave New York especially when maybe your life up till moving there was—well, I grew up on Long Island, so it's a different—but is guided toward this, and you think that it's an achievement in and of itself to be there. And you have to make the most of it, and if you're not happy then that's a personal failing of some kind when it's really the city making it so unlivable for people who aren't doing six figures, and now probably honestly like more than that. [Laughs.] High six figures.
And it is interesting to, for me personally, too, to have the success that I wanted. But I had to leave New York for that. But I didn't even know that I had to do that. It just was reality. The universe pushed me out, and then that was when anything good actually started to happen for me.
But it's wild that that is the reality, because I do love New York. I wish it worked. [Laughs.]
Rachel: Oh, I know. Exactly.
Alicia: [Laughs.]
But similarly, you write a lot in the book about the pains of being a freelancer, which I obviously know well, and that mainstream media wasn't interested in work about natural wines. I wanted to ask, how has that changed in recent years? Is self-publishing still the best route for good writing on natural wine?
Rachel: Hmm. Probably still.
I mean, there's, there's The Wine Zine based in New York, which is this really cool publication. To be honest, I've never gotten my hands on a copy. But I think it's widely available in the States. Punch Drink, Punch magazine has been doing a little bit of coverage on natural wine over the years. And that's a nice viewpoint. And I have seen some increased interest in mainstream and in smaller publications. It does seem to kind of reiterate some of the same topics.
I mean, the thing that Pipette has always done is that—which no mainstream publication will ever do—is just profiles of natural winemakers. And these are people who are important if you definitely love and care about natural wine. And so a mainstream publication would not assume that about their audiences, whereas I can assume that about my readership.
I don't know. I guess for me what's been more interesting is just seeing in the past year and a half the well and true diversification of voices and topics, finally. It’s great. It's really, really great. I'm like, ‘Wow, so many more interesting articles are coming out, interesting people kind of being elevated.’ And I'd love to just see more of that.
And, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what will be filling kind of the space now that Pipette is going to stop publishing regularly. But I'd love to say something else come up.
Alicia: Yeah.
Why did you make that decision to stop publishing right now?
Rachel: The amount of admin and kind of computer work involved has just become hard with being a mother.
And I'm looking out the window at the farm. ’Cause we planted vineyards in the past two years. We have 6,000 baby vines, and we work them basically by hand. And I make wine. I would like to maybe slightly, possibly slightly increase. I mean, I make less than 3,000 bottles. It's all done by hand.
And, yeah, I'd like for our daughter to be more a part of our lives on the farm. Yeah, I don't think I can justify the time spent in front of the computer, especially now that it's slightly less fun, ’cause I can't fly to Paris and go around Europe for two months visiting winemakers, which was kind of the original idea for the mag.
It just feels right. I mean, 10 issues was great, that accomplishment. And I've loved working with all the people involved. Just because something seems like a success doesn't mean you have to keep going. I might do an encore edition one day. I'm very interested in doing a podcast. I love having conversations like this. It’s much more rewarding, actually.
Alicia: Yeah, then doing admin work. [Laughs.]
I think that's why I decided to do—I needed to figure out something for paid subscribers. And I was like, ‘Well, I can just talk to people. That seems sweet.’ [Laughs.] And it's not as hard as you think it is to do a podcast at all.
And I think that would actually be really great. I know there are wine podca—That's a niche that you still are one of the few people that could fill. But yeah, it's funny. Pipette was being sold here in San Juan. I don't know if you know that. There's a cafe that was selling the magazine.
Rachel: Yeah, yeah. Café—Is it Cafe Regina?
Alicia: Café Regina. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was like, ‘That's so funny.’ Just something that ended up in this tiny city, which is so cool.
But I wanted to ask what are the biggest misconceptions you see about natural wine that are still talking points, because I—even as a casual reader of this kind of stuff, I'm like, I feel there's still like a lot of narratives that are wrong. [Laughs.] I don't know.
Rachel: Ok.
I hear the idea that you can't find it anywhere, or it's too niche. And like, ‘Oh, but it's not in just regular restaurants, right?’ It's this niche thing. I think we can partly blame this mentality of if you know, you know. And we're all guilty of that to some extent in the natural wine world, because there are some bottles where it's if you know, you know. ‘A guy makes 300 bottles of this in a tiny shed in the mountains of the Rhone Valley. And it's amazing. And you wouldn't like it anyway.’ And the attitude just comes up a lot.
But I have seen so many companies really just do the opposite in recent years, and really push to educate and share and actually distribute natural wine to places where it did not exist. So one example is a company called MYSA, M-Y-S-A. And they're in the U.S. just distributing amazing natural wine, and they do lots of education on their Instagram posts.
And yeah, the proliferation of small businesses selling Pipette in small towns around the world has really shown me that it is everywhere. And it is a force.
Yeah, I'm curious if you had any other misconceptions in mind.
Alicia: No, no, no. I'm probably thinking of maybe past thing.
