From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

Alicia Kennedy
From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

A weekly food and culture podcast from writer Alicia Kennedy, who talks to writers, chefs, and more about their lives, careers, and how food fits into it all. www.aliciakennedy.news

  1. A Conversation with Millicent Souris

    05/25/2022

    A Conversation with Millicent Souris

    You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in. This week, I'm talking to Millicent Souris, someone I have long wanted to make my friend. Millicent is to me just wildly cool. She talks about food equity and drinking bourbon, and there was no one I would rather talk to you about the dichotomy of being politically engaged with food justice, and also stocking your pantry with very nice olive oil. She's also one of my favorite food writers period; her pieces in Brooklyn Based, Bon Appetit, Diner Journal—they kind of redefined the genre. As a longtime line cook who now runs a soup kitchen and food pantry in New York City, she's someone who simply knows food—its highs and lows and is cool as hell. Did I say that already?  Alicia Kennedy: Hi, Millicent. How are you, Millicent? Millicent Souris: I'm doing all right. How are you, Alicia? Alicia: Did I say your name right?  Millicent: Yep!  Alicia: Actually, we should have done that before. [Laughs.] Millicent: I know. Yeah, my name is Millicent. And is Alicia correct for you? Alicia: Yes. Alicia is correct.  Millicent: Great. Alicia: Yeah, I'm Alicia sometimes, but only if you're a Spaniard. [Laughs.] Millicent: Fair, I'm not going to pretend… Alicia: Yeah, yeah…well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? Millicent: Yeah, I grew up in Baltimore County, north of Baltimore City, and in Towson, Maryland, and Lutherville, Maryland—which is of course home to John Waters and Divine, and also in North Baltimore County.  So my dad's parents had immigrated from Greece, so I grew up eating Greek food. And then my mom's family had a dairy farm, so I grew up drinking—when I was up there—unpasteurized milk, which I would say about 10 years ago, I made the connection was raw milk. And country food, you know—my grandfather would grow his own corn and tomatoes and zucchini, and that would be summertime. We ate a lot of crabs in the summer, because it's Maryland, and then also, like, oysters were definitely a part of my mom's family. Like we'd have oysters stuffing and raw oysters at Thanksgiving, because her dad would bring them and shuck them.  But then also because it's the ’70s and ’80s, straight-up s****y American processed food, was a gift, you know, for our household because my mom worked and my dad worked, and there's three of us. And, you know, even on the farm, my uncle and his wife, they would buy Steak-umms, even though they had ground beef from the steers that they sent to slaughter. You know, we would drink Tang, and we ate Stouffer’s lasagna, so it was a real hodgepodge, I think, of all that stuff.  And then there was, when my mom left my dad and there was the episode called “divorce food,” which was Lean Cuisines and Hamburger Helper and La Choy and a lot of Mandarin oranges in tins.  Alicia: Wow. Yeah. Was that on behalf of your mom’s side? Millicent: That was on my mom's side. And then my dad would just take us to his friends’ restaurants or bars and we’d eat there.  Alicia: [Laughs.] My parents, when they got divorced, I always say, when I knew something was going wrong was when my mom started to make instant mashed potatoes.  Millicent: Yeah… Alicia: I was already like, 20. So it wasn't like I was a kid. But you know it was always seared in my mind that the instant mashed potatoes were the beginning of the end. Millicent: It's the tell…it’s the tell… except I, when I did eat instant mashed potatoes and I think I was 21 I first had them, I was like, What is this magical stuff that just turns into mashed potatoes?  Alicia: No, it's super cool.  Millicent: It's…I mean, science. It's science. Alicia: Yeah, well, you know, as you were just talking about the dairy and also your family had a bar as well, you know, how did you end up in food, personally?  Millicent: I ended up in food…uh, I mean, my Yaya would cook—Souris’s started as a restaurant in 1934. And so it was a classic Greek restaurant, which is American food and then Greek specials. And then when my dad made it a bar, there was a grill, but there was a flattop behind the bar, and so my Yaya would make totally frozen hamburgers, but she'd also have really good Avgolemono soup. But I didn't—I was just a kid and I didn't really take in all of that. So I don't have that—it would be really cool if I could lie and be like, and then yeah, romantic version of food.  I got a job at the Royal Farm Stores, it was my first job on the books, when I was 14. And that was the convenience store that had fried chicken and Joe Joe's, and then you take the leftover fried chicken and break it up and make chicken salad. So that was my first job in food and everyone who worked there hated it. And, it was cleaning cases of frozen chicken thighs and cutting potatoes and deep frying a lot of stuff. And then our neighbors owned a luncheonette in a pharmacy and I remember working there and being blown away by making salad dressing from scratch.  So, what I knew is that I would always have a job in food because I was willing to do that hard work and for girls like, and teenage girls, I would never be hired to be the counter person or a waitress, because I wasn't cute; I was tall and big and strong and fat, you know. And this is not now—this was the late ’80s. And like, no one was…no one would hire me to be their waitress, but I could always work in the kitchen. And so I—it's not anything I verbalized; it's just something that I knew, that I could always get kitchen jobs. I know that's not really passionate, but you know, you got to make money… Alicia: Right, well did passion emerge for it?  Millicent: Yeah, I mean, I think for me I found a land that made sense to me. You know, I remember living one summer, and working um, finding a job at—I lived in Portland, Maine. And I was in this place Greedy McDuff’s, which was a brew pub, and it's still there, and English-style pub food and just working; you're just working with a bunch of heshers, you know, and a bunch of—you're hanging out listening to music, you're working hard, you're kind of gross, your skin's not great, you didn't get a lot of sleep, because you had to work the prep shift… But, you know, I remember working with a guy where when Black Sabbath would come on, we’d take the melted butter and dip a brush in it and turn off the lights and hit the grill and the flames would come up. And it just, I don't know, it was that moment: It's just fun—somewhere that felt free when there's not a lot of places to be free, you know?  And so I knew that. And then, when I moved to New York, 17 years ago, I helped someone open a restaurant. And I've just always been like, I'm a good worker—everything made sense for me. So I do, when I talk about food, a lot of it, I talk about work, but there has to be a sustained level of the community of people that you're working with and that you're buying from, and that you're feeding. And also the food itself, that is passionate. It's just, that's not just, I'm not one of those people who like has that language, you know, who’s just—I'm not very over-the-top with language about myself and what I like, but don't worry, there's plenty people who have that covered, you know… Alicia: I'm one of them…so… [Laughter.]  Millicent: I don't think so. Alicia: Well, you know, yeah, you've worked in restaurant kitchens for years, you write, you've curated social justice film series, you've been a DJ, now you're cooking. You know, well, how would you describe what you do now? Millicent: Right now, I mean, I work at a food pantry in a soup kitchen. And before the pandemic, I'd been there for over five years and I came on as a consultant to do a culinary job training program. We didn't—it didn't work, and it didn't get more funding, but I was I was the only person there who had worked in restaurants. So I kind of had an eye for the food. And I was like, I can work here part time, and we can get more produce and rescue food and things like that, get more produce to people, take care of the food better, increase our capacity for produce. And then I did that, and then the pandemic hit, and then it was that times a million with just the whole world shut down, so where's all the food gonna go? And all the pantries shut down, so we just got dropped all this food. So then I became—then it just became something different. So now, I mean, I don't even cook there. I just, I'm the facilitator of the pallets, you know, and trying to— There's a good grant that came out of the pandemic called the Nourish New York grant. And I think that's permanent now. And it was to really just keep the state going. And you have to spend it on New York State products. And this grant, the director and the head of the pantry, they were just like, What are we going to spend this money on? I was like, I got this, I got this, give it to me please—let me, let me have, let me buy things and not have it all just be like, donated Tyson evil meat.  So those grants I take care of and I like to think it balances out all of the super-gross food bank tax writeoffs for giant companies and really just, because I've consulted on restaurant kitchens, I have a good eye for logistics in space. And so we just had to switch our entire building over to be a warehouse and I was like, the chapel can hold pallets and the waiting area can hold pallets. And if we open this up, we can fit pallets through here—so just really nerdy s**t, you know, and also where all the food goes. So that's what I'm working on. That's what I'm working on now. And now hopefully something new will happen.  Alicia: Well, that grant is really interesting. Li

