Meant To Be Eaten: Recent Episodes
Heritage Radio Network
Meant to be Eaten looks at cross-cultural exchange in food and contemporary media. What determines “authenticity”? What, if anything, gets lost in translation when cooking foods from another’s culture? First-generation Chinese host, Coral Lee, looks at how American culture figures forth in less-than mainstream ways, in less-than expected places.
If you’ve been keeping up with Meant To Be Eaten, you know that our last few seasons were produced in collaboration with Gastronomica, the Journal for Food Studies.Gastronomica now has its very own feed on the Heritage Radio Network where they are continuing this work!
So, if you’re a fan of Meant To Be Eaten, go check out Gastronomica and subscribe! Here’s a little sneak peak of what you can expect.
On this episode, host Jaclyn Rohel, a member of the Gastronomica Editorial Collective, talks with food historian Krystyn Moon and biologist Jennifer Rhode Ward about their new research on the complexities of taste, identity, and food access in Cuba. Krystyn and Jennifer shed light on why hierarchies of taste persist even amidst state attempts to flatten social hierarchies.
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This episode is part of a collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by editorial collective member Jaclyn Rohel. Jaclyn shares some new and soon-to-be published titles in food studies and is joined by her Gastronomica colleague Melissa Fuster in conversation about Melissa’s new book, Caribeños at the Table: How Migration, Health, and Race Intersect in New York City (UNC Press, 2021). An expert in both public health nutrition and food studies, Melissa weaves together research in history, policy, health, and everyday life to connect newcomers’ culinary practices to the complex structural factors that shape well-being. Melissa also discusses how this work led her to develop her community-based research initiative, the Latin American Restaurants in Action Project.
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This episode is part of a collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studieshosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Paula Johnson. In this episode, curator Stephen Velasquez discusses how activism and food history come together in a graphic calendar. The Calendario de Comida 1976, created by California-based artist collectives in 1975, sought to bring attention to alternative foodways and indigenous food knowledges as part of a broader social justice movement. Stephen discusses some of the imagery within the calendar and expands on the role of Chicano activists in reimagining colonial histories and identity.
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This episode is part of a collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Krishnendu Ray. The tomato is a staple ingredient in Indian subcontinental cooking, but this is a relatively recent phenomenon. In this episode, anthropologist Sucharita Kanjilal explains how tomatoes became incorporated into Indian pantries in the 20th century. Weaving together the histories of two British imports -- the tomato and the recipe -- she discusses the fluidity of taste-making in postcolonial India.
Photo courtesy of Sucharita Kanjilal.
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This episode is part of a collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Daniel Bender. Aya H. Kimura unpacks the biocultural history of tsukemono (Japanese pickles). She discusses the different kinds of traditional tsukemono in Japanese dining cultures and explains how these preserves are made. She also offfers insight into how modern agriculture has affected tsukemono.
Photo credit to Aya H. Kimura.
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This episode is part of a collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member James Farrer. Geographer Benjamin Schrager talks about his new article, “Risky but Raw: On (Not) Regulating One of the Most High-Risk Dishes in Japan,” published in Gastronomica (issue 21.3). He raises awareness about food risk and discusses the tastes and textures of some raw chicken dishes, local regulatory responses, and the development of the poultry industry in Japan more broadly.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Josée Johnston. Raúl Matta and Padma Panchapakesan discuss how ideas of "good taste" have changed over time with the aid of different judgment devices. Focusing on the role of chefs, they unpack the sociology of tastemakers amidst the changing landscape of the restaurant industry.
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This episode offers a sneak peek behind the scenes at Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies. Lisa Haushofer hosts a roundtable live from the 2021 Food Studies conference, Just Food: Because It Is Never Just Food. Editors from the Gastronomica editorial collective – Amy Trubek, Paula Johnson, and Daniel Bender – reveal what’s coming down the pipeline and share their thoughts on what they’d like to read in Gastronomica.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Melissa Fuster. Michaël Bruckert explores meat industrialization in South India. Recounting his fieldwork in the region of Tamil Nadu, Bruckert traces the commoditization of poultry, from farms, markets, and butcher shops to eateries, home kitchens, and consumers’ plates. In this global South context, he explains how recent developments in animal agriculture have changed how people think about chicken - as animal and as meat - and have in the process materially transformed the chicken itself.
Image courtesy of Michaël Bruckert.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Paula Johnson. V. Constanza Ocampo-Raeder explores human-nature relationships through the social life of camarones, a Peruvian river crustacean. Drawing together stories of landscape, labor and gastronomic revival, Ocampo-Raeder distills the complexity of crawfish-catching from river to plate.
