From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

I have been a big fan of Claire Sprouse’s work since way before she opened Hunky Dory in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Through Tin Roof Drink Community, she’d been challenging the bar world to think sustainably and work differently. And by opening Hunky Dory—which used to be a place I went regularly after getting a manicure, to zone out at the bar and think—she has put the ideas into practice. We spoke late in 2020 about how she got into the hospitality industry, how the restaurant has been weathering the pandemic (it’s currently closed for the winter), and how she researches sustainability. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Claire, thank you so much for taking the time out to chat.

Claire: Hi, thanks for having me. I'm a huge fan of your work, and so this is very exciting for me to be on your show.

Alicia: Thank you so much. I'm a big fan of yours as well. So can you tell me about where you grew up in what you ate?

Claire: I grew up in Texas. My mother is Filipino. She was also a nurse and worked a lot. So, to be honest, she would cook Filipino food every once in a while, but we ate a lot of fast food. And Ragu bottled spaghetti sauce and things like that. But aside from all of that, we always had mango and rice on the table. That's a very distinct memory, like every single meal, whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner, there was always mango and rice. And it didn't matter if it was Domino's Pizza or Chef Boyardee. There was always mango and rice on the table. As an adult, though, I spent a lot of time in Houston and got exposed to a lot of different foods and definitely expanded my food diet and vocabulary beyond the fast food chains as an adult.

Alicia: Well, what led you to working in the restaurant industry?

Claire: I got my degree in art history and anthropology, and I was doing some nonprofit museum work in Texas and Houston, which has an amazing art scene, and was making the rounds of unpaid internships. And I was like, Oh, I should probably make some money. So I actually started at a small restaurant, just because I knew a lot of the staff there from hanging out the same local bar, and started as a server and fell in love with cocktails, which has been my focus more or less since then, and worked as a barback and kind of made my way up into the bar manager role. All at that same restaurant.

Alicia: What has kept you in the industry, and what has led to you focusing so much on sustainability in bars and restaurants?

Claire: What has kept me in the industry, honestly, leading up to that first couple restaurant jobs, bar jobs, I did have a very tight professional community, like the art museum world is very competitive and kind of isolating, in a lot of ways, your work. And so I really liked this team mentality. We're all up against all the odds, together, and so I really, I really loved that kind of ethos. So just getting it done, and working together to make that happen. My first restaurant job was this kind of fancy barbecue place, and the woman that was the chef-owner there, she was really leading the way in kind of the farm-to-table movement in the early to mid 2000s in Houston, and then in a city that was so meat-centric, especially at that time, that definitely informed a lot of the ways that I initially thought about what restaurant food could be and what cocktails could be. And then kind of coinciding with that, I started doing a couple shifts at another restaurant. I think I was working at three different restaurants at the same time, because I was just really hungry to learn everything about the industry and get a lot of different experience. I started working at this nose-to-tail restaurant. There were some chefs that used to work at St. John's in London, and very much took that model and just transplanted it into Houston. And so I learned a lot about nose-to-tail cooking, in terms of meat, in terms of animals, and how a lot of that was rooted in cultural and historical necessity, so I was kind of seeing both sides of the spectrum: these heritage techniques that a lot of them came from the countryside in Europe, and then seeing it in a setting, going into fancy cocktails from garden to the glass.

I don't think I thought about either of those things in terms of, ‘Oh, I'm like starting my career in sustainability.’ But I was just like, ‘Oh, that's really smart. And that makes sense. And why isn't everybody doing this?’ 

I eventually moved to San Francisco and started digging deeper and more intentionally into sustainability. But when I was out in San Francisco, that started from a perspective focused on water, which kind of circled back to these initial experiences I had, and in the restaurant industry, and so it all kind of came full circle once I got to San Francisco.

Alicia: And how has sustainability colored your career since you started to focus and dig in intentionally into these issues?

Claire: Oh, my gosh, once you start thinking that way, you can't go back, and so it's the lens that I looked through everything. 

To be honest, when I first started doing it in California and speaking about it, and saying the word “sustainability” and cocktails and restaurants out loud, I was working on one particular project, and I was actually really nervous, I was like, ‘Oh, I don't know if this is something like a standard I want to be—it's something I want to hold myself to, but I don't know if I want to publicly be held accountable to it.’ Because it seemed really daunting. And a lot of the information out there isn't made for restaurant people, when you talk about carbon footprint; I read books about carbon footprint, it's like they're written by carbon footprint nerds and not people that are working 12-hour shifts and also trying to learn about wine and hospitality, and so it's very daunting at first, and then I realized that was kind of where I could fit in was, I do have a high capacity for that type of research, but also I’m not afraid to email the author of a book and be like, ‘What the hell are you talking about? Like, okay, but what about normal people?’So I found that my place that I could carve out for myself that felt also needed was distilling this information in a way that not only was approachable for restaurants, people who are juggling a million other things, but also finding the access points that were more accessible for all. I think a lot of people think of sustainability as expensive produce and solar panels and, you know, precious cocktails, and it's certainly precious, low-waste cocktails, and it certainly is all those things, but there's also all these other elements that go back to those food waste or farming perspectives that were what I thought were just smart when I first started bartending. There's also little things that help improve the bottom line of restaurants, like saving electricity and water and gas and also food waste. Those items, even though they're not as sexy and talked about, I found that they're really useful when we have set an industry that operates on such small, razor-thin margins.

Alicia: And when you opened your own space, Hunky Dory, how did you kind of bring that perspective into the building and and the model that you've been pursuing?

Claire: Well, a lot of the work that I've been doing, I thought of Hunky as the place where that could come to fruition in a way where I was making solely—I was the sole decision-maker, but also in a way where I thought it would be even, like more people could relate to it because up until this moment I was mostly doing a lot of consulting work. It's very different when you're playing with other people's money—and not even money, but time is always a luxury to devote to these goals. And so, I was like, ‘Oh, this will be great. I'm opening a restaurant with very little money in essentially a turn-key space,’ meaning, I bought an existing restaurant, and we have to make use with whatever equipment that had been here the last few years, and the bones of it, we didn't plan on changing, and also, I was doing everything by myself and can continue to do that. So, definitely cut out that time as a luxury perspective, but I was excited, because I thought I was like, ‘Okay, this is a chance to really do things on my own terms, but also make it relatable, and continue to share the things that I've been preaching about so much.’ 

We've been open for a year and a half-ish; we celebrated our one-year anniversary in February, right before shutdown. I think that we have accomplished a lot, but there's still a long way to go. And I think that's okay, even for somebody that has such lofty goals within sustainability. We're just trying to chip away at all the angles, so carbon footprint, water, food waste, so on and so on.

Alicia: And how have you been running the restaurant since the pandemic began? You know, what have you changed? What have you—how has that been, basically?

Claire: Everything's changed and right even just the easier decisions that we were a dine-in restaurant, we did some takeaway, so we didn't really have a lot of single-use material here; we were very picky about the materials that we did choose for to-go cups and things like that. And prior to this, we had reusable straws, bamboo straws, and now everything is a single-use, because we're relying more on takeout. 

But also, when we reopened with our staff, we didn't feel, I think, as a team, didn't feel comfortable handling guests’ plates and cups after they were done eating with them. We weren't really in a position to hire back all of our staff, so we had to do away with the porter position. And so everything is single use. Like if you have a sandwich outside, you throw away the paper; every cup is single use. It's made from recycled plastic. And then we're also doing a ton of packaged, bottled cocktails, and that's all in plastic. Before I'd say, it's all a give and take, because some of these things that are elements of being sustainable are at odds with each other. Like, you might always tell everybody that like you should figure out what is pertinent, urgent for your geographical area. So maybe when I was in California, I focused a lot more on water and agriculture. And then in New York, it felt very necessary to think more about trash, even though water is still an issue here. And I think a lot about carbon footprint, and because we're on the forefront of that, as an industry or the trendsetters here, but sometimes those elements are at odds with each other. And in that now, that's even more amplified like that. Your value of, you know, not using plastic is more a priority over your staff safety. It's not right and right. And so you know, there's a lot of sacrifices that we have to do, and then there were other things like our composting partner had to take a really long pause because of the city being tapped out in terms of people and resources to keep composting going. They're finally getting back online. 

We're, for the most part, all the stuff that we've done, other than those big items, we inherently built into all of our systems. And so we still don't have a lot of food waste; we're still running a very water efficient program;I still walk around turning all the lights off for everybody, whenever they leave a room. We found funny little ways to think about it. Like, the lights on our new patio are all solar-powered. We try to still kind of create community around sustainability. We turned our dining room into a retail store, and so a lot of the things that we carry here kind of speak to that value. So we have reusable straws and bottles and paper-free toilet paper. I sell toilet paper now. Like all sorts of things, and we carry books that talk about sustainability, and not just in food, but our lives,, and there's a lot of books on food in general, and I think a lot of them speak to those points as well. We're definitely not carrying, like, Bobby Flay's cookbook; we have a lot of books that—even just now, I just did a big purchase of a lot of books that talk a lot about Native and Indigenous farming and stewardship of land, and that all ties into the sustainability that we really strive for, and try to promote.

Alicia: You've pivoted the restaurant so much in this time, into doing retail, to going outside, and that sort of thing. Have you felt supported by the government locally in these changes? And in these pivots? How do you see the restaurant industry, you know, kind of recovering from this? Like, is that possible?

Claire: I would say no, at any level. There's certainly been things I'm grateful for, like outdoor dining, an extension of that. But you know, a lot of it, I've been pretty involved with some of the restaurant owner groups here, and trying to watch the politics play out in real time is extremely frustrating. And knowing that, people are really struggling out there. Sometimes the decision gets me that like, because a staffer in Albany is like, ‘Oh, I love to-go cocktails, we should keep them.’ Like those really key decisions are kind of just being made without, a lot of times, without the input of the people that are most affected. 

I was talking to somebody recently, and I think a big part of the reason why the restaurant industry hasn't gotten support, in the way that we've needed is that we haven't really been organized in our existence. You know, in the modern restaurant industry's existence. Everybody's focused on their own thing and their own PR and you see these groups complaining about the hotel or the airline industry, or the cruise ship industry, getting bailouts and things like that, and it's because those groups are highly organized, and they've been advocating and lobbying in various ways over the years, and the restaurant industry has not historically done a great job at that. So we're kind of two steps behind where we should be, slowly playing catch-up, and I think that hopefully some good will come after the election and hopefully—well, unfortunately, it probably won't come on a federal level until spring, and that'll be very late for a lot of businesses.

Even with all these people kind of speaking out, too, I worry a lot about whose voices are being heard and who's kind of taking up space at these tables? Obviously, the restaurant advisory board to Trump was an example of how that really shouldn't look, you know, even the small restaurant advisory, they had a lot of people representing the big chains and it was ultimately I think all men and mostly white men, and I kind of see that playing out too on a local level. So I've been thinking a lot about ways that that should change, when you have a lot of conversations being had about small businesses, and the owners and workers of them, and are the people speaking on our behalf representative of the people that are most affected by what's going on? And the answer is no. And so that is kind of where I've been shifting a lot of my focus this time.

Alicia: What would a governmental response be that would be beneficial to independent restaurant workers? I know that that would have to be such such a broad, and, you know, reach into so many different  sectors of the specific industry, but what would be really helpful in your perspective?

Claire: I hesitate to speak on a federal level, just because it's, so much of the problems that I think workers and small business owners face are, they're just different from location to location, and that same Band-Aid won't fit for all.

But I think, you know, obviously, gosh, universal health care would be really great. And, you know, I think that just the acknowledgement and protection of undocumented workers, which are such a huge backbone of our industry is, you know, I have to say, I was super naive about that aspect of, of it all, until we shut down and I started getting everybody on unemployment and our staff and kind of understanding the ins and outs of it all, I was pretty shocked, because I ultimately paid, still pay, unemployment taxes on our undocumented workers, and so that's really hard to watch and see. 

I think that, you know, we're all kind of—it doesn't feel good to see a lot of people having to choose between how safe they feel, and going into work. And, you know, I would understand, like, we can't all be shut down forever. But we need to start thinking about what this means long term, instead of just kind of putting on little Band-Aids and pretending that it'll be over soon. 

You know, I think a lot of it has to come down to the fact that our, the restaurant industry, you know, again, we operate on such small margins, so as owners, it doesn't really give us a lot of space to be more accountable or provide more support for our staff. So where does that change? I think, you know, real estate reform, a certain amount of tax reform for the hospitality industry, is really necessary. And then right, there's an initiative and I'm not actually sure the status on it right now, but it's to expand SNAP benefits so that more restaurants can accept them. And I think that is a really key piece of legislation that benefits everybody ultimately, and, you know, getting more subsidies to farmers that are small farmers and farmers that are, you know, shifting toward more like regenerative organic farming so that those foods are more accessible. Are those are all big key pieces to me that I've been trying to do a lot more research on and seeing where we can as an industry be active in those conversations and not just thinking about the next big crisis or thinking about propane heaters, but how are we choosing to make sure that we'renot falling back into the same cycle where we were not an active participant in the conversation surrounding food and the people that make it happen. 

But it's so complicated, and it reminds me of when I started getting more into sustainability. I was like, ‘What is carbon footprint?’ And so I'm trying to make those same phone calls that I was making back then and trying to get anyone on the phone that'll explain to me where the pressure points are and who's doing what, and the frustrating thing is that it's political. I've never in my entire life hated a system more than politics. It's so gross. I don't know when this interview will air, but tomorrow's the big day, and we're actually closed for the week of the election, just because I didn't want to be open around it. I remember being at a bar in 2016, and how the wheels fell off very quickly, on all levels, and I was like, ‘Oh, let's just give the staff some time.’ And, you know, and we're getting some projects done here as well. 2020 is a hard one. My boyfriend last night was like, ‘Despite it all, you're having a great year, you got like this great press.’ So when I look back ons ome of these, like, ‘What was your best year?’ I don't want to say 2020. It's hard, tough. It's hard to lean into the silver lining in it. 

I think it's definitely a wake-up for a lot of people, so that, I think, is a point of optimism.

Alicia: Well, for you is running a restaurant a political act?

Claire: I never—I guess I never explicitly said that. But I guess I've always found that, you know, when you're purchasing something like food, or hiring people, like how could it not be? The decisions we make, to buy produce from certain farms and to spread awareness about composting and sustainability and the way that we choose to care for employees and our community is? Yeah, I mean, especially right now, it's more political than ever.

I think at the beginning of Black Lives Matter this year, and the height of the protests, I was trying to take time and ask myself, ‘Who is my community?’ “Community” is a word that is thrown around quite a bit. And I was just trying to be like doing some journaling and trying to reflect and be self-critical about myself and my business and all the things that I think I stand for, and thinking about what about who is my community, what does that mean to me, and who do I want to be in community with, and it's not just like standing in solidarity with certain values and people, but also using our this platform, my business, the power that we hold here to, to speak out about issues as well. And so I'd say that it has to be political, if it matters to you and it matters incredibly so much to me and definitely matters to the people I want in the neighborhood, that I want to be in community with. So yeah, I take that role as a route. Like as a huge positive privilege and something I really try to hold myself accountable to every day.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time, Claire.

Claire: Thank you, thank Thanks for having me. Um, I'm embarrassed to say I just woke up so... 

Alicia: No worries. This is wonderful.

Claire: Great, thank you. And thank you so much for all the work that you do as well. I learned so much from your perspective and, and then some of the books and the people that you point out to is like such a great rabbit hole to go down every time I get one of your newsletter. So I love it.

Alicia: Thank you. Thank you.

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Tamar Adler wasn’t in the best mood when we recorded this interview, and she apologized once we stopped recording. I didn’t think there was anything to be sorry for, but I appreciated learning that it was due to trying to get her town, Hudson, New York, to make their vaccine information available in languages other than English so that they would be accessible to people who needed it.

I think it helps to know that’s what was on her mind while listening or reading to this conversation about how impossible it can feel to make the world a better place through writing, when it is in doing that anything really happens, that anything really changes. But while Adler doesn’t think her best-selling book An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace did what she hoped it would do, it did change how I cook, and I am positive it had that effect on many others as well. It’s easy to consider her a bit precious, a bit twee—associate her closely with egg spoons. But she’s much more than that, and once she gets talking, you see how much bite and real care is there.

Here we discussed her many stops on the way to becoming a food writer, the demands of social media, how she picks her topics for Vogue, and why food media just kind of sucks. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Tamar. Thank you so much for taking the time out to chat.

Tamar: Hi, it's wonderful to talk to you. 

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

Tamar:I grew up in Westchester, New York, which is about an hour and a half south of where I live now. And because you were so generous in sending some of the questions that you wanted to ask me along beforehand, I thought about this one a lot. Because I realized that there are these like—there's a tendency to try to narrativize one's own life in a coherent way, and that every time I answer a question like this, I tell one version of the narrative, and that it's actually not super coherent. 

And like I was remembering that I ate chocolate Pop Tarts for breakfast, which I've never put into any story of what I ate because I also had this kind of unbelievable, gastronomical upbringing because my mom is an incredible cook. And it was—my mom was a developmental psychologist, but she worked in a really, really hard area. She worked at Albert Einstein in the Bronx, and specifically with foster children with developmental disabilities, and their foster parents. And it was just like, it was just hard, and grueling, and she had terrible stories. And she was really beaten down and she took refuge in the kitchen. And so she cooked incredible food. Like, I used to take smoked mozzarella and eggplant and pesto sandwiches on focaccia to school and just like, it was not, you know, it wasn't standard. She loved it. That was a big part of it, but I hated food. And she was a super young mother; she had me when she was 24, she got married at 19. The fact that I hated food meant that if ever I wasn't eating, she would like flip out and try to find a way to compensate for that. So it was like this funny mix of—my father was 11 years older than her and Middle Eastern. So we had this like, really amazing Mediterranean, homemade diet, where like, there was hummus every meal, and Israeli pickles and olives, and like, this sort of very, you know, like, rooted and real culinary existence. And then also, I was a picky skinny kid. And so I had, like, every kind of sugary cereal you could possibly want. I had, I mean, maybe not Lucky Charms, but only because they weren't kosher. But I had like, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And chocolate Pop Tarts, that was like a several year long thing. And then sometimes a chocolate Pop Tart and Carnation instant breakfast in the hope of like, you know, just like getting me to wear, you know, pants that wouldn't fall down and stuff like that. Yeah, so it was like a mix of hyper-processed, just anything that a kid would eat. And, you know, like, the Mediterranean diet before that was even—I mean, I'm sure it was a thing, but certainly wasn't going on in a lot of my friends’ houses.

Alicia: And I mean, that's so interesting, because obviously the next question is that you were an editor at Harper's before you turn to food and now that I know you didn't like to eat as a kid, it's especially interesting, I guess, to understand how you made this move in your in your career. So how did that switch happen?

Tamar: Well, that was another—it's another thing where I think I've tended to narrativize it one way and it is other ways, too. Because when I was, I was an editor at Harper's for I guess, three years, during that time, I developed a just a real, like a full, full passion for cooking. I was just totally, I was in love. I loved reading food magazines. And I loved, you know, going to the Chelsea Market and buying Italian olive oil and I loved the farmers’ market and I loved learning about food sourcing and about organic and biodynamic farming. 

But I had kind of a false start with food because I got—I was really, really in love with it like, like the way you fall in love with a human. And then I thought, well, you know, I was so young, I was like 22, I think, when I got to Harper's and I just got really lucky and ended up kind of like, rising there. So I was a, you know, a full editor, but I was like, you know, 23, 24, 25, really, very kind of early in my grown-up life, and I decided that I wanted to go to see if I—I like decided to give myself this test where in order to test my love of cooking, I would get Gabrielle Hamilton to let me work at Prune on the weekends, but not quit my job as an editor. And that that was just gonna like—that was going to answer the question. Which is a super like, it's a naive and charming and bold thing to do now thatI think about it. 

But she had said, like, ‘No, I'm not gonna let you do that. And I don't think you're gonna really learn anything this way.’ And then I was super persistent, and there's this wonderful story that I've told a billion times where finally she kept on, like, saying no, or no, it was I hadn't actually talked to her yet. I would go to Prune at lunchtime, and talk to people who were working in there, and they were like, she's not here. She's not here. And then her pastry chef, like the third time I went, her pastry chef was like, ‘Well, if you're an editor, why don't you write her a letter? Because she's a writer.’ It was a long time before Gabrielle started, really started her writing career. So I wrote her a letter. And she actually called me and when I got back to my office at Harper's, there was a voicemail for me saying, like, you can come in, and so I ended up somehow convincing her and I would work. I worked brunch there. Which was terrifying, right? On Saturdays for three months. And I never told anybody at Harper's, but it went okay. I mean, it sometimes didn't go okay; she pulled me off the line once, I was like burning hundreds of dollars’ worth of food. And, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't really smooth or effortless, but it was happening. But then I quit. After three months, I was like, I can't. 

At that point, I really wanted to—I was feeling quite ambitious. And I felt like I needed to work weekends at Harper's, too, because I wanted to, like rise and excel. And I just felt like I was like between two worlds. And she was like, great, you should definitely not be a cook, like go back to Harper's. And then I quit Harper's not that long after that, like maybe six months or a year. But I didn't quit to cook, I actually quit, when I did quit, I quit because I thought I wanted to go to law school. I felt like I was—it was like part of wanting to cook was that I wanted to not be sitting in this chair so far away from life. Like, you know, it was just so removed. And Harper's especially was so removed on so many levels. I just felt like my heart was turning black. And so somehow, like the fact that I wanted to cook and the fact that I wanted to go to law school seemed very connected. 

So I studied for—I quit Harper's, studied for the LSAT, and while I was studying for the LSAT, I worked as a personal chef and a research assistant for Dan Barber. And then when I ended up becoming a real full-time cook. I was supposed to be going to law school; I deferred for a year. And I was going for immigration law. So I was sort of on the fence about Georgetown versus Michigan versus Chicago and I ended up deferring from Georgetown.

And then during that year of deferral, I just became—I had to choose, and cooking sort of had me in its grips. So that's the super-long and but totally fragmented story.

Alicia: And I mean, that's so fascinating. And so when did you decide to start writing about food?

Tamar: I tried to write about food while I was an editor at Harper's, but I was too scared to do it. And I wrote one piece and I showed it to the deputy editor and he said, ‘Well, what I've learned from this is that you can write but you would have to rewrite this entire thing. It's not—it has to be rewritten.’ It took me years to just get it together to do that, and the idea of rewriting it was too overwhelming. And so then I guess it just got, I was just scared. I think I always wanted probably to do it, but it was—it was like beyond, it was beyond terrifying. Nothing else was as scary as the idea of writing or writing about food. And in particular, writing about food because it felt so frivolous. Like the main reason that I didn't just write about food from the beginning was because it seemed frivolous beyond anything else I was doing like Harper's, although it was obviously kind of removed and intellectual. And not like service-oriented. The observations in it were valuable. And cooking has always seemed useful to me, because you're literally feeding people and giving them joy. And obviously, immigration law is important if you're on the right side of it. But the idea of like, I was—I was just really like, I was scared and ashamed of the frivolity of it. And so it just, I think I always wanted to do it, it took me decades, really, to let myself do it from a combination of paralysis andmoral paralysis. And I don't know what the other kind would be personal paralysis, self-confidence.

Alicia: Well, how did you? How did you figure out a way to write about food in a way that made it not frivolous for you?

Tamar: It was because of the thing that I started writing about it. I started writing a few like free pieces for this, San Francisco—I was living in San Francisco because I was cooking at Chez Panisse. And my friend Sasha had zine called Meatpaper. I was involved in the meat world, because I actually started the first meat CSA in the country. Back then, because it was San Francisco, like you could do anything, it was kind of like that. You literally could just decide you wanted to do something, it started happening. 

So I was spending all of my time buying whole animals and having them broken up and then distributing them according to this crazy, sort of non-mathematical butchery algorithm that I had worked out. And so because of that, I was like in the meat world, and I started writing pieces for Meatpaper, and they're really like turgid and like so overwrought, but it was a beginning. And then I wrote one or two pieces for civil eats, which were also pretty bad. But it was like just writing for these local, these local places, mostly, from my perspective as a, you know, meat activist. 

