Olivia Chase and Steve Sprinkel are the owners of The Farmer and the Cook in Ojai, California. What is The Farmer and the Cook? It’s a restaurant, café, bakery, farm market and community hub in the middle of Ojai, plus a 10 acre farm a few blocks away.

The Farmer and the Cook opened in 2001, though Olivia and Steve have been at the center of the American organic food movement for decades, helping it grow from a radical counter-cultural idea in one small area of Southern California to a transformational influence on the American food system. Organic food, vegetarian and vegan food, farmers markets, farm to table – these are ideas that entered the American mainstream because of what started to happen in this area. Today, they are often buzz words, corrupted by industrial food. Then there are people like Olivia and Steve that have not wavered from their original goals. They have stayed true to their ethos, growing, distributing and serving nutritious food that is good for your body and doesn’t destroy the environment. They try to make it nutritious food affordable and accessible to anyone in their community, not just the wealthy Angelenos that make their way to the town on the weekends.

In our discussion, where Juli was there on location, we talk about how the price of land has made it difficult for new farmers, but how organizations they are a part of, like the Ecological Farming Association and ALBA, are helping to train farmworkers, many of them Latin American, to improve yields and access land of their own. We talk about hopeful gains in seed saving, which is helping make agricultural diversity more resilient. They are also helping preserve seeds from Gaza so that they don’t disappear during the war and they can eventually be reestablished by Palestinian farmers.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the time it takes food movements to have real impacts. We are sometimes taken by surprise at how quickly food systems can be disrupted. I’ve seen it happen rapidly in the two decades I have been researching food in Latin America. Sometimes we want things to happen in the other direction overnight, but it takes time. Seemingly small actions, like saving seeds and getting nice vegetables into the hands of consumers can have a strong impact as time goes on. It might take decades before you can see the change, maybe it’s after your bones are down in the ground, but someone must have the courage to start somewhere. 
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Host: Nicholas Gill
Co-host: Juliana Duque
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder https://www.newworlder.com
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Nicolás Tapia is the chef and owner of the restaurant Yum Cha in Santiago, Chile. Nicolás talks about how he became interested in tea during a trip to China and during a family style meal where everyone was drinking tea he was reminded of the Chilean concept of once, the evening tea and meal. That’s when the idea was planted in his head to create a restaurant where food and tea could be paired together, combining his cooking experience, Chilean ingredients and the influences from China and elsewhere in Asia where he continues to explore regularly.

I mention this in the conversation, but when I first heard about Yum Cha I questioned whether it was going to work. A tasting menu with Asian techniques, Chilean ingredients and a tea pairing? It’s a risk. Even though there is a ton of tea consumed in Chile, more than anywhere else in Latin America per capita and even more than in China and Japan. Then I went and I was like, alright, he knows what he’s doing. It comes through in the interview. I think it’s a good example of someone following their curiosities to another part of the world with an open mind and doing something interesting with it what they learned, and continuing to learn, engage and create something new. I highly recommend a meal there if you are in Santiago. Or stop by the tea house he is about to open. 

Nicolás did the interview from a hotel room in La Paz, Bolivia, where he was doing an event later that week with the restaurant Phayawi, which I haven’t been to but I’ve heard great things. I’ll be in Bolivia in a few months and hopefully I’ll have time for it.

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Martin Rosberg is a natural cheesemaker that lives in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, a small community across the Río de la Plata from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is Argentine and once ran a boutique hotel and restaurant in Buenos Aires but moved away to find a quieter life on a small farm with his family. He built a few stilted houses that he still rents on Airbnb, then he started making breads and eventually a few cheeses to give to the guests there. He really fell down the cheese rabbit hole, however. This led him to the world of natural cheesemaking, which is kind of like the natural wine of cheese: using traditional methods with natural cultures and without expensive equipment. It’s essentially how cheesemaking was done for 8,000 years until a century ago when modern practices entered into the craft. Martin now makes 20 kinds of natural cheeses from his farm in Uruguay, several of them his own unique styles. He also teaches workshops on natural cheesemaking and gives tastings around the world, including at his farm.

Martin has been a good friend of mine for 15 years or maybe. I’m not even sure anymore. He used to be clean shaven and wear suits. Now he is this cheesemaker on a farm with all these crazy cheeses. Anyway, he was leading a few workshops at the very beautiful Coltsfoot Valley Farm in Cornwall, Connecticut, which isn’t that far from me so I went and picked him up and he stayed at my house for a couple of days on his way back to New York City. One of the most Connecticut things ever happened on the drive: two cars got into an accident trying to navigate going in and out of a narrow-covered bridge. Back at my place we of course tasted some cheeses and drank wine, but we decided to do this somewhat sporadic podcast conversation from my barn where I always record, while Juliana was able to join by laptop set up in front of the couch. Martin was one of the first guests on this podcast and it’s always good to hear from him, but it was nice recording the conversation in person in the barn. He’s the first to do that and it felt like a studio. Maybe one day it could develop into one. It just needs some time, like a cheese.