Photo Courtesy of V. Constanza Ocampo-Raeder
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Bob Valgenti. Eric Funabashi discusses Japanese immigrants' culinary experiences in Brazil following the initial migration of Japanese workers to São Paulo’s coffee farms in 1908. Drawing on published cookbooks and immigrants’ private diaries, he shows how Japanese immigrants forged new culinary practices and identities in Brazil over the course of the 20th century.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Jaclyn Rohel. Jaclyn is joined by her colleague, anthropologist Janita Van Dyk, to introduce a new feature on recent and upcoming books in Food Studies, “What to Read Now.” This episode focuses on Just the Tonic: A Natural History of Tonic Water (Kew Publishing, 2019) in conversation with authors Kim Walker and Mark Nesbitt to explore sparkling water in the history of medicine, in cocktail cultures, and in the archives.
Photos courtesy of Kim Walker and Mark Nesbitt.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Krishnendu Ray. Alison Hope Alkon and Rafi Grosglik discuss representations of race in food media. Drawing on examples from contemporary popular culture, they explore how the medium of television engages with racial inequalities and how it could act as a critical intervention for social change.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Daniel Bender. Chef Rob Connoley discusses culinary collaboration and the roots of Ozark cuisine at his research-driven restaurant, Bulrush. Drawing on his experiences of shared knowledge creation with a range of local academic and culture partners, Connoley helps bring place-based storytelling to the forefront of culinary creation.
Photo Courtesy of Bulrush
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Melissa Fuster. Historian Amy Bentley returns to the show to discuss the politics of food and nutrition. She traces how the Reagan administration 40 years ago shifted (deliberately or inadvertently) the classification of ketchup from a condiment to a vegetable in an effort to overhaul national school lunch programs and cut government costs, a move that disproportionately affected the health of lower-income children.
Photo courtesy of Amy Bentley.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Jessica Carbone. Alexis Agliano Sanborn explores how Japan's school lunch programs connected people and supported communities in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Highlighting civil-society initiatives, she shows how school lunch programs were a source of resiliency in local food supply and distribution networks.
Photo courtesy of Alexis Agliano Sanborn.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Krishnendu Ray. Historians Michelle T. King and Wendy Jia-Chen Fu discuss the stigmatization of Chinese food and eating habits in Anglophone media coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. They weigh in on common questions surrounding wet markets and the wildlife trade in Chinese food systems, dispel misinformation, and share ways to both combat negative stereotypes about Chinese food and support Chinese American communities in the United States.
Photo courtesy of Michelle T. King.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica, guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Jaclyn Rohel. Alyshia Gálvez explores the work of transnational food couriers known as paqueteros and paqueteras. These informal grassroots entrepreneurs connect people and places across international borders through the delivery of goods, care packages, and specialty and traditional foods. Drawing on ethnographic research of micro-local foodways in Mexico (Puebla) and the United States (New York) and the connections between them, Gálvez discusses how informal food couriers humanize an increasingly industrialized food system in the post-NAFTA landscape.
Please note that around the 10-min mark, Professor Gálvez mentions having been asked by federal attorneys to serve as an expert witness, while she meant to say that she had been approached by public defenders in that capacity.
Photo courtesy of Alyshia Gálvez.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Bob Valgenti. Bryan Dale and Jo Sharma share a COVID-19 dispatch from Toronto, Canada. They discuss how their project "Feeding the City, Pandemic and Beyond" has developed a model of public scholarship that documents food system experiences, community challenges and local resilience. By engaging grassroots voices, from farmers and urban growers to school food advocates, market provisioners and other local stakeholders, they highlight actions toward sustainable food solutions for building a socially just and resilient global city.
Photo courtesy of Bryan Dale and Jayeeta Sharma.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Daniel Bender.
John Broadway problematizes how a global restaurant ranking system produced an irony in haute cuisine in the years prior to the pandemic: elite, hypermobile customers travelling the world to eat hyperlocal food in celebrated restaurants. Commenting on restaurant rankings, access and exclusivity, he positions this phenomenon in light of staggering inequality in contemporary food systems.
Photo Courtesy of John Broadway
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies , guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Lisa Haushofer.
Adrienne Bitar investigates the many miracle food cures for COVID-19 that continue to circulate on social media, drawing from her piece that appears in the current issue’s Dispatches section. By analyzing the so-called Israeli lemon baking soda tea and Yoruba pepper stew miracle cures, she explores the changing role of authority, food, and new media during this pandemic.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Melissa Fuster.