And then I was having drinks with a friend of Alice Waters, Chris, who—wait, what's her name? Katrina, who was like one of the founders of Wired Magazine, or maybe one of the first editors, I don't know, she's like a brilliant sort of polymath. And we were having martinis. And she was like, I've always wanted to write How to Cook a Wolf for today. And I, like almost fell off my chair,

because I was like, but that's my life's work. Like, that's what I am put on this earth to do. I'm like, I was born to do that. And then I said, Why don't we do it together? And she said, Great.

And we were gonna do it by sending stuff back and forth. And then it was like, I got tricked into it. I mean, she didn't mean to, but I just kept on sending her things. And she wasn't sending anything back. But she was sending me really good edits. Like I remember one of them. She said, This seems digressive throughout. And I was like, wow, wow. Wow. But then because it was so offline and just not part of anything, I was able to write because I was just writing her emails, right? And then after like a month of that, she said, You know, I'm not doing any work on this, but you basically just wrote a book proposal, so why don't you just go with it? So that was my 20-year-long way of backing into the thing that I had wanted to do forever. 

Alicia: And so that book, which I'm assuming became An Everlasting Meal, you know, was about making cooking seem, you know, simple rather than complex. And you told The New Yorker when it came out, “One way we get back to the stove is to treat food less fetishistic.” And, you know, do you think that that has happened, it's been ten years since the book came out, is food being treated less fetishistically? In the right way, from your perspective?

Tamar: No, no. Nothing. I mean, like, yeah, so I mean, also that I didn't even answer your question. But so I thought that An Everlasting Meal didn't feel frivolous to me. It felt like, it felt like good work, you know. So that was why—that's how I was able to do it, was that I was like, this is good work on this planet. And that's what I want to do. It's gotten more and more fetishistic. I can't, I have had so many times of like, real. I don't know, beyond depression, about it, like, sense, like, real senses that I haven't done anything. And that, in general, this, the whole field is like, at a point where I can't even reach it and shouldn't try and to just find other things to do with myself to make money because I like—that was before Instagram. I mean, you know, with with obviously a little bit of a parenthesis around pandemic, thinking about food and pandemic experiences of food and a parenthesis around, you know, growing awareness of the longtime erasure of traditional and indigenous and black food pathways. 

But for the most part, over the last ten years, food has gone on being fetishized and become more and more and more fetishized, and entire personalities have been built on, you know,

co-opting food personalities co-opting traditional dishes and, no, I found it. I thought, like, I was so naive, I thought I could write a book. And obviously, not that many people read it. So like, maybe you could write a book and like every single person could read it and that could be all you had to say on it. But I was just, I really thought I was so innocent. I was like, I'll just write this book. And then everyone will have it. And then everyone can just do the stuff in it. And they'll be totally untethered from all of these awful systems, and we can, like, live better lives and be kinder to each other. But that was not true.

Alicia: Well, I mean, how do you define fetishistically? Because I think, I mean, in my perspective, people think that those who kind of care about food and where it comes from and like would be a person who joined a meat CSA are who is perceived as fetishistic, rather than, you know, people who are focused on consumption or the way something looks on a plate. So how do you define fetishistic and food? 

Tamar: You know, I would like to look up what the word actually means. Like, you know the answer? I think it comes from, like charm, like, lucky charm. I don't know. Like, I'm going to look it up while we talk. Because I have this really amazing dictionary. Um, just the sound of it. It's really old. So it has to be in a special box. 

I think that some people could join a meat CSA out of a sense of fetishizing food and I don't know how I interpreted it. I think that food has to be, I mean—some people would say that like Italians fetishize food, right, but it seems like when we eat… I think Wendell Berry, but I forget who said it, but that when we eat we're consuming existence. We are killing every time we eat. There is a degree of kind of the magical and the sort of the mystical and the horrible about all of it and it should be treated like that. 

[Finding the word in the dictionary] Fetishism, fetishistic. Oh yeah, I'm right. Fetish, artificial sorcery charm made by art; artificial factitious material objects supposed among certain tribes to represent in such a way or be so connected with a supernatural being? 

Alicia: That's not how we use it now. 

Tamar: I think that, to me, it was the determining of something that should be sort of personal and simple and human and sensual into this level, into this—the system of capitalistic symbols that everything seemed attached to like whether you could get it and like kind of, like having the— it's like having the experience and not reflecting on you and consuming it seems very detached from actual personal experiences. And I guessI've thought of he way certain personalities get fetishized, turned into like a symbol of your own value, or what you are rich enough to have access to and the way certain objects, you know, that if you have a certain kind of pan means you're a certain kind of serious cook and like this, this sort of identifying it with a projection of yourself as opposed to experiencing it. That's how I guess I thought very, very vaguely of fetishization.

Alicia: And it's so true that that continues and kind of proliferates, and maybe is more true now, as you said, now that Instagram exists, and I, you know, I struggle with this, of course, it's like how much I'm performing a personality for other people around food that is bad, or it's just yeah.

Tamar: The fact of performing it is bad or the personality, your performance.

Alicia: I mean, I don't think—I hope the personality isn't bad. But I think the fact of performing it is, is bad and inauthentic. And I'm trying to figure out a new way of doing that, I think, so that it's not, it doesn't feel bad. But yeah, it's like, I don't know, it's funny, because, you know, Instagram. I mean, this is an interview of you—but you know, Instagram reminds me of what I would post a couple of years ago, and like it was, you know, different from what I would post now. In terms of how thought out it would have been, you know. I didn't think about it as much back then as I do now. Which I don't like, but at the same time, it's hard to get back to being having it be more natural.

Tamar: Because you feel like now you're plotting it? Sort of because you're plotting it in a maybe strategic way. And then it felt more—you weren't so strategic?

Alicia: No, absolutely. Yeah. But I mean, I also have like, way more followers now. So it's this kind of necessity of not being as personal, I suppose. Which is just a weird thing to happen. Like, the more popular your work becomes like the less you can actually be yourself for people, I guess. But maybe that's not true. Maybe it's just a—

Tamar: Yeah, I don't know if it is or not. It's definitely something that I have been thinking about because I never, I was never on Instagram. I resisted it during the writing and publication of my second book. I'm working on a third book right now and I have like, after hearing people say for ten years, you have to engage with people on social media, I finally started posting stuff on social media and it's been on Instagram. I've always been, I mean, Twitter—I’ve always been just like, I'm just, you know, upset about the state of the world and my message and nobody really knows what I say, but it's different pictures of food. 

But I have been thinking a lot about it because I've been thinking about the way it’s cultivated, personality is actually often. Some reckoning happens when people realize how cultivated they've been? And yeah, there's a degree to which there are individuals who are really, who are extroverts and who benefit from a kind of open exchange, like who actually it doesn't cost them. 

Like it costs me. I share things with people and I find I find it all very costly. Anything that isn't just like my actual life is costing me. But there are people like really thrive, I think, through an honesty that is nourishing to them that it's interesting that that it is a medium that can bring out, you know, a kind of like this—there is a channel on which lots of people can talk to one person with some amount of clarity and honesty, but I don't think very many people are good at that. And so there's just like—high jinks ensue.

Alicia: Absolutely. Well, I mean, how has being on Instagram been? I mean, did you get on it because of the publishing ecosystem kind of forcing your hand?

Tamar: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, not forced my head. But like, realistically, I need people to be conscious of my next book, because my second book, I really didn't do anything to promote. And I think I also made a lot of assumptions about, like, what people needed and wanted in a book, and it really didn't sell. And that that stinks, because this is how I make money, right? And so there are all of these things that I have not done. And I'm not a very visible, just not very visible person. I never tried to be or wanted to be. I just had this idea that I could like, write the books that I wanted to write. And they weren't—like, they weren't platforms. I didn't want a platform. I wanted to go on writing books. But that's, I mean, I think that probably works for a novelist, but it doesn't work for like a slow-writing, hamstrung, paralyzed food writer. And so I did join it in the hopes of it making more people excited about my next book, because I

need people to buy it.

Alicia: Right now, it's such an odd situation to be in. I have a friend who writes cookbooks, and also does not want to be on social media, and just is in this situation of, you know, where does that leave her in terms of whether her books will actually sell and it's so strange that basically, it seems like social media is such a massive part of that in a way that maybe it wasn't before. And it is really, it's costly for people who don't have a natural inclination toward it. And it's, it's not, you know, a fair situation. But who knows.

Tamar: Tell her to call me if she needs someone to listen and totally understand. I'm here. 

Alicia: Yeah, I know, it's a very strange position. Now I feel really, you know, I feel you know, very sympathetic toward it, even though my situation is like basically the opposite situation. 

But you're also now a contributing editor at Vogue and you've been there for a while, you know. How do you decide which food subjects you cover for that kind of audience, like the more fashion audience?

Tamar: I don't think anybody reads my Vogue stories. I've been in doctors’ offices, I mean, not in the last year, but I think I've been writing for—I've been writing for them for like five or six years, I think, maybe. A long time. And all of my doctors have always been on the Upper East Side, because my uncle is affiliated with Lenox Hill on the Upper East Side. So I have lots of doctors’ waiting room experiences on the Upper East Side and all of them have Vogue in them. And I mean, it probably hasn't been like five times, but I have seen at least twice people thumbing through Vogue, stopping—I've seen this happen in a hair salon, too—like stopping, you know, for the amount of time you do when you're reading Vogue on the pages and just like “$1200” and then get to the food and just like, go right past it, like nothing. So I think there are like five people who actually read them. And I think I know those five people, and they write me and they're like, I love the Vogue story.

So I don't—that's not really there. It's more like there are elements that need to be in it to evoke story. But I have always chosen what I'm going to write about for them based on what I wanted to spend my time finding out about, for the most part, so, like, weirdly, I mean, I've only done two or three profiles for them, but they were of Questlove and Enrique Olvera. And you know, I've written about like, sardines, broth, food scraps, like it's very—and to some degree, you get, like, because it's Vogue, and there is a tongue-in-cheek quality to a lot of their photography, certainly, like a lot of their art, and, in general, it's a lot of smart, mostly ladies, sitting around a room. So like, you know, kind of the weirder something is often the more attractive it is there. 

But I've always—that has always been a place where my choices have. I mean, they haven't been immoral. But there have been certain pieces that have been amoral. Like, I did write about learning how to make mille-feuille, just like, who cares, right? I am terrified—well, post pandemic, I'm not terrified of baking, but I used to be terrified of baking. So it was just like, you know, a stressful and funny experience. But a lot of the stuff that I've written for them has been about, you know, ecology and environmental responsibility, and using all this stuff. And if a trend shows up that happens to allow me to talk about—I just got to write a piece about, oh, well, whatever, it's coming out. There's a piece in April that sort of could have been a trend piece, but actually is about how it's not a trend, you know, so I think because nobody reads it, it's kind of been the secret place where I get to write about things that are interesting to me.

Alicia: And, you know, because you're writing mostly for Vogue, and you're writing cookbooks, you don't necessarily have to kind of wade into  the more food media sector, I suppose, and you've mostly written for non-food publications from what I can tell. How do you perceivethose magazines? How have you kind of negotiated your place in that ecosystem? Or lack of place in it? 

Tamar: I mean, it's much more lack of place, right? I certainly have been—this is certainly something I've been very plagued by recently, but by remaining outside of an ecosystem that I really didn't like, I may have rendered myself entirely irrelevant. And that is just in terms of like, you know, self-image and self-confidence and earning potential that I feel a little bit like, that might be coming home to roost. Um, that is not the right way to use that. I don't know how to actually, you know, right. 

I've stayed outside of the food publication ecosystem, because I don't—I've never liked it. When I first moved back to New York, and I was writing An Everlasting Meal and right after it came out, I had a personal, a modus operandi, I guess, a kind of like a principle, which was anything that paid me $1,000 or more, I would write. I was just like, I can't afford to turn down something that is $1,000, more than $1,000. 

But then, I had a column in the Times Magazine for like a year, year and a half, and then I was feeling overwhelmed with that and Vogue and books, and so I chose just Vogue, but I was able to not change that. I didn't use that rule anymore, and I didn't want to write for—I don't really like food publications very much. I mean, I love Whetstone. I think it's gorgeous. I'm so excited about For the Culture. A billion years ago, in like the year 2000, I loved Saveur. 

I've never really been into the other stuff, ao I haven't navigated it probably great to my own detriment professionally. I was reading, I guess, probably via Twitter, this interview and statement that Food and Wine did with the chefs of a restaurant called Masala y Maíz in Mexico City. That I thought was a great interview. And I loved the things that the two chefs said, and one of the chefs whose name I now forget, but it's a couple, and one of the two chefs said, like, you know, food media is—I'm totally paraphrasing—but he said, food is processing all of these, all of this food tradition, and all of this food history, for a general audience, and so there is a lot of levels of processing that you have to think about, like it's taking something. I don't think he used the word processing, but as I was reading it, I thought of like taking a potato and turning it into a Pringle. You know, like, I would rather it be a potato. 

And I think, I've always felt a little bit like, what am I doing here, like, you end up with all of this, all these side effects and like, in recent years, a lot of it gets everybody sticking their foot in their mouth, but actually, people have always been sticking their foot in their—their feet, their foot—their feet in their mouths, and like having a white guy write about how you eat pho and, you know, putting hot sauce on on mole, which is what happened with the Food and Wine thing. Like, right? I'm not totally comfortable with that. With that processing, I think it's—I have certainly been part of it, I don't mean that I'm like, somehow above or outside of like having done it, but I think there's, I think I have a level of discomfort with it as a way of, like, interacting with the foods and the traditions and I don't take a ton of pleasure in it. I think it tends to cut a lot of important people and things ou, and it's a shitty way of making money in a shitty system right now.

Alicia: It was interesting, because that interview, it didn't really start to make the rounds on Twitter, except when Soleil Ho shared it. And I had seen it being shared a lot on Instagram. And it was interesting to me that I didn't see the writers from Food and Wine sharing it and it's been interesting to me to watch food media sort of perform its own, you know, quote unquote, reckoning and kind of not really interrogate itself, you know, to kind of treat things as isolated incidents and not as kind of a pattern of behavior, as you explained, of taking things and kind of dumbing them down and making them palatable to to the the American audience. It's really been an interesting moment, I suppose, but a very alienating one, I think,or anyone who's thought of these things before.

Tamar: Now, you always seem like you think there is some—I don't know if hope is the right word, but like, that you could envision a food media ecosystem that is less extractive?

Alicia: I do. I do. And I think you know, as you mentioned, Whetstone, and I think that's a great example of it. And I think that I've been, I guess, you know, I've been writing about it in my newsletter, you know, with the idea of translation and kind of approaching a food magazine in the way that some art magazines approach art—not to say that they're perfect, but to say that, you know, they are taking perspectives from the places of origin and translating them into English, not translating them for the audience, but simply translating them into an legible language for the audience. I think that that's a really—there's so much potential there. And now I've seen a little bit of translation now happening more, but it's mostly just translating words into Spanish for that audience, which is, you know, that's a start, but I think that the global perspective of a magazine like Whetstone is extremely, you know, non-extractive. And I think that in independent publishing, we're seeing models, but I mean, of course, I would like to see, you know, Bon Appétit, you know, because it has such a huge audience, take kind of that perspective, but I don't know how it would work with its voice because you know, it's a bit frivolous in tone. And I don't know how it would work to not be frivolous.

How do you do Bon Appétit without being frivolous when its whole thing is being frivolous? I don't know.So, you know, they took away Gourmet to make, to just have Bon Appétit. And now it's like, you know, this is what we're left with. And this is, you know, the most widely read food magazine in the United States. So, you know, you can't completely ignore what they do. But it's, it's really terrifying to see what that is. And what kind of influence it has. 

I do have hope, though, that things could change. But I do think that, you know, for that to happen, like I was saying—like when you have the Food and Wine situation where you're going to do an interview to talk about how they got this wrong, or you have, like Grub SStreet writing about the abuse at Mission Chinese Food, you need to take more of a look at the whole process that has created this moment, in terms of how the media has been culpable in contributing to these things. And I think not having that kind of media culpability is where, you know, things are gonna just keep being wrong.

Tamar: I've been curious and watching and reflecting on my reactions to things over, you know, the sort of, I don't know what the right word is. I mean, you said reckoning, so let's do like reckoning and quotes. But, you know, I do wonder—I get this image of a kind of people, people being, I don't know, the suits upstairs, going like, ‘have we slapped ourselves on the hand sharply enough?’, like, ‘Are we forgiven?’ You know, this sort of like, I think that they're there. It's not that I don't have hope. But I do wonder whether there's a little bit of an irresolvable power issue, where I feel like the people in charge want to be forgiven by the communities that they have never written for or given any power. I don't know how you as a person in power get forgiven by people you've never given power to. I don't know what this is like, I don't. I wish I were a philosopher so I had models for how this could be like, I don't know what the catharsis and shift would be.

And I, again, I don't mean to, like, make myself not part of this. I'm a white writer who's had tons of opportunities. And I've never run a magazine, but I can't, you know, I don't mean that I'm excluded from it. But I do wonder how—I don't know, any models for how it happens.

Alicia: Neither do I. I mean, I have ideas, of course, but you know, no one's gonna put me in charge of a magazine. But for you, is cooking a political act?

Tamar: Of course. Yeah. It's, I mean, it is always it ever for it is for everybody. I, again, stupidly really thought that when I wrote An Everlasting Meal, I was providing people a tool for self-sufficiency and sovereignty and a way of becoming less reliant on the food industry and the, you know, the mendacity of our corporate industrial food culture.

And, you know, it's not that easy, but I continue to believe that the more skill people have in their kitchens, the less reliant on corporate America and corporate global north we are—I think that's  actually pretty common sense—when we don't need them anymore, then we have more power, and I've always felt like the means of production in our hands. It's a vital shift. I don't think it can happen super usefully independent of structural change, you know, our agricultural system that demands huge surpluses has a bigger impact than whether or not you make your own flippin’ pizza dough. But I think it's absolutely political and for 100,000 reasons, but one of them is knowing how to cook is actually liberating and can make you less dependent on all the other stuff, and and I think that for so many and all of these beautiful ways for so many cultures

to have an ability to, you know, persist. 

I'm thinking of, you know, cultures where there were—like Syrian food. A lot of refugee populations were like, when you’re un-land-ed and the thing that you are able to keep are tastes and smells and all of that. And that eventually the hope is to have land again. And then as soon as one does, one would plant the things whose tastes and smells one remembers. I mean, that is the most fundamentally political thing, right? What we want when we want land is to grow our food. 

I think maybe that's part of why I, you know, have felt so—there was so much discordance between the inherently political nature of food and stuff like, you know, unicorn ice cream trends. Because that's a political statement, too. But it's always felt like, no, you're just saying, f**k you. I know you know. 

I always keep Wendell Berry somewhere on my desk. And there's one part where he writes about how the impulse of charity is, like, true it might come from some idea of doing good, being divine, but that actually, you can't be good. You can't do charity, unless you have skills, like you have to be able to be a good neighbor. And cooking is, you know, one of the simplest ones. I'm not a good builder; I’d like to be a good builder. I'm getting a little bit closer. But you have to be able to do stuff in order to be a good community member, and you have to be a good community member in order to be able to do anything on a larger stage.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

Tamar: You're welcome. Good to talk.

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Bettina Makalintal has, in a relatively short span of time, become a mononym in food media. People know who the Vice culture writer is, what her voice is, which subjects she covers, and the compelling angles she takes on them. From Bettina’s writing on cake or font trends to thoughtful longform pieces, she is an indispensable voice. We discussed how she got into cake, how she balances short- and long-form writing, and what she’s most looking forward to when we’re all vaccinated. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Bettina, thank you so much for taking the time out.

Bettina: Hey, Alicia, thanks so much for inviting me to talk with you.

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

Bettina: Yeah, totally. So I grew up in suburban Philadelphia. And I moved there when I was five from the Philippines. So what I ate was sort of like—I feel like it was sort of all over the place. Like my mom just watched the Food Network a lot and like, read a lot of cooking books, and, you know, different newspaper columns, and just try to make foods from like, a lot of different inspirations. So honestly, I didn't actually grow up eating a ton of Filipino food, I feel like I ate sort of really inspired by the fact that I was just like, in the United States, and like, sometimes a Filipino food, but really, it was just like, not really tied to any cuisine in particular. 

Alicia: Mm hmm. Right, and how did you end up getting into the food world?

Bettina: Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, I think because of that, I was sort of, like always very into food, like, I would, I would read cookbooks, and watch the Food Network a lot. So it was always sort of like, the thing that I liked. And I sort of always wanted to, you know, I always wanted to be like, the food travel host who would go and eat things, and then talk about it. And so it was, that was sort of like not top of mind for me, I think for like most of my life. And then when I got to college, I sort of realized that, like, food media was a thing and was something that I could potentially do. And I ended up sort of working in the food in like, food service for a while. So that was sort of how I got into it. And then just started like freelancing and getting into the media side after that.

Alicia: Right, right. And, you know, I said this, that I was gonna ask you about emo, but from your tweets, you were into that kind of music. And so I wanted to ask, what are your favorite bands? And like you did that scene have any impact on what you eat? What you think about food, because I write so much, obviously, about veganism and like, how tied that was to those kinds of scenes.

Bettina: Yeah, totally. I mean, like, so basically, for like, my favorite bands. I mean, it was really just like, you know, the ones that were big. So honestly, my favorite band for a really long time was Brand New. But I also loved Taking Back Sunday, basically, like the entire Fueled By Ramen roster, and just that whole, like Victory Records adjacent like, popular internet band scene. 

And I think I've never thought about it in terms of food until you sort of brought up this question. But I think it did actually sort of influenced my approach to food in that when I was growing up, my best friend and I would go into Philadelphia a lot for shows, and sort of that was my way to be sort of like independent, like, I was sort of free to just go around the city and do whatever. 

And there was the Malaysian restaurant that was right by this venue that I went to a lot. And that was sort of like the first restaurant that I really became like a regular at, like my best friend and I would go there a lot. And she was not familiar with—she didn't really eat a lot of like, Asian food or anything like that. So this was sort of one of my early experiences of helping someone explore new cuisines and try new dishes together. And it became a favorite spot for us. So yeah, I mean, I think in the sense of like, the emo scene gave me a lot of independence. And that sort of helped me discover food and like eating on my own. And figuring out sort of what I liked, like independent from my parents.

Alicia: Right, right. Now, that's so fascinating. And yeah, how did you get into writing about cake? Because for Vice, you have a column called Cake Hole? Like, how did that happen?

Bettina: Yeah, totally. It's, I mean, I think that this has sort of just been like, a—I spent a few years like decorating cakes. And so I just sort of like started keeping an eye on like, what people were doing. But then sort of recently, I sort of fell into sort of like the Instagram cake scene a little bit more. And the column was sort of just like born out of like, my editors being really flexible and just being like, okay, you're really interested in this. So they've let me sort of explore my little internet obsessions in that way.

Alicia: And how did you kind of get into writing about not just food but you know, trends really on the internet, you know, the font of gentrification, and that sort of thing? Like, does that intersect with your food writing at all? Or, or do you see these things as separate?

Bettina: Yeah, I mean, I think that like I don't, I guess I don't really think about them too much. As far as like, what the writing I do is categorized as and I think I mostly just appropriate from the point of view of like, writing about whatever is interesting to me and whatever, sort of like taking up a lot of my mental space at any given moment. So yeah, I think that just like, I think that the internet is a really interesting space to sort of look at the way culture is formed. And so I think most of that, like most of my attention is in the food side of things. But I also do, I feel like, I need to be limited just to writing about food, you know?

Alicia: How do you kind of balance you know, bigger ideas of what to cover with having to write at that staff writer pace of getting stuff out there? You know, I know you've had a few features lately that have been really big hits like you're right about your work on that. The book by the Filipino food writer, that was a big hit, and other things that kind of really grasp people as more long reads, but how do you balance, like the ideas for longer pieces and the ideas for shorter pieces? And that kind of workload?

