Hidden Apron Radio

After a year’s worth of writing, editing, reflecting, then editing some more, we’ve finally finished our 33rd episode, four years after we had first launched this podcast and a year after we had published our last episode.  This is a long overdue reflection of sorts tying every one of our last 32 episodes.  Across them all, we’ve gathered the underlying truths that not only relate to food but also the experience of being.  This was the most challenging episode we’ve recorded not only because we wanted to give justice to the generous wisdom our guests have shared but because they themselves come from such varied backgrounds: farmers, tech startup founders, writers, educators, activists, and everyone in between.

In this episode, we go surface three broad themes that hold all our episodes, if not all of Hidden Apron, together:

- Food is never just Food.

- Our problems are real and difficult, but the fundamental solutions have always existed.

- It all starts with “Why” and the stories we tell ourselves.

We also include snippets of past episodes and they’re quite a trip back in time when many of our guests (and us!) were in different stages in our lives.  You’ll find a full listing of past episodes in the show notes below if you’d like to take a deeper dive with a guest who’s whetted your appetite.  Given that this is a season closer of sorts, we’d be remiss in not thanking everyone who’s been along for this side project of a side project.  From being one of the thousands of downloads, to providing us with valuable feedback, to one of those who’ve shared your own stories as a guest, maraming maraming salamat!

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For more information including notes to the show, please visit hiddenapron.com/podcast.

This is the second installment in a special series of conversations with fellow authors of the recently published cookbook and anthology, "The New Filipino Kitchen" (available on Amazon) that features Filipino cooks, writers, and thinkers all across the globe.  We take a peek into how they view the world and their cuisine.

For this East Coast edition, we feature: 

• Katrina and Kristina Villavicencio, co-creators of the Washington DC Supper Club Timpla along with their friends Aniceto and Paolo. Their simple vision of introducing modern Filipino cuisine to the city has grown to incorporate storytelling, design, and art to educate others about Filipino culture. Their combined experiences in food service (Kristina) and art (Katrina) make them a versatile team that is able to explore multiple facets of the Filipino culture.

• Alexa Alfaro, an Alaska-born Milwaukeean who, after a 10-week trip to the Philippines, was inspired to open her city’s first Filipino Food Truck “Meat on the Street” with her younger brother in 2014. This involved dropping out of her Engineering degree but weeks from graduation. Since then, the pair have opened a brick-and-mortar slinging their famous BBQ sticks and pork adobo to the masses.

If I had to pick a single word for today’s show, it would be: Expectations.  Be it: 

• Expectations around Filipino food (looks, tastes, methods, and costs).  

• Expectations around our age and the need to balance respectful obedience and forging our own path.

• Expectations around the immigrant experience and the constant theme of sacrifice.

• Expectations around gender; something we don’t get to cover much on this show. I’m glad we talked about this topic in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the fortuity that a majority of the co-authors I’ve been touring with and are getting the much-deserved spotlight (seeing as immigrant women are the keepers of cuisine) are female.

Of note to me was how we can think about our relationships with women in and out of the kitchen and where we draw the line between demanding excellence at work and abuse.  

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For more information including notes to the show, please visit hiddenapron.com/podcast.

This is a special episode that is the first in a series of conversations with fellow authors of the recently published cookbook and anthology, "The New Filipino Kitchen" (available on Amazon) that features Filipino cooks, writers, and thinkers all across the globe.  We take a peek into how they view the world and their cuisine.

For this West Coast edition, we feature: 

• Joanne Boston (previously featured in Episode 2!), the founder of JBKollaborations, a company that creates events promoting Filipino Food at the local and national level.  Joanne has been a part of the local food scene in the Bay Area for years and has written for places like CBS San Francisco and the San Francisco Chronicle.  She’s also a full-time student and works as a medical reimbursement specialist during the day.
• Robert Menor, aka Adobo Loko.  Born in Montana and raised in Little Manila, Stockton, CA, Chef Rob is a mestizo (half Filipino and Mexican).  He’s cooked in restaurants in places like Chicago, Ohio, and all over California, bringing his unique take on Filipino food.  He’s also quite the hip hop head and “remixes” his foods to straddle the diverse experiences he’s had throughout his life.
• Rodelio Aglibot, aka the Food Buddha.  A true industry vet.  Besides opening, working in, and with several critically-acclaimed restaurants from California to Chicago to Rome, Chef Rod has hosted his own TV Show also called the Food Buddha (he talks and looks like one…if Buddha was a boisterous Filipino).  He’s been featured in the Today Show, Good Morning America, Ellen DeGeneres, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Chicago Tribune…the list goes on forever!  Chef Rod is truly a foodie’s foodie.  

We explore views that span the culinary gamut and proved again just how diverse our cuisine is.  While we spend a good amount of time on Filipino Cuisine and Culture and what this book means to us, we also take a broader look at things:

• How to inspire others, pass on knowledge, and organize communities, all while staying sane and,
• How knowing your own history empowers you to break through subconscious barriers. 

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For more information including notes to the show, please visit hiddenapron.com/podcast.

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For more information including notes to the show, please visit hiddenapron.com/podcast.