John Gifford discusses salmon and sustainability, drawing from his piece that appears in the current issue’s section on “Working with Ingredients.” Taking us to the waters off the coast of Vancouver Island, he explores the environmental effects of aquaculture, which is growing to meet global demands for fish. He then looks to Lake Michigan, to offer an alternative model of fishing that is both sustainable and in harmony with Indigenous culture.
Photo Courtesy of John Gifford
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Jaclyn Rohel.
Amy Bentley and Stephanie Borkowsky discuss The Food and COVID-19 NYC Archive, which documents the ongoing changes to New York City's food system during the pandemic. Their article, which appears in the current issue’s special section on COVID Dispatches from around the world, explores the origins and evolution of the project and includes excerpts and photos from the archive. Visit the collection at: https://wp.nyu.edu/foodandcovid19/
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, guest hosted by Gastronomica editorial collective member Krishnendu Ray.
Kyoungjin Bae, as part of a Gastronomica round table on Taste and Technology in East Asia, explores the production and consumption of soy sauce in Korea from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. Although the transformation of Korean soy sauce's identity in the 20th century is usually attributed to industrialization, Bae discovered a shift in the way ordinary people interacted with soy sauce. Soy sauce, in the early modern period, was home brewed. In colonial times (1910-1945), due to an influx of Japanese commodities in Korean market, consumers increasingly relied on their tastes to evaluate soy sauce and guide their choices among industrialized products. This, in turn, transformed conceptions of the taste of soy sauce and its identity.
Image courtesy of Kyoungjin Bae.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica. This episode offers new understandings of the food desert. In the case of Mexican Chicago, the imageries of food desert is inadequate. Drawing on unique ethnographic work — interviews with ordinary Chicago residents of Mexican origin — residents highlight access stores that cater to a wide variety of eaters. Guest host and Gastronomica editorial collective member Dan Bender discusses with Coline Ferrant new ways of studying food access and acquisition among Mexican first- and second-generation immigrants in Chicago. For 30% off a single-print issue, use promo code GASTROAUG2020 at checkout.
Photo Courtesy of Coline Ferrant.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica, whose recent issue is entirely devoted to COVID Dispatches—in it, authors from around the world offer short, intimate portraits of early responses to the food crises of this pandemic, and hosts from the journal’s editorial collective will be joined by some of the featured authors to share their stories, and to hear how things have or haven't changed in the past few months.
Saumya Gupta reads from her essay, Lockdown Desitution: Delhi, March 2020, and joins guest host and issue editor Bob Valgenti to discuss the enormous challenges faced by millions of working class people in response to India's national lockdown in March this year, many of whom were forced to flee their cities - places of informal employment (much of it related to selling food, but no longer deemed "essential" under lockdown).
For 30% off a single-print issue, use promo code GASTROAUG2020 at checkout.
Photo Courtesy of Saumya Gupta
Meant To Be Eaten is powered by Simplecast.
This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica, whose recent issue is entirely devoted to COVID Dispatches—in it, authors from around the world offer short, intimate portraits of early responses to the food crises of this pandemic, and hosts from the journal’s editorial collective will be joined by some of the featured authors to share their stories, and to hear how things have or haven't changed in the past few months.
Ashley Young reads from her essay, Dispatches from the Northeast - One Grocery Store Employee's Experience on the Front Lines of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and joins guest host and issue editor Bob Valgenti to discuss the challenges faced by employees of the retail sector.
For 30% off a single-print issue, use promo code GASTROAUG2020 at checkout.
Photo Courtesy Ashley Rose Young.
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This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica, whose forthcoming issue is entirely devoted to COVID Dispatches—in it, authors from around the world offer short, intimate portraits of early responses to the food crises of this pandemic, and hosts from the journal’s editorial collective will be joined by some of the featured authors to share their stories, and to hear how things have or haven't changed in the past few months.
Jessica Carbone reads from her essay, The Stockpile and the Letdown, and joins guest host Daniel Bender to discuss stockpiling and motherhood amid a global pandemic.
For 30% off a single-print issue, use promo code GASTROAUG2020 at checkout.
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Meant To Be Eaten, Coral Lee, food, books, culture, hospitality, baby food, Jessica Carbone, essay, Gastronimica, Journel for Food Studies, sustainability, COVID-19, Corona virus
This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica, whose forthcoming issue is entirely devoted to COVID Dispatches—in it, authors from around the world offer short, intimate portraits of early responses to the food crises of this pandemic, and hosts from the journal’s editorial collective will be joined by some of the featured authors to share their stories, and to hear how things have or haven't changed in the past few months.
Amanda Blum reads from her essay “I Miss the Grocery Store the Most”. She discusses with guest host Bob Valgenti the missed pleasures of grocery shopping, and whether Instacart or Amazon can make up for the human connections of brick-and-mortar stores.