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Host: Nicholas Gill ( https://www.instagram.com/nicholasgill2 ) 
Co-host: Juliana Duque ( https://www.instagram.com/juliduk/)
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder https://www.newworlder.com
Email: [email protected]
Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Garima Arora is the India born chef of the two Michelin star restaurant Gaa in Bangkok, Thailand. She is the only female Indian chef with two Michelin stars. Garima has been working tirelessly to awaken the transformative potential of Indian cuisine both in India and abroad for many years. She developed a non-profit called Food Forward India, that documents, discover and catalogue the diversity and complexity of Indian food and the culture surrounding it, and is also a judge on MasterChef India, one of the most wide-reaching culinary television shows on earth.

In our conversation, we speak of how the perception of Indian food has changed since she opened the restaurant. I spent two months in the country when I was 25, traveling on 3rd class trains everywhere, going from the Himalayas in the north to Goa in the south, and the border with Pakistan in the west to Varanasi in the east. Aside of being one of the most impactful periods of my life, I tasted so many things that were new to me and I haven’t seen since. Indian food, the cuisine of a massive landscape with hundreds of ecosystems and more people than any other country on the planet, was, for many years, reduced to a handful of curries and breads outside of the country. It’s so vast and rich and has been bottled up within India for so long, but suddenly it’s starting to spread. This is very much a big moment for Indian food outside of India. Tresind Studio in Dubai was just awarded 3 Michelin stars. Semma in New York was named the best restaurant in the city by The New York Times. And within India there is a lot going on too, not just with fine dining restaurants, but at the street level there is an energy there that is growing by the day. This is a cuisine, sorry not a cuisine, but thousands of them, that have been overlooked for far too long.

Aside of trying to juggle parenting with chef life and her early career as a journalist, Garima talks about her work at Gaa. She tells us about the historic Thai house that was moved in pieces to Bangkok and reassembled with the help of a modern architecture firm to create the setting of the restaurant. She tells us how she cooks the Thai fruit durian on a tandoor oven as her main course, which sounds like one of the most delicious things ever.

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Maru Molina lives in El Salvador, living somewhat of a nomadic lifestyle. She has a weekly pop-up event called Cocina de Jardin, where the events are held in both wild and urban settings around the country. Maru's work on the project over the past five years is very impactful. I believe it is having an impact. She has been holding weekly events that connect consumers with healthy, nutritious food grown by local producers, often right on the farms. They are physically seeing, tasting understanding where their food comes from. She recently expanded the concept with Finca Sylvestris, an experimental farm on the slopes between two volcanoes, just outside of San Salvador. Aside of giving her new altitude ingredients to work with, she also has a formal space for Cocina de Jardín events, which occur there twice a month. It’s given her an entire new understanding of her work.

It is a very pivotal moment in the history of El Salvador. Even though there are serious concerns in the way the government has behaved itself, the country has opened up wildly and people are genuinely optimistic. I saw it the last time I was there I saw it. I felt it. It was as if a heavy burden had been lifted. As Maru and I discuss, this moment is an opportunity to build something better and lasting because it might not come again. 
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Host: Nicholas Gill ( https://www.instagram.com/nicholasgill2 ) 
Co-host: Juliana Duque ( https://www.instagram.com/juliduk/)
Produced by Nicholas Gill & Juliana Duque
Recording & Editing by New Worlder https://www.newworlder.com
Email: [email protected]

Read more at New Worlder: https://www.newworlder.com

Evan Rail is based in Prague, in the Czech Republic and is prolific food and travel writer, and has covered beer and spirits for many years. His latest book is called The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit.

Evan and I have been crossing journalistic paths for many years. We both have written for the New York Times Travel section for a long time and we also have an interest in food and drink, though in very different parts of the world. But we now have the same agent and last year, said agent, sent me a copy of Evan’s new book before it came out and I couldn’t put it down.

For one, absinthe is this intriguing spirit and I’ve always been fascinated by it. It has this rich history that inspired all kinds of great art, but then it got banned in much of the world a century ago and there’s always this desire for things that we cannot have. The book is part history lesson about the absinthe story and part true crime novel about this forger that was creating and selling what he alleged were highly sought after expensive pre-ban bottles of absinthe. Evan describes this entire absinthe underground that exists, this community of enthusiasts who want to taste history, and how actual lost bottles are occasionally being tracked down and being rediscovered in chateaus and estate sales. It’s a great read and I highly suggest getting a copy.

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Carolina Colque and Sergio Armella are the owners of Ephedra Restaurant outside of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Let me be clear when I say that this is a very unlikely restaurant. Two young, local Atacameños with no cooking experience, have opened a tasting menu restaurant in the Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth. It’s not even in the main town, San Pedro de Atacama, but in an ayllu, a traditional community a dozen kilometers away. I urge you to just go to their Instagram page right now and look at the food they are making and the ingredients they are working with. It will blow your mind.

The Atacama Desert, in the far north of Chile, is a special place. I have been there a few times over the years. The scenery is unreal, almost lunar at times, but it is the flavors there that have always excited me. In a place with little rain, most of the plants grow slowly, into large shrubs with brittle branches that develop one-of-a-kind flavors. There are also fruit trees, leguminous pods and fragrant flowers that only come out when there is a hint of moisture in the air. This is the kind of landscape Carolina and Sergio are working with.