    1h 2m
  2. A Conversation with Andrea Hernandez

    05/11/2022

    A Conversation with Andrea Hernandez

    You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in. Today, I'm talking to Andrea Hernandez, the oracle behind the newsletter Snaxshot, which explores food and beverage trends with humor, broad insight, and gorgeous graphics.  Nothing about the conversation went according to plan. I had to reschedule because of Puerto Rico's archipelago-wide blackout, my usual recording software wasn't loading, my laptop and Andrea's AirPods were dying, and we went totally off the prepared script to discuss the limits of tech that doesn't cross borders, having to be self-motivated as independent workers, adaptogens, commodification of culture, and much more.  Alicia: Hi, Andrea. How are you? Andrea: I'm good. I'm actually doing good. [Laughter.] Thanks for asking me, how about you? Alicia: I'm good. I'm good. I know, you've had some power problems lately. Andrea: I was honestly, yesterday, I was like, Oh, God, because yesterday, I woke up with no electricity. And then at night, the power went out too. And I'm like, I don't know if we're gonna be able to do this. I was gonna have to— I don't know if tomorrow will be okay. But thank God, there's been no issues. I don’t wanna jinx myself. [Laughs.] Alicia: Right. Well, yeah, we rescheduled this because there was a blackout in Puerto Rico and then there have also been problems in a lot of other places as well. It's interesting, because someone messaged me in the Pacific Northwest, in Oregon, and was like, “We're having bad weather, I don't know if the power is going to hold.” And I feel like this is something that's underestimated and that's not as discussed, I think, because people in New York and LA don't have these problems right now, you know, and so I did want to talk to you about that, about how do you get your work done, and how do you keep your kind of resolve because also, as independent writers—as I know, of course—we are self-motivated completely with kind of, these unpredictable issues that happen.  Andrea: Yeah, it really sucks at times when, at night, because it's like, well, I don't really have anywhere else to go. My phone has been sort of like what I default to, which is, like, so funny that you put yourselves in these positions, like I've literally, like, learned to do like, writing on Substack on my phone, which is like the most tedious thing—I wish they would like improve upon that experience. But I'm also, you know, before my laptop battery died, I will literally use my phone as a hotspot, for whatever, [how long] it can last.  But yeah, I think—it's just so funny, because I talk to a lot of people from literally all over the world, people from Sydney and London and all these places. [And] they are always surprised. They're like, Wait, like, you're in Honduras? And I'm like, yeah, and they're just like, so shocked. They can't believe that someone from an unknown hub could be putting out work that's recognized in their places.  So I think, to me, it's like, you mentioned something, like the self-motivation. It's so true. I talk to people, constantly, that there's no hack. You need to get the work done. Nobody else is doing it for us; we don't have a team so that we can default to—it's on you. So you have to figure it out, and I think growing up, my parents taught me that sort of resiliency of, you have to figure it out. Like, there's no backup. So, you have to…there's a saying, it's called the “the law of the wittiest,” “la ley del mas vivo” in Spanish, which is like you just have to be streetwise and figure out, Okay, this isn't working, let's try to figure out which angle to work at, whatever. And so I think that's my approach to everything. And I again, we’ve got no power—okay, cool, my phone. Like, there's no, Oh, you know what, let me just, I'll nap and see if something happens. [Laughter.]  Especially growing up in countries where you don't have infrastructures to depend on. Like, you can’t depend on your government; you can’t depend on the infrastructures. Even growing up in a politically unstable country has taught me I can't even rely on there being peace. There's gonna be unsettling things that happen and you kind of just have to figure out how to work it out. And also the emotional toll that these things take on you. I think I addressed this last week. I feel like I've internalized these things, but the reality is, it f***s with you. It’s like s**t, you know, I am not really competing, because I don't see myself and I'm like competing with mass mediums, whatever, because I'm like, kind of the antithesis of that. But I'm like, yo, there's so many people with so many resources out and I have to figure out how to,  on top of all the s**t that I have going on, like, Oh, f**k, I don't have like electricity, so does that mean that I get to miss out on publishing this on time or whatever.  And I think it's something that's not really talked about because a lot of the main publications or people who get clout or—it's so funny when people send me examples of like, Oh, look at how these people are using Substack and yo, I don't even have the ability to paywall Substack, a lot of people don't even know that: having Stripe is a privilege in itself. And I've been very vocal about how it's frustrating; it does take at times, an emotional toll, but it's not like I can be crying and just sitting down, being like, Oh, look at how unfair life is like no, it's like, you have to work with what you got. So, yeah, I mean, that was a long-winded answer to your question. But yeah. Alicia: And how do you deal with—because I mean, we'll get to obviously, my normal questions and everything—but how do you deal with people probably assuming you do have a team, right? And people assuming that you have all these resources? It's an interesting space to be in, because as you said, you can't even paywall your Substack because of their weird national borders that they maintain— Andrea: Yeah, I don't even get it. I'm like, Why the hell do you tie your platform to just one thing? It feels like excluding the majority of the people. It's a f*****g paradox: You're supposed to be an equalizing career, whatever, but it's not really true.  But yeah, it's so crazy, that at the same time validating, I literally had people say, I thought you were a team of 20. Like, I thought you were an actual publication. Like, there's no way that you could be doing all this, like as a one-person team, like, I had people telling me like, I can't believe that—I refuse to believe that, because it's not possible.  And the funniest thing that happened to me was at this conference Expo West that I got a free press pass to, and I was going to be a speaker at a panel there. So I was there and I was walking and I remember someone coming up to me like, Oh my god, you work for Snaxshot? What part of Snaxshot do you work at? And I was like, That's so funny. I even joked that I should have brought all these different changes, like clothing changes. And I could have dressed up like different people… When you have a fire lit up under your ass, you have to wear all these different hats because it's your default mode. And I think to me, it's just been extremely validating that you think, like that people think that this is, like the work is so—that I have value and that it’s got that much quality, that people assume that there's more people behind it. But at the same time, I want to highlight just how much respect I have for people who have to do everything themselves because they don't have the resources. And also they have to deal with, on top of being underresourced like that, they have to deal with like f*****g infrastructural problems. To me, those people are like: mad respect. Who gives a s**t, you know, if you're, like, in The New York Times, whatever…like that, to me is like, okay, cool. They are a f*****g corporation, whatever. But like, I'm more about mad respect for the people who have to be doing their work on top of all these other things that serve as obstacles.  So I don't know, I feel like I love to tell people like, Yo, if I could do this with the bare minimum, and on top of that, f*****g things like not having electricity, what's stopping you from doing it, dude? Like, seriously, especially Americans—like just f*****g go and do it. And I talked to Gen Z a lot about that, because I'm like, Stop letting people tell you that you have to be struggling and working without pay to get yourself somewhere and that they have to give you permission to make your space in this world. And, I think that I have also been able to prove that as someone who's living outside of a usual hub of where like, you know, media is a thing. And to show people like, I've scratched my way in dude. Yeah, it's possible, so anyways— Alicia: But I love it because you're such a success story for—and like you're saying, there are so many limitations that I think we have to be talking about when we're talking about, to use that construction, these new ways of ‘supposedly’ equalizing the field. Because you know, Substack gives itself a lot of credit. We're on Substack platform; Substack is paying for this podcast to be edited. But, Substack is using a payment processor exclusively that isn't available to everyone. And you know, for me, of course, Substack has been such a great opportunity for me to make my career, basically. But at the same time, you know, I'm aware that because of that, I think more people should have access to that around the world, too, because also considering you're going to be able to make money from currencies that might be valued more highly, for whatever reason, than your local currency.