For 30% off a single-print issue, use promo code GASTROAUG2020 at checkout.
Photo Courtesy of Amanda Blum.
Meant To Be Eaten is powered by Simplecast.
This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica, whose forthcoming issue is entirely devoted to COVID Dispatches—in it, authors from around the world offer short, intimate portraits of early responses to the food crises of this pandemic, and hosts from the journal’s editorial collective will be joined by some of the featured authors to share their stories, and to hear how things have or haven't changed in the past few months.
Shalini Sinha joins guest host Krishnendu Ray to discuss the influence that the pandemic has had on street food culture and its industry in Delhi.
For 30% off a single-print issue, use promo code GASTROAUG2020 at checkout.
Photo Courtesy of Shalini Sinha.
Meant To Be Eaten is powered by Simplecast.
This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studieshttps://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica, whose forthcoming issue is entirely devoted to COVID Dispatches—in it, authors from around the world offer short, intimate portraits of early responses to the food crises of this pandemic, and hosts from the journal’s editorial collective will be joined by some of the featured authors to share their stories, and to hear how things have or haven't changed in the past few months.
Jacques Rousseau reads from his essay South Africa under lockdown and discusses with guest host Daniel Bender what quarantine has looked like—for him and his family, and his community—these past few months.
For 30% off a single-print issue, use promo code GASTROAUG2020 at checkout.
Meant To Be Eaten is powered by Simplecast.
This episode is part of a special series in collaboration with Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, whose forthcoming issue is entirely devoted to COVID Dispatches—in it, authors from around the world offer short, intimate portraits of early responses to the food crises of this pandemic, and hosts from the journal’s editorial collective will be joined by some of the featured authors to share their stories, and to hear how things have or haven't changed in the past few months.
Stephen Meinster reads from his essay The Sickness Unto Hospitality, and discusses how the industry has evolved in recent months with guest host Bob Valgenti.
Link to journal: https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica
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A conversation with Alicia Kennedy.
Alicia Kennedy wears many hats. A food and drink writer from Long Island—now based in San Juan, where she’s covering the local culinary scene—Alicia’s written for NYLON, The New Republic, Time, and the Village Voice, to name just a few. She also hosts Meatless, a podcast on meat consumption and culture, and currently writes a weekly newsletter on the goings-on of good media.
Mentioned in this episode:
Alicia's newsletter: https://aliciakennedy.substack.com/
The JBA talk between Tunde Way and John T: https://register.gotowebinar.com/recording/recordingView?webinarKey=7172502883044897296®istrantEmail=kimseverson%40gmail.com
In March, HRN began producing all of our 35 weekly shows from our homes all around the country. It was hard work stepping away from our little recording studio, but we know that you rely on HRN to share resources and important stories from the world of food each week. It’s been a tough year for all of us, but right now HRN is asking for your help. Every dollar that listeners give to HRN provides essential support to keep our mics on. We've got some fresh new thank you gifts available, like our limited edition bandanas.
Keep Meant To Be Eaten on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate.
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Meant To Be Eaten, Coral Lee, food, author, talk, radio, Alicia Kennedy, drink, writer, NYLON, The New Replublic, Time, the Village Voice, consumption, culture
A conversation with Donna Kilpatrick and William Matovu.
Heifer International works all over the world to use agriculture as a path out of poverty. Under its umbrella is Heifer Ranch, a regenerative, organic and humane ranch, run by 3 women, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Donna Kilpatrick—who oversees operations of Heifer Ranch—and William Matovu—who oversees Heifer’s work in Uganda—are joining me today to discuss the flaws of our current food system, and how alternate systems can offer lasting change.
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Meant To Be Eaten, Coral Lee, Heifer International, Donna Kilpatrick, William Matovu, farm, farming, food, sustainable, agriculture, policy, organic, humane, ranch, system
A conversation with Andrew Genung.
Andrew Genung is a Hong-Kong based writer and regular contributor to Eater. He also writes a twice-weekly newsletter, Family Meal, that covers the goings-on in and around the food/media world.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Genung.
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A conversation with Esther Kim.
Esther Kim is a writer and editor of the Asian American Writers' Workshop's Transpacific Literary Project. We discuss the stickiness of the "Asian-American" genre, Eddie Huang and appropriation, how a fistful of rice created a democracy, and our duties as Asian-American writers. Michael Pollan, The Sickness in Our Food Supply Ishay Govender-Ypma, Navigating the use of a knife and a fork at the dinner table .
Photo Courtesy of Joe Liew.
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A conversation with Lori Flores.
Stony Brook University associate professor history Lori Flores's research and writing focuses on Latino life, labor, and politics in the United States from the post-WWII era to the present day. We discuss farmworkers' rights amid (and beyond) the pandemic.