Bettina: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I feel like one of my big problems is sort of like, I sometimes can, like, be I generate ideas as sort of a form of procrastination. Like, the idea part is never really the hard part for me, because I feel like I'm always like, adding like, a bunch of new ideas to my list. But yeah, I think that for me, and like, also I’m like huge sort of perfectionist and wanting, feeling like everything, you know, everything could be a little bit better, I could find a slightly more perfect source, stuff like that, I feel like for me, part of it is sort of understanding that at a certain point, you sort of just have to accept that like, the thing is done, like not everything is going to be is going to be written with the goal of being like, you know, really long or like really, like, really incisive, or something that you're going to submit for awards and just sort of figuring out there like, some things are a little simpler.

You don't necessarily need quite as much sort of time. Or as many birds even.

Alicia: And you know, you have a very, you know, personal food aesthetic as well in your food photos. So how did you come to be really a cook, because I do feel like some food writers don't necessarily have to be a good cook, but it always helps, I suppose. But you do seem to be a very good cook, someone who can work with recipes, change them. I saw that you made a miso carbonara but you use mushrooms instead of bacon. You know, how, how did you learn how to cook? And how did you develop your kind of personal approach to cooking?

Bettina: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that's an interesting point. Because I feel like some food writers are very much on like the restaurant end of things. And some food writers are much more on the home cooking end of things. And I feel like I've, especially over this year, I've realized that like, I feel like I'm much more drawn to sort of the home cooking side, in part because it works a lot better for my budget to cook everything. 

I mean, I think I learned how to cook mostly just by like watching my mom, like if I think about it, there's only like, maybe two or three dishes that she sort of, like explained to me like how to do, but it was sort of just like out hanging out in the kitchen a lot while she was doing stuff and sort of just like ambiently learned techniques and things like that. 

Really, for me, it's sort of just been, it's like, especially over the pandemic and I have to like cook a lot more for myself, it sort of just been drawing on all of those things and realizing like, you know that I just know the technique for doing certain things, and I can play around with it. I'm definitely not a very, like recipe-oriented cook. And I feel like when I do use recipes, I really like mess with them a lot. Like, you know, like, I didn't follow like that miso carbonara, you know, super closely, but I think I like to use recipes as inspiration and then sort of play around based on like, what I know and like what I have around. 

Alicia: And how has the pandemic kind of influenced your cooking at all?

Bettina: For one thing, I'm cooking a lot more. I think that I've since I've sort of been living on my own, I have like always cooked a decent amount. But you know, living in New York and then like working a full time job and commuting, I feel like it was really easy to get into the thing of just like, Okay, well I'll just get like a slice of pizza on my way home or like I'll stop by this place. But I think that since the pandemic has started I've sort of just realized that—and it sounds so full of myself, right—but I realized I'm actually a pretty good cook. And most of the food I can make I'm very happy with and I don't necessarily feel the need to like get food elsewhere. So it's been a fun way to sort of like lean into that and just sort of like play around a little bit more and I feel like I've just landed on a lot of things and formats that I make that like are foods I really enjoy eating but are also are really fun for me to cook.

Alicia: And you know you write for Vice and so I've kind of noticed over time and have been frustrated over time by how a lot of food writers really can ignore things going on in politics that or business that have an effect on food, but at Vice it seems like you have a little bit more freedom to make those connections, especially because you know people that you work with are all are covering those those aspects. You know, I was just citing a piece about how plant-based meat that people are coming out with now, like Impossible or Beyond, that has its roots in Chinese cuisine, which was not something that other people were tackling quite as deeply or as kind of just blatantly, like explicitly covering that. So how do you feel, you know, that you're allowed to kind of make more bigger statements about food, because you also did one of the few critical pieces of Tastes the Nation as well, which was Padma Lakshmi’s food show that was, you know, a bit nationalistic?

Bettina: Right. I mean, like, I think that, like, the thing that really has worked in my favor, sort of at Vice, is the fact that we're not, you know, I feel like we're doing the food coverage that not a lot of other websites are doing, I think, just sort of in a really sort of different space, like, we're not doing a ton of restaurant coverage, we're not really telling you, like, what to eat. And so I think that gives me a lot more chance to sort of take risks and sort of think about things like food in terms of much bigger context. 

And I think that also like, you know, these are like the way that class and race and colonialism have influenced food or things that just like personally, interest me and that matter a lot to me. And I think I've just been really lucky that like, if I come to my editor with ideas that want to get a little more critical or incisive, about what food culture is, you know, they sort of trust that it matters to me, and therefore it's something that's worth pursuing. Yeah, I mean, I think that's been really helpful, but I'm sort of not like, hampered by having to do product announcements, or restaurant opening pieces and things like that. I can exist in a very, almost like looking at food, culture, and food media with a much broader eye.

Alicia: I mean, you do write so much about social media and so much about being online quote, unquote. And, you know, for me, and I think because of the pandemic that has become so much of a piece of our lives, even more so than it was before where it's just really our only venue for expression and contact with people in the outside world. And you told James Hansen for an interview at In Digestion like, “what's exciting to me is that now foods relationship with being online appears to see people favoring things that are less branded, and more individual.” And it's interesting to me, because I'm writing about cake right now in cake decorating, and you've written a lot about cake, and how kind of the aesthetics shift over time, and you can see people kind of going into the same vein as other people. And, you know, I think in cake, specifically, there's a very heavy social media influence on what people want and what people you know, think is a good cake. And, you know, right now it's like, very organic. In decor, it's not using fondant, it's not using heavy food coloring, but like, before this moment in cake, I thought there was there was a lot of—there was that, you know, tons of food coloring, like make a shag cake, make a unicorn cake, and now we're in a moment of a really organic cake decor. And, you know, so like you said, things are less branded and more individual, but at the same time there is this kind of constant influence that is, you know, not necessarily something you can shake off. So how have you been thinking about social media and food right now? Like, do you see that continuing the trend toward being a little bit more individual, even if it's not, you know, what everyone else is doing?

Bettina: Yeah, absolutely. I think cake is a really interesting way to sort of watch how these things play out, in part, because like, it is such a distinct niche on Instagram, but there's also so many, like, styles and like, different sorts of ways, the way cake is playing out. It's like, really interesting to watch, I think. Even a few months ago, when I started sort of writing about cakes, I was thinking, these messy cakes, I think that's going to be maybe, this will be the peak of the trend or so sort of, it'll become like, over after that, you know, but I think that even in the past few months, I think that there have been so many other trends sort of coming out of that scene, that I think that even if something feels very, like popular, and like it's been done a lot.

I think the scene is sort of just continuing to expand and try new things. I think it's really interesting because so much of this is not being guided by any one creator on Instagram. Like, I think it's a lot of people are sort of in communication with each other in a various, in a very friendly way. It doesn't seem like people are sort of trying to take over the scene, like it doesn't seem like one person wants to have, like, the monopoly on this stuff. Whereas like, you know, some of those sort of other trends did feel like, you know, someone was trying to build a brand out of a certain cake visual that was very polished and instagrammable. But this growing wave to me feels much more like, everyone just sort of wants to be inspired by each other, and create work that's fun and exciting, but isn't necessarily something that they're owning, or that they want to be the only person who's doing that, you know,

Alicia: One you've been posting a lot—what trend you've been focusing on a little bit, right, is the more like maybe classic American bakery style cake, but that has kind of gone in a weirder direction, like a very, maybe Amy Sedaris type direction. When did you start to notice that and do you feel like it's very interesting that that is happening alongside like, these more organic like, maybe rooted that Sqirl aesthetic cake?

Bettina: There is a big resurgence of vintage, playing off the like classic, like Wilton designs look. But the thing that's really interesting is that over the past few months or so people have taken to write much like sillier statements on top, or use colors that are not necessarily, you know, traditional American dessert looks. A cake has frosting that’s traditionally and vintage inspired, but it's completely black, for example. Or there was one the other day that said, like, “I still can't believe Dan was Gossip Girl,” just like things, like, your expectations about what you should see on a cake.

Alicia: Do you bake cake like, or is it just kind of a more intellectual pursuit?

Bettina: So I used to decorate them for work several years ago. But the thing is, I actually don't really like eating cake. I don't have a sweet tooth at all. I'm very much like a salty food person. So I sort of prefer cakes from an observant and like visual standpoint and sort of like what are the trends, but I'm not really—I keep saying that I want to bake cakes. I finally got a stand mixer. And so I have baked a few cakes, but the thing is, I want to bake them and I want to decorate them and I want to experiment with what they look like. But then I'm sort of left with this cake that I don't want to eat. Like when the pandemic is over, and I can have people over I can like bring more people food. It'll be something I wrote for the moment. It's sort of like, my boyfriend and I don't need a bunch of cakes.

Alicia: For me, it's great to have family and friends very close by to bring cake to because I also make a lot of cake. And have to do something with it. But yeah, you mentioned, you know, when the pandemic is over, when we're all vaccinated, you know, in that beautiful future, you know, what are you looking forward to most food-wise for when, you know, you don't have to cook every meal at home yourself?

Bettina: I mean, honestly, that's the thing I'm looking forward to the most, is—over the past almost year, I feel like I've really honed my cooking skills, but I feel like I'm not really able to share it with anyone other than posting pictures of them. So that's really the thing, because I feel like before this, I really took the concept of gathering for granted. And I was like, you know, always coming up with an excuse for why I couldn't have people over for dinner, like I didn't have the right plates, or I didn't have the right serving bowl or whatever. But now I'm realizing that that stuff doesn't matter very much. And really what I want to do is just cook for people and come together over meals again, in a way that I'm creating the experience.

Alicia: And for you, is cooking a political act?

Bettina: I mean, I think so I think that, I think that my daily cooking, I don't know that. I don't know that I think about it terribly hard. Like I'm sort of just sustaining myself. But I feel like the part that feels really political to me is sort of like revisiting those cultural dishes, and the things that my family used to make or just learning more about Filipino food than I maybe haven't even eaten before. 

Because I do feel like this act of understanding your history and understanding this broad culture that largely has not traveled from the Philippines to here like in my family, like I think that it's political. And then I'm sort of reviving these histories that may have gone unspoken or not written down. And understanding the broader history of the culture that I come from. 

I feel like I'm always sort of searching for more understanding of what being Filipino means, and I think that I have found a lot of resources. I felt there's a lot of things that I've learned about recently, but I feel like one one thing I struggle with is making those foods. 

I do a lot of like versions of things that I grew up with. But there are also a lot of those new dishes that I'm reading about, that I've never had before, I haven't necessarily made some of them because I feel like for one thing, I don't cook a lot of meat. So sometimes I'm trying to sort of get inspiration from these cookbooks, but they are sort of more meat-centric than I want to cook with. So yeah, I feel like I think that cooking is political in the sense that learning these things, and understanding these histories, but I also—I'm figuring out how I feel about actually cooking some of these dishes.

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

Bettina Yeah, totally. Thank you so much for taking a minute for reaching out to me.

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Jing Gao is now food-world-famous for her eponymous line of strikingly labeled Sichuan ingredients, Fly by Jing (the stuff is good). But before she launched what has become a super-successful purveyor of Sichuan chili sauce, mala spice mix, Zhong sauce, doubanjiang, preserved black beans, and more, she ran a fast-casual restaurant in Shanghai called Baoism.

This switch was brought upon by her love for ingredients—for sourcing them well, for putting them together well—and regional Chinese cuisines. We talked about all this, as well as why her product is more expensive than the commonly found Lao Gan Ma. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Jing. Thanks so much for coming on.

Jing: Thank you for having me.

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

Jing: Yes. So I was born in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province and food capital of China. But my father was a nuclear physicist and a professor. So we moved around with his job a lot. So I ended up growing up all over the world, really. Germany, England, Austria, France, Italy, and then Canada. So I would consider myself Canadian. I lived there for probably the longest out of anywhere else. And, yeah, so it was kind of an interesting upbringing, you know, being put into a new country with a new culture and a new language pretty much every year and needing to code switch. So I ate, I would say, you know, it was definitely a mix of different things, but a lot of home cooking. So the through line was definitely, you know, kind of, yeah, I would say like homestyle Sichuan food that my mom would make at home, and we didn't really eat out that much. So it was, yeah, it was definitely my first love, which is what brought me back to China.

Alicia: I've read that you were working in brand management in business development, what made you move toward food, and especially toward opening that fast-casual restaurant Baoism, in Shanghai?

Jing: Yeah, so I found myself in Beijing, in college on an exchange semester. And that was around 2008, so right around the time of the Olympics. And I just fell in love with the energy of the city. I didn't know what to expect when I went there, because I was so young when I left China. But I was just astounded by the modernity of it all, the energy, how dynamic the city was — just kind of the juxtaposition of the ancient, the ancient city, you know, buildings that have been around for 800, 900 years, you know, against the backdrop of skyscrapers. 

And I realized, when I was there, just how disconnected I'd become from my heritage, and from, in many ways from myself. And so I started to dig in deeper into the culture. And what I found the most fascinating was the food culture. 

Beijing is interesting, because it's the capital of China. So you have the regional government offices of all of the provinces in Beijing, and each of the offices would have their own restaurants, and they would fly in chefs from those provinces. And, you know, what people don't realize is how vastly different the regional cuisines are in China, and so it is actually really hard, even in Beijing, to find, you know, food that was super true to those regions. 

And so those government restaurants, government office restaurants, were where I started to learn about the regional differences. And I ended up helping a friend out with her food tour company in Beijing and learning even more about the history of the regional cuisines that way, and it just dawned on me how little we knew in the West about Chinese food and culture and its people and how much misinformation there was about it. And, you know, so I started writing about it at first on my blog and for different publications, which led to taking celebrity chefs around when they would come to China and doing some television work. And all of it really was with the goal to shine more light on the cuisine, and, you know, show how complex and diverse it is. At the time, I was working in tech, which is what allowed me to be in Asia. And I eventually realized that I wanted to — I always knew I wanted to start my own business. When the food writing kind of took off, I realized I wanted to create something more tangible. And so that took the form of a restaurant. I was inspired by Sweetgreen and Chipotle’s models in North America, and I didn't really see an equivalent of that in Shanghai at the time. And so, yeah, my restaurant was using that model and able to provide food at an accessible kind of price point, but also featuring, you know, a modern kind of expression of  different regional cuisines in China.

Alicia: How did you move from that to launching Fly by Jing?

Jing: As I'm sure, you know, from talking to restaurateurs and people in food, running a restaurant is no joke. It's an operational challenge. And I realized through that process, as much as we were successful doing what we did, we had international and local acclaim and won awards. It was widely celebrated. But I realized I didn't want to operate restaurants. 

The next step would have been to grow it as a chain, and what I realized I loved about the experience was the brand creation, the product creation, the storytelling. And I wanted to reach even more people by doing that. So I actually sold the restaurant to my business partner at the time, and in seeking kind of what my personal expression is within Chinese food, I went to my hometown, Chengdu, and I spent some time there, studying with probably one of the greatest living Sichuan chefs, Yu Bo. 

I just absorbed everything that he had to offer, and he was very kind to take me under his wings and read all of these century-year-old cookbooks in his library. Ate so much street food. And it was the food I remember growing up with as a child, these places called fly restaurants. And it's a very unique part of Chinese food culture. Fly restaurants are so named, because they are usually hole-in-the-walls, kind of rundown, dirty, but they are considered so delicious, like the flavor trumps everything. And so it's so delicious that it draws people like flies. They’re my earliest food memories, eating with my family in Chengdu, and so I just had such a love for them. And they're such an equalizer, as well—you have people of all different backgrounds, you see Ferraris parked next to bicycles. Everybody's literally just there, in that communion of those delicious flavors for that one moment in time. And it's something that really deeply inspired me. What I also saw was that a lot of these fly restaurants, you know, there's the old-school ones that are run by elderly mom-and-pop teams, but then there's also the new-school fly restaurants that I saw popping up. And with young people really just kind of innovating and pushing the boundaries of what Sichuan food and even homestyle street food could be. And so I was very inspired by that. 

I knew that because of the way that I grew up, and my unique set of experiences, I needed to figure out what my own expression was. And so it was through experimentation and kind of synthesizing my experience having traveled and eaten all over the world and, I wouldn't say bridging west to east, but definitely taking all of my personal experiences and putting it into my dishes, I started to cook something that I think was uniquely my own, and went back to Shanghai and started this underground supper club that I named Fly by Jing, and took that on the road, traveled to cities all over like from New Zealand, Australia, you know, the U.S., Europe, and did pop-ups. At the time, I didn't know that I was going to start a condiments company; at the time, I was just cooking and carrying my suitcases of ingredients around with me, because I realized that the flavors taste as they do in Sichuan because of the very specific ingredients, and I had spent years by that point sourcing those ingredients, and I knew that they were super rare even within China. 

I mean, China is such a massive country. The highest quality ingredients are immediately snatched up whenever they're available. And so, of course, there wasn't going to be any available in the places I was going. And cooking for hundreds and thousands of people, I saw this immediate feedback on their faces, and when they tasted the food, I knew that, okay, these flavors are universal, and people love them; they just have no access to them and have never even heard of some of these ingredients. Kind of a light bulb went off, and I realized I wanted to make these flavors more accessible to everyone and that I could do that maybe through the sauces.

Alicia: You mentioned you're not changing the flavors for different audiences, but you are bringing these flavors to an audience that maybe didn't grow up with them. And because you had this experience with Baoism, serving these regional cuisines within China, what did you change, if anything, for Fly by Jing to make it so kind of globally appealing?

Jing: So I think with Baoism, as well as with Fly by Jing, I was looking for a modern expression of those flavors that are traditional. So at Baoism, we combined different flavor profiles from different regions, and we made a red braised pork dish that is a very kind of characteristic of Eastern Chinese regions like Shanghai, but we served it almost like carnitas-style. So a pulled pork version of the hong shao rou, which is usually served in chunks of pork belly. And we also served that with pickled cucumbers, and cilantro, and peanuts that were more evocative of the Taiwanese region, and the gua bao, the steamed bun itself, is rooted in Taiwan. 

We also had a Cantonese style, like black pepper—usually that's like black pepper beef, but we paired it with crispy tofu. And so it was always kind of like, a bit more whimsical and a bit more unexpected. 

I was always interested in kind of, like, defying or giving the diner something that they didn't expect, or, you know, that they expected one thing, but having something completely different show up on their palate. 

I approached that with Fly by Jing, as well. Some of the ingredients in the sauces that we make have literally never been put together before, and I know this because of just the difficulty in sourcing and in combining those ingredients, there's a lot of challenges along the way. The way that, again, it's like—I realized that I can only, for me, I can only cook what I know, and what I know, is a kind of amalgamation of where I've been, what I've found, and what techniques I've learned. That's how I approach it, and I think my background, the products, they're rooted in tradition. And to me, that means really understanding the cultural significance, the way it's evolved over time, the provenance of the ingredients, and then made for the way that we eat today. Super versatile, something that has no rules bound to it, that you can add to your existing kind of lifestyle.

Alicia: The Fly by Jing tagline is “not traditional, but personal,” and have people kind of pushed back because I know that there's been so much demand for this idea of authenticity, especially around cuisines like Chinese cuisine. What is the response to that? And also, is that tagline kind of a push against that already?

Jing: Yeah, you're right. It is a push against that. 

We launched a couple of years ago. So I actually moved to L.A. about exactly two years ago to launch Fly by Jing here. And, you know, we came up with this rebrand just a couple of months ago, and we started working on the rebrand about a year ago. And at that point, you know, we'd already been in market and I definitely started noticing a lot of people trying to put us in a box—in a neat little box that will allow them to understand what we are, because we were the first modern Chinese chili sauce company to launch in the U.S. At the time, in 2018, Lao Gan Ma had been around, but definitely had not reached kind of the mainstream cult status as it has now. 

I found a lot of people were, you know, because our first product was a chili sauce—and we have many products that we've launched since then—but because our first product was chili sauce, a lot of people would say, ‘Oh, is this just a gentrified version of Lao Gan Ma.’ Or, you know, you know, ‘I've been to China once so I know what chili sauce is,’ like, ‘is this gonna meet my expectations’ kind of thing, or, you know, ‘I have a Chinese girlfriend, so I know what this is all about.’ 

A lot of it was coming from people who are not Chinese, and trying to kind of make it fit in their minds. Even some Chinese people or Asian people would have kind of, I realized, this very ingrained view in their own minds of what Chinese food should represent. And I felt like it was often prescribed on us. Growing up, my parents would tell me, or, growing up, we were always very cost conscious. And Chinese food—you know, this is a very common thing with immigrant families— the more authentic it is, the cheaper it is, the more authentic it is. And so, there's definitely a lot of connotations, I guess, around the cuisine and what it represents to so many people and so, I wanted to move us away from that, because to me, this product is such a personal expression to me that I knew the ingredients had never been put together before, these ingredients have never been exported before. And so this tastes different to even people in my hometown in Sichuan. 

My family tasted it and they're like, ‘Oh, this is different. This is interesting.’ Because everybody in China has their own chili sauces and homemade condiments, and everyone's is so vastly different. Some have meat inside, like beef, and some have dried seafood, some have black beans, fermented fava beans—everyone has such a different way of making these sauces that most people in China just eat their homemade stuff; they don't even buy stuff from the stores. 

So I wanted to show that we're not just a monolith. Asian food, and just even Chinese food, and even breaking it down even further, Sichuan food. It's not something you can neatly fit into a box that makes it easier for you to comprehend. There's so much complexity; there's so much depth; and every version of it deserves its own space to be, and so that was the impetus behind the rebrand and and calling it a very personal product. And since we did the rebrand nobody has—well, you know, people who don't know about our brand and just kind of see it on a surface level will still try to place their judgments on it, but for the people who have seen our rebrand, our customers and people who are interested in digging deeper into these things, their response has largely been very, very positive. And people really get it.

Alicia: I saw you on Instagram, I think this weekend, kind of responding to people with the idea that you've gentrified chili crisp or something. And I had already written this question because I know that people especially—it's a woman-run brand, it has really cool branding, there are people who are going to say that t's too expensive and that sort of thing. How have you responded to this publicly? What is your go-to response when people say that the brand is more about this kind of millennial aesthetic, rather than motivated by flavor or important sourcing and that sort of thing?

Jing: Mm hmm.

The people that make those comments, they don't really say it's for the aesthetic at the expense of these other things, because I don't think they dig deep enough to know about those other things. But usually it's like an ad or something like that. You know, they're just seeing it for the first time. And I think the assumption is always that, again, I think there's such a perception of—their perception of whether this is just an expensive chili sauce is very much colored by people's views on the value of ethnic food, right? 

Broadly, and in this case, Chinese food, and Chinese food history in this country has been one that has been forced to be very cheap, because of expectations, and evolved this way because of many different factors, one of which is the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1800s. The immigrants that came here had no choice but to produce Chinese food and change it up based on the available ingredients, and based on expectations of its value. And so, for a very long time, Chinese food is seen to be extremely cheap and affordable. But as a result, it's become extremely popular and proliferated. There's 50,000, Chinese restaurants in this country alone. So it's arguably one of the most popular cuisines here. And so everybody has some interaction or some kind of connection to it. And so people feel that very personally, and have very, you know, strong feelings about what it represents in their mind. There's definitely a lot of pushback on the price. But that pushback I find is, oftentimes has not been very thoughtful. Because if you think really about it, what does a price of a product—what are the components of that, it's the people behind it, making a living wage; it is ethical sourcing; it is transparent sourcing. If it's a product that tastes incredible, any chef or anybody who's cooked knows that what you put into your dish is everything, right? The same dish made with different grades of ingredients will produce completely different things. I think there's not enough thought put to that.Our response usually is just explaining that this tastes different from everything else, because this is made differently from everything else. People also forget about economies of scale. They want to compare—because when you see an ad on Instagram, you kind of tend to think that you equate all of these companies the same. So it's like a small, tiny company, you're seeing the same ad on the same platform as a giant monolith, or giant company. They often think that we're maybe at the same scale of something like Lao Gan Ma—it is a billion dollar company, and we're completely bootstrapped. I was the only employee up until August of this year of this business. Actually, I wasn't even on payroll. It's comparing apples to something completely different. We do explain it without judgment. We're like, Look, we can't compete against the economies of scale of something like Lao Gan Ma, but we can be proud of the quality of our ingredients, the intentionality behind it, the the craft behind it, and we're a very small team and female minority run. Usually, the response is excellent. We've seen a lot of white men apologize to us on Instagram. We also recognize you can't win every battle and so we don't need to sweat about it. We sometimes will have some fun with the trolls and troll them right back. 