I think maybe that's actually exactly the misconception that has prevailed, which is that it's just people in Brooklyn guzzling orange wine. And it's not a thing anywhere else. It's not something that's interesting to the regular person. It's not something that's interesting to older people, that it is—just occupies a very niche space, that a lot of it is bad or flawed, and that sort of thing.
I liked in your memoir, you talk about enjoying things that might seem off or wrong to other people, just finding the beauty in any piece of it. I think that if we change—it's the problem of the narratives of food and drink, generally, I think, is to think that there is a right—Something is correct, or there is one correct thing. And anything that deviates from that is incorrect or something.
Rachel: Well, it's a big problem with vegetables and produce. That's a really big problem. But with wine, yeah, you reminded me that there's the misconception that it will go bad and spoil and rot because it doesn't have preservatives. Sulfur dioxide is a preservative.
And I'll just touch briefly upon that. It's not true. You do find volatile acidity, which is sort of a vinegar sort of flavor in some wines, but that happens from fermentation. That happens from day one. And it does not mean that the wine has gone bad. It's not spoile. And natural wine ages phenomenally. It just needs to be in a refrigerated condition, like 55 degrees Celsius. Sorry, we can work out later what that is in Fahrenheit. So, I've had natural wines that are like 10 years old. Basically, no sulfites added. Stunning, pristine.
And so, yeah, I do talk a lot about flaws and where they come from in winemaking from my experience making wine in the book. I'm always happy to talk kind of more about that, because it's a very complicated topic.
But my takeaway is if you want to support people that make wine organically in this very beautiful, artisanal way without chemicals, then you might occasionally get a wine that tastes a little wild, because it has a little bit of volatile acidity. But we don't want chemicals on our prop—chemicals on our farm. Our daughter can walk around the winery and play with stuff. And I don't have to worry she's gonna put her hand into some chemicals. We don't have them at all.
Alicia: [Laughs.] And for you, how do you define abundance?
Rachel: Ok, I love this question.
Abundance is such an interesting word, and—because I think it hits upon a problem of being human, which is this persistent idea that we lack something. It's a very, very fundamental part of being human.
We grow food. We make wine. If the climate crisis ended capitalism as we know it tomorrow, we'd probably be able to sort of be self-sufficient with all the things people around us that make other things. And at the same time, I would absolutely miss—I would miss so much. And I do right now.
A lot of the book is about a friendship with someone who is in Paris who I haven't seen in years. I feel abundance is having that person who can come over and just make ravioli with you on a Tuesday afternoon, and drink wine and go to the market and eat oysters on a Thursday morning. That is abundance, having that person in your life. So, I think it's always a bit, very human of us, that no matter how much we have, we can feel a lack. And I think accepting that is something important to work on for me.
Alicia: For sure. Yeah.
The pandemic has been hard in Australia. How has it been for you?
Rachel: It's surreal, not being allowed to leave. I don't know if people outside Australia fully understand that we are not able to leave. You have to get permission to leave and they're denying it to most people. And then if you do leave, it's almost impossible to get back. Very, very, very hard to get back. Very expensive, two weeks of hotel quarantine.
Australia provides Medicare. It provides a high minimum wage. Certain things are provided. And so like, there's this kind of relationship with the state where when they tell people what to do, it's kind of expect—it's a totally different concept of what the state is. And I guess the American in me just hates it.
But at the same time, would we have gone abroad with a one year old baby who’s, that’s vulnerable? Or would we go abroad, now that she's not vaccinated but we are? Yeah, I mean, we probably would given data around kids, which I've listened to on every podcast available and read about in every scientific paper available.
The pandemic has been hard everywhere, but I've never felt so isolated. As a new mother in a country I've only lived in for a few years, which is literally an island at the end of the world. I've never felt so isolated.
It's hard not to be able to go to the States for my book release. It sucks. I'm hoping that I'll get feedback from people that will be sort of, lift my mood a little bit, that people would be kind of sharing their experiences of reading the book and reaching out. I would love that. I read basically all messages in some form. So I'd be thrilled.
Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, what do you have planned for the launch, at least virtually?
Rachel: At this point, I'm still researching that. Your podcast will be part of that. I'll probably do some kind of online tasting. So yeah, I will be sure to share any update on that on my Instagram, which is @rachsig.
And I also have a newsletter. It's just like a monthly-ish thing. And you can sign up. There's a link in my Instagram profile. I recommend natural wine and books. I read a lot. I read literary fiction and non-fiction. So for people who care about things other than wine and food, I'm your person. I don't know. Yeah, I talk about what I'm reading or stuff that I'm listening to. Sometimes I talk about music. It's a bit of everything. Yeah, I talk about the magazine, obviously, of course, too.
Alicia: [Laughs.] Wonderful.
Well, thank you so much for taking this time so early in the day. [Laughs.]
Rachel: Yeah, it was great to talk with you. Yeah. Awesome to connect. Thanks so much.

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