Link to the Food52 story we discuss here.
United Farm Workers https://ufw.org/
Coalition of Immokalee Workers https://ciw-online.org/
National Center for Farmworker Health http://www.ncfh.org/
Food Chain Workers Alliance http://foodchainworkers.org/
United Food and Commercial Workers Union http://www.ufcw.org/
An example of a food security initiative: No Us Without You (effort to feed undocumented restaurant workers in Los Angeles): https://www.nouswithoutyou.la/
An example of a community market: People's Market in Bloomington, Indiana: https://www.limestonepostmagazine.com/peoples-market-ethos-focuses-on-food-justice-mutual-aid/
Photo Courtesy of Lori Flores.
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Conversations with Malcolm Harris and Julia Bainbridge.
This episode, we’re talking about loneliness—versus solitude, versus self-isolation. My first guest, author, editor, and critic Malcolm Harris and I discuss what it’s like to be young in America today: how obsession with productiveness and our human capital, has us feeling perpetually burnt out, anxious, and lonely.
During the latter half, I speak to Julia Bainbridge—writer, editor, and fellow podcaster. Her show, The Lonely Hour, explores loneliness and solitude—not as states to fix or escape, but ones to inhabit fearlessly and learn from. Because of the coronavirus-induced self-isolation, we’re all geting into a habit of being alone—something Julia worries is “dangerous for our species that’s hardwired for connection.”
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Meant To Be Eaten, Coral Lee, food, talk, loneliness, Malcolm Harris, Julia Brainbridge, The Lonely Hour, solitude, self-isolation, anxiety, burn out
This episode of Meant to be Eaten was produced in collaboration with Gastronomica Journal.
Melissa Fuster, from Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, is in for Coral Lee.
A conversation with Chhaya Kolavalli.
The local food movement has been criticized for its overwhelming whiteness. How has the movement responded to these critiques? And what are the implications of these responses? Chhaya Kolavalli confronts whiteness in Kansas City’s local food movement, examining diversity work and discourses of privilege and power. Chhaya Kolavalli is the assistant director of the Center
for Equality and Social Justice at the University of Kentucky. Her research intersects whiteness, race, and class-based inequality, specifically exploring politics of sustainable, equitable redevelopment in US cities.
Photo courtesy of Chhaya Kolavalli.
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This episode of Meant to be Eaten was produced in collaboration with Gastronomica Journal.
Melissa Fuster, from Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, is in for Coral Lee.
A conversation with Eric C. Rath.
Many of us know about sushi, but have you heard of funazushi? Historian Eric C. Rath shares his tasting notes from trying Japan’s most ancient form of sushi. The lessons learned from his two-day tasting spree in Japan allow us to ponder about possibilities of sushi’s future, taking a view from the past, including current environmental sustainability concerns. Eric C. Rath is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Kansas.
Photo Courtesy of Eric C. Rath.
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This episode of Meant to be Eaten was produced in collaboration with Gastronomica Journal.
Melissa Fuster, from Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, is in for Coral Lee.
A conversation with Azri Amram.
Can food serve as a tool to build bridges in times of conflict? Azri Amram takes us to the Palestinian town on Kafr Qasim, the site of a massacre in 1956, which today serves as the site for food tours,
motivating dialogue between Palestinians and Israeli-Jewish “food tourists”. Azri Amram is completing his doctorate degree in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at The Ben-Gurion of the Negev in Israel, examining Jewish-Palestinian relationships in food spaces.
Photo Courtesy of Azri Amram.
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This episode of Meant to be Eaten was produced in collaboration with Gastronomica Journal.
Bob Valgenti, from Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, is in for Coral Lee.
A conversation with Rose Wellman.
Jello is a beloved dessert and also an unexpected source of religious debate. Anthropologist Rose Wellman shares the fruits of her field work in Iran as part of our series of deeper dives into recent articles in Gastronomica. Dr. Wellman’s research explores the many ways that jello and the question of its status as halal highlight a number of religious, political and generational tensions in modern day Iran.
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This episode of Meant to be Eaten was produced in collaboration with Gastronomica Journal.
Bob Valgenti, from Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, is in for Coral Lee.
A conversation with Krishnendu Ray.
Street Food—emphasis on street, that “dwelling place of the collective” and site of liveliness. Sociologist Krishnendu Ray returns to the podcast to explore the vitality of street food, its vendors, and why cities should protect these spaces from the homogenizing gaze of the Global North. The Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at NYU-Steinhardt, Dr. Ray recently delivered the Distinguished Lecture at the annual event co-sponsored by SOAS University of London and Gastronomica.