Alicia: I read that your business kind of boomed during the pandemic, which I think has happened, you know, for a few kind of artisanal brands in food doing stuff that will make people's home cooking more interesting. You mentioned that you just hired people—how has that been, to kind of grow so quickly? And under these kinds of conditions? How have you adapted to that?

Jing: Yeah, so, this year has really been unimaginable in so many ways. It's been a crazy year for me personally and professionally, as it has been for so many of us. 

I think, at the beginning of the year, we were still just kind of growing at a steady pace; we were probably 20 to 30%, month over month. It was completely bootstrapped. I didn't have venture capital funding; I didn't have 1000s and 1000s of dollars to pump into advertising. So it was growing largely organically, through word of mouth and through media mentions, but in March, when there's so much uncertainty brewing, and my factories on the ground were also shut down since the beginning of the year, because of COVID on the ground in China, there was alot of uncertainty, and it was quite scary, especially as more and more kind of blatantly racist comments were popping up on our socials. We had no idea whether this business would make it. 

But then in April, we had a really glowing review about us and feature about the product in the New York Times by Sam Sifton, and that coincided, obviously, with the lockdown, and we saw sales spike immediately. And with the New York Times article, we actually sold out of three months’ worth of inventory overnight. It's obviously—it was great, but it was also highly distressing, because the factories were not up and running yet. And so I had to overcome a lot to get that up and running again. And it's just seemed like at every corner, there was a new challenge, a new issue that was sending us back, and we started taking preorders, which was a godsend, because we probably wouldn't have been able to survive without it. We eventually had about 30,000 people on a preorder list. Because we were also being very communicative and transparent with our customers, as to all of the delays and the reasons and we were also donating about 10 percent of our sales at that time to organizations feeding the frontline. And, and also, in June, two organizations that were doing essential work in Black communities, I think a lot of our customers were very happy to support, to wait for their product, if it meant that their money was going to support these causes. 

There were obviously also some people that were just extremely adamant that they needed their chili sauce immediately in a pandemic. Luckily it was very, very few. But yeah, I mean everything from, you know, setting up a whole new supply chain in the U.S. because the Chinese bottlers were unable to do it. And to you know, custom delays of up to a month, to the sauces literally breaking the machines when we got to the co-packer so we had to bottle 30,000 jars by hand. All of these things just—it was endless issues. 

But when we finally got our stock back, which was about July, the feedback from customers was incredible. You could see that as soon as they received it, they would come back on the site and buy four more jars o give to their friends. I think this year has been really a landmark year for us. And I was able to hire four people. We're actually doing a little kind of 2021 strategic planning session right now, and I'm so excited about all of the different directions that we're going, and all of the opportunities that we have ahead of us. We started as C-to-C. And out of necessity, because it is just the most efficient way for someone without capital to get started. But now we are looking at entering retail this year, and, and some new products coming down the horizon. So I'm very excited about that.

Alicia: That sounds amazing. And so for you, is cooking a political act?

Jing: I think so. It's the reason why I got started with this, I felt like. There were so many factors that I couldn't control that were coloring the way that people looked at Chinese food and looked at me as a result, and I hated categorization more than anything, putting people in boxes that make it easier for you to comprehend, but that grossly misunderstands or underestimates them. 

With Chinese food, it's always been kind of at the lowest rungs of what's known as the hierarchy of taste. And that's the value that we prescribe to different cuisines that really is colored by the value we prescribe on their people and the immigrants from those countries. So there's no, there's no doubt, in China, the Chinese food has value, but I found that in the West—countries like the U.S., which ends up influencing global culture as a whole through the power of the U.S. media—I felt like there was something I could do here,  which is why I chose to base Fly by Jing in Los Angeles, and in the U.S., I wanted to tackle the problem at the source. I think through the work of newer companies like mine and some of the new-school restaurants, even, that have opened in New York and L.A., run by young people who are really pushing the conversation forward about what Chinese food is and what it could become, we are working to make it be more seen. The byproduct of that, and I think, with my rebrand, I was telling a very personal story that was around seeking belonging and coming home to self, and I found that our goal is really now becoming creating space for all of these different stories to exist, because they deserve to be told, and it felt highly vulnerable for me to share my story. But the amount of feedback that we got, and then the people that really connected to that, from all walks of life, really showed me that this is a universal thing. And so through what we're doing in something as little as a Sichuan chili oil, hopefully we can create space for everyone to tell their stories.

Alicia: Thank you so much, Jing, for taking the time out to chat.

Jing: 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

Nicola Harvey is a journalist and farmer based in New Zealand. We connected about the podcast she produced for Audible, “A Carnivore’s Crisis,” because we share concerns about the tech-meat burgers by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat that are being hailed as a climate-change savior while still encouraging monocropping in farming, processed foods with dubious health effects, and other food-system ailments.

I wanted to get her on to chat about that, as well as her forthcoming book on “food citizenship” and whether New Zealand is as great from the inside as it looks on the outside. Listen above, or read below

Alicia: Hi, Nicola. Thank you so much for coming on.

Nicola: Hi, Alicia. Thanks for inviting me.

Alicia: How are things over in New Zealand?

Nicola: Ah, look, to be honest there — oh, I hate to say it considering what's happening out there in the world. But to be honest, they're quite normal. Well, the country has sort of come through Covid relatively unscathed, and we live pretty much as we did this time last year. So, it's a nice place to be.

And I do feel so — Oh, heavy hearted for the rest of the world, because certainly heading into the holiday season when people want to be with family and many aren't able to and here we are over here making plans for family Christmases and holidays. So, I would rather not delve too much into detail because it will probably just make people in the U.S. a little mad at you.

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

Nicola: Yeah, sure. 

So, I'm actually located in the middle of the North island of New Zealand. And for those who are from this part of the world, they may sort of recognize that as next to a very large lake called Lake Taupo. 

But for those who don't know the country, it's split into two islands. The North island is the most populated, full of small towns. And where I grew up was on a farm about three and a half hours south of Auckland, which is the largest city. And I was there for about the first eight and a half years of my life, so certainly not my entire childhood, and then moved into a small town and then soon after university left New Zealand and was overseas for 20 years. 

And what I ate is an interesting trip down memory lane because I grew up in the 1980s. And it was a very bland diet of mostly meat and vegetables. 

And then I recall a cookbook arriving on the scene called the Womens Weekly Cookbook. And all of a sudden, there were spices in our diet and recipes for things like spaghetti bolognese and a very mediocre chili con carne served with corn chips. And so, that was sort of the meals that we looked forward to as kids because it was something different. And I think anyone growing up in New Zealand or Australia will remember that. 

I suppose my fondest food memories come from when I was in my twenties, when I actually headed outside of New Zealand and started to eat more broadly from cuisines around the world. And that certainly was the case in Melbourne.

Alicia: Nice. Well, you identify as a farmer and are at work on a book about farming and food citizenship. I wanted to know how you define food citizenship.

Nicola: I mean, that's an interesting question, ’cause I think just to to backpedal slightly your use of the word identify as farmer is something that I just want to dwell on for a minute first because it has become a big topic of conversation for me of late, especially with other women working in the agriculture sector. 

So before I answer the second part, what is food citizenship to me, I think it's worth saying that I identify as a farmer as opposed to someone else or another title within that space because it is a specific and purposeful act to claim a voice in that space. As you might know, I think it's the same in the United States, that the majority of people working the land all claiming the title of farmers tend to be of a certain ilk. And here in New Zealand, that is over the age of 60, or certainly over the age of 45, white and male. 

So to be a woman and to claim that title farmer, is to have a voice in a space where the female perspective has largely been marginalized. And that's unfortunate because historically, and certainly in this current day and age, women are disproportionately exposed to things like food and security. Women are often at the forefront of climate change impacts, especially when it has to do with the land and our ability to access good food and care for our families via food and things like that, or care for ourselves. 

So, that is why I claim the title farmer. And it tends to amuse people here because it hasn't been considered something that has been contentious, that I have had many conversations on Twitter and Instagram with other women who are purposefully entering into that space and claiming that title. 

And then that leads on to what I'm thinking about when it comes to food citizenship. And it's actually a title or a concept that was introduced to me by a professor at Colorado State University. His name is Michael Carolan. He champions that as a term as opposed to say conscious consumer when it comes to running a line of activism or action by your food choices. 

And it's this idea that food impacts so many tenants of our life. And to say that we can shop our way to, for example, a healthier planet is to disregard a number of different ways in which food impacts people's lives, whether it be culturally or economically or through workplace experiences or justice. 

And it also to run that idea of conscious consumerism flags that some people have more dollars. Therefore, more votes. And so the idea that food citizenship might be centered in the food debate is to say that people value different things within the food scape, and that there is no shame in that and there is no hierarchy as far as I'm concerned in what one values over another. 

And so I'm interested in it from a New Zealand perspective, because we are here starting to think very seriously about ideas of food sovereignty. Who has access to what, who has access to land, who are the farmers producing our food for locals as opposed to food for commodity? So it's been a point of fascination for me for about the last two years. 

And I'm just slowly starting to unpack it from a local perspective. But that's what I understand it to mean, from a — I suppose an academic point of view. And certainly the work of Professor Carolan is that it is simply an acknowledgement that food is many things to many people, but to be an active participant in the food scape is to do more than shop.

Alicia: Right. 

And as you mentioned, you live in New Zealand. And I actually got a press release today about visiting Auckland in 2021, as it is a culinary and cocktail, I don't know, great travel destination. That's what landed in my inbox today, which was really funny because I was going to talk to you. 

And to people around the world, I think, especially those of us with more progressive politics, we look at New Zealand — we look at how you've weathered the pandemic, and we're like, ‘Wow, why can't we be like that?’ [Laughter.] And so I wanted to ask, how does that, as you were just talking about, how is that manifesting in local food politics? Is that global perception off of New Zealand? How would you like to see food politics there evolve, if at all?

Nicola: This is such a big question. And it's so topical here in the moment, especially in the wake of Covid, which has had an impact on New Zealanders. Perhaps not to the extent of other countries, but it has impacted those who are on the cusp of food and security. And I'll dive into that. 

But let's just backpedal. Ok, progressive politics in New Zealand and how it's perceived overseas is such a fascinating thing, because we have a well-known Prime Minister. Jacinda Ardern, young woman, mother, charismatic leader who communicated her way and our way through Covid with much effectiveness, and that has translated very well internationally. The reality here, as often the case with good communicators, is more nuanced, and it's not as rosy as perhaps those abroad would perceive it to be. 

When it comes to food politics and our progressiveness, that definitely starts in agriculture here in New Zealand. The primary industries are a huge earner for the New Zealand economy, which basically means a huge number of people are farming in some capacity in New Zealand. And a lot of land is used for agriculture, be it dairy, beef and sheep, forestry, growing fruit for export. 

And throughout Covid, the primary industries were highlighted as probably the key economic driver to get the country out of a potential recession. 

And the regulations that have come through the pipeline in the last couple of years from the progressive Labour government that we have now were initially seen as quite confrontational to some of the farming sector, who were not used — say that again, were not used to having their way of doing things challenged. 

And what Labour is trying to do is to position New Zealand and New Zealand's agriculture as a legitimate, clean green industry globally. So there's a lot of regulations around water quality, because the dairy industry has been culpable of a lot of pollution over the last decade to 15 years. And the water quality and rivers and streams are not great. 

They're looking very closely at methane emissions, as is the world. But there's some interesting research happening here in New Zealand that really pushes this idea that if we're to tackle agriculture’s and — agriculture's impact on global warming, that we need to take a really close look at what the gasses do in different ways. So there are millions and millions of cows that dot the countryside in New Zealand, but then they are a problem that can be solved in x way. And then we also need to look at fossil fuels, which is the same the world over.

So it's not to bundle them all together and say that agriculture is the biggest emitter in New Zealand, which it is in terms of statistics. But it's to understand how we can actually get to zero emissions collectively across the board, because that is our progressive government's target, is zero emissions by 2030. And we're not doing a very good job of it yet. We're trailing behind some of the European countries. But that's not to say we don't have good intents to get there. 

So that's the landscape in which we're working. And then the food that comes out of that agricultural sector, the majority gets exported. So this is a big point of contention in New Zealand. We produce the most amazing food, but the majority gets sold either as commodity or as high end food into affluent markets in the North. And what's left for New Zealanders is still good quality produce, but it's expensive. So most people will go to the supermarket and pay the same for New Zealand projects as they potentially would if you went to a supermarket in Shanghai. 

So there's a real sense of disparity emerging, and people are starting to get quite angry because there's fewer dollars around. Certainly this year, a lot of people have either lost jobs or lost hours. And we're just simply not able to purchase the food that we're growing here in this country. 

So the push for this idea of food sovereignty is gaining a lot of momentum. And the way that we're seeing it played out is small food producers are starting to just push aside the middlemen and get rid of this idea that we must produce for the commodity market, and setting up structures where they can take their food straight to the people who need it. There's a big push from fisheries and small farms to go from farm straight to consumer, and at a price point that makes it affordable. 

And that's a big kind of middle finger to not only the government's push to increase commodity and high-end value food exports for the dollar, but also for conventional farming and conventional food systems. So that's probably the most interesting thing that's happening for me at the moment is a little bit of a political rumbling, from a grassroots level where food producers are just saying, ‘We don't want to be part of this system anymore. It's not serving our people as it should.’

Alicia: That's really interesting to me, especially because I'm on an island colony that is also making these big grassroots push — pushes towards food sovereignty that are really difficult, really challenging. Especially because here being a colony, not having control over wages, not having control over how things are exploited, how things are imported. I now want to take a deeper look at what's going on over there, because that might be, might have some interesting things that are applicable to the situation as well because I think island nations probably have a lot more in common around this than maybe they think, just because of so many cultural and political differences. 

But you recently produced an audio series called ‘A Carnivore's Crisis,’ and I wanted to know what was the inspiration for that, the background. And how did you make it all happen, because it's really so expansive?

Nicola: Yeah, it really was a big project. 

It started from a conversation that I had with my Australian husband actually, who I drove to New Zealand to farm with me, but also one of my closest girlfriends who's another producer and she's based in Sydney. 

So, she felt very strongly that I had left her behind. So, we started talking about ways that we could work together. And it was three years ago, and I had made the decision with my husband to leave Sydney. I worked in Australia for, as I said, almost 20 years, with a short stint in London in between. And worked in the media over there, and held a number of senior editorial positions towards the end of my stint in Australia, and was with BuzzFeed for the final couple of years as managing editor. 

And I just was at the end of my teether. I was burnt out. The hours were too long. The emotional, physical drain was just too much. And during that time, my husband and I had a miscarriage. So we lost our first baby. And it's incidents like that, or moments like that in one's life, I think, people take stock.

And for me, in the weeks and months after that food took on a very peculiar and specific role. And I used it to try and heal myself to try and become not just physically strong, but also a little more emotionally robust. And it also just served a very specific health purpose. I cut out all of the things that I knew weren't feeding me, and started eating in a way that would sort of build my immunity and resilience and all of that kind of stuff. 

And that started a conversation about, ‘Well, do I need to get closer to my food source in order for me to really make a good goal of this?’ And we had an opportunity through my father to work on a piece of land that he leased. And because things just weren't going that well for us in Sydney, we said, ‘Yes.’ 

And so we made this transition from working in central Sydney on to a rural property and trying to become farmers three years ago, right at the time where some of the big research reports were coming out from the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the eight Lancet Commission and Oxford University that were taking a really good hard look at what the global agricultural sector was doing to the land and to ecology and diversity and the drain on resources. And I'm sure for your listeners who are interested in the food space, that information won't be new. 

But what jumped out at me from the media coverage off the back of that was how focused it became on one tenant of the research, which was an increase in plant-based diets, and a decrease in meat and dairy across the board for Western societies or Western countries would have the biggest impact. And yet within the detail of the reports was a lot of regional nuance, and a lot of findings and suggestions about how to best farm certain land and certain countries sustainably. And I didn't see that being reported. 

And I was curious about that, because obviously we'd found ourselves on land, farming cattle right at the time where cattle farmers had been pinpointed as environmental enemies and certainly degraders of the environment. Yet here in New Zealand, we operate a very different farming system to what a lot of big cattle ranches or what feedlotters do in the United States or in Australia, or in the EU. 

So, that was the start of the audio documentary series, these conversations about what is missing from this debate or from this conversation, and is the plant-based diet the best course of action from an environmental point of view? And that's a very important thing for me to raise, that we were looking — or I was really concerned about the environmental impacts. We didn't dive into the health implications, or the moral or ethical implications of eating meat at that early stage. I was really focused on, ‘Is the land going to be degraded by what we do here by running cattle?’

So, that was the start of it. And then we pitched to get some development money from the Australian Documentary Conference, which I'd been involved with in my previous job in Sydney. We received a little bit of development money, and then Audible, which is a Amazon subsidiary funded the commission. And they were really interested to tell the story, or help tell the story, and were also interested in pushing it out to more of a, I suppose an international audience. 

So we started thinking about, ‘Well, what's the other aspect of the conversation that we — my production partner Naima Brown and I — don't have a lot of experience in?’ And that was certainly the food and cooking space. 

And so we started having conversation with a British chef named Rachel Khoo, who was at a point in her career where she wanted to dive into something a little — I suppose a little more challenging for her audience, maybe. She'd been fronting TV shows and writing beautiful cookbooks. And she was now based in Sweden with two small children, and she was also thinking about the environmental impact of her — not only her family's eating lifestyle, but also the way that she was writing recipes for others. 

That was the style of the conversation. And so we just started developing it over the course of about six months. We were fully funded by Audible, so we had obviously budget to travel and to hire crew. And we divided up the storyline to basically try and canvass the export market and export touchpoints from New Zealand and Australia. 

So thinking about New Zealand and Australia as it's — colonies, directing their food products up into the UK and what that meant from an environmental point of view now, and then looking at the West Coast of the United States because a lot of Australian and New Zealand beef ended up in California. But California also is the hotspot for some really interesting food tech and plant-based product lines coming out of the likes of companies, such as Memphis Meats and — well, Memphis Meats has not to market yet with lab grown meat. But Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers, and some of the other interesting Silicon Valley startups. 

So it was, from the first conversation through to when we locked off the documentary, around 13 months of production. 

And then unfortunately, we were due to release the podcast right in the month where countries started to shut down due to COVID. So our commissioners made the decision to hold the documentary through ’til August, when it was initially slated for March. And unfortunately in that time, the foodscape completely changed, went into flux. And it would have been nice to have added another couple of chapters or episodes into that storyline to take account for what was happening in the meat processing lines, and what was happening with food logistics and people's ability to actually access good, healthy food during COVID.

So yes, that was how it sort of came together. The details of it, I would encourage anyone to go and listen. But I can dive into that, if you want me to unpack that as well.

Alicia: Oh no, they should listen to it. 

But I wanted to hear, what surprised you when you were creating this series, if anything? And did it change how you personally relate to meat or to these plant-based meat products that you were mentioning?

Nicola: Yeah, that's an interesting one. 

I think the most surprising thing for me, when I started having initial research conversations with people and trying to book talent or put together our production schedule, there were — there was a lot of fear, which surprised me enormously. I had to work very hard to get people on microphone and to put them in a space or into a conversation with me or my fellow producer Naima, where they felt comfortable to share detail and to be honest and truthful. 

And these people were primarily coming out of the farming space, but also food manufacturing, cooks, chefs. I think that was a byproduct of the two years of a lot of vitriolic conversation around diet choices and activism via food. 

So a lot of the farmers who we spoke to, before we turned on the mic, were very cautious with me. And I was accused on a number of occasions of being a vegan spy or a vegan activist. There was an assumption that I had an agenda. 

And that goes both ways. We had a very long and involved interview conversation with a UK food writer who I had — admire enormously, and they ended up pulling out of the documentary because upon reflection they thought our agenda was pro-meat and that we were working for the meat lobbyists.

Which, again, is not true at all. I may be a farmer, but I'm also a journalist. And I come from a public broadcasting background, which means a lot to me. And so my sense of journalistic integrity is incredibly important, and goes to my reputation and how I actually get work. I was taken aback by that, that they just said, ‘No, we don't want anything to do with it.’ 

And that just continued throughout the entire production process. There were so many phone calls once we were in sight, or — I had a producer travel to a valley in, north of the UK And suddenly, I had a dairy farmer on the phone to me saying, ‘You need to explain this to me again. How can I trust you? Are you sure that this is — that you don't have an agenda?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, this is what we want to do. We just want to give a platform to people to share their experiences and their expertise, and then try and craft a narrative out of those voices that offers a broad range of opinions.’

And so, I think, the end result for me hearing all of those stories and how much discomfort and animosity has kind of driven the conversation over the last couple of years led me to make a couple of decisions in my own life and in my own diet. And that has been to spend a lot more time having more conversations to try and find a space where we can talk about food and the environment, and farming’s impact on the environment in a way where — that it doesn't descend to argument. 

And my diet choices and the role that food and cooking plays within that is really important. I often have these conversations over a meal, and that gesture of sharing food is often a way to calm the space. 

And the consequence of me learning what I did throughout the course of the documentary has shifted my diet in that eating red meat is still part of it, but a minor part. And the reasons for that are very firmly focused on environmental impacts. I do believe that in the West, we need to drastically reduce the amount of red meat consumption. But that's not to say that it needs to disappear entirely because meat serves a particular role, or plays a particular role in a lot of people's cultures and diets for health reasons. 

When it came to looking at some of the replacement products or plant-based manufacturing that's going on, I have a lot of views on this and the way in which corporate or food manufacturers are peddling protein as opposed to actually producing good food. I don't eat it. I wouldn't touch it. The majority of our weekly diet is either vegetarian or plant based, but there would — nothing would convince me to purchase a plant-based burger patty. I think that they are doing consumers a massive disservice with the products that they are producing.

Alicia: Why do you think that?

Nicola: Because I think that corporate food or big food especially has co-opted some very genuine attempts to try and make eating for the planet a little easier. But the actual product that is being produced, I'm a little skeptical over what the various isolates are doing from an environmental point of view but also for our health. It's essentially baking recipes. 

And given what I said earlier, I made a conscious decision to cut out processed foods from my diet for health reasons. The plant-based burger, to me, is a processed food. And so it just doesn't serve a role, or doesn't have a role to play in my diet. 

But what I am concerned mostly about from an environmental point of view is where those ingredients are coming from, how they're farmed or how they're produced. There's an New Zealand manufacturer that I visited during the documentary, and they make high, really good quality, plant-based sausages and burgers. And the bulk of the bulk of the ingredients comes from Europe, and Canada and the Pacific Islands. 

So the Pacific Islands produce the coconut ingredients, which is great. It's good for the Pacific Islands economy. Canada is where a lot of the grains are coming from. Hemp is coming from the EU. 

And some of those ingredients, like pea — well, pea and pea-isolates, soy, corn, barley, wheat, the way that they are farmed in some of the big corporate farming spaces is as monocrops. And those monocrops might be rotated, but they're certainly not a diverse farming system. There's typically a lot of inputs in terms of fertilizer, in order to produce those crops over and over again in the same soil spaces. 

And to think that that is environmentally beneficial is concerning to me, knowing what I know now about the way in which soil has degraded over the past 40 years with the advent of conventional farming systems, not just in New Zealand but the world over, and the increasing use of inputs, whether it be fertilizers or pesticides and herbicides. 

So that's where the plant-based products are coming from. They're coming from big monocrops. Me, personally, I just would prefer to eat plants that are growing in vegetable gardens locally as opposed to products that are processed and manufactured abroad.