    47 min
  3. A Conversation with Angela Garbes

    05/04/2022

    A Conversation with Angela Garbes

    You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in. Today, I'm talking to Angela Garbes, the author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy, and the new Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change. We discussed how her past as a food writer continues to inform her work, what mothers who are creative workers need to thrive—spoiler, it's basically what all workers need to thrive—informal knowledge building, and the significance of having an unapologetic appetite as a woman. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or adjust your settings to receive an email when podcasts are published. Alicia: Hi, Angela. Thank you so much for being here. Angela: Thank you so much for having me, Alicia. Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? Angela: Sure. I grew up in rural Central Pennsylvania. So—people can't see this—but this is roughly the shape of Pennsylvania, my hand. And I grew up here in what I call the ass crack of Pennsylvania. And it was a very small town, about 4,000 people. And I was one of very few people of color. And my parents are immigrants from the Philippines. You know, I would say that from a very young age, I was, like, born different. But, you know, we have a fairly typical…like, my parents are both medical professionals. So we had a pretty typical, I would say, fairly typical as you could get, middle class upbringing.  And as far as what we ate, I look back on it now and I think of it as like a perfect combination of like 50 percent American, quote unquote, American convenience food, like a lot of Hamburger Helper, a lot of Old El Paso soft shell tacos, a lot of Little Caesars Pizza, a lot of Philly cheesesteaks.  And then the other half we ate Filipino food: sinigang, adobo, arroz caldo, tinola... and, you know, I remember my dad, like, hacking up pig's feet, you know, I would come downstairs and he'd be cooking up things like that. And so when I look back on it now, I think it was—I mean, I love Filipino food so much. But I also, I mean, I love all kinds of food. And I kind of eat anything. And it's partly, I think, because I was just exposed to a lot of things.  But my parents, you know, we lived in this really small town, and they couldn't get all of the ingredients that they wanted to make traditional dishes. But they kind of improvised with what they had. And because they were so committed to cooking Filipino food, sort of against the odds, I would say, you know, we did a lot of…there were not vegetables that [were] available, like you couldn't get okra or green papaya. So we would use zucchini, and, you know, frozen okra to make sinigang. But it was such a way for them to stay connected to their cultures and I feel so grateful to them because what they did was really pass that down to me, from an early age. I was like, Oh, yeah, this is—this is my food, like, this is who I am. And I've never lost that. And I've always loved [it] and, yeah, so it was sort of this wonderful, healthy mix, I think.  Alicia: For sure, and, you know, it was so interesting to realize, because I don't think I'd realized it before, that you were a food writer. [Laughs] Until I got into your books, I was like, Wait… And Like a Mother, your first book, starts out like, so…like, such a rich piece of food writing. And I'm like, Wow, now I understand. And then I realized, I'm like, Oh, she is a food writer. So you know, you've come to write your two books about motherhood, but you know, you're also a food writer, and you're writing about food in these books as well. How did you become a food writer? Angela: First of all, thank you for saying this now because I miss food writing. And I think at heart, I am a food writer. And I think it informs, you know, the way I portray sensory detail and physical experiences. But yeah, so the way I became a food writer was sort of, it was really my entry into writing. But it happened…the year was 2005, I think. And you know, I had gone to college and studied creative writing, but like a lot of things, I just thought just because I liked doing something doesn't mean I get to do [it], right? And I think that's a lesson that a lot of writers could learn... [laughs] So I didn't work in these like writing-adjacent dying industries, you know; I worked as an independent bookseller. I worked for a nonprofit poetry press—which is still going, actually I should say, and then I worked as an ad sales rep at an alt-weekly. And, you know, I obviously wish that I was a writer there, but I had no designs on writing. I was, you know, I partying a lot with the ad salespeople, and we were just— I mean, alt-weeklies are— I'm so proud to have started all my writing in my career and adult life there. It was a good time.  So I was working in ad sales. And at the time, David Spader and Dan Savage, who are the editorial people, they said, “Hey, do you want to write?” I was leaving to take another job. And they were like, “Hey do you want to submit a sample food writing piece?” And I was like, Me? And they were like, “Yeah,” and I was like, why? And yes, and why. And they both said, “Well, we know you write, we know that you have a writing background” because I was friends with a lot of writers. And they were like, “But you're just always walking around the office, talking about where you went to dinner, talking about what you cooked, talking about what you ate, and like, everyone in the office wants to go out to lunch with you. Everyone wants you to invite them over for dinner.” And I was like, Oh, okay! And so then I just did it as a one-off.  And something clicked, where you know, I had been writing fiction, I had been writing bad poetry, but when I started writing about food, I was like, Here's everything that I was thinking about, like food to me—and this is what I think it has in common really with motherhood, and mothering really—is a lens to see the world. And it's a lens into—I mean, the sky's the limit about what you can talk about, right, or what you want to talk about. And so, I mean, when I started, it was like, here write a review of this place, that’s doing mini burgers at happy hour, right? And I started doing restaurant reviews, which was very service-y, which, in some ways I hated, but in some ways I'm grateful for, right—meeting a weekly deadline, and like thinking about your audience and being of use, that's something that I think about all the time still.  But um, yeah, I mean, when I started doing it, too, I felt really—I came into it, absolutely, with a chip on my shoulder. I was like, Okay, so I'm Filipina. I never hear about Filipino food. Why do we call places holes in the wall? Right, like, that's racist. Why are we willing to pay $24 for a plate of pasta but people get up in arms when someone wants to charge $14 for pho? You know, I feel like this is where I was coming from. And there wasn't really a lot of space for that, I will say. So there was—I felt a little limited. You know, I think about sometimes, what it would be like to start my career now. I feel like people have created a lot of space. It's not like just the space has opened up.  But the scene has changed. I took a forced hiatus from food writing, because of the Great Recession, where they were like, We don't need freelancers anymore. I came back to it, though—what year was this? It would have been 2012; 2013 and 2014, I was pregnant. And I had actually decided, you know, just because I'm good at writing doesn't mean I get to do it. I need to figure out something more practical to do with my life. So I had applied to go to graduate school, actually to get a master's in public health and nutrition. And I wanted to work with immigrant communities to help them have culturally appropriate diets. You know, like, not everyone was just gonna eat kale, which is what people—or shop at the farmers’ market.  So yeah, I mean, I took classes at the local community college. I took biology, chemistry, all the s**t that I didn't take as an English major in the mid ’90s. And, yeah, I got accepted, but then when I was pregnant, The Stranger, the alt-weekly, called me and they were like, Hey, we're hiring a food writer, and are you interested in applying? And I was like—this chance is never going to come around. And so I was like, Yeah, I'll take it.  And so this was, this is a really long answer, sorry, [this was in] 2014, and I started back, and it was restaurant reviews. But it was also when $15 an hour was going really strong here in Seattle. And I really wanted to explore the labor aspect of that, and what was that like for workers…and then my secret goal, I had a great editor who was Korean-American. And she and I were like, yes, like, every two weeks, there will be a picture of a Brown or Black person to go with the restaurant review. And so it was all this stuff. Like, I felt like I finally got a chance to do what I really wanted to be doing. It was like, moving towards that.  And then I wrote this piece about breastfeeding, which, at the time, they asked me to pitch a feature. They're like, You've been here on staff long enough, like what do you want to write about? And I was like, I definitely need to write about breast milk. No one in the editorial room was like, it was just like, it landed like a dead bird and I was like, Well, I kind of want to do this for myself. I felt it was very much an extension of my beat. Because I was like, here I am. I'm thinking about food. I'm producing food. I am food. I'm eating food. And so I wrote this piece and ended up going viral, which is how I got the opportunity to write my first book and