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This episode of Meant to be Eaten was produced in collaboration with Gastronomica Journal.
Bob Valgenti, from Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, is in for Coral Lee.
A conversation with Laurie Bertram.
What motivates the passionate defense of a recipe? Historian Laurie Bertram expands on her recent Gastronomica article dedicated to the curious case of Icelandic vínarterta—a cake whose origins and most adamant defenders are, surprisingly, not found in Iceland. Cherished and defended by Icelandic immigrants to North America, the dish’s history highlights how food can serve as the crossing-point for issues of class, gender, geopolitics and cultural identity.
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A conversation with Rebecca de Souza.
Do food pantries completely miss the point? Rebecca de Souza thinks they might. In “Feeding the Other,” Rebecca demonstrates how “food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity.” We discuss the power and significance of stigma, and why food pantries are unable to combat hunger.
Photo Courtesy of Rebecca de Souza.
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After a decade of building up sustainable farming, ethical trade, and community development in Africa, Jeff Abella—and his partner, Ishan—founded MOKA farms in Cameroon, and thusly— MOKA Origins, a bean-to-bar/bag chocolate and coffee that inspires "real social change". Jeff is here to explain—well, first and foremost, what “bean-to-bar” is, the challenges and unique rewards of building MOKA Farms up in Cameroon, and how it feels to have been fair trade before fair trade was cool.
Photo Courtesy of Jeff Abella.
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A conversation with Carol Pak.
Carol Pak is the founder of Makku, America's first canned craft makgeolli company. We discuss why she markets Makku as she does (the can reads "rice beer"), and whether craft-beverage-crazed America s ready for makgeolli (as more than just a novelty "Asian" beverage).
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A conversation with Amy Trubek.
Amy Trubek's research interests include the history of the culinary profession, globalization of the food supply, the relationship between taste and place, and cooking as a cultural practice. We discuss the sustainability of restaurant culture and work. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of Vermont, and part of the new editorial collective leading Gastronomica.
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A conversation with Daniel Bender. We’re all very concerned with saving food–from preservation to curation to nostalgia to archiving to salvation– but Daniel Bender, an editor of leading food studies journal, Gastronomica, and history professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough—took a step back to ask, “what exactly are we saving food from?”
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A conversation with Amanda Hesser. Amanda Hesser is CEO and co-founder of food, home, and lifestyle brand, Food52. Now in its 10th year, Food52 has evolved wildly from the recipe-sharing site it used to solely be, and recently closed a very large funding round (which we’ll get to in a bit). Amanda and I will be picking up where UK food writer Sybil Kapoor and I left off last week. We discussed what “taste” means, how it is biologically, culturally, and socially constructed, and why it’s important to continually challenge our own… and today, we’ll be exploring how “taste” is determined in our -- supposedly-- algorithmically-optimized worlds, if our unique “taste” is indeed our own, and whether SEO-driven content hurts or helps us.
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A conversation with Sybil Kapoor. UK food writer Sybil Kapoor’s recently released book, “Sight Smell Touch Taste Sound”, builds on “Taste”, published 16 years ago. In both, she presents cooking as a sensory practice, one that does not require great skill, knowledge, or willingness to follow a recipe...Only a willingness to engage and think critically with all five of our senses. We discuss the concept of “taste”, whether it is truly our own or constructed, and if it is possible to alter.
Join Heritage Radio Network on Monday, November 11th, for a raucous feast to toast a decade of food radio. Our tenth anniversary bacchanal is a rare gathering of your favorite chefs, mixologists, storytellers, thought leaders, and culinary masterminds. We’ll salute the inductees of the newly minted HRN Hall of Fame, who embody our mission to further equity, sustainability, and deliciousness. Explore the beautiful Palm House and Yellow Magnolia Café, taste and imbibe to your heart’s content, and bid on once-in-a-lifetime experiences and tasty gifts for any budget at our silent auction. Tickets available now at heritageradionetwork.org/gala.
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A conversation with Mukta Das.
Following her studies of both Chinese and Indian history at SOAS, Mukta Das’s research interests have continued to exist at this intersection of South and East Asian cuisine and culture. Mukta has been following a group of South Asians who have adopted Cantonese cities and culinary identities– and we’re here to talk about the complexities of “heritage making” as an outsider, in a country whose identity is now split.
Join Heritage Radio Network on Monday, November 11th, for a raucous feast to toast a decade of food radio. Our tenth anniversary bacchanal is a rare gathering of your favorite chefs, mixologists, storytellers, thought leaders, and culinary masterminds. We’ll salute the inductees of the newly minted HRN Hall of Fame, who embody our mission to further equity, sustainability, and deliciousness. Explore the beautiful Palm House and Yellow Magnolia Café, taste and imbibe to your heart’s content, and bid on once-in-a-lifetime experiences and tasty gifts for any budget at our silent auction. Tickets available now at heritageradionetwork.org/gala.