Today, I talk with Isabel Moura (full disclosure: she is also my Portuguese professor), who, during my visit to Brazil, introduced me to foods beyond the stereotypical açai bowl and grilled meats.  She's a popular teacher on the Language Learning Community Platform iTalki where I met her and has over ten years of experience teaching and learning languages.  We:

- Demystify some of the misconceptions around language-learning (no you don’t have to rely on memorization),
- The systems one can use to make language learning not only efficient and effective but also personal,
- How one can create environments to learn a language even if they don’t have the resources to travel often or take intensive courses, and
- How they can apply their newfound skills abroad

Portuguese may have been the language I have dedicated the most time on but I cannot overstate just how much more delicious my experiences in food have been abroad just by learning some essential phrases.  That’s because the real food of a place is often in the homes and markets, hidden in plain sight in front of us tourists and I’m really excited to be taking this rather different look at food in today’s episode.  Então, senhoras e senhores, por favor, aproveite minha conversação com Isabel. 

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For more information including notes to the show, please visit hiddenapron.com/podcast.

Today’s guest is Cynthia Glanzberg who I first met behind the counter of a tea house on a cold, snowy New York night. We chatted tea and travel for hours and I learned about how she left a solid marketing job to hop from country to country learning about the world of tea for more than a year. She has since returned and started her company, One Tea, that sources unique teas from all over the world and creates experiences akin to a roaming tea house. She’s worked with yoga instructors, sculptors, candle makers, and yes, yours truly in an attempt to create more connections between people through the humble tea leaf while also educating them about a beverage that has deep cultural ties in many countries.

We first talk about Traveling: how to pull off long-term international travel, checking your privilege and traveling responsibly, working abroad, the value of relationships on the road, and getting comfortable with discomfort. We then do a deep dive into tea: what is it, how does one navigate the sometimes confusing terminology, and the questions to ask when buying it. We also talk about how tea can really bridge the gaps between people and their tribes by creating shared spaces. Tea can be as varied and rich as wine, even if it comes from the same plot of land and so if you’re looking for something that fuels a good conversation or Netflix binge session that isn’t alcoholic and is shared by more people around the world as the #1 consumed beverage, this episode is for you.

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For more information including notes to the show, please visit hiddenapron.com/podcast.

Today’s episode may seem like an oxymoron: Filipino Vegan Food. There’s no way around it, today’s topic can be a bit touchy to some. There’s a lot to unpack with the “V" word and I’ve seen conversations range from moralizing, purely economical, to downright bizarre. One things for sure though, the words “Vegan" and “Filipino", at first glance, seem like they’d be about as good a match as unripe mango and shrimp paste. Then you realize that shit’s actually really good! Today we have on the show RG Enriquez, the creative mind and cook behind “Astig Vegan”, one of the coolest Vegan Filipino resources online. Astig, by the way, is Filipino slang for kickass, and RG definitely lives up to the name. A former newsroom correspondent, RG’s road to a plant-based cuisine, which she’s been on for 12 years now, was a surprising one as there was no magic moment where she saw pictures of dying baby cows and swore off meat forever. She describes it as a gradual shift in palate and today, she’s helping many others taste the Filipino food they love - but made with plants - through her YouTube channel, blog, and live cooking demos.

We talk about her transition to a vegan lifestyle and why it’s actually given her more room to be creative with her cooking while exposing her to new flavors, her surprising sources of support and pushback, and some of her strategies for how to tell the story of your food, especially one that has so much cultural meaning to it that proposing a vegan version sometimes invites a violent reaction. RG is passionate about keeping the Filipino soul in Filipino Food and her inviting and compassionate nature embodied in her tagline “Kain na, Let’s eat”, is why I think she’s as successful and well-loved today. This one’s for everyone who's always wondered what it’s like to be transition into a plant-based lifestyle but also for those looking to invite more people to their dining tables.

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For more information including notes to the show, please visit hiddenapron.com/podcast.

Chef Lenny Russo is a forty year veteran of the food & beverage industry, a member of the U.S. Department of State American Chef Corps, participating chef at World Expo Milan 2015, author of "Heartland: Farm Forward Dishes of the Great Midwest", founder and owner of the seminal Heartland Restaurant in St Paul, MN, six time James Beard Award finalist nominee for Best Chef Midwest, and is currently the Executive Chef at The Commodore Bar & Restaurant in St. Paul, MN.

Chef Lenny's name has become synonymous with the local food movement in the Midwest and he has spent a majority of his career championing issues important to our food by contributing the remaining time he has when not in the kitchen to the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, the MN Organic Advisory Task Force, the Ramsey County Food and Nutrition Commission, and many other organizations tackling the biggest challenges our food systems face.  Chef Lenny's philosophy was evident in his cooking as he would change his menu every day at Heartland based on what the farmers brought him that morning, ensuring only the best possible ingredients were used. 

For the most part, Chef Lenny’s accomplishments as a chef have been widely covered internationally and a quick Google search will show he’s been written up numerous times in various food publications.  However, most don’t get to hear about his other experiences and interests.  He studied Philosophy and Literature in college, worked at an architecture firm, and was even a clinical psychologist before heading to the kitchen for good and so for this episode, we delve into the other aspects of his multi-faceted life.  We definitely talk about his early days in the kitchen and his approach to food but we also talk about:

• Food and Family as non-monetary “Wealth”
• The need to have a healthy sense of skepticism but also an open mind when trying to leave the world a better place
• The challenges but necessity of finding common ground especially during these polarized times
• Relinquishing control and having the a sense of confidence that in turn allows others to pursue their best selves
• Evolution as a Choice

It’s very easy to pigeonhole Chef Lenny into the "Chef Box" but as he once mentioned, he’s not JUST “The Local Food Guy”.  Give this one a listen all the way to the end if you’re serious about helping heal this world because I guarantee you this episode will leave you inspired, thought-provoked, or at the very least, just a little bit more inquisitive.