    50 min
  4. A Conversation with Jami Attenberg

    04/27/2022

    A Conversation with Jami Attenberg

    You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.  Today, I'm talking to Jami Attenberg, the author of seven novels, including the best-selling The Middlesteins. Her latest book is a memoir called I Came All This Way to Meet You, which grapples with ideas of success and living a nontraditional life. We talk about the ups and downs of the writing life, along with her move from New York to New Orleans, why she chose to write a memoir right now, and how the pandemic has shifted her relationship to travel. You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.  Today, I'm talking to Jami Attenberg, the author of seven novels, including the best-selling The Middlesteins. Her latest book is a memoir called I Came All This Way to Meet You, which grapples with ideas of success and living a non-traditional life. We talk about the ups and downs of the writing life, along with her move from New York to New Orleans, why she chose to write a memoir right now, and how the pandemic has shifted her relationship to travel.  Alicia: Hi, Jami. Thank you so much for being here.  Jami: Hi. It's so nice to meet you. Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? Jami: Yeah, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I’m 50, so I grew up in the ’70s. And I'm Jewish, and so there was an emphasis on deli when we could get it. There wasn't a lot of deli going on out there where I grew up. I grew up in Buffalo Grove. So closer to Skokie is where they, where you can get deli.  And then, a lot of Italian food. A lot of pizza. I don't know if you've ever heard of Portillo's before. That is an amazing Chicago chain, and the Italian—Oh. I want it right now, just thinking about it. They had this croissant sandwich with Italian beef that was really delicious.  My mother would be upset to hear me say this, I do not recall having a lot of emphasis on healthy food in my household growing up. We were also latchkey kids. You come home and you sort of scramble for what you could find in the house, that kind of thing. I mean, there was food there. So, I don't know. When I look back at it now, I just think it was that there was not a clear path to, not a clear aesthetic necessarily. It was a lot of what was around. Alicia: Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you say your mom wouldn't like that. In your memoir, you write about her making chicken noodle soup from scratch and insisting she'd done it. And it's interesting, because it brings up obviously—memoir, where your memories don't match up with other people's memories and the question of that. How was it to reconstruct those kinds of things? I liked that in the book, that you enacted the problem of memoir in the memoir with this kind of like, ‘Whose memory actually is the memory that's the memory?’ [Laughs.] Jami: Well, I have a brother. So I think he would back me up on certain things. And he's a wonderful cook, and he’s very health focused and really into the farmers’ markets and has a big tomato festival in his house every year. It was like a goal of his to kind of learn how to cook and be connected with food in a different way. I mean, I'm not blaming my parents for it. They had, of course, a million jobs and things going on.  So I mean, I tried to be as honest about it as I could. I mean, I think my mother genuinely wants to have cooked, made chicken noodle soup for me from scratch. I do not recall it at all. I don't think that happened. So when that did happen, it felt kind of special. I mean, she probably hadn't cooked for me as an adult and in a really long time. That story where she is looking after me and making chicken noodle soup, for me, probably happened when I was in my late 30s. I don't know how much you go home to see your family or what that looks like for you. But for me, I had lived in New York a long time and my parents lived in Chicago. And I went back maybe once a year, and when we would see each other we could go out to eat. Big going-out-to-eat family. Alicia: Well, you write in the—that you're not a great cook, but you are a superb dinner party guest. And food and drink are present in the memoir of course, but they're also present in your fiction. So, how would you kind of characterize food in your life now that you're an adult, fully formed and all that? Jami: I mean, sadly, unlike my brother, I don't, I'm not—Yeah, I didn't take on the challenge like he did. Yeah, I don't have much of a repertoire. Yeah, I make a lasagna every so often. It’s winter and I'll be like, ‘Alright, I'm gonna make lasagna, veggie lasagna, and I'm gonna drop some at friends.’ This year for Christmas. I just made a ton of spiced nuts for everyone. And like, so once a year I get excited about doing— I throw a lot of parties though. I do that. I had, right after everybody got booster shots for the first time, I had a big oyster festival in my backyard. And it was really wonderful. I mean, it's just definitely a way for me to commune with my friends. It's just really important to me to connect with people. Everyone's happy. We like to sit down for long meals. I live in a city that's got a great food culture. I lived in New York City for a long time. And I have a great food culture. I just was there last week and had dinner with some girlfriends at Ernesto’s, which was wonderful.  Every part of the dinner was wonderful. But then at the very last minute, we got dessert too. And there was this fried brioche. I don't even know how to explain it. We were talking about it, still this morning. But the fried brioche, it was kind of creamy in the center. It was kind of french toast, but something at—something else. It was so good. And we’re probably going to remember that fried brioche for the rest of our lives. It was really special.  Alicia: Well, and so much of the memoir is about success and how it's difficult to define. And you can publish books and have no money. It was important for me to read, I think, at this juncture in my life, where I was like, ‘Nothing means anything, necessarily, until it means something.’ I don't know. [Laughter.] How do you define success? How do you feel about success as a concept as a writer? Jami: Well, first of all, let me say that, I have told you this before that I'm a fan of your newsletter. So I'm sort of following along your kind of existential crisis that you, that is sort of rolling out, in particular, the last couple of newsletters. And I don't want to be that person who's like, ‘It gets better,’ but I think it does get better. I don't know how old you are. And it's fine however old you are, but I think— Alicia: I'm 36, yeah. Jami: I think it gets better in your 40s. I hate to say it. But I have given that advice to so many people in their, in that age, where you're like, ‘I've been doing this for so long. When does it just get a little bit easier?’ And I think the answer is, as a writer is it got easier for me after I'd written four books, which is like when I was 40, 41, something like that, was when I'd had that moment where I was able to—and also there's just like this catch-up period where you're constantly waiting for somebody to pay for something that you've written. And it's like, ‘How do you ever get ahead of that?’ And at some point, you sort of do get ahead of that. Hopefully. I'd make no guarantees or promises to anyone.  And so to me, I think that your question was notion of success. To me, right now, because I have a book contract, and I have—I can spend the next year writing that book, that I feel safe for now. And you're always kind of leapfrogging to the next, whatever the next project is. I mean, someday I might run out. And I might be s**t out of luck.  And I don't know, if you ever really get to take—it's the only thing I envy about an academic existence, is that they get to take sabbaticals. Yeah. And I mean, I guess it's for us, on our own, I think it would be about applying for grants or something like that. I don't actually, don't think residencies are really a sabbatical. The only thing that gives you, that buys you time, is money. Which is, then you have to do more. I know. I get it, I get it. It’s hard. And then I feel bad. But then it's like double I know, I know. It's really tricky.  I think it slowed down a little bit for me, or got a little bit easier. I mean, part of that was that I moved to a city that was more affordable. Yeah, I had looked around when I was 45. So I've been down here for six years, I looked around and was like, ‘I can't work any harder than I am. I can't do any more than what I'm doing. I'm not really gonna make any more money than this unless something magical happens, like somebody makes one of my books into a TV show. I'm operating at a pretty good level. I'm still not saving any money. And I'm still not getting ahead. So what's the problem here?’ And it was New York City. So no, I love you, New York. But it’s bringing me down. We have to sort of start making certain decisions as we go, get older about it. And you can always go visit New York. Or wherever. Alicia: Well, New York is also my home, so yeah. But I get to go because that's where my family is. So I get to go back. But it feels so weird now, not living there anymore. I don't know how it feels for you to go back. The visiting is strange to me, to visit a place you lived for so long.  Jami: Well, I don't go to Williamsburg where I lived for a zillion years