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A conversation with Kristin and Mark Kimball.
Kristin and Mark Kimball are the owners of Essex Farm. Located in Essex, NY, the farm offers members unlimited access to produce, meat, dairy, eggs, and dried goods year-round. We’ll be discussing the realities of running the world’s first full-diet, free-choice CSA, Kristin’s latest memoir, Good Husbandry, and why there exists such a disconnect between producer and consumer... and what we can do to close that gap.
Join Heritage Radio Network on Monday, November 11th, for a raucous feast to toast a decade of food radio. Our tenth anniversary bacchanal is a rare gathering of your favorite chefs, mixologists, storytellers, thought leaders, and culinary masterminds. We’ll salute the inductees of the newly minted HRN Hall of Fame, who embody our mission to further equity, sustainability, and deliciousness. Explore the beautiful Palm House and Yellow Magnolia Café, taste and imbibe to your heart’s content, and bid on once-in-a-lifetime experiences and tasty gifts for any budget at our silent auction. Tickets available now at heritageradionetwork.org/gala.
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Korsha Wilson is a food writer, culinary school grad, and host of Heritage Radio Network’s “A Hungry Society”– a podcast dedicated to creating a more inclusive food world. We’ll be discussing an essay she wrote for Eater earlier this year, "A Critic for All Seasons", in which she explores what would restaurant criticism look like if it represented diners like her.
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Robin Sloan is concerned with the intersection of media and technology. His first novel, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, was a New York Times Best Seller, translated into more than twenty languages. George Saunders called the book “a tour-de-force” and Robin kindly requests that no one say anything else about any of his writing, ever. We discuss his latest novel, Sourdough, which was published in 2017.
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Eater'sDirector of Editorial Strategy, Sonia Chopra, on Mexican-Punjabi cuisine, code switching, and how food helps preserve the intactness of ourselves.
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Jen Monroe returns to the show to discuss her recent dinner series concerning bees. We discuss a brief history of colony collapse disorder, pollinator health 101, the effects of monoculture farming, why we should care, and if/how we can actually save bees with food and art.
Image courtesy of Ola Ola Studio.
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Elizabeth Minchilli is an ex-art-historian turned lifestyle and travel writer, turned food writer. She is the author of multiple books, including Eating Rome, Italian Rustic, and The Italian Table. We talk about the intersection of architecture and dining, the importance of considering space alongside food.
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What makes good food, good? PhD students at SOAS University of London Francesca Vaghi and Brandi Miller join Coral to discuss why ""good"" food is often contigent on nutritional, economic, political, or moral conditions, and why the distinction changes across cultures and scale.
Francesca is a final year doctoral researcher based at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and the Thomas Coram Research Unit. Prior to starting her PhD, she was awarded an MPhil in Medical Anthropology from the University of Oxford in 2015. Her project, ‘Food, policy, and practice in early years education and care: children, parents, and practitioners in a London nursery,’ spans a variety of areas, mainly: medical anthropology, the anthropology of food, childhood studies, gender, and class. Francesca's doctoral research was conducted in an inner-London nursery and children's centre over a 12-month period. As well as investigating the ways in which children create their self and peer identities through food and eating practices, her work explores how children's food policy fits into family intervention policies more broadly, as well as how notions of 'good food' and 'good parenting' (particularly 'mothering') are interlinked.
Brandi Simpson Miller holds an MA in World History from Georgia State University (2015). She is a doctoral researcher at the Department of History at the School of Oriental and African Studies London. Her research interests include the study of the social history of Ghana, particularly the political aspects of global and local food practices from the precolonial period to Ghanaian independence.
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A conversation with John T. Edge. John T’s work examining, documenting, and exploring the diverse food cultures of the American South is oft-referenced, and widely trusted and revered. A Writer, thought leader, and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, He also makes regular appearances on Iron Chef and NPR’s All Things Considered … the common thread being John’s belief in and pursuit of the cultural narrative that food so uniquely affords.
It's HRN's annual summer fund drive, this is when we turn to our listeners and ask that you make a donation to help ensure a bright future for food radio. Help us keep broadcasting the most thought provoking, entertaining, and educational conversations happening in the world of food and beverage. Become a member today! To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we have brand new member gifts available. So snag your favorite new pizza - themed tee shirt or enamel pin today and show the world how much you love HRN, just go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate
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A conversation with Leslie Bow. Leslie Bow is the author of Partly Colored - a book that look at 1954 American literature, film, autobiography, ethnography, and pop culture, to investigate the ways in which “in-between” people and communities were treated in the South.