Before starting the restaurant, Sergio’s cooking experience consisted of a Neapolitan pizza business they tried out during the pandemic, then he staged at Geranium, the 3 Michelin star restaurant in Copenhagen, which is extremely technical, for a few months. What makes Ephedra special is their will to create a distinct experience in the place they are from. These unique ecosystems, not to mention the cultures that support them, are what makes Latin American food special.

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Bruna Fontevecchia and Max Wilson are the cofounders of the food magazine and platform Anchoa. The magazine, which began in Argentina, has tried to create a space for deeper stories about food in Latin America. There is little to no mention of fine dining chefs or restaurant rankings. The magazine covers anthropology and ecology with food, the things that we eat and drink and how they are made, as the connecting tissue that unites them all. Bruna is the editor and Max is the designer and as you will hear, the process in building each issue is very organic and flows with the rhythm of the region, which is in constant flux.

While the magazine’s coverage began in Argentina, where Bruna is from, it has gradually spread to rest of Latin America. Plus, the last two issues, #4 and the just released #5, are bilingual, in both English and Spanish. Part of that decision is to get more people to read it, though part of it is logistical, in just getting it on the shelves of bookstores and newsstands in different parts of the world. Anchoa is part of a new wave of gastronomic journalism in the region, where small print magazines are finding life as large print publications gravitate more towards digital publishing. There’s also Chiú in Ecuador that started recently, as well as several other small publications.

In the interview they describe the challenges in exposing people to these kinds of stories and are continually experimenting with new forms. They have a digital only part of the magazine and a podcast that releases sporadically. They also just released a 20-minute short film called El Sueño del Vino, about ancestral winemaking methods in northern Argentina, in Cafayate, and the battle to preserve them. Please check out what they are doing. Pick up issue #5, I even have a photo essay in it about fish in the Peruvian Amazon. Request your local bookstores with lively food sections to stock it. The more engaged the world can become with the depths of cuisine in the Americas, the better it will be for all of us.

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Sarah Thompson is the chef of Casa Playa in the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts and is a Culinary Institute of America graduate who spent many years working in New York City at restaurants like Marea and Alder, but when taking a job with Enrique Olvera and Daniela Soto-Innes at Cosme, she fell in love with Mexican cuisine. When that restaurant wanted a variation of it called Elio in Las Vegas she was tapped as the executive chef. They opened right at the same time the pandemic hit, so after months of openings and closings and instability on the Las Vegas strip it closed. However, she was able to convince the Wynn to let her take over the space and serve her form of Mexican cooking.

Casa Playa serves coastal Mexican food, but it’s not attached to any specific region. She has no sentimental background with a grandmother in Michoacán or anything like that, so she doesn’t try to insinuate that she does and just lets the flavors work together as she sees fit. She even whips the masa for her tamales with coconut oil. It’s a very particular environment, running a restaurant inside of a casino. The way people dine is different. They often come in large groups. She has a late-night taco menu for those that want to stop in for a quick bite before during or after going to a club or some kind of attraction. The lighting is beyond her control at times. These unique attributes also give her an opportunity to do things a little differently. It’s a really fascinating world in Las Vegas. I know it seems like a place I wouldn’t like, but I’ve never really gone there for all of the money and excess and nightlife that it has a reputation for. I’ve always appreciated just the weirdness of Las Vegas which is everywhere, though sometimes you have to peel back what’s on the surface.

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Based in Malmo, Sweden,Lotta & Per-Anders Jörgensen are the founders of the legendary food magazine Fool. Lotta is an art director and Per-Anders, or P.A. as I have come to call him, is a photographer. This is a magazine that launched in 2012 and has put out, thus far, 8 issues, very sporadically. It has been a few years since. The last issue, but as they reveal in the episode, there will be a #9.

Aside of its unpredictable publishing schedule, Fool is a rare kind of magazine. In a world where everything moves so fast, where writing about food is mostly oriented towards minuscule bits of information on social media that keep coming at a rapid pace, one after the other, Fool is slow. It’s thoughtful. It’s reflective. It’s stories are about interesting humans that work in food and their ideas, regardless of how well known they are. It’s creative, with beautiful illustrations and photography, and stories that have always gone a little bit deeper than anywhere else. I had the pleasure of writing a few feature stories there and there was never any indication of what the word count should be. Just make it as long as you think it should be, they would say. That kind of collaboration is a dream for a writer or contributor of any sort. When you pick up an issue, you can read it like a book. A decade later, the stories remain relevant.

Lotta and PA also create books, such as the Burnt Ends book, which we talked about with that restaurant’s chef, Dave Pynt, in the previous episode. They’ve also worked with Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz, and quite a few other truly iconic chefs. There is also a documentary series they have created that they will launch soon, or at least soonish, or when it feels right. Anyway, their work has always been a big inspiration for me so it was a pleasure to have them on.

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