    34 min
  5. A Conversation with Daniela Galarza

    04/13/2022

    A Conversation with Daniela Galarza

    You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.  Today, I'm talking to Daniela Galarza, the writer behind The Washington Post's Eat Voraciously newsletter, which goes out Monday through Thursdays offering suggestions for what to cook for dinner. We discussed how she went from pastry kitchens to food media, writing recipes for a broad audience with plenty of substitutions, and walking around Walmarts to see what kind of ingredients are available everywhere. Alicia: Hi, Daniela. Thank you so much for being here.  Daniela: Hi, Alicia. Thanks for having me. Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? Daniela: I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, a few different suburbs. And my mom immigrated to the U.S. in her early adulthood, and my dad from Iran. And my dad moved from Puerto Rico to the mainland in—when he was 9 or 10 years old. And they met in Chicago and realized they had—I guess, they both loved to cook. Or they both loved food. And so growing up, I ate a lot of both of those cuisines, and also a lot of things that they kind of made up together.  And then, when I started going to school, I started—my brother and I, who’s younger than me, started complaining that we weren't eating enough American food. I loved the Puerto Rican food and the Iranian food that I was eating. It's interesting that I, as a kid, just wanted macaroni and cheese and, from a box. And, I don't know, hot dogs, and—What else? Oh, and baked pastas. I wanted all of this Italian American food, which was so foreign to my parents. And they did their best to try to figure out what we would eat. That manifested in really interesting mas- ups. My dad's take on spaghetti and meatballs was spaghetti, really, really overdone spaghetti in, I think, a canned tomato sauce, and then a fried pork chop on top. And it would get cut up for me. Yeah, there were a lot of translations into American food that I ate. Alicia: Wow.  Well, and you've had such a long and varied career in food. So I wanted to start at the beginning. Why food? And how did you start your professional career? Daniela: I don't know how I always knew I wanted to work in the food, in food, somehow doing something with food. I think I always gravitated towards the kitchen. It wasn't always a happy place in my home. I just loved eating. Something I get from my mom that I'm more aware of now is a pretty sensitive sense of taste. And I think that that contributed to my enjoyment of eating different foods and different cuisines, whether I was cooking them myself or eating somebody else's at a restaurant or at their home. And that enjoyment— I remember my parents. My dad was a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority. And my mom did many, many different jobs when I was growing up. And it was very clear that both of them worked to work, to pay the bills. And I came away from that experience never wanting to work a 9 to 5 and never wanting to work to just pay my bills. I wanted to figure out how I could work, how I could do something I loved and make a living out of it.  And initially that was me wanting to go to culinary school. And I had a lot of notions of like, ‘Oh, I'll open a restaurant.’ Or ‘Oh, I'll be like a TV chef like Julia Child,’ whoever I watched on PBS growing up. And my mom had these very strong feelings about like, ‘Oh, you want to be, want to cook for people?’ And in some cultures that—there's a stigma. There's a class attached to that kind of service industry work. And I remember being so puzzled by that when I would hear that from family members just not understanding it at all. Until I went into working in restaurants and saw how restaurant people are treated, saw how you were treated if you worked in the back of house at a restaurant in general and the assumptions that are made about you. And then, I understood her words a lot more. But I still had a lot of fun doing it. Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, so you started out in kitchens, right? Daniela: Yeah. Oh, I didn't answer the second part of your question. Yeah.  I started out working in restaurant kitchens. My first job was working at a local bakery, selling the bread. And then my second job was at Williams-Sonoma as a food demonstrator in the local mall. And when I went to college, I worked in local restaurants to help pay for books and lodging. And that's when I started getting into pastry. I found some local pastry chefs that took me under their wing, and I got really excited about it and was a pastry assistant for a really long time.  And then, after I finished college, I studied food history in college and found a number of really great professor-mentors while I was there who encouraged me to stay on the scholarly food path. They thought I would become like them, and I would teach food history or food anthropology. And then, I would write books about my research. Just that whole time, I was just like, ‘No, I'm gonna go become a pastry chef. I'm going to get this degree; I'm going to cross off my list. And then somehow, I'm gonna figure out how I'm going to pay these student loans back by working in restaurant kitchens.’ And so after I graduated, I went to the French Culinary Institute in New York City. And I had to work full-time while I was doing that. A way I found a job in New York was I just read. I started reading all of William Grimes’ restaurant reviews and looking for the ones that mentioned pastry chefs. And I cold-called all of those restaurants and just said, ‘I'm moving to your city. I need a job in a restaurant kitchen. This is my experience. Are you hiring?’ And most of these places hung up on me until one of them didn't. And I mean, I don't know if they still do trails, but I did a two-day trail where I worked for free for two days. And they observed my work and hired me. God, I had a job. I could move to New York, and I could go to culinary school. And I finally thought I had found my place—It's like, ‘I graduated college. And I found what I was, what I've always wanted to do. And I did it.’ I worked in pastry kitchens in New York, and went to France and studied a little bit more in France. And then got offered a job doing product development in Los Angeles. And I never wanted to leave New York. This was a really good opportunity. And it was also an opportunity for me to finally have health care benefits, which I hadn't had before. As you know, they're very rare in the restaurant.  I went into that, and then the recession hit and this company basically went under. And a friend of mine at the time said, ‘Have you thought about writing about food?’ And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it had been years since I thought about writing about food.’ I hadn’t thought about writing about food since I was in college. Yeah, they told me about an internship at Eater LA that was open, and I went and applied for it. And that's how I started writing about restaurants and food.  That was really long. Alicia: No, I love it. Because it gives me a better sense of—I knew you did all these things. But I didn't know how you know the chronology of everything you've done. And so now, it all comes together. You've stayed really invested and interested in pastry. What keeps you so excited about dessert? Daniela: When I was in pastry school, I didn't have a clear sense of what the North American public thinks of as pastry and how it fits into their daily lives and how essential it is. And then when I went to work in restaurant kitchens, they—that's where my first sense of pastry as a business came out. At the time, I was told by a number of restaurant people that the average restaurant sales for rest—in restaurants in New York City was about 30 percent, which was considered high nationally. So 30 percent of people that walk in the door of a restaurant were ordering dessert. And I just thought, ‘Oh, my God, that's horrible! It's so low.’ And it's about, if I'm devoting my whole life to this—but I also knew it from a practical standpoint, where it just so happened that the first restaurant I worked at the dessert sales were 90 percent. And that was because it was mostly a tasting menu. And the restaurant was known for its desserts as this sort of spectacle, and it was something that the chef really promoted. And so, I had this really early skewed introduction to how many desserts people would order at a restaurant. And then progressively in my career I realized, ‘Well, people are, just don't order dessert. They're always on a diet. They’re always making excuses. They’re too full.’ And I was the person at the end of the night. All the line cooks are cleaning up. It's 10, 11 p.m. The kitchen closes, but pastry stays open because people are having their after-dinner drinks. And then, they're gonna order dessert, or you hope they're gonna order dessert. And so, you have all your mise en place. You have all of your beautiful little cakes and the souffle ingredients and all of the things you have ready to go. And then they don't order dessert, and you have to throw it all away.  And I was crushed. I was constantly crushed when people didn't order dessert. And then, you're walk home at 1 or 2 in the morning, walk 50 blocks home and would just be bummed out the whole time. And after that experience, few years of experiencing that, it just underlined for me the labor that goes into pastry, I feel is so much, can be so much greater than the labor that goes into savory food. And I want to value that.  I find it exciting just because it's—Pastry is so many things, has so many different ingredients and involves so much chemistry. There's so many different components. And I feel it inter