Alicia: Right. 

No, I agree obviously. I like to hear other people's articulation of how this works. And obviously, you know so much more than me so it's nice to hear that in such depth.

But for you, is cooking a political act?

Nicola: Is cooking a political act. How would you describe political, or how would you define? 

Alicia: Right. 

This is a question I ask everyone. And I suppose it is a bit of a trick question in that — in the answer, one must be defining what political is for them. 

I talked to Amanda Cohen, who's a chef in New York City earlier today. And her immediate response was ‘Yes, of course, it is because food, what we buy has all these impacts on the environment, on labor and on our bodies, on health, and these things are regulated by governmental bodies, etc, etc.’ And so it's really a question that is about how you view — people personally define what politics means in their own lives, or what politics means more broadly. 

Nicola: Yeah, totally. 

I mean, the reason I push it back onto you, because I've been thinking a lot about that term of what — there is a phrase that's bandied around a lot at the moment, which is ‘Food is political.’ And it's just said as a throwaway without- 

Alicia: Right. To placate. [Laughter.]

Nicola: Oh, completely.

The ability to unpack that is so important, especially at the moment. So when I'm thinking about this idea of what food citizenship means, citizenship, of course, plays an essential role in the political space and in politics writ large. 

I would say cooking is an act of citizenship for me. And what I mean to say by that is when I cook — when I put together a meal, I'm actually thinking about a very small, personal set of concerns which I hold on to because the ripple-on effect, I think, has a political consequence. 

So when I say that food, as I elaborated earlier, played a particular role in my life, when, around my miscarriage but also around the birth of my first child, my daughter. And the thinking behind that was food is the basis of my health and good health, and I wanted to never have to enter the public health system or hospital system again, as long as I could avoid it. So many hours waiting. So I didn't want to be a burden on an already overstretched health system, both here in New Zealand and in Australia, so if I could do anything to avoid being in that space I would. 

That has weighed heavily on me, because food, and certainly cheap food — there's a lot of research around this, that people purchasing cheap food are basically just offsetting — or offsetting might not be the right word, but pushing the burden onto a different part of our society. So to eat a certain way is to potentially develop health concerns, or health issues later on in life. 

But to spend time, the alternative to spend time now if you can afford to, or if the food that you have access to is at the right price point, is to have less of a burden on the healthcare system. So that in itself, for me, is a political act, but it's also about citizenship and that I don't want to be a burden on it on a system that's already stretched. So I don't know if that's a particularly useful answer. 

But there are a bunch of other ways in which cooking and food works in our house in a similar way. So it's also about knowledge, sharing, and trying to unpack the ways in which we cook for others as a gesture of community or friendship or culture. 

When I say culture, I mean acknowledging the past and current situation that colonialism has in New Zealand. So when we serve meals, what are we serving? Are we paying attention to local ingredients? And local is to say foods that can and should be growing here, not just local that happens to be tomatoes grown in glass houses down the road. 

So it's a really complicated question, and I'm not answering it particularly well. Why don't I summarize it in saying that, yes, cooking is absolutely political. But it is deeply, deeply personal in the politics that I live out. I'm also aware that to have any kind of political sway or influence, I need to live my words. 

And that was part of the reason for leaving Sydney and coming to where I am now to farm and to learn this stuff from the inside of the industry. It's one thing to say, ‘I care about worker’s rights and justice, and I care about the soil and the environment’ and to not do anything about that. So, yes, the answer is cooking is deeply, deeply political. But for me, and I hope for many others out there, it is also incredibly small and personal in the way that those politics are played out.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

Nicola: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Your writing has been such a beacon for me this year, Alicia, so thank you for all your good work.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much. That means so much. And I love ‘A Carnivore's Crisis,’ and I can't wait for your book as well.

Nicola: Yes, me too. Need to finish that. [Laughter.]  

Alicia: That's the thing I say when someone's like, ‘I can't wait for your book.’ Yeah, I'm like, ‘Oh, me too. Can't wait to read my own book.’

Nicola: Yeah, the idea of writing a book sounded great when it was just a concept. And then sitting down for the hours has been the challenge.

Alicia: Exactly, exactly. Yes. Well, thank you again. I hope you have a great day-

Nicola: Well, good luck with your — and happy holidays for you.

Alicia: Thank you. You too, you too.

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It’s hard for me to properly state what I perceive to be the significance of Amanda Cohen. For more than ten years now, she’s been the chef-owner of Dirt Candy in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan. The restaurant was once very small (it was once, indeed, in the space that now houses Superiority Burger), then she moved it to a larger space. Now, it’s rather small again, operating only on the patio with a lot of heat lamps, and she long ago adopted a no-tipping policy in order to pay staff a living wage. She’s only ever cooked vegetables. With Lekka Burger, she’s added veggie burgers in a fast-casual setting to her oeuvre, and the result is stunning.

I don’t think she has gotten enough credit for any of this. The reasons are sadly obvious: she’s a woman, and she cooks vegetables. Even vegans, I found out recently, despise her for occasionally consuming a piece of meat or fish in order to study flavor and texture, in order to put out food that really is on par with what omnivores are accustomed to (and while I usually say “f**k the omnivore’s palate,” I have to acknowledge that when my fiancé—only recently converted to vegetarianism—eats her food, he can barely speak because he’s focused on how delicious it is).

Anyway, I’ve interviewed Amanda many times for different pieces because her perspective is so essential to me, but this is a broad one. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Amanda, thanks so much for coming on.

Amanda: Hi, thanks so much for having me.

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

Amanda: Sure.

So I grew up in Ottawa and Toronto in the ’70s and ’80s. And certainly, Ottawa was a winter city. It's funny, because I look back on it and we didn't have a huge amount of produce at all times. It's cold in Ottawa, in Canada, so the winter—vegetables were pretty pathetic. But my mother would always try as hard as she could. 

At the same time though, both cities were pretty international cities. Toronto is the capital of Canada, super cosmopolitan. Sorry, Ottawa’s the capital of Canada; Toronto's the capital of Ontario. And because Ottawa was the capital, it's filled with diplomats. So we had all different kinds of restaurants that we constantly were sort of going to. My dad was in government. We were meeting other families. 

And so I had this sort of really varied variety of cuisines. And I have this memory of going to the supermarkets when I was younger, and particularly in Toronto, which again is a much more cosmopolitan city filled with all different ethnicities and nationalities, where the — it's pretty exciting if I look back on it now. But the grocery store was filled with products from all over the world. 

And so if you were an adventurous cook, which my mother sometimes was — she wasn't always — we'd have really random fun ingredients in our kitchen cupboard. I think we ate all over the map. But also, it was a family of five kids. So we had a lot of pasta and pasta salads.

Alicia: And so, what got you into food actually?

Amanda: Well, I think there was a variety of things that got me into it. I am the youngest of five kids. And there's about a five-year difference between me and my — the next sibling who's closest in age to me, but all my — all those other siblings are about two years apart. So my brother's 12 years older. And then there's three sisters in between. This is a whole family history. 

But by the time I became a teenager, my mother had been cooking for about 25 years for her family. And kudos to her, she just sort of like, ‘I'm not doing it anymore.’ I swear, she looked at me and she was like, ‘You look pretty capable. You seem to know your way around the kitchen. You want to have dinner? Figure it out yourself.’ 

I mean, it wasn't quite that blunt. She didn't have to cook for a family of seven anymore, every single night. It was just sort of me and her and my dad. And I think she was kind of done with it, which I think we all understand now having cooked through the pandemic, how hard it is to cook every night. 

And I liked it. I was like, ‘Oh, this is fun, I get to figure out what I want to eat. And I get to play around.’ And I loved cooking magazines. And so I would cook recipes from them. I'm sure they were all terrible. My parents were certainly nice enough to suffer through some awful meals. 

But I liked it. I liked the challenge of it. I liked reading the recipe and figuring things out and seeing it come to life. I was a kid that was always so disappointed that I could never get what was in my imagination to come through on a piece of paper. Or I'd write a story and be like, ‘Oh, I imagined it so different.’ I’d paint a picture. I'm like, ‘I'm a terrible artist.’ But in my head, I'm an amazing artist. But something with — like a recipe, you get the ingredients together, you sort of have this idea of what it's going to turn out like, and it turns out like that. And so, that was so just satisfying to me. 

And I liked it. And it was always sort of my backup plan of what I would do if I couldn't figure anything else out. And as it turned out, when I was in my early twenties I really couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. And I was like, ‘Well, I've always liked to cook, so maybe I can just get that as a skill. If I can hold on to that as a skill, I can go anywhere in the world and I can travel and it'll just — it'll at least sort of be a lifeline for a moment while I figure out what I want to do.’ And the reality is it's what I wanted to do. I just didn't know it at the time.

Alicia: And you decided to go to the Natural Gourmet Institute?

Amanda: Yeah.

I'd been actually living in Hong Kong right after university, and I wanted more than anything to keep traveling. And so I was like, ‘Well, I have to figure out how to get this skill.’ And I lived in Los Angeles for a while and hated it. 

And I was starting to look at cooking schools, and at the time I was a pretty hardcore vegetarian. I think I’d just left my vegan stage, and I — there was no way I was going to a real cooking school. 

One of the reasons I don't eat — I mean, I eat a little bit of meat now, and fish, but particularly at the time why I didn't is I really — bones really freak me out. And so even as a kid, I didn’t like bones in my food. And so the idea that I was going to have to learn how to butcher something was really, really traumatizing. 

And fortunately, at the Natural Gourmet, you really didn't have to learn how to do that. They did actually have meat classes at the time, and I think there was a chicken butchering class and a fish class. But you were also allowed to miss two days. And so those were the two days I missed. 

But it was a great program, actually. And I look back on it now. And it's funny, because so much of the time it was like, people didn't think it was a real school. And they were like, ‘Oh, it's just a school with funny ingredients.’ And all those funny ingredients, and all the sort of recipes that we were using then, and all the courses that we were getting taught are actually now considered really cool and trendy. And it's so amazing how that's changed.

Alicia: You said you had a vegan phase. What made you stop eating meat?

Amanda: Well, I had stopped eating meat when I was 15 because, really, all my friends were. I mean, it was 32 years ago and becoming a vegetarian was super rebellious at the time. Very different now, where it's almost mainstream. But then really, it was super rebellious. And all my friends were rebelling against their parents. And I was like, ‘Oh, that seems like a good idea. I'll do that too.’ And certainly annoyed my parents enough. They're like, ‘You're not gonna have enough to eat, and what's gonna happen to you?’

But the reality is it actually — my diet didn't change. I had never eaten that much meat anyways, to begin with, and I didn't really like it. So when we started sort of having meals after I made the decision that I was a vegetarian, as it turned out there — I was just eating the exact same thing I was before and I just hadn't labeled myself as a vegetarian. And so it's not like it was a grand change in my life. 

And then when I moved to Hong Kong, and I'd probably — moving maybe a little bit beforehand, it just sort of — I had become, I think, vegan. And I think a lot of my friends and colleagues were vegan, so it was easier. I don't know now, but certainly at the time when I was living there, there wasn't a lot of dairy in the food I was eating in Hong Kong. And so it just all of a sudden, again, happenstance, I was a vegan.

Alicia: Right. 

Since your time at the Natural Gourmet Institute, you worked at so many vegetarian restaurants in New York. How have you kind of seen vegetarianism shift in this time, as a cuisine?

Amanda: You answered your own question. You called it cuisine. So I don't think that it had ever been considered really a cuisine beforehand. It was so disregarded and considered a second-class cuisine, I think, what, by most foodies and food writers and certainly the mainstream press. 

And nowadays, well, I'm not sure it's held at the top level. It's certainly in the playing field. We're seeing getting a lot more coverage. We're seeing vegetarian chefs being treated a lot more seriously. 

And what we're seeing, which I think is pretty fascinating and has been a huge shift is — and it's slow. We're not where I'd like to see us yet. But we're actually considering vegetarian chefs who started off in the vegetarian world as serious chefs, versus what was happening for numerous years, which was that you'd have a mainstream chat or an omnivore chef all of a sudden be like, ‘Oh, well, now I'm going to cook vegetables!’ or ‘I'm going to become a vegetarian for a while!’ And they got all the press. And it was you'd be a vegetarian chef next to them. And you'd be like, ‘Hello. Hello. I've been doing this for a really long time, too.’ And you were just totally disregarded because of your background. Who you did or didn't know. And I think that's a huge, huge shift and an important one.

Alicia: Right.

And I mean, when you opened Dirt Candy — for this reason, it was considered extremely radical. And how have you changed your approach to cooking, being as you're kind of on your own wavelength? You have to challenge yourself, it seems, because you're kind of in a league of your own in terms of what you're doing. Has your approach changed?

Amanda: Well, one, I'm a much more confident cook than I was. 

I think one of the things that I'll always find sad, and I'll find this sad for the rest of my career is, I'll never know actually what it was like to be a customer at little Dirt Candy when it opened, and what my food was like then. And I think it's changed so much now in this restaurant, because I have so much less to prove. But I'll also never get to really sit down and eat my food here as an outside observer. And maybe I'd hate it. Who knows? I'm pretty picky. 

But I felt like I had so much to prove at the beginning. And I think my dishes were so much more complicated. And then they had to be, but I also think they — it was a time of cooking where it was a lot more like that. And now I look at what I'm serving now. And it's a lot less pretentious and complicated. And I think I'd always wanted to serve fun food. My sort of what I didn't know I was covering up when served with microgreens. I was like, ‘Oh, well, all this f*****g stuff.’

And now I am a better chef than I was, since I opened little Dirt Candy. It's ten years later. I don't have as much to prove. And so I can let the vegetables really speak for themselves a lot more. I'm still only competing against myself, I think. And so it still allows me to kind of do whatever I want to do, ’cause there are no rules for this kind of cuisine still, which is great.

Alicia: Well, as you noted, vegetable-forward dining kind of became a thing for which mostly men have been given credit, when I go through my cookbooks, my vegetarian cookbooks from the ’70s through now, it's mostly women who have always been doing vegetarian food and who have always been pushing the cuisine forward, who made it a cuisine. And you've been so outspoken about this. 

And so I wanted to kind of ask, have you seen or would you like to see food media change its approach to how it talks about vegetarian cooking? How have you understood how gender kind of manifests in this specific approach to how people talk about vegetarian cuisine?

Amanda: Well, I think it goes back a little bit to my answer about the mainstream chefs, which is really just a coded word for male chefs getting a lot of attention for entering this field. And I think what happens is they become considered the experts much faster than the people who actually have been doing it. They come with all the credentials, like, ‘Ooh, this is my press, these are my awards. These are my restaurants.’ Versus people who've spent their entire life doing this, and probably actually are the experts in it, they don't come with all the whistles and bells. They just come with knowledge. 

And fanfare seems to have a lot more weight than actual in-depth knowledge about a subject, I think, in the food media. I'd like to see that change. I'm not sure we are there yet. It would be very nice. 

And I thought this for a while with a lot of food coverage, if we could start talking about the history of the food and how we got to covering this particular aspect of it. Because I think once you go back through the history, it’s exactly what you see on your cookbook shelves if we're talking just about vegetarian food. ‘Oh, wow. There's so many women who were writing these cookbooks and were at the forefront of this movement.’ And then you can't deny that existence. It has to become much more sort of holistic when we report on food, and not just this narrow idea of ‘Ooo, what's cool?’

Alicia: Yeah. 

And I mean, I think that this is so prevalent in the veggie burger discourse now, too, where because people have obsessed so much over Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers, then when you did Lekka Burger it seemed kind of — to people who don't like to eat vegetarian food most of the time, they were like, ‘Huh, it's kind of an anachronism.’ And thus, you had that New Yorker review where the Lekka Burger was compared solely to Brooks Headley’s veggie burger at Superiority Burger.

I know you had a very strong response to that review. I've always been like, ‘Well, Superiority Burger was huge and got its press because of Brooks Headley’s prestige’ that he got in the same way that you just said. If you come with the accolades and those bells and whistles, then people will think that your veggie burger is more worthwhile than the veggie burger by someone who has actually been like — I mean, not that he hasn't.

And it's very difficult because I love Superiority Burger and Brooks is great, but at the same time it's like, ‘Why is this the only standard against which we can talk about any other veggie burger in the way that fine dining omnivorous chefs could make a burger and it would still just be made of meat?’ It wouldn't be that interesting. 

But yeah, so. I don't know. How is the perception of Lekka Burger, how have you felt about the press there that you've gotten?

Amanda: Yeah, I mean it's been a real up and down roller coaster. But I want to be very clear about this. I have nothing against Superiority Burger. I think the world of him, and so my issue was always about the press surrounding it and not actually Brooks himself, who I am friends with. He’s in my old restaurant, we talked about that for months going — I sat down with him and worked through his budget a little. 

So, it's just absolutely no issues with him whatsoever. I'm so glad he pushed the conversation, veggie burgers forward and what they could be. He has this sort of really good example of what one is. I have a very different example of what it is. 

And the reality is when I opened Dirt — er, Lekka. Dirt Candies. When I opened Lekka Burger, I never imagined that my competition was actually Brooks. Brooks has this really tiny, fun artisanal burger shop. And even then, he says that burgers aren't really necessarily the whole focus there. But it's not meant to be scaled up. 

And for us, when we opened Lekka Burger, honestly, our competition is Shake Shack. I mean, that's what we want to be. And so that's who I want to be compared to. I want to be compared to the burger at Shake Shack, which actually the vegetarian burger is all around the country. That's our competition, not Brooks’ really delicious, artisanal burger. 

And even if I was being compared to that burger, then the New Yorker review really sort of took it out of the context of the burger in the end. And they're like, ‘Well, it's something about the burger. We really like this sandwich instead, and that's what people should be doing.’ 

And that really discounts a female chef coming into the space saying, ‘Hey, you know what? I want to grow really big. This is my chance to have a franchise, or not a franchise but to have lots of different locations.’ And then sort of being told, ‘No, you can't do that because you're not up for it.’ 

Obviously, the New Yorker thought that I couldn't do that, because you're not doing exactly what this person is doing and this is what all people should be doing. And I just keep thinking, ‘But there's so much room out there for all of it.’ No, it felt there was no way to compete, even though I'm not trying to compete with Superiority Burger because the only person who can do that is Brooks.

Alicia: Yeah. 

No, it was very interesting because I think it spoke to how little imagination people have when they are approaching vegetarian food. And that's really depressing to me, of course, as a person writing about vegetarian and vegan food, that most of the people — when people who don't think about these things all the time approach it, they come at it with such a narrow perspective, which does such a disservice to how we should be able to discuss this wide and varied world of veggie burgers. I mean, that's what the cool thing about the veggie burger is, is that it can be literally anything. But yeah, it's very disheartening.

Amanda: I cannot tell you, because now I'm in the veggie burger world, how many articles every day are written about veggie burgers. And are they the next big thing, or what Beyond Burger is doing with the Impossible Burger. Nestlé's next burger. This is huge. We're on the cusp of some — whether or not it works, we're on a cusp of some weird veggie burger mock meat revolution. And it's a huge, huge conversation that's happening that never would have happened ten years ago.

Alicia: Right. To see it not taken as seriously as it perhaps should be is just — yeah, annoying, frankly—

Amanda: And really ignoring how much room there is for so many different kinds.

Alicia: Yes, exactly. 

I mean, but at Dirt Candy too in the pandemic, you've sort of also kind of embraced the sandwich as a tool. Which is interesting, ’cause you — now you've had this experience doing the veggie burger and that kind of approach. Did working on Lekka Burger influence how you approached kind of pivoting Dirt Candy during the pandemic?

Amanda: Yes and no. I mean, a little bit because of Lekka Burger, I had to simplify my process so much. The Lekka Burger, it's like ten steps or less to get a burger out, whereas before at Dirt Candy it was like, ‘Well, we're at 300 steps for this one dish. But that seems like enough. We're good to go.’

So, this idea of focusing on what a sandwich is, and how best, how easy it is to make it and what does an actual sandwich mean. And we talked about this a lot, but what's the best bread for this? What's going to happen to the filling? Is it going to soak into it? What's the textural contrast between the bread? And do you want thick bread, crossbred, crunchy, chewy? 

And all that sort of went into the burger at Lekka. So, I think I had started opening up my brain to that way of thinking. But also I didn't have a choice with Dirt Candy. Lekka was a choice. There was nothing else I could do. I'm looking at this restaurant. We're reopening in the middle of the pandemic, ’cause I, again, have no choice. I have to reopen or I'm going to close. 

And clearly, my fine dining restaurant isn't going to function. It's just not going to work. I can't make that food. I'm trying to keep as few staff members as possible on board, A. to keep my payroll low. But also, I — the idea of having to let anybody else go again was just too much for me. So I have this core group of staff, which if I'm slow or busy I can take care of. I didn't want to play the game of, ‘Oh, well, I think I'm going to be busy on Friday nights during the summer so we'll hire some extra people, but come October I'm going to fire everybody again.’ It just didn't seem fair.

I have to make food that my staff can handle. But I also have to make food that people want to eat. And my customers are gone. My customers were, I didn't even understand how many, but probably were 75% tourists. 

Alicia: Wow. 

Amanda: And then, the rest — Yeah, huge. I never understood. I always would pay lip service to tourists like, ‘Oh, I was a tourist destination.’ I really, really was. 

And the other part of my customers were probably people who also left the city because they had a lot of money. And we were treated as a once in a while restaurant, a fancy restaurant. Maybe you come to us once or twice a year, which is fine. I didn't have to be a neighborhood restaurant. 

But the restaurants right now that are surviving and that are doing well are neighborhood restaurants. They're really catering for their neighborhood. And it's been very humbling for me to realize that, ‘Oooh, that's not something I did.’ And I'm not sure it was necessarily the worst thing not to have done that. But in the long term, it wasn't great. But I also wasn't thinking down the road to a pandemic when I put my business model, ‘To sell, always consider a pandemic down the road.’

We've struggled with trying to figure out, what do people want to eat and how do they want to eat it? And what do they want from me? Because what we get is a lot of people who are coming in, they’re like, ‘Oh, I've always wanted to come to Dirt Candy. Oh, you only serve sandwiches?’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah, that is all we're serving right now.’ And we are sort of revamping ourselves all the time to figure out how we can best serve our community and our customers. And sandwiches happen to be an easy — not an easy one, but universally loved.

Alicia: Right.

Do you think you'll keep them on the menu, when things return to non-pandemic times?

Amanda: I don't know. I mean, we used to have a really good brunch. And I loved it. And we had some sandwiches, and we were a much more casual restaurant then. But brunch was just impossible for us. I don't know why I'm such a bad restaurateur at brunch. It’s so hard to find line cooks. I don't know, we had a deal for ‘you get a cocktail and a pastry and a sandwich and a cup of coffee all for $30.’ And it was our party brunch. 

And I think that's a really good deal. But around the corner, there's ten places that are doing bottomless brunches, and I'm like, ‘I can't pay my rent with that. I can't pay my staff.’ And so I'm not sure I can live on sandwiches. We can't count on it. Honestly, I have no idea what we're going to be at the end of this.

Alicia: Right, right. No, I mean, that's terrifying. 

Yeah, I mean, for you what would a good response have been by the government to keeping restaurants open but also keeping people safe during this?

Amanda: So, to take a step back, I don't fault them for the response we had. Within a week of us all shutting down, basically they had a care plan in place. The PPP was there, and there were seven stimulus checks and the extra $600 a week for employees, which was great. I mean, they came up with that. We’re basically a dysfunctional government. [Laughs.] They came up with that really fast, and once the PPP was sort of rejiggered early actually did work for most people who were able to take it or who had decided to take it. 

However, it's not enough. And that's where we're at. This real problem is they have sort of — it was short-sighted, and now we need to really be thinking long-sighted. Even within the PPP, one of the reasons it didn't work is you were basically paying people to go to work. And I still think the government should have paid people not to go to work, all people. I shouldn't have made the choice to open my restaurant so that I could survive, as opposed to I'm going to keep my restaurant closed. I'm going to keep all my employees on unemployment with the extra federal aid, and then I can keep everybody safe. That would have been a choice, and that's something that I really think the federal government should have thought more of doing. But they didn’t. 

