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.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

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 would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

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 would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

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 would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

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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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.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com