  6. A Conversation with Robert Simonson

    04/06/2022

    A Conversation with Robert Simonson

    You're listening to “From the desk of Alicia Kennedy”, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in. Today, I’m talking Robert Simonson, a contributing cocktail writer at the New York Times, Punch, and other outlets. He’s the author of many cocktail books, including one of my favorites, A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World We discussed how he went from theater critic to cocktail writer, the methodology behind 2016’s A Proper Drink, launching his newsletter The Mix, and the non-alcoholic beverage scene. Alicia: Thank you so much for being here, Robert. Robert: Oh, it's my pleasure. Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? Robert: Yes, I grew up in a small farming community in Wisconsin. It had the name Eagle with about 395 people in it. And my parents had moved there for a change of pace and their lifestyle, and we lived on a working farm. So my mother had a huge vegetable garden and my father raised pigs and other animals, so I kind of grew up knowing where all the food came from, all the vegetables came from our garden, all the meat that was in the large freezer in the basement, had once been living on our land, and we sent it away to a butcher and it came back.  So I guess this kind of gave me a sort of a trusting attitude towards food, which is perhaps not well founded or well founded and how you look at it. I was very lucky in that respect. My mother was a good cook. She made a lot of, you know, home meals, mainly Germanic, the kinds of things that you would get in Wisconsin. And of course, you know, you eat a lot of cheese out there; you eat a lot of bratwurst. One thing we did every summer that I did not realize was special until the last ten years is, we took one of our pigs and we roasted it whole over a spit and we invited all the family over and we had this day-long pig roast. I think at the time as a kid, I probably thought it was pretty gross. But now of course, you know, that's, that's a very cool thing to have. Alicia: [Laughs] Well, when did you end up coming to New York then? Robert: I came to New York in 1988. I came here to go to graduate school at Hunter College. Alicia: Nice. And what did you study? Did you study journalism? Robert: I had studied journalism and English Literature at Northwestern University in the Chicago area. And I came here with the quixotic idea of getting a master's degree in dramatic criticism, which is not, you know, a going concern, not a way to make a living. But that's what I wanted to do. I really wanted to be a drama critic. My family is a theater family; they're a group of actors, directors and designers. I've… I've always been a writer, I knew I would be a writer from the age of 11, or 12. So that seemed what my role should be, although later on, I tried playwriting as well. Alicia: What did you take from dramatic criticism that now sustains you as a cocktail writer? Because you really, you've spent most of your career writing about cocktails, right? Robert: Yes, about 16 years writing about cocktails. There was a brief interval with wine, and before that, 15 or 18 years writing about theater. At first, I didn't see the parallels, but then they were very clear and right in front of me. Obviously, the bartenders behind the bar, many of them are former actors or current actors, but they are all performers, they are on a stage, we are looking at them, we are evaluating their performance, enjoying the show. The theater has a long and rich history, I always like the historical aspect if anything. And cocktails have been around for a long time, more than 200 years. So there was that history to dig into. There are a lot of traditions and superstitions; there are a lot of rituals surrounding both theater and the bar. So there's actually quite a lot between the two. And now… now in retrospect, I can see why I would have made what would seem like a very unorthodox career transferred from theater to cocktails. Alicia: How did that transition happen? What got you actually started in writing about wine and cocktails and going more in that direction?  Robert: I think after about 20 years of writing about the theater, I was, quite frankly, burnt out. The theater is a very small world, even in New York, and I felt I had written all the stories I had interviewed all the people I… I hadn't seen all the plays, but I'd seen hundreds upon thousands of plays.  And I thought to myself, you know, does a person have to do the same thing their entire life? I knew I had to write but I was… I was tired of writing about theater. And I just looked around, like I said, I did wine for a while. I was always fascinated with wine. I educated myself and wrote about that for a while. But then I found out that the wine world is kind of stuffy, frankly.  And also there were… there wasn't a lot of opportunity there. The people who write about wine are quite entrenched, and they don't really open the door for a lot of new people. And then I discovered—this was like 2006, and the cocktail world was just discovering itself, and at least bartenders are reclaiming cocktail history, bringing back all these classic drinks, opening cocktail bars. So I was able to kind of get in on the, you know, so called ground floor on that. I'd always been interested in mixology and cocktails. Again, this was a thing that was in the back of my head, I didn't really realize it. But my parents always, you know, steadfastly honored cocktail hour, my mother drank old fashioneds. My father drank martinis. I'm from Wisconsin; drinking is a big part of the culture.  And so I was fascinated with how you put those drinks together and where they came from, and where the names came from, and all that stuff. And so I made that switch and I'm glad I did. Alicia: Well, and your book, A Proper Drink: the Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World, is one of my favorites, because it caught me up to date on all these things that I had missed in the cocktail world, and then kind of came into it late. What was the research process for writing that book? Because it really is such a deep and extensive historical record, but also has a real narrative thrust to it as well. Robert: Yes, that was the second cocktail book I wrote, after The Old Fashioned at that point, it was in the middle of the 20 teens, it was about 2014. And I was looking around and having this historical bent in my mind, I was thinking what history is happening right now in the cocktail world, in the bar world. And nobody's really writing it down.  I mean, they're writing it down piecemeal, article by article, but they're not taking the broad view…long view. And part of what we were all doing as cocktail writers was trying to rediscover the past because it hadn't been written down very well. So we were going back, like, who were the bartenders who created these cocktails? Why do we drink martinis? Why do we drink old fashioneds? How do you make them all that kind of stuff? So I thought, Well, let's not, let's not go through that again… let's write it all down while everyone's around, and everyone's alive, and the bars are still alive. And you can interview everyone. I went to 10 Speed Press, which is my publisher, and they thankfully took the idea I was… I was happy and surprised. And then, of course, I had the task in front of me, which was a daunting task. And so I interviewed more than 200 people in several countries, a few continents. It was just a matter of doing one after another. You just couldn't look at the entirety. So you started with one interview. And then it went on, I think I interviewed Dale DeGroff first, who seemed like the perfect choice for the first interview. And at this point, I had been writing about cocktails for about eight years, so I knew all the players and they trusted me when I interviewed them before and wrote about them. They knew that I wouldn't do a disservice to them or the history or this culture. I did the interviews and I think it took about a year and a half to do all the interviews. Then of course, you have to transcribe the interviews, which is absolute torture; it took so much time. And you know, just thinking about it right now, I'm exhausted. I could not… I can tell you right now, I could not do that again. If you… if you had given me this book contract today, I could not do it. It's just too tiring. It's the hardest thing I ever did. But I'm glad I did it and I'm glad I did it at the time I did because as you know, some of the major characters in that book are no longer with us.  So I got to talk to them. But while they… they were still here. Alicia: Right, and, you know, there is a quote from Giuseppe Gonzalez at the start of chapter nine that ever since I read the book, I think about this quote all the time. But he said when you think of the classical bartender, it's always a tall white guy with a funny mustache. And he goes on to say how that erases people like him, Audrey Saunders, Julie Reiner. And that's been a real guiding point for me, but, you know, how have you tried in your work to kind of write the modern history of cocktails, not just in that book, but in your… in your journalism that you do, really do a justice to how diverse this… this job is really, and how diverse you know, the world of cocktails is. There's cocktail bars literally everywhere now in the whole world where they're all doing different things. Robert: Yes, yes. That's a great quote by Giuseppe, that moment. Giuseppe was always a good interview, he was always very unguarded, and candid. And the moment I heard that, I thought, Well, that's gold. That's going in the book.  Alica: Yea