So, now we're here. And we're still stuck without really a follow-up plan, and now it's dire. And this is where I think they really, really failed us. The cities failed us; the states failed us. And the federal government has failed us. We are not getting the aid we need to keep our doors open or keep our doors closed. Either/or, they're putting us in this really uncomfortable position, where we're all having to make not even smart decisions. We're just making decisions, and it's — everything's a band-aid

And we're not going to survive without another aid package now, without even passing the Restaurant Act or something akin to it. The Restaurant Act just happens to have the most movement behind it. I won't stay open. That's the reality, come end of January. If I don't know that there's a lifeline along — on the way, then there's just no point anymore. 

Alicia: Right. That's so scary and so horrifying.

Amanda: Yeah, because it's not just me. We're looking at every restaurant. I mean, not everyone, but the bulk of them facing the same issues. And it's two parts. If we knew that we had the money coming in, it was coming at the end of January, then everybody could breathe a sigh of relief. It's coming, right? We can hold on ‘til then. But the mental toll of sort of being kept in limbo, constantly? It's too much. And then we're just sort of throwing away good money after bad money. 

And then the reality is at some point, you have to make the choice. I have to close, I'm not making enough money. I've gone from making $10,000 to $12,000 a night to $2,000 to $3,000, on a good night $2,000 to $3,000. On a bad night, I can also make $600. We're not doing well here. 

And if I close, the city loses me. But the city also loses the jobs that I have. And yes, I only have six right now. But in six months, maybe I actually could have 20 jobs or 30. Maybe I could get back up to my pre-pandemic levels come summer, once the vaccine sort of has been rolled out. And they lose the taxes I put into the city, and they lose my payroll taxes. There's a huge, huge amount of sort of economic destruction that's going to happen if they don't start sort of having this long-term thinking.

Alicia: Right. 

I mean, I don't think at this point it has, it makes that much of a difference. But you've been one of the few restaurateurs who's been super outspoken about the — having a no tipping policy. Does that make a difference, do you think, in terms of how you've weathered the pandemic or how you could survive? I know in the beginning places that had, places — people that I was talking to who had tipping, a no tipping policy, they were really weathering the beginning a lot better. But that kind of wears out after a while.

Amanda: Yeah, I mean I think actually it's been a saving grace not having tipping for a number of reasons. 

One, it actually helped us with our — the amount of money we got from the government originally because I didn't have — my payroll was higher, and so it's allowed me to sort of sustain myself a little bit longer. But I think everybody who has tipping right now is seeing that they have nights where they're only making a couple hundred dollars, or $1,000. But they still have to staff up, and you still have to have your staff here for a certain number of hours. 

And so, people are going home with not a lot of money these days. They might have gone home at the beginning in the summer when — and we didn't have a curfew and there was a lot more money sort of flowing. From also what I've read and talked to other people, the money isn't flowing as quickly as it used to. And there's a lot of bad nights. 

I walk home about 40 blocks every night from Dirt Candy, and Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, curfew or no curfew, as soon as it got cold, places are done. And I walk through the East Village, through Union Square. There is nobody in restaurants except your three or four front of house workers who are standing there waiting to see maybe possibly a few people come in. So they're suffering. They're suffering a lot.

Alicia: No, it's absolutely horrifying. And I hope that something happens between now and the end of January. 

But to completely change gears, but I guess not, no, for you is cooking a political act?

Amanda: My restaurant is a political act, for sure. I think food is so incredibly political: where it comes from, who cooks it, who grows it, who's eating it, all of that. 

And sort of when I start to think about the global supply chain, it's so enormous and it's so overwhelming how basically every plate has become exceptionally political. But I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. And I'm just starting to sort of think this through. And for years, I've said, ‘We have to raise prices.’ And I think about how much I pay for my food and how much — sometimes I pay so little for food. I'm like, ‘This is insane. And sometimes I paid so much for food, I'm like, ‘Ok, this makes a lot of sense.’ 

But like when I'm paying so little for food, I'm like, ‘I don't understand how a driver who's dropping it off got paid? How the company afforded the boxes? What does that mean how little they're paying the people who shipped it, or the people who grew it, or how much are the seeds?’ Honestly, when you start to go back through that, it's — my brain doesn't know how to process all of it. 

And it's something that I know you've written a lot about, and probably know a lot more about it then me. But as I start thinking through it, and my guess: of course, what we eat, who eats it, and how we serve it, and why we serve it is insanely political. 

And on the flip side of that, I think that food is actually politics. And this is something that sort of really comes up over the course of the pandemic. One of the reasons that the IRC has been really successful, or not really successful but it's sort of come together and we've seen a little bit of movement, is because of how many actual restaurant workers there are and how many independent restaurants there are. 

There are 16 million, or there were. That number is not as high as it used to be. But there were 16 million restaurant workers in the United States. That makes us the second biggest employer, behind the government. And that's insane to me. And then the fact that there's like 500,000, independent restaurants, none of us knew these numbers beforehand. And we were so naive. 

But when we started putting it all together, and we realized how big our voice could be, A) I think, I mean, certainly for a lot of us we were like, ‘Oh, we've missed so many opportunities.’ But now, we actually can do so much with our voices. And it's one of the few good things that may come out of the pandemic, is realizing how much power we could have.

Alicia: Right. Absolutely. And I'm excited to see if that turns into something powerful and real and effective in the future. 

Well, thank you so much for coming on the chat. I know you're insanely busy. I've been going back to your cookbook lately and in my research, and it's still so fun and original. And I just love it, obviously. But yeah, thank you so much for coming on. And good luck. Can't wait to follow along with what happens.

Amanda: Yeah, me too. Thanks so much for having me. This was great.

Alicia: Thank you.

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The first time I interviewed Eric, I knew he was different from other chefs. He really says whatever is on his mind, which comes from deep experience: Rivera used to work in the insurance business, then the recession hit and he turned his interest in food into something bigger. He went to culinary school. He spent three years as the director of culinary research operations at the Alinea Group in Chicago. But when it comes to his Seattle restaurant, Addo—which started in his apartment—he doesn’t really follow tradition. That’s been useful in the pandemic, a time during which he’s pivoted to selling pantry goods and frying customers’ potatoes, acting as what he calls a “concierge service.” This is why he’s outspoken about how the most famous chefs in the U.S. have acted irresponsibly during this crisis. We talked about his upbringing, the pandemic, and how chefs with investors don’t know how to do anything themselves.

Alicia: Hi, Eric. Thanks so much for coming on.

Eric: Awesome. 

Well, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

Alicia: How are things in Seattle right now?

Eric: I would say kind of all over the place. They just shut down restaurants again, for indoor dining. Doesn't necessarily affect us too much, ’cause we’re — we weren't doing that anyway. [Laughs.]

But everybody's kind of in a little panic mode. Everybody's kind of in like a little panic mode here, people that were doing it. Numbers are rising, and things are going back to beyond levels we were before March when they shut everything down. So, it's a lot more serious now.

Alicia: Right.

And, I mean, we're gonna get into this, but also, can you tell me what inspired — how did you decide never to open dining during the pandemic?

Eric: It was pretty simple: It's a virus that feeds off of people moving together and hanging out on the most basic level. And it doesn't matter who you are, or what performative safety things you want to do, the $25 thermometer, UV lights, or any of that other stuff is just pretty much [performative] at that point. 

So, this is something pretty serious, and I didn't want to have to open and close and open and close and open and close over and over again, ’cause I can't afford that. [Laughs.] So, I just basically said, ‘We're gonna have to be extreme. If this virus is as extreme as it is, then it's gonna take me being extreme as well.’

Alicia: Right. And so, to get back to the normal course of the interview — can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Eric: Yeah, I mean, I grew up in Washington State. My dad was military. They're both from Puerto Rico, both my parents, and they moved over here ’cause he got stationed. And then I was born here in Fort Lewis, and then grew up in Olympia, which is about 45 minutes south of there. And it's like, very secluded, suburban-style life. There was no Puerto Rican anything other than my parents, so it was very different. 

And just pretty much over here for a while and then started moving around a little bit later in life again, ’cause my dad was military.

Alicia: And were you eating Puerto Rican food, mostly at home? How was your — outside of the house, it was totally different?

Eric: Yeah, that was the only option. It was just at my parents’ house. My grandparents had moved from Puerto Rico to kind of help raise us until we were about, until I was about seven. So, it was always Puerto Rican food from them. And then everything else on the outside was new discovery land for all of us. 

So it was a matter of early on taking Puerto Rican food to lunch, to school, getting laughed at, getting made fun of, and then assimilating towards white culture, and taking Lunchables and stuff like that. And it was very, very different.

Alicia: And I know you've kind of given this story before, but how did you end up having your restaurant and being a chef?

Eric: Yeah. 

I'd pursued other things before. So I was in mortgage insurance, financial services when I was younger. And then that whole thing blew up, and I got forced out with the recession. And so then I said, ‘Hey, I'm gonna pursue something. Even if worst comes to worse, at least I can make myself some food.’ [Laughs.] So I started tinkering around in kitchens and kind of doing that whole thing, was doing a food blog, and finally hit a point where I'm like, ‘This doesn't work for me. I need it to actually be something real.’

So, I proceeded as being a professional cook. Did that for a while, worked in some cool places. And then finally got to the point where I was like, ‘I'm tired of everybody telling me how this industry should be. I'm going to do it for myself now.’ 

So I started off in my apartment as a — two seats at a time, tasting menus, literally in my apartment. And people didn't know anything other than that. They’d just come over, and they were dressed all fancy. And they're like, ‘Oh, s**t, this is just your apartment?’ I'm like, ‘Yeah.’ [Laughs.] So, it kind of started growing from there. 

I did pop-ups around the city. Any little opportunity to just get myself out there. I was working 80 to 100 hours a week, just trying to hustle. Which I still do now anyway, but — which is different. And I approached everything very differently. I couldn't get a loan. I couldn't get any investors. I couldn't get anything. So, for me, it was trying to figure out how to make it happen for myself.

Alicia: How did you do that? Were you being an independent restaurant in the truest sense of — it's you that are kind of, you have the stake in the whole thing. So, how has that made your restaurant different from other restaurants, even before the pandemic?

Eric: Yeah.

I felt there was all these gatekeepers and established brands of restaurants, and those are all the people that are getting all the attention. And it was easy for them to get the attention, whether they have fancy PR or they're just known people that have been here for a long time. I realized I didn't have that time to kind of fuss, and I didn't have the money to put it up front. So, I had to figure out a different way. 

So, it was basically creating a brand for myself and going around everybody, redirecting how things happen, how the communication goes out, how people see things. And a lot of that was more using modern technology to kind of help me do that, and pretty much just forcing that on the system. And it worked. Started having people going like, ‘Who the hell is this guy? Where did he come from?’

And I think people, as they started to try the food, they were like, ‘Ok, cool. It's not perfect, it's not amazing or whatever. But it's different for sure.’ So, there's a lot of people that have hung out with me along the way and been really supportive. So, it's been really cool. 

But it hasn't been easy. It hasn’t been fun a lot of times. But it's just been real. And it's been real, not having a lot of things that other people are afforded. And I'm cool with that.

Alicia: I just watched your kind of segment on Eater's Guide to the World. Because I've never been to your restaurant, and because I think I've mostly kind of seen what you've been doing post-pandemic happening, it was really interesting to get that glimpse at what it actually was before all of this. 

And so, did you view your role as a chef and a restaurant owner differently before the pandemic as you do now? How has the idea of what a chef is evolved in your brain, if at all?

Eric: Yeah, it was very different, because the point of view was, ‘Get people here. And then once they're here, show them what you can do, and then interact with them all over.’ So, for me, that doesn't exist anymore. And having a tasting menu and having a chef's counter, all that s**t sounds fancy ’cause it was, but there's a lot of other stuff we were doing at the time that was lower spectrum, lower price point stuff that was just, ‘Get people through the door.’

But now it's very different, because you're almost flying blind every day. There's things that people want that I figured out; it wouldn't have existed before the pandemic. So, it's made me more kind of jump into their house, figure out what's going on with them, kind of understand and talk to them and go like, ‘What do you want?’ 

And basically, what I've positioned myself as is being your personal chef. And that's kind of the relationship I have now, rather than imposing what we do here. It's the other way around. Now it's going like, ‘What do you need?’ Which is cool.

Alicia: I noticed on your Instagram one day, I think you even just fried someone's potatoes for them. So, how has your relationship to customers changed in this time? Is it more of an intimate, actual relationship? 

Eric: Yeah, it definitely is. There's more communication than there was before. Because people wouldn’t tell me things when they were here. Now, it's — they're on Instagram, or they text me, or they email me. And they're like, ‘Hey, do you have this? I'm out of that. I can't find this type of flour. I can't find-.’ And I'm like, ‘Oh, s**t. Yeah, I got that. That's easy. I don't know why you’re going — just email me.’

So essentially, I'm sometimes a concierge service. [Laughs.] And I'm cool with that. I'm trying to do as much as I can within running a business, within keeping the staff employed. It's a lot more variables than it was before. 

I've had other people go catch like crab or fish or whatever. And they're like, ‘Hey, do you want one? If I give you one, can you do this to it?’ And I'm like, ‘Yes, it's easy.’ 

It's not a big deal to me. That's what I’ve always wanted it to be. So, it's not like it’s stopping me from doing something else that's not as important or more important. I'm like, ‘F**k yeah, bring it. I’ll fry your potatoes. I have a fryer. It just sits there.’ It's kind of a cool little service. 

But it's like, the guy comes in, gives me a potato, I make fries for him. He goes home and makes poutine out of it. I mean, ok, sure. That’s great. It's easy. Probably would have taken him like an hour, and it took me like 10 minutes. 

So, it's cool. And as long as you're cool about it, the guests, and they're appreciative. That's all I care about.

Alicia: Yeah, no, it's so interesting. And it's so against what you're supposed to, or what we've been trained to believe that the chef is — so it's really fascinating to watch this from afar and see, yeah, a chef who would usually be doing a chef's table counter service be just frying potatoes. It's really wild, and it's really awesome to see that. 

And have you found — because you mentioned before not being able to afford the big PR firm or anything like that, but also not being in New York, not being in what's considered sort of a major culinary center in the U.S., how do you think that has affected your restaurant? How do you see those things and the way food media prioritizes those things, whether it's a big PR firm or whether it's being in New York or Chicago. Has that affected you, and how do you see it?

Eric: It's been really hard to get to kind of this point, of people actually realizing kind of what we're doing. Eater’s been dope, Thrillist, Infatuation — everybody's been amazing. Seattle’s massively hyping it. Everybody’s been really, really cool. It's really hard to transition what I'm doing to guests, because they're like, ‘I don't know what he did.’ Or, ‘Hey, I found out what he did over there. And then he changed it.’

And I was talking to somebody the other day. Over this pandemic, we've done over 600 variables of offerings that we have — experiences — since March. I had somebody the other day go, ‘Hey, you remember that one hot sauce you made back in July? I ran out. It’s our favorite hot sauce ever. Can you make it again?’ I'm like, ‘Well, no.’ And they're like, ‘Well, why not?’ And I'm like, ‘That was like a two-month process, and it was specifically with one farmer’s tomatoes. And that's it. I don't have anything else.’ I wish I would have made like 1000 bottles of it, but that’s just not how — it's not what we do.

So, it's a very different thing. Because then places in New York are the hubs, are looking for important people, always. And there's always that upper tier that I'm always talking s**t to. The Jean-Georges, Danny Meyers, and whatever, the people that make it easy for New York Times or whoever to talk to you, because they just know, ‘I'm gonna get f*****g free food from it.’ That's really easy. 

But then I'm over here in Seattle, it's a small market. I wouldn’t say I necessarily make an impact, but just show people like, ‘Look, there's other options in the middle of a pandemic that doesn't involve eliminating 800 employees and then asking the government for a bunch of money.’ That’s just crazy to me. So, it's me trying to show people. 

And I've been fortunate with enough talking s**t online that real writers and people who are in the press have actually reached out to me. They're like, ‘Ok, I'm going to filter this a little bit, but tell me what you have to say.’ And that's been pretty cool. For me, it's come from anger of three-ish years of — we've been doing this since day one. And it's nothing new for us. It's just showing people that there's a different way to do a restaurant. It's all the same thing. 

I don't feel bad for Cheesecake Factory down the street having to close for indoor dining. F**k them. I don't feel bad for Danny Meyer or whoever these f*****g guys are that have all the access and stuff. 

And I just saw Jean-Georges yesterday, looked at his brand-new outdoor-indoor dining thing. Fancy as f**k, man. It's really expensive to do that, and then still fueling, just bringing people in. And I'm like, ‘How and why is that ok?’ But that's just how it is. That guy's gonna end up probably on Forbes tomorrow about his indoor dining thing. And that's easy. And you kind of have to fight against that, because that's where the beacon shoots. That's the spotlight towards it. 

I was talking to Devita Davison. She was saying the crazy part about a lot of restaurants in Detroit is that none of them, almost none of them, had to really pivot that were owned by Black people, or Indigenous people, or anything else. Because she was like, they weren't trying to serve expensive food. They weren't trying to do this highfalutin s**t. So on their side, they were like, ‘No, we're fine. Most of the stuff is good in a takeout box. We're not complaining about it.’

And so when when I look at stuff like that, and then I see the other side where it's all these people going to the president and talking to him and being like, ‘We need millions and billions of dollars,’ I’m like, ‘You guys are full of s**t.’ That's not what everybody needs. It's not a catch-all thing. It's not a one-size-fits-all. It's like we need help, but we don't need the help that Éric Ripert needs. That's crazy. 

Alicia: And, I mean, it is fascinating to see, because I did a panel for FoodLab Detroit, which is run by Devita Davison. And I was on the panel with a couple of restaurateurs from that area. Women, I was gonna say, of course. And there was a woman who is Indigenous and had a restaurant in Detroit that she already was sourcing from very local farms, and selling, putting that in her food, but then now she is selling right to people. And that is such an easy shift to make if you don't have your whole ego tied up in a type of plate or something. 

And that seems to be the big difference. It's because I've seen — my favorite chefs in New York are people like Brooks Headley or Amanda Cohen, who have just done their best, and probably been pissing people off in the — for not being run in the way that they believe that restaurants should be open, despite all the science that we know. And so, it's really fascinating to watch the most famous and lauded chefs have been the ones who cannot function during this time. 

And I know, obviously, that you've been extremely outspoken about this and how stupid it is, and how you don't necessarily need a response from the government. But would you like to see a response, maybe when we have a new people in the White House?

Eric: But I don't want it to look like the way they want it to look like. I don't need it to be that way. 

I mean, the biggest part was taking care of employees. It's something that all these restaurants that got that far, they got there with unpaid stashes and paying people like s**t just so they can have their big caviar menus and all this other stuff. And that's not ok. So, if we're going to help restaurants first, I'd rather have them help out the restaurant employees that have been unsteady the whole time. They're being laid off. 

Meanwhile, you've got the David Changs still opening up restaurants all over the place and going on Goldbelly and shipping out and doing stuff. They have options. But the problem is that everybody that's being talked to is those guys, is those people, because they're seen as the beacon or some lobbyists from the National Restaurant Association. And they're just fueling that s**t. The mouthpiece for it, to me, isn't them. 

It's the restaurant employees, all those people that may never have a job again. And having things start up job retraining programs, because there's — a lot of people aren't gonna be able to work for, probably ever again, in certain places. So, giving them a shot, giving them a shot to pay their rent, or canceling it, or doing all those things that actually help the people. Not just the oligarch-style, big name, restaurateur. 

A lot of the reasons why these guys, it sounds like they're always asking for money is because that's how it is. They don't own their restaurants. They're just there by name. And the way that they get funding is all these investors come on in. And, at most, they own 7 to 10% of that restaurant. And so that's all they're used to, is when something goes bad, like a f*****g toilet explodes or there's a leaking, they’re used to calling the investor and going like, ‘Hey, we need money. Hey, we need money. Hey, we need money.’ That's all these guys are used to doing. 

So, when something bad like a pandemic happens, the first thing they do, and you see them, the Thomas Keller — ‘I'm gonna sue my insurance company.’ Meanwhile, back corner, lays these people off. And I'm like, ‘Well, that s**t’s gonna take like three to seven years.’ I know that because I was formerly in insurance.

You look at what their priority is, and it's always not guided towards the employee. And that's a big problem. I hope that this next administration looks at it that way. Because this last administration was basically business first, and it's just not okay. It's not what people need. 

A true independent restaurant doesn't have 20 restaurants. A true independent restaurant doesn't have restaurants across the country, and has licensing deals, and isn't flashy cookbooks and other s**t. That's not it, man. 

There's entire areas of our state within the international district, with restaurants that have been around 50, 60, 70 years that still don't get any press normally. Or you have them be this lauded thing. They’ll never get a James Beard award, but they'll get an American Classics pat on the back. So, it’s like the point of view for everything is just — it's so weird. And it's not right. And it doesn't serve the people that need it the most.

Alicia: Right. 

And I mean, do you think things like the way that press attention is spread — given out, and the ways that awards are given out, do you think that these are able to be reformed in order to more accurately reflect who's cooking and what people really? 

Eric: Yeah, I think it just needs to be blown up from the ground up. I mean, honestly, it just needs to be. Because even the James Beard awards, the way that they were doing it was it had a bunch of people, they’d get together, they’d talk about it, and then there's chefs that are able to vote, or restaurateurs are able to vote. 

But it's all the same people. It's all the same people, always. And it's all the same people given, passing their little torch every time. And that's watered down white b******t, the majority of people that are winning it. And you start to look at things — And I’ve said this a million times. But when you have a Rick Bayless that’s won more awards for Mexican food than actual Mexicans. You have a Sean Brock, who's won more awards for Southern food than Black people. That's f*****g insane. It's f*****g insane. 

So, it's like why are the people who are voting for these things so scared? Are they scared of Black people? Do they not know how to talk to Latin American people? Do they not know how to go and understand what good Indigenous food is? Are they scared of Japanese people? Like, what's the deal? And a lot of it comes down to, it's not representative of the people who are — is judging it. So, they're not going out there. They're not doing the thing. 

So yeah, if you're going to do it, you’ve got to blow it up. And that's kind of my thing. Otherwise, it just won't be respected and it won't be — it won't affect the right people. 

Even with writers. I just saw the thing from L.A. Times, and how they had co-people, and it was all b******t. And you look at it and go, ‘Well, why would you do that? Why would you position both people as being co-critics and then say, ‘Well, this other person won a James Beard award,’ and that makes it all better when it doesn't? So it clearly, when you start to look at it as a systematic problem, you can clearly see that if someone's gonna say, ‘Well, this person won a James Beard award and that means they're better than this other person,’ that's all b******t. 

And it doesn't really work into the factor of understanding who that person is that they hired. For them, they are just like, ‘Oh, cool. Look at my shiny Rolls Royce, and cool.’ And you're like, ‘Yeah, but it has an oil leak. And it's not very good.’ [Laughs.]

Alicia: No, it's wild. And it's funny that you say, ‘Do these people not know how to talk to Black people, the people who are judging?’ Because I remember doing an interview and — it was at Time Inc. It was for branded content. I don't know. It was like a contract thing. 

And I went to this interview, and the dude asked me, he asked me about my ethnic background. Which is illegal. It's illegal to do that. But he asked me about my ethnic background, because he wanted someone to be able to talk to the people at — I don't know, like People en Español and some other magazine focused more toward people of color. And I was like, ‘Holy s**t.’ But this is how media is — and if it's not racist, it's classist all the time. This is how the sausage gets made, and exactly why it needs to be blown up.

But do you think even, pandemic aside, in the current situation, what reforms do you think need to happen in the restaurant world to kind of make it viable, make it a — not necessarily even the restaurant world, but just politically, economically. What has to happen for running a restaurant as an independent person?

Eric: Just the biggest part is who's who, and more transparency in that. So, when there's stories written about the bigger name chefs, and — essentially, I target them because they're like the 1% in the normal world, right? And I'm like, ‘Wait, why are we checking in with those people? Why are we talking to them?’ 