    27 min
  7. A Conversation with LinYee Yuan

    03/30/2022

    A Conversation with LinYee Yuan

    Today, I’m talking LinYee Yuan, a design journalist as well as the editor and founder of MOLD magazine, which approaches food and the future from a design perspective. It’s one of the most innovative food magazines out there, with a global scope and an honest relationship to unpleasant realities like hunger, waste, and even fecal matter. We discussed how the magazine came to be, how its point of view has been forged, and its trajectory from the microbiome toward its sixth and final forthcoming issue about soil. Alicia: Hi, LinYee. Thank you so much for being here. LinYee: Hi, Alicia. I'm so thrilled to be here with you today. Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?  LinYee: I grew up in Houston, Texas. I am a first generation Chinese American woman, and I basically ate all the things that kids in the ’80s ate in the United States. So Lunchables. I was obsessed with Cookie Crisps. I did the whole Pop-Tarts, all the things. But the difference is that my mother is a dietitian. And I just grew up knowing that those things were kind of foods that were just kind of special foods. So I would often go to friend’s houses to access those things.  And because I'm Chinese American, we would typically eat some kind of Chinese-ish every night. My father is a man of ritual. And so, he's not super into being very exploratory with his kind of daily meal. So often growing up, my job when I got home from school–’cause I was a latchkey kid, ’cause it’s the ‘80s—my job was basically to make the rice. So I had to go into our chest freezer and dig out cups of rice, wash the rice, and then put it in the rice cooker. So that was very much kind of my experience growing up.  My father was an avid gardener. And because I grew up in Houston, Texas, we had access to the water. And his other passion in life, besides gardening, is fishing. And so oftentimes, we would have fresh vegetables, fresh fruits from the garden, and fresh fish that my father had caught and then scaled and then cleaned and put them in the deep freezer. So that's basically how my parents still eat today. They do a lot of fish. They do rice at every meal. When the season is right, they eat a lot of vegetables and greens from their own garden. But we also would do at least a weekly trip to Chinatown to get Asian greens and other pantry staples that I grew up eating. Alicia: And so, what first interested you in food? Can you give us kind of a bio, a rundown of your career? LinYee: Well, I've always been interested in food, in the sense that food was always the centerpiece of any sort of familial gathering. As a child of immigrants, we would always make an excuse to come together over a meal. So whether that was just kind of weekend dim sum with my aunties and uncles and my grandparents, or going to my grandmother's house for a meal or something more celebratory. For example, now as adults, my family, we meet for Thanksgiving. And so, that's kind of our central purpose for meeting. Everything always revolved around what to eat.  And so, I think that food always meant more to me than just a source of sustenance. There was always kind of a reason for celebration when it came to food. And it always meant family. And it always meant joy and connection.  And so professionally, I have worked in magazines basically my entire career. And I was never really interested in food media and the way that we understand it today. I wrote about design. I wrote about culture. But the food media wasn't really something that seemed interesting or accessible to me. I wasn't really interested in restaurant reviews or recipe development even.  But what I was interested in, especially in the kind of 2010s, was this culture of restaurant pop-ups. And so being from Texas, living in New New York, especially in 2010, there was no proper Texas-style barbecue here. And this was the kind of age of the Brooklyn Flea. And so basically, the moment I had access to a backyard in my personal space, I bought a smoker and started smoking brisket for friends with—over the summer. So I would host a little party at my house. And then I would just, I would smoke a brisket.  And one of my friends who was also from Texas, who is also Asian American and first-generation was like, ‘Hey, we should just do this at the Brooklyn Flea.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I just never thought about that. But ok, I'm down to try.’ And so we launched a little Texas-style barbecue business, and started slinging brisket sandwiches at the Brooklyn Flea. And so, that was kind of my first entry into a more professional understanding of food, besides being a waitress when I was in college and that type of thing.  But again, not really interested in the traditional modes of working in food. I wasn't interested in opening a restaurant. Food has just always been part of my understanding of who I am and how I navigate the world and why I travel it. Why I would visit certain neighborhoods in New York, or even with friends at that age. And still today, we always gather around food. Alicia: Of course.  And so, how did Mold come to be? LinYee: So I was working as an editor for an industrial design resource called Core77 when I started seeing a lot of really interesting food design projects. And they were primarily from students, often, or they were speculative in nature.  But at the time, most design websites weren't covering anything to do with food design, because their focus was really on furniture and lighting, interior objects. And so I was like, ‘I love food. I'm interested in food. I am a design journalist. I'm very well situated to actually write about this.’ So I was like, ‘Well, let me just start a little nights and weekends project’ where I would write about these interesting food design projects that I would come across that didn't really have a lot of space in other places for publication.  So Mold was just a nights and weekends project. I reached out to a friend who connected me with a designer. And I was like, ‘Hey, can you give me an updated Blogspot template, or maybe a Tumblr template for this project I want.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, actually, I can just design a whole website for you. It'll probably take about the same amount of energy.’ And so, I worked with him on creating a kind of vessel for these content ideas. And that was basically our online presence for the first seven years of Mold. And so, it kind of immediately became something that felt real. And that was the start of all of it.  Alicia: That's so fascinating. Well, I worked in magazines, too. But I come as a writer from writing about literature, or writing about food, specifically on restaurants and the recipe development. So this whole other side of it that is more mainstream.  And then recently, I've been reading so much about, not just with Mold, but also these writers, usually from the Netherlands, I don't know, doing, really thinking about food systems regionally and how design fits into all of that. And how architecture is a food systems issue. And things I hadn't thought about at all, because I never thought about those things at all. They weren't in my mental wheelhouse, I suppose.  It's been so fascinating to find these actual connections, and I—it just seems such a lost possibility to talk about them more broadly, or in a way that's more accessible. It seems a lost opportunity for food media, specifically, not to be talking about how food fits into design and fits into landscapes.  LinYee: I mean, it's insane because design is such this, a bit of an obscure profession in a lot of ways. Because on one hand, everything is design. Literally everything in your built environment was designed by a human. Somebody made a decision about the materiality, about its shape, about the way it was going to be produced, how it was actually going to—the system that not only makes the thing, but then gets it to you in a store or in your home is also designed. The system in which we live is designed. So everything that surrounds us is designed. Yet nobody talks about design as a lever, as a kind of invisible kind of layer into the world that we live in. I think often because design is about complexity. The way that we're educated, especially in the United States, is not about complexity. It's about creating a lot of dichotomies. It's about enforcing binaries. It's about telling stories around ways that things cannot change. And so, I think that by introducing design as this kind of wildcard within the conversation about food, it makes people nervous. Because it's hard to explain why we have apples 365 days out of the year at every single grocery store, deli, bodega, whatever. You can get an apple, or one species of banana everywhere, all the time. So why is that? It's a huge question that nobody really wants to answer. Alicia: It is so much complexity. And you're right. That is something we're trained not to do. I think the only time people in food media talk about design is to talk about a restaurant, how it looks. And that's literally the extent of it.  LinYee: Yeah. Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.] And so the one fascinating thing to me about Mold, and it's something that I'm—you can find in literature, you can find in art criticism, but you don't really find in food—is that it has a global scope. It's something that food magazines based in the U.S. tend to not be open to. Whetstone, always, is an exception, of course. LinYee: Stephen’s incredible.  Alicia: Incredible.  And so, you claim the phrase ‘the future of food,’ too, without it being solely about food tech. Which is something I've been thinking about so much, which is how this phrase has become, to be the synecdoche for this one way of looking at the future in food.  And so basically, how did Mold’s point of view come about to be global in scope, to be about the future, but to be so broad, basically, in what it will look at

    43 min
  8. 03/23/2022

    A Conversation with Eric Kim

    You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in. Today, I'm talking to Eric Kim, a staff writer at The New York Times food section and author of the just released cookbook Korean American. I've admired Eric from afar via social media, as well as his beautiful essays. And it was a thrill to finally get the chance to talk to him and find out that he comes from a literature background, which explains the beautiful writing. We discussed how he came to food, the way his cookbook took shape during the pandemic, going viral with gochujang glaze, and his relationship with meat.  Alicia: Hi, Eric. Thank you so much for being here. Eric: Hi, thanks for having me. It's so great to finally meet you. Alicia: I know. It's so great. I'm meeting so many people that I've wanted to meet for a long time. [Laughs.] Eric: Yeah. It's kind of funny. I won't say the person's name, but we have a mutual friend. And anytime I want to say something to you, I say it to this person instead of just—I should just DM you and be like, ‘Man, that latest newsletter was great.’ But instead, I just tell your friend and hope that they tell you. Alicia: Yeah. I mean, we can be friends. We can be friends. That's ok. [Laughs.] Eric: So great to meet you, though, seriously. Alicia: For sure! Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? Eric: Yeah, sure.  I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in the suburbs. My parents moved there in 1983. And they've been there since. And I was there till I was 18.  And I ate mostly my mom's food. She was a cook. She cooked a lot of Korean food, Korean American hodgepodge dishes. And I think when I got old enough to drive especially, but even before then, when I kind of was tall enough to stand at the stove, my brother and I were latchkey kids. We ate a lot of convenience foods. And I think that's a big part of my life and my nostalgia. It's become a theme in my work, because I just love these memories of these frozen meals actually span so much farther than myself. And I think about this all the time, actually, my—the way my micro life has macro resonances. And so you just say one thing, like ‘Remember this?’ And then thousands of people are like, ‘Yeah, me too.’ And almost always they are children of immigrants and I think that is something I have discovered recently. And I feel it's a real power. It's a power to harness, I think. It's really nice.  Oh, and just like in terms of dishe. I vaguely specifically remember this one after school snack that I ate a lot, which was the broccoli cheddar chicken hot pocket, which is the best one and kind of very substantial. It's got some vegetables in it, but what I would do is I would take the first bite and then squeeze it out onto a bowl of rice and ust mix that up. And then later in our, later—our Thanksgivings had this broccoli cheese rice casserole dish. It was like I was manifesting that or something as a kid. And now, it's a regular staple in our—on my Thanksgiving table.  Alicia: Yeah. The combination of broccoli and cheese, I have to admit, is just unbeatable. Eric: Sublime, for sure. Delicious.  Alicia: I used to get the Stouffer's with broccoli. When I had my first job, I would put that in the microwave because I made no money. So I'm like, ‘Alright, I'm gonna go to the supermarket, get a Stouffer's mac and cheese with broccoli. And because it has broccoli in it, it's fine. It's healthy.’ [Laughs.] Eric: It was a classic. I mean, what a genius move, because that—once you eat the macaroni, there's still sauce. There's so much sauce. And so, kind of having that broccoli moment is really lovely. That's funny. Yeah. Alicia: Well, you're one of those food writers who is a really good writ

    50 min

Ratings & Reviews

5
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3 Ratings

About

A weekly food and culture podcast from writer Alicia Kennedy, who talks to writers, chefs, and more about their lives, careers, and how food fits into it all. www.aliciakennedy.news

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