That’s like talking to — when someone writes a story about Amazon and they had a bad day in the stock market, and they're like, ‘Oh, Jeff Bezos lost like $500 million today.’ And I'm like, ‘What? Why does anybody write this? This is all b******t. He's worth over 100 billion dollars, I don't give a f**k. F**k him.’ I mean, I appreciate what he's done to a certain degree, but goddamn, to a certain point, how much more f*****g money do you need? 

And you're stopping the process. And it's always that trickle-down, Reagan-style economic mind-set. And it doesn't work. It's proven that it doesn't work over and over again. Meanwhile, you have tons of other people that are sick, dying. It's the same way in the restaurant world. 

So, when you have all these vaunted brands that everybody knows just by three little letters, like TFL and JGV and all that s**t, people know who they are. And they check into them, and they're the first ones that go, and it's not what that is. 

I want to see pop-up culture — I want to see not just ‘Hey, we have 10 chefs here, and we checked off the list. And we have made sure to have six of them be Black.’ That's b******t. You have got to do the due diligence, make sure everybody's cool. But then also be aware and get other people who know what the f*****g food is, not just white people. It has to create a different point of view. It has to be different, it has to be blown up. 

Otherwise, you're going to run the same problems. You have these legacy people that have been around forever 25, 30, 40 — f*****g 40 years. And they're not being held accountable. They're not being held accountable at all. And that's from the industry on, even on the outside. And we've seen that. 

I think it was the guy from James Beard that stepped down, and he'd been there for 20 years. Like, that's a good first step. And I think he realized like, ‘Hey, even if I did something bad or not, I realized that I just maybe need to get out of the way now.’ And I think that's like a lot of things that need to happen. 

There's a lot of people that just need to get out of the way. They’ve made enough. They've done enough, good or bad. It's time to get out of the way. Go. Retire. Go to your public access television station and do your little cooking show. But seriously, there's a lot of other people that want to be in the mix that you're dropping, and having to compete with them is not okay. It's not fun.

Alicia: Right. 

And well, speaking of competing with big people, I — you got a lot of attention this year, when the Goya boycott happened, for adobo and sazón, and — which is obviously good. But I wanted to ask how — you do cook a lot of Puerto Rican food. You're selling sazón and adobo. What is the role for you of Puerto Rican food in what you do?

And I think what you do is so interesting, because you really are incorporating it into your full vision of what your food should be, and not being like, ‘Oh, hello, look, here's a-’ I don't know. It's not schticky when you do it, and — which is very refreshing, because sometimes it gets so forced into that kind of schtick thing. So, what role does it play in your cooking, those Puerto Rican flavors?

Eric: I approach it as being realistic. Because there's a bunch of things that I don't have access to with my — the food that I cook here. There's a lot of people that are from Puerto Rico that will come, and the first thing they do is talk s**t about how it's not authentic all the way down. And I'm like, Well, first off, I don't know your f*****g grandma. I don't know who you are. I know we're different families. We all have different things we do. Cool.

But I also am not going to spend 10 times the amount to bring certain peppers, and certain flavors, and certain things, ’cause then I'm gonna end up charging you 10 times as much and you still want it to be Puerto Rico prices. So, we have to take that away. 

I'm also in a city where I'm the only person doing Puerto Rican food, and it’s not even a full-fledged Puerto Rican restaurant. Because the numbers don't make it for that. People still don't give a s**t. I would be better off if I said I was Cuban food, and I did Puerta Rican food.  Honestly, that's what people would gravitate towards. And if I had a Cuban pressed sandwich, people would lose their s**t. 

But that's not what I want to do. I want to be — people to understand a little bit of what it is, and then start to go dig on their own and find out. Because then that allows them to broaden their horizons and realize that Puerto Rican cuisine isn't a one-all, one-size fits all thing, either. There's different styles, there's different ways you can make it. And there's seasonality towards it that a lot of people really don't understand. They're like, ‘It's f*****g fried food.’ And I'm like, ‘It's not all that.’ There's a lot to it.

But I'm also classically French trained. I went to culinary school, I worked at really cool restaurants. So for me, there's a touch that I want to bring to it that sometimes can be super high-end fancy or not. I can still charge $5 to this thing, or I can charge a couple hundred for it. But I want to have that point of view where anything that comes out of here is Puerto Rican food, whether it's the black truffle? That's still Puerto Rican food that a Puerto Rican guy made. 

So, I kind of want to like poke the bear always with people. They were like, ‘I've never tried Puerto Rican food.’ And I was like, ‘The f**k you haven't? You've tried my food, right? You've had it before.’ And they're like, ‘Oh, yeah.’ And I was like, ‘Made by a Puerto Rican.’ So, it’s a tongue in cheek type thing. But it allows them to kind of go, ‘This is very different. I like it. It tastes good.’ And then I'm like, ‘Well, just keep buying stuff. Well, keep supporting, and we'll be cool.’

Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Eric: Yeah, it always has been. It's political. It's also who gets to eat a lot of the things, too, with how much money someone has or doesn't. So, there's always that thing that I'm trying to push. Within my restaurant, we have stuff that's like $5 all the way to a few hundred dollars, and everybody can still have something from us. There's not a lot of places like that. 

So, I'm always trying to bring that on a level, but I'm also trying to force down different ideas so that way, people just don't think if you buy something from someplace, they shouldn't be held accountable for the things they believe in. If they're Trump supporters, f**k them. Or if they want to go on some irrational Republican-style strategy stuff, f**k them. Or if they just mimic it softly and don't really say they're Republican or Trump supporters, but everything they do in their business supports that, then I basically will tell people, ‘Hey, they're acting in a part of the system. Whether they're saying it or not, you should really look at it like this.’ So, it really becomes political at that point. 

There's a lot of stuff within Puerto Rican cuisine, too, that happens that way. Every time somebody starts to talk about Puerto Rico that's white, or doesn't really know a lot, is the first thing they say out of their f*****g mouth is like, ‘They should become a state. I can't wait to take them over.’

And I'm like, ‘That’s not your f*****g place. Listen, man. Both my parents are Puerto Rican. I'm legit, check squared. Fine, cool. I got my little card, I guess. But I don't say whether they should be a state or not. That’s none of my f*****g business. I don't live on the island. It wouldn't affect me personally. And, I don't have any Pinta or Santa Maria ready to get fired up to take the place over again. Calm down. Leave the ship to them where they live.’ 

It's not like random guy in Idaho, someone's gonna go to this random guy in Idaho and be like, ‘What do you think we should do here?’ And he's gonna be like, ‘F**k you,’ and has this little sign up with his gun, and that's what's gonna happen. 

So it's always interesting to me, when stuff like that happens, because me, I make food. Ok, cool. And then what? I'm not supposed to have an opinion about things. What? Sounds good, Jim, that works in accounting at some f*****g weird firm that you make, like, $50, $60,000 a year. You have more of an opinion than I'm supposed to have? F**k that s**t. So, it's very different. 

And I think seeing, maybe, with Anthony Bourdain kind of being more vocal about stuff like that, people kind of like were ready to accept it more rather than just being like a Bobby Flay who's like, ‘I make food,’ you know? ‘No, I don't talk about anything. I just make food. Ta-da.’ And you're like, ‘F*****g fakes.’ That's what it is, they’re f*****g fakes. And I don't think we need that right now.

Alicia: Right. Absolutely. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time-

Eric: Sorry about cussing — it’s my fault. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Oh, it's fine with 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

Kevin Vaughn started his bilingual weekly newsletter and monthly zine Matambre early on in the onslaught of the pandemic. For me, it has become indispensable reading on the ways in which various small restaurants in Buenos Aires and food workers in the country are coping with crisis, as well as reimagining the future. While I’ve only been to Buenos Aires once and quite briefly, I loved the city on the surface but felt that I wasn’t able to quite dig in—Vaughn’s writing proves that feeling was correct. There is much more to Argentina than steak and the rather racist notion that it is more European than Latin American, and I appreciate the glimpse his writing gives.

Vaughn isn’t Argentine. He grew up in California. We talked about how he ended up in Buenos Aires, what the food scene is like, and how it feels to publish independently. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Kevin. Thanks so much for coming on.

Kevin: Hi, [exaggerated Spanish accent] Alicia, thank you for having me.

Alicia: Thank you for calling me that. So many people call me Alice. 

Kevin: [Laughs.] Alicia. 

Alicia: I know, and it makes me so upset. 

And it’s just like, ‘Well, you're from the United States, so obviously your name's just Alice.’ It's like, ‘Well,’ ’cause I say my name Alicia, so that's a more difficult — I guess. But I'll take Alicia any day.

Kevin: No one can say — pronounce my name either. I'm always like, ‘Kebin. K.’  No one can pronounce my last name, either. 

Alicia: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely not. [Laughs.] The trials and tribulations of—

Kevin: ‘Why do you have a g in your name?’ [Laughs.]

Alicia: [Laughs.]  —of being a gringo in Latin America. 

Kevin: Yeah. Totally.

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

Kevin: This is my favorite question that you ask. I love hearing people's responses to this. 

I'm from California. I grew up in the Central Valley, in the San Joaquin Valley, which is actually where I think a lot of the United States gets their food from. 

So, I grew up in a really small town. Everyone kind of makes fun of me because I pronounce it the okie way even though I speak fluent Spanish, so it's Los Banos, which is a really rural, small farm town. The identity of the town is really wrapped into farming. I actually did 4-H and FFA.

And the town historically was sort of built by Basque people and Portuguese people, a lot of people from the Azores. Lot of people from Lisbon, and those are kind of the old families. And as I grew up, there was a lot of immigration from Mexico and from Central America. And so when we ate out, those were — which we ate out of the house quite a bit. Those are sort of the foods that we were surrounded with. 

A lot of fast food. My mom worked and was in charge of feeding us. And so I remember eating a lot of McDonald’s, and Taco Bell, and pizza on Fridays and Chinese food on Sunday. I think those are kind of my strongest memories, are eating out and a lot of fast food. 

My mom, she was a cook, or she liked to cook. She kind of modeled herself, I think, around a lot of recipes by Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, so very typical white people food was what we ate at home. I remember eating lots of spaghetti and a lot of roast meats, a lot of turkey and chicken. 

I was always a little bit picky. Mexican food was around, and at school actually a lot of kids in my class I remember in elementary school were — came from Mexico. Those are the foods that they brought to school, and I remember eating a lot of hot Cheetos and drinking horchata — Do you know what Lucas is? 

Alicia: No.

Kevin: It's kind of a really spicy tajín, so it's — I just remember people bringing these bags that were just spicy chili and dried lemon and salt. I mean, they're like pillars of Mexican cuisine, right? And you just lick your finger and dip it in and suck on this hot chili.

At home it was very, very white people food, but sort of once I left the home there was this curiosity. And I was always really attracted to Mexican flavors. My grandfather was also a really good cook, and he was the person that that sort of taught me a love for food. He was from California, but all of his family was from Texas. So, that was a lot of sort of very southern hospitality type foods. I remember a lot of fried chicken, and dumplings, and pies and cookies, and things like that. So, a bunch of different things. 

Yeah, like I said, a lot of white people food at home, but I was always really curious about what everyone else in town was eating.

Alicia: Right. 

So, how did you end up in Buenos Aires, first? And then also, how did you start writing about food? Which came first for you?

Kevin: I came here to study abroad, initially, my junior year of college. And I studied a major that was an interdisciplinary between political science and economics, but there was a really big language emphasis. And so I chose Spanish. And you had to study abroad basically to graduate on time. Buenos Aires was just chosen on a whim, because the program offered either Barcelona or Buenos Aires and everyone was going to Barcelona, so that made Buenos Aires really attractive by default. And so I came here.

I didn't know anything about Argentina before I came. I think the semester before I came, I took a Latin American Studies class, but it was mostly about Central America. I don't really remember talking very much about the Southern Cone. And so I came here to study, and that was like a year-long program. I went home for my senior year of school. There was something that the city in Argentina — and I traveled around Argentina for like six weeks — there was just like this thing that was — but I still can't quite describe what it was, that was pulling me back.

Sometimes, I think if I would have studied abroad in, I don't know, Moscow or Tokyo, or any other place, maybe just sort of the time in my life, I would have developed a connection with any of those places. 

But after school, I went home and worked for a year, and then came back here. And my intention actually was I thought I was going to be a human rights lawyer. That was my plan. And at the University of Buenos Aires, there's a really great human rights program that I was going to sort of do like pre-law. And then study to get into law school, and there's just a lot of red tape around that. And so, I had to get a job. 

And I started working for a bilingual culture website. And that's when I started kind of seeing the food scene. The way that I was making friends at this time was I was just — it was the very first time I'd ever lived alone — completely by myself. And so, the way I was making friends was I would just cook and invite people over to eat. And my house kind of became the space where all of our friends with — all my friends come over to socialize. And in the wintertime, I remember making lots of soups. In the summertime, we would barbecue a lot. I had a barbecue built into my balcony. 

And that turned into MASA, which was a closed-door restaurant that I ran, which is the Cuban commodores — are they called commodores — where they're these restaurants that are run out of private homes. So, cooking started first. 

And in one of those very first meals, this woman came by herself. And it was a meal that was where you’re always going to share a table. She was alone. It was mostly couples that would come. And she just kept on popping her head into the kitchen, and asking me questions about where I was from and what I was making. And we hit it off, and she had this — at the time this personal blog that she was trying to turn into a website about Buenos Aires. And so she invited me to contribute recipes. And that turned into writing about restaurants. 

I mean, it started very much as a hobby. As I kind of got more into cooking and being actually like in restaurants, in services with this pop-up, became more curious about going back to my roots with what I studied, which was very social justice, and political science, and economics, and trying to insert that into writing. So, maybe that's been six years. I kind of hit the ground running and was pitching a lot. It's really hard to be a freelancer and it's really hard to be a freelancer from a foreign country if you don't have a lot of bylines. I've written locally a lot with sort of being able to place a store every once in a while that went a little bit deeper than the narrative that's typically told here.

Alicia: Right.

And, well, I mean, you're talking about what your — what you studied, and then you're doing a kind of a supper club in your house. How did you decide to major in that and study that?

Kevin: At school, I actually entered as a film major. And, I think my sophomore year, I had to take a media theory class. And that just totally changed, I think, the course of my life, that class, because it was really — I always looked at media and film as a purely recreational thing. And this was the first class, the first experience where I was reading theory, and philosophy, and kind of seeing media as a reflection of society, and vice versa. And that just is fascinating to me, to kind of see the intersectionality of things and to kind of begin to not take things at face value. 

That was very natural for me, because very quickly in studying film, I realized I wasn't super interested in production. I was really interested in film history and film theory. So, kind of shifting to analyzing anthropology, and economics, and politics, that was a very, very natural shift. And media was always something that was really fascinating by it, especially because I've always been a writer. And I've always been a reader, and watched film, and listened to music. Yeah, that was pretty organic.

Alicia: Right.

Did you learn how to cook by cooking, or—?

Kevin: So, I was always really curious about all these foods that I was surrounded by. But I was a little bit picky, very picky. 

That in-between year between graduating from school and moving here, my grandfather was sort of reaching the end of his life. He was getting sicker. And so, I decided that I didn't know for how long I was going to be here. But I knew that if I was here for more than a year, it was likely the — that he had passed away. 

And so, I moved in with my grandmother and my grandfather, and my grandmother — this was his third wife, she was a bit younger, so she still worked. She wasn't retired yet. And so, she was out of the home. And she commuted into the Bay Area and would stay there.

I would work during the day. I had like three jobs at that time. And when I didn't have a night shift, I would come home from my job — my day job. And my grandfather, his very first job was in a military kitchen during World War II. His introduction into cooking, besides his kind of formation in the southern cooking of his family, was making food for two, three, four hundred really hungry soldiers. And so the way that he cooked was always very generous in size, and whether he was eating alone, he was always making — there was like seven things on the table. 

I was still kind of just beginning to become really curious about food, and kind of breaking down my picky barriers and just eating whatever was in front of me. And he didn't have any patience for that. It was like, ‘The food that I made is what's on the table, and you better eat it.’ 

And I would come home from work, and he would — he always decided what he wanted to eat the day of. And so I would get home, and there'd be a recipe on the table and a very, very specific grocery list. I remember one of the meals that we cooked a lot that was like fried pork chops with fried apples. And so, he was very specific about what kind of graham crackers had to be purchased to bread the pork chops. And he knew the name of the butcher, and I’d have to ask John to cut this specific — an inch exactly on the pork chops. And if we were getting apples it had to be a Granny Smith and it had to be this color and I needed to smell — he was very, very specific.

That was how I learned to cook, was we would sit in his kitchen. And he'd have a beer, and I'd make a Rob Roy. And he would instruct from the dining room table, how to cook and chop and the proper way to heat the pan and when to know when to throw it in, when to know to take it out, when to know when to flip it. So, that was my cooking school.

And that was also, I think, the moment where I really began to value the way people come together inside of a kitchen when a meal is being made. And the intimacy that's shared around a dining room table, and kind of that immediate gratification of cooking something and people enjoying it. Like I said, when I came to Buenos Aires, and that's how I made friends. I'd really kind of become addicted to that setting that happened every single day.

Alicia: I'm really fascinated by Argentina, and I always have been. And the reason I was super excited to go to Buenos Aires was just to see what it was like, because I just read so many novels and stories by writers from there. 

And then living in Puerto Rico, it's funny because it's — people will be like, ‘Oh, that's an Argentinian’ and they'll — by the way they speak Spanish, of course — but also by just the vibe, and just this nervousness about — it might be offensive to assume someone is Argentinian. Because of the connotations of what it is to be an Argentinian. 

In your piece that you wrote about the Netflix Street Food episode about the city, you took it to task for this colonial perspective. But I also think that colonial perspective, it also kind of influences how the rest of Latin America views Argentina in terms of the — and I think it was evident in — there was the person who is a talking head who was like, ‘This is the Paris of Latin America, we're more European than we are Latin American, etc.’ It's this weird mix, I think, of perspectives on Argentina. 

You live there. And so, how have you come to understand the city in the way that you do, which is so far removed from that ‘We're European. We're not Latin American’ refrain. And how is your understanding of the city changed over the time you've lived there?

Kevin: So, I've been here for 10 years.

I've been thinking about that term ‘Paris of South America’ a lot lately. Partly because of that article that I wrote. And I remember when I was deciding to study abroad here in the brochures, that was definitely sort of what was sold to us. 

And I remember coming here for the program and the program directors were like, ‘Only stay in this neighborhood. Don't go into this neighborhood because it's dangerous, or because there's nothing there worthwhile to see.’ And I was studying, and I was living in a homestay that was in Belgrano, which is on the far northwest side of the city, very upper-class and very much old money, very white looking. 

And maybe two or three days out of the week, I would volunteer on the polar opposite of the city, in the southeastern neighborhood called La Boca. And the way that Buenos Aires is set up, is that as you go from north to south, pretty much in all cases goes from these very wealthy upper class, into sort of this kind of white collar upper middle class, into this very, very middle class neighborhoods, until you reach these very blue collar, kind of marginalized spaces. If you're on the bus, and you're going from one end to the city to the other, it's really, really obvious to see that distribution of economic capital, and social and cultural capital. 

And so, from the very beginning of my time here, I never really bought into that idea of ‘this is a European space. This is the Paris of South America.’

And I remember a really formative moment in understanding the why, why that exists, why that idea is sold, is at the end of that study abroad we went to the Iguazu Falls for a long weekend. On the last day, they took us to this reserve, like this Native community. And they were showing us around where they lived. It felt like such a zoo exhibit. It felt this really ingenuine show. And I felt super uncomfortable, through this whole tour. 

And at the very end of the tour, we were greeted by all of the children of that community who were in what I assume is festive dress, and they sang and they danced. And at the end the guide is like, ‘Ok, guys, you can take pictures.’ I've always really been into photography. I really like portraiture. I was feeling a little bit uncomfortable. Should I take a picture? Should I not? But all these other people from my group just got up, and they started taking pictures in front of the kids with peace signs, or throwing their arms around the kids. Again, an exhibit of some sort. 

And that was this big moment for me to really see that negation of what it means to be Brown or what that means — what it means to be Latin, and it was so — that example is so in your face, because Buenos Aires and Argentina, the country, is — we're told there's no native people here when, of course, there were native communities here and there are various kind of military

strikes to kill off these people. There were Black slaves that were tossed into the War of the Triple Alliance on to the front lines, and were mostly killed off. 

And all of that story is totally erased. And well, what we are told is kind of the story of — we're talking — we talk a lot about kind of colonized narratives, and taking over and co-opting narratives. 

And I think the really unique thing about Argentina is not only is it a colonized narrative, but it's the narrative of the colonizer. Because if you really start to study the history of Argentina, that phrase, the ‘Paris of South America,’ what it's rooted in is the pillage of land in Argentina, Argentina's economy has always been centered around agro-exportation. When that land was taken from the Native people who lived here, and monetized, and created at the time, at the turn of the 20th century, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, that was all on the backs of these native people who were killed. 

And so all of that wealth was used to build Buenos Aires. And it was a total mark of colonization because it was this aspiration of being European. And so, there's a lot of buildings in that historic part of the city that don't just mimic French architecture. Actually, there are buildings, full-on blueprints, that were stolen from buildings in Paris. I mean, it was very consciously built to create this culture and the society that in every single way demonstrated this separation of Europeanness, and whiteness, and sophistication, and all of these things that are part of the white supremacist fantasy to dominate what it means to be Latinx. 

Once I started really understanding the nuance of that and the history behind that, and when I came back to — as I've lived through the city, I've — on a personal level, as a resident of the city — very consciously sought out other spaces, and other communities, and tried to get to know the real diversity of this city. 

And part of that is also working in kitchens in an industry that globally is very precarious. And the people who are working behind closed doors in these kitchens are generally not white. A lot of them are like Brown-bodied people from — with ancestry from other parts of Latin America. I was always surrounded by the people who are actually in the street, on the ground, who are — who make up Argentina. So, I feel like I've been a part of those communities in a way. This idea of whiteness and European, it’s just — it doesn't compute to me, ’cause it's not the city I live in and the people I surround myself with.

Alicia: And so, I mean, as you're explaining, you have this very different vision of your city than you — is sold to outsiders. And that sort of seems to be what you're bringing to Matambre. And so, what is your methodology for producing it, and also what is it that you hope to achieve?

Kevin: When I started taking writing more seriously, and moving — trying to move away from restaurant review, and trying to move more into reported stories. I think I spent the better half of 2016 and 2017, really, really chasing stories, and trying to add nuance, and humanity, and diversity to the story. 

And as I was pitching, I had some really great experiences with a handful of editors, mostly from Munchies, Remezcla kind of people at the time that were on very kind of alternative tips in terms of their food and writing coverage. 

But the bulk of the stories that I was pitching, I just — I wasn't getting any responses, at all. And there was one story in particular, where I went back to Misiones, back to Iguazu Falls. And I spent about two weeks traveling around the entire region, because there was, at the time, this — a lot of, kind of conversations in the Buenos Aires food world about what is Argentine cuisine — how, what is this — how to reconcile between immigrant culture and what was already here. And so, there was a lot of this kind of talk about rescuing native plants and incorporating food that came from other Latin communities and indigenous communities. 

So, I went to Misiones, because that is the region that is the most biodiverse and it's a region where there still are Guarani and Indigenous communities. And I was pitching this story, and it was about biodiversity, it was about sustainability, it was about classism, it was about this wealth gap disparity about these mostly European farmers who had just totally taken the land away from the people who lived there before and yerba mate, which is what's mostly grown there. It only grows in the Misiones. All the biodiversity has been taken over by yerba mate plantations.

And it was just this really rich, beautiful story. And I pitched and pitched and no one responded. I finally got this response from this editor saying, ‘This a really interesting story, but it doesn't fit into the Argentine narrative. I don't think that our readership would get it.’ And that was this moment — I was like, ‘Ok, I'm not getting responses, not because the stories are bad, but because there's this idea of a simple story and what our narrative is allowed to be, what is allowed to be considered Argentine, what isn't.’

And so I kind of retreated and was writing a lot locally. When the pandemic happened, it was — all these ideas were still floating around in my head, obviously. And Matambre, for me, is kind of — I was never — I wasn't being given the space to tell these stories and to raise up these voices. And so, Matambre for me is that. If editors aren't going to give me the space, I'm just going to take it up myself. 

That's the idea behind Matambre, is take up space. It’s become this project that I think that what I'm doing, what it's evolving into is asking questions around power structures, and how power structures are built around privilege, and talking about them as a means of deconstructing and rebuilding. 

Part of that is being really self reflective and recognizing one, the power and the privilege that we as writers have, because we have — at the end of the day, our articles are our written word, and so it's the way we decide to frame and edit, and the parts of the story we decide to tell and the parts of the stories we don't, and sort of recognizing the mechanisms of that. And also understanding who I am, which is a white, cis-gendered male from the United States who lives a very upper class quality of life in a country where that's not the reality for most people. 

And so, I want to have these conversations but a lot of times — obviously, sustainability, kind of more environmental questions are things that I can relate to in real ways. But as I'm having conversations about labor rights, about gender equity, about trans culturalism, about the trans community — all these things that don't touch me personally, that I can empathize with them, I can understand them theoretically, but I can never live those experiences. 

As I'm seeking people out, I'm — I ask myself two questions. One, by telling this story, am I having a positive impact? Or am I folding into these structures of power that I want to break down? And in order to do that, I'm asking myself, ‘When I contact this person, am I being invited into the — into their space, or am I demanding to take it up? Am I demanding them to tell me something that-’ in some cases, it's a lot of emotional labor.

I'm very conscientious, and have been really surprised by where a lot of the interviews go because — when I talked to Gloria del Fogón, and it was a really great example of this. I went to talk to her about some art project that she was working on. And we sat down and she started talking to me about what it was like to be in — a Brown immigrant woman trying to exist in this society, in the restaurant world. 

And that was her choice. I was just there. I was just listening. And I was trying to act more as a microphone than anything else. And that’s also why doing interviews was really important to me, that the format take on an interview format, so that I'm not editing these people's realities. 

It's about giving a voice and trying to decenter myself as a writer, and just kind of act as this platform for people. Every time I sit down for an interview, the conversation goes to a place that I did not expect it to go at all, which has been just so beautiful.

Alicia: And it shows, in the final product, too, that it's very organic and very reciprocal in terms of how the conversations evolve while you're doing that.

I didn't give you this question, but since you were talking about kind of how living in Buenos Aires, you're still beholden if you want to write for bigger English language outlets, to how Argentina is perceived from the outside. I guess because I wrote about awards, and in particular the James Beard awards, which are for writing that's broadly available to a U.S. audience, I guess is how they define it. 

And both of us, I guess, are self publishing or independent media creators. So, this idea of how do you define success for yourself, and how do define, I don't know, your place in the world when you're not kind of going after the same accolades or same bylines as people — as we were kind of brought up to understand as being markers of significance for ourselves. Have you thought about this? How are you defining what you want, if you're not going to necessarily be going after all of these ready — made markers?

Kevin: I've definitely shifted my goals in terms of what spaces I want to be printed in. And so, I still want to write for U.S. or foreign publications, because I think it is important that those audiences start allowing these spaces. 

Not just Argentina, it's the entire world. Whatever is considered other. I don't think that Argentina and the Argentina narrative is sold as unique in that respect. So, I am going to continue fighting for that, but I think the — that has to happen in other spaces.

And there's a lot of really great people that I hope to be writing for at some point. I'm reading Whetstone, and Vittles, and I just finished a piece for Life and Thyme that's coming out on Thursday. And really kind of seeking out those spaces. 

Because the other part of this is as I'm speaking with a lot of people, I'm kind of realizing that'll — not realizing things that are new, but really confirming to me this idea that these changes — nothing's going to trickle down from the top. The top is always going to be motivated by capitalism, and economy, and algorithms, and all of those things. It's just following the current, and this kind of different type of storytelling is really going to come from the base, and maybe then the top will understand.

But to answer your question more specifically, in terms of what — what would be successful for me, I'm already starting to see this little community begin to form from Matambre. There's cooks that have appeared in the magazine that are — that didn't know one another, that are starting to connect with one another because Americano and Shade — that are, they're both trying to work towards composting. And they're both doing that same thing. So, they linked up with one another, and they're helping each other and I'm seeing a lot of little things like that. 

And then with Gloria, she was working on this project where her and her partner, Damien, were going out onto the streets, and finding people who are living in the streets. And there's a lot of soup kitchens and things like that here. But those are soups and very impersonal foods, and there's not a lot of contact between who's cooking your food and who's eating it. And you don't get to sit down anywhere, they just hand you a tuper and you kind of go off and eat wherever. And so they started going out and speaking with people who are living in the street and forming relationships, getting to know their names, what their circumstances were, and asking, ‘If you could choose a meal, what would you want to be — what would you want to eat?’

So, they started doing this project where they were cooking food that they were told, like, ‘This is what I want. I want a milanesa sandwich. I want a pastel de papa,’ or whatever it is. And so I kind of piggybacked on that idea, and joined them with another baker. 

And part of the money that I make every month through Matambre, 10% of that goes to this project that we're building together, where — we linked up with this organization called AMMAR. And that is a syndicate that works with sex workers, particularly from the trans community and particularly from a trans immigrant community, a lot of women from Peru. And they have different centers located all over the city. And we're working with one in Constitución, which is a really stigmatized area of the city, really kind of a forgotten area of the city. 

When we form this relationship with them — like I said, we were very — the way I do with my interviews, we're very cognizant of being like, ‘We're not going to force anything here. We're here. We want to cook for you, we're-’ and we are available to be more involved than that in whatever way they want to receive us. 

And so together with the money that I donated, which was, not that much, we were able to collect a ton of other donations. And we cooked for 150 people on Thursday, last Thursday. And with our second event, we've already been able to generate enough talk in our immediate communities, where all of the meat for the next event is covered by a butcher shop. They're going to donate everything. This organic vegetable producer is providing all of our vegetables for us. We're doing these raffles where different people that I've been talking to donated stuff to the — to raise money. 

And so that, to me, trying to figure out how journalism and storytelling and the sort of, kind of, social justice storytelling can actually translate into something real. And not that I think journalism is not real, but something that's — you can grab, that you can hold on to. 

And so, that to me, that is my goal in trying to look at this from a really interdisciplinary, really holistic way. And just with one event, we're already seeing this — all these connections are being formed, which has been really, really cool.

Alicia: That's amazing. That's awesome. Are you gonna write about it — not to make it all a big, circular thing. But like, are you gonna write about that?

Kevin: So, one of the women that came, we — this bar gave us their kitchen for the afternoon. And it was our first event, so we were running behind. None of us are used to cooking in that kind of a volume. And so the coordinator, Monica, she is the one that we've been speaking directly with. And she came to get the food. 

And this woman, Mia, who was at the very first meeting with us when we left — ’cause we were kind of like ‘Ok, what kind of food would you like to eat?’ And they were a little shy. They didn't really want to tell ud. And then I was like, ‘Well, you guys are all from Peru. Would you like some sort of Peruvian food?’ And then the conversation just went crazy after that. 

And this woman, Mia, just started telling us all about all these foods that she knew how to cook because she's from the Amazon part of Peru, and her parents were food vendors. And so she knows how to make cecina, and all these different soups, and braised meats, and things like that. And so when we left that meeting, I was like, ‘She's a cook. She knows what she's doing. This girl, she's got — she's on top of her stuff.’

And she just showed up to come pick up the food, and we were running behind and she was like, ‘Ok, let me help. I want to learn. I wanna know what you're doing.’ And so, we developed this exchange. And I told her that I would really like to pay her to give me some sort of class, or do some sort of food exchange, or I can teach her how to make Mexican food and she can teach me how to make her food. And I would like to eventually do a story with her. 

But, like I said before, it's — I want to make sure that it's genuine, and I want to make sure that it's sincere, and that she feels comfortable and safe to share that story with me, and share that part of herself with someone who is completely different from her in every single aspect. 

But yeah, I mean, I'm totally fanboying over the idea of being able to write a story ‘bout that.

Alicia: That's so cool. So, for you, is cooking a political act?

Kevin: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, has anyone ever said no in these interviews?

I'm gonna keep talking. Yeah, I mean, everything about cooking, but food in general is a political act to me. I mean, every single part of it. Gloria said something really that stuck with me, which was that food has the power to dignify or humiliate. And she was sort of referencing the people who were eating, the diner, but I think that goes to everyone. That the person in the field that's picking vegetables, the person in the kitchen that's preparing it, the person who's eating it, food is everything. It represents everything: politics, economics, social issues. I don't think that there's any way to separate food and cooking from politics at all.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for coming on.

Kevin: Thank you for having me.

I want to say, you have been so generous and so supportive of this project, and I don't think the — especially the Netflix piece when you shared it, was shared by a lot of people, but it really kind of took off. And I'm really appreciative of your support, your generosity, even though we have never met each other in real life. I mean, you've just been so, so cool, and it's really sort of — it's been very helpful, and I appreciate it a lot.

Alicia: Aww, thank you. 

I think it's funny because — well, of course I love your work. So, obviously, I've been sharing it, etc., etc., and it's been so useful and interesting to me to read about all these stories that are — things that are happening in Buenos Aires that you're not hearing about. So, it's been absolutely enriching and wonderful. 

But also, I think it's funny. This is the first time I'm hearing your voice, and I definitely expected you to be gruffer, I think. And obviously people hear my voice if they care to hear my voice, ’cause I'm — I host this every week. But I also feel people might be surprised that I'm not, I don't know, mean, or more wacky, or something. I don’t know.

Kevin: I don't want to bite people's heads off, but it's — have you ever seen the movie Network?

Alicia: I saw the play, with Bryan Cranston. 

Kevin: So, that is just how I've felt for like the last two years of — when he's just screaming out the window like, ‘I'm mad as hell. I'm not gonna take it anymore.’ That's what I feel like when I read all this b******t. And I can't take it anymore, Alicia. I can’t.

Alicia: Well, thank you again. And I'm so glad that we're — yeah, in touch, doing our thing.

Kevin: I hope to see you when all of this is over.

Alicia: Yeah, me too. 

Kevin: We can travel. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah.

Kevin: All right.

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Listen now | He's the Raaka Chocolate brand manager and a nature photographer.

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When it comes to wine, I admittedly try to keep myself a little bit ignorant. This is because I love wine so much: I don’t want to over-intellectualize it; I want to keep it special. One of the magazines that feels organic (no pun intended) in its approach to writing about the subject is The Wine Zine, published independently by writer Katherine Clary, whose book, Wine, Unfiltered, is similarly approachable in its voice. Both come from a perspective where enjoyment is centered, and it’s understood that enjoyment happens most when the wine has been made well, without much interference, by people who give a s**t. We discussed her upbringing, how she got into wine, and her editorial approach.

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

Katherine: Thanks, Alicia. How are you? Thanks for having me.

Alicia: I'm good. 

How are you? How's life? Are you up in Hudson Valley?

Katherine: I am. Yeah, I've been out of the city now pretty much since March. I'm up in Kingston, New York, which — it's beautiful up here. It's an amazing time to be up here too, because the leaves are all changing. And yeah, it's been really nice.

Alicia: That is probably the best place to be in quarantine, I think. 

Katherine: Yeah, I think so. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, actually, I wanted to talk to you about — Diane di Prima passed away this week, the poet. And you posted about her food writing on Instagram. How did you encounter her food writing? And why do you think it's significant?

Katherine: Yeah. So, gosh, rest in peace, Diane. We've lost so many people this year, obviously. And for some reason, this — her death just really, really hit me yesterday. 

I have read her work, probably since, I guess, my late teens or so. I came across her for the first time actually through City Lights Books in San Francisco, where I was living when I was 18. And it's a great, kind of iconic bookstore. And it's owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who's one of the kind of pioneer Beat poets. 

And I had never really read much Beat poetry or Beat writing from female writers. And so when I came across her book, Dinners and Nightmares, I mean, one, the title just kind of stuck out to me. Like, ‘Oh, gosh, is this — what is this going to be about?’ 

And I started reading it. It chronicles her early days as a Beat poet in New York, the places she lived, the people she lived with, and what she ate. And it was just such a cool, kind of effortless feeling, chronicle of — almost like a daily food diary. But she really weaves a lot of her poetry in and out of it. 

And it's just — yeah, one of my favorite books ever. And like I said, in that post, I really just wish that she had written about food more. [Laughs.] But as it stands, I'll just cherish this book Dinners And Nightmares.

Alicia: It's interesting, because I didn't realize she did any focused food writing. But I know in her poetry, food does come up so much. And even in a memoir — I quoted her memoir, where she was talking about being taught to cook at a young age, and the scars from the hot oil being part of the pain of being a woman. And so, it was so interesting to see your piece, ’cause I was like, I knew that there had to be some more, just food writing from her.

But yeah, we haven't heard enough about her. And I hope that now that she has passed — and unfortunately, we'll probably hear so much more, and see the books reissued, etc, etc. 

Katherine: For sure. I hope so.

I mean, I've already — I immediately got on eBay and was like, ‘Ok, what of her anthology am I missing?’ And there was actually so much that — I maybe own Dinners And Nightmares, Memoirs of a Beatnik,’ and then she has a book of poetry, really beautiful, called This Kind of Bird Flies Backward. But beyond that, she put out so many small, self-published books. And, yeah, as soon as you check on eBay, those prices are going up. [Laughter.]

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

Katherine: Yeah. 

So, I grew up between Phoenix, Arizona, and San Francisco, mostly. Bounced back and forth quite a bit when I was a kid, but those are kind of the two main homes. 

And yeah, in Phoenix, our — my eating style, and how things were in the home, were definitely much more suburban. My mom loved to cook things like chicken and dumplings. And we had some family recipes passed down, for things like yorkshire pudding. And it was just kind of — I mean, don't get me wrong, totally delicious. But, it felt like a pretty kind of standard suburban diet for the time, the late ’80s, early ’90s. 

And I should give my mom more credit, though. Actually, one of her favorite books was — Sunset magazine issued this Southwestern cookbook. I think it came out in the late ’70s. And so we did on occasion have enchiladas and her — she loved making chimichangas, which was a fried burrito essentially. So, there was some variation in there. But it was — yeah, it was delicious, kind of comfort food. 

My mom and I moved to San Francisco. And the culinary landscape, I guess, so to speak, and also just cooking style at home completely changed. Because she was then a single mother raising me. And she was working full-time. And so, I really kind of was put on my own in terms of like, ‘Let's figure out how to get dinner on the table’ and all that. 

And lucky for us, we lived in Chinatown. And I went to school in Chinatown. So, by age 9, 10, I was exposed to so many, so much incredible food. Suddenly, I was eating egg custard tarts, and cha siu bao, and rice noodle rolls, and all — just all this great dim sum. So, I think, San Francisco really kind of expanded my mind, certainly, but also hers. Her culinary style kind of shifted, then. 

And yeah, I think, the way that I was eating in San Francisco kind of carries over to a lot of my curiosity about food now.

Alicia: Right. 

And how did you get into wine and natural wine specifically?

Katherine: Yeah.

So, I won't say that I was ever really into wine until I discovered natural wine. I moved to New York when I was 18. And I think like a lot of people that age, and then going into your early 20s, I was just kind of — I was going out to restaurants with friends, and going to bars, and would kind of just drink whatever was put in front of me. [Laughs.] 

I didn't really distinguish between ordering a vodka soda, or a beer, or whatever when we were out at bars on the weekend. And wine was kind of always this thing that was for quieter nights, maybe if we're sitting in a Italian restaurant. Or I'm having a nice night at home with friends and we would just get some generic bottle of red wine, usually not spending more than like $10 on the bottle. 

I just never really thought about wine. I enjoyed it. But I really, I never connected it to anything bigger than just this alcoholic beverage. And it wasn't until I started to learn about natural wine that this whole world kind of opened up and I understood like, ‘Oh, this is an agricultural product and wine is basically like food.’ And that happened mostly because of two things. 

So, like I said, I'm up in Kingston. And I've had the privilege of spending a lot of time up here the past ten years. My partner's from the area. And a really great wine shop opened about — think, about nine years ago. And it's called Kingston Wine Co. 

And it was the first wine shop that I had ever gone into that actually felt like my people were running it. And they were young people that were really excited about what they were selling. And suddenly I was seeing these bottles that had really creative labels, and the staff there just wanted to chat about things and wanted to know what I was looking for. And it just felt like this really warm, kind of welcoming vibe. It didn't feel like it was purely transactional anymore. 

And then, at about the same time, I was up in the Finger Lakes in western New York, where I have a bit of family. And, as you might know, the Finger Lakes is New York's kind of wine country, so to speak. 

And I came across this small winery called Bloomer Creek. And it turned out that Kim and Debra, the winemakers, were actually basically New York's pioneering natural winemakers. And so I had the privilege of kind of learning from them and understanding the whole history behind natural agriculture in New York. It changed everything in that kind of one to two year time. I really kind of couldn't look back at that point and keep drinking those generic bottles that I had been for the previous ten years.

Alicia: Then you launched The Wine Zine. There have been four issues so far. What inspired the creation of that? And how do you approach the creation and curation of each issue? Does each issue kind of have a theme? 

Or basically, how did The Wine Zine get started? And how do you keep going?

Katherine: Yeah, so they are unthemed. That was a pretty early decision for us, to keep them unthemed. Mostly because the content in each magazine, in each issue, really kind of just comes from, I think, what we are really curious about in that given time. Each issue takes about five to six months to put together. And so, I think I always felt that doing a themed issue would kind of stifle us in terms of what we were able to work with. 

And also, of course, in a six month span of time, so much can happen in — just culturally with wine, but also agriculturally or politically, with tariffs constantly changing and things like that. We kind of needed to be a little bit more on the edge of our seats with how we were coming up with content. And so, yeah, that's kind of why I stay away from themed issues. 

But, in terms of how we come up with content, I've mostly been on my own for these four issues in terms of our editorial direction. So, the magazine has always really been just sort of a fanzine by me, about what it is that I'm really curious about in wine. 

For the next issue — for issue five, I've actually brought on two wonderful editors. Nadia Pugh, who's going to be my associate editor. And she's based in California, and is going to be working kind of more generally on the magazine. And then Farrah Berrou, who's based in Beirut, and she’s going to be focused on that region. 

So, this is the first time that I'm kind of bringing in two outside minds to really start to curate the content and think about stories in a way outside of my own brain, which I'm really, really excited about. ’Cause I was nervous that it was maybe starting to look a little bit too inward. 

I really have my ear to the ground in terms of new producers and new wine shops and new wine bars and what people are talking about, but no matter how much I'm paying attention, things are always going to be outside of my vision. There are always going to be things happening elsewhere that I'm just not capable of knowing. So, I'm super excited to kind of expand my team.

Alicia: And how do you figure out who you want to write for each issue? Are you getting pitches, or are you mostly assigning?

Katherine: Yeah, I'm mostly assigning. For the next issue, I am opening it up to pitches. I've mostly only ever commissioned stories just because, one, I always felt like I had an idea of what I wanted to get into the magazine. But also, I was really terrified about the moment that I opened pitches — gosh, and this probably sounds so crazy, but — that I wasn't going to be able to handle the volume of pitches. Which is, of course, we're a tiny magazine. Come on. I'm not like Wine Enthusiast or something. 

I've always been very slow and steady about the growth of the magazine. And I've always just kind of taken things at my own speed in order to not get too overwhelmed. This has always been a side project for me pretty much until last year, when it kind of became a little bit more full-time, especially with the book. 

But yeah, I've always just kind of wanted to take things slow. And for that reason, I wasn't accepting pitches, but now I think we're in a good position to, with the next issue. So, I'm excited to bring on some new writers.

Alicia: That's super exciting, yeah.

And your book, which you just mentioned, Wine, Unfiltered, is such a wonderful user's guide to the world of natural wine, which doesn't have an official definition. And so much of the coverage of natural wine and mainstream outlets has been dismissive to my — in my perspective. 

And I've always found it a little bit annoying. There was a New Yorker piece about natural wine, and it made it seem as though everyone in the world lived in Brooklyn and was having orange wine poured down their throat by force. 

But you were writing your book, kind of amid this mainstream awareness and gaze upon natural wine. So, how did you come to your way of writing about it and thinking about it? And what kind of guided you along as you were writing your book, and how you want it to approach the topic?

Katherine: Yeah, that's a great question. I was reading those articles as they were coming out, as I was writing my book. And I have to admit, I was totally freaked out. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, mainstream media is already making fun of this thing and dismissing it and writing it off as some trendy, hype-filled whatever and here I am about to put a book out on it. Is this just going to be, by the time this comes out, is — are people just going to be super dismissive of what we're doing?’ 

But the one super-grounding thing about that is, I knew that I had my community within the wine scene. And I knew I had writers there and readers, and people who really did care about the who and the what and the why. And they weren't just paying attention to what bars were pouring orange wine, or whatever. 

And in that way, I think it always felt really good to be writing a primer on natural wine, and kind of an introductory guide. Not that I could have written anything more advanced than that, because let's be honest, I'm very new to natural wine. So, an introductory guide was my speed. It was perfect for me. 

But I always felt confident in that approach, because I know that there will always be new people to this community who maybe need to have the basics explained to them. I was one of those people at one point, and I didn't really have a book like that. 

And, to your question, just regarding, I think, how I approached the book and how I — what my kind of style was with it. It was really the same way that I approach the editorial direction of the magazine. I always want to speak to people kind of at their level, and at a very kind of understanding, ‘learn with me, not from me’ approach. Kind of create a bit of a conversation, and ask questions together. 

I never wanted to be that kind of preachy wine person that's, like, ‘Drink this, not that. Or be drinking this, because it's X, Y, or Z.’ It's more like, ‘Let's kind of create this ongoing dialogue about maybe why we should be changing the ways that we drink, or what [do] these winemakers think about the way that they're farming?’ And just kind of keeping things a little bit more transparent, you know?

Alicia: Absolutely. 

And how do you define natural wine, if someone asks you?

Katherine: Yeah, so. [Laughs.] Oh, the question. [Laughter.]

So yeah, when I'm talking about natural wine, what I'm referring to is wine made with grapes that were not sprayed with synthetic pesticides or herbicides for the most part. It's minimally fined or filtered. 

So, fining is basically a process that allows a winemaker to strip sediment from the wine using a binding agent. And then a filter, the filtering process is just basically a physical filter that will remove sediment from a wine. And it has the benefit of clarifying the wine a bit, among other things. But so, no fining or filtering, no synthetic grapes. 

And what else? I should have my book in front of me. Little to no additives, let’s say. So, we're talking about no chaptalization, which is adding sugar to a wine in order to spike the alcohol content. 

Also, pretty crucial is the use of native or indigenous yeast. So, this is just using the yeast that is present on the grapes in the vineyard and in the cellar, and not using commercial or inoculated yeast to kick off the fermentation process. 

And then I think there are some sort of — there's a little bit of give and take elsewhere. But these are sort of the core things, I think, that most of the community would agree makes a natural wine. Or more simply said: nothing given, nothing taken away. Gosh, I just got that wrong. [Laughter.]

Alicia: For you, is drinking wine a political act?

Katherine: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think with anything that I think we consume, we can think of that as being a political act. With wine in particular, it touches so many aspects. How was the labor treated that was involved in the production of the wine? What were the agricultural processes? How does it look for the environment, or how does it impact the environment? I think there are so many ways that we can think of wine being a political thing. 

And also just for me, it's about where and how do I want to spend my money? Do I want to have it go to a small family farm in western New York as opposed to a giant, anonymous corporation in Napa? Absolutely. Or even spending my money at a small, locally owned shop versus a big chain. I think all of those things add up, you know.

Alicia: Thank you so much, Katherine, for coming on.

Katherine: Thank you, Alicia.

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