It's HRN's annual summer fund drive, this is when we turn to our listeners and ask that you make a donation to help ensure a bright future for food radio. Help us keep broadcasting the most thought provoking, entertaining, and educational conversations happening in the world of food and beverage. Become a member today! To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we have brand new member gifts available. So snag your favorite new pizza - themed tee shirt or enamel pin today and show the world how much you love HRN, just go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate
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A few years ago, Dave Haeselin, an English professor at the University of North Dakota, moonlighted as a sugar beet truck driver...and he learned one or two things about himself and the world around him. We discuss Culinary Luddism, and the (in)authenticity of food (industrial/""fake"" vs. organic/""real""), selves (what's a non-Midwesterner with a PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies doing driving a beet truck anyway?), and communication (why digital culture is ruining our ability to interface with each other).
It's HRN's annual summer fund drive, this is when we turn to our listeners and ask that you make a donation to help ensure a bright future for food radio. Help us keep broadcasting the most thought provoking, entertaining, and educational conversations happening in the world of food and beverage. Become a member today! To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we have brand new member gifts available. So snag your favorite new pizza - themed tee shirt or enamel pin today and show the world how much you love HRN, just go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate.
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Katie Rue is the owner of Reception Bar - a self-proclaimed Korean-American bar in the Lower East Side. The cocktails feature not only Asian ingredients, but traditional combinations of ingredients found in Korean healing elixirs; the pink of the booths and glowy lighting, meanwhile, feel very '80s Miami. She’s here to talk with me about what it means to feel neither Korean, nor American, nor entirely Korean-Americans… and what unique, creative things arise from that tension of identity.
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Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen is a facilitator, teacher, historian, curator, re-organizer, and dumpster diver. He co-founded the Museum of Chinese in America in 1979-80 where he continues to serve as senior historian. He’s researched and written widely on Chinatowns and anti-Asian fears, on everyday intermingling and improvisations; and is currently grappling with issues like dispossession, climate change, and why it’s especially important for those in/around food to lead change…so, a little bit of everything this episode.
It's HRN's annual summer fund drive, this is when we turn to our listeners and ask that you make a donation to help ensure a bright future for food radio. Help us keep broadcasting the most thought provoking, entertaining, and educational conversations happening in the world of food and beverage. Become a member today! To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we have brand new member gifts available. So snag your favorite new pizza - themed tee shirt or enamel pin today and show the world how much you love HRN, just go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate
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A Conversation with Maggie Gray, Sarah Horton, Vanesa Ribas, and Angela Stuesse. A forum of four authors of books on food politics. Maggie Gray (Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic), Sarah Horton (They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields: Illness, Injury, and “Illegality” among U.S. Farmworkers), Vanesa Ribas (On the Line: Slaughterhouse Lives and the Making of the New South), and Angela Stuesse (Scratching Out a Living: Latinos, Race, and Work in the Deep South) discuss their respective approaches to analyzing immigrant workers’ contested and changing roles in the U.S. food system.
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Cafes offer up this unique third space - not home, nor work - for people to be private in a public space. Merry White, professor of Anthropology at Boston University, studies just this: cafes and cafe culture, but in Japan. Her book, Coffee Life in Japan, “part ethnography, part memoir”, traces Japan’s cafe’s society over the past century and a half.
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A conversation with Chris Cheung. Google today’s guest, and immediately pops up the article titled, “Chris Cheung respects tradition, by breaking it,” - a clickbaity headline that’s buzzy, but incomplete and not quite correct… much like our topic at hand today. Chris Cheung is chef-owner of East Wind Snack Shop; we discuss the (un)lucky openings as of late.
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Gaik Cheng Khoo's (author of Eating Together) research exists at the intersection of food and race, culture, and identity. In this episode, we discuss what it means to be ""modern Malaysian"", the South Korean hansik globalization campaign, and frozen durian foodways. She is a professor at the University of Nottingham, in Malaysia.
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Takeyuki Tsuda (Gaku) has been researching the ethnic minority status of Japanese Americans across generations, and the extent to which they remain connected to their ethnic heritage. How do Japanese-Americans’ differ across countries, let alone generations? Having been in America as long as (if not longer than) other immigrants, why are Asian-Americans still constantly defending their ‘Americanness’? We discuss the ways in which generations of Japanese-Americans respond to these pressures.
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Sarita See is author of The Decolonized Eye and The Filipino Primitive, Media and Cultural Studies professor at UC Riverside, and founder of the online exhibition space, Center for Art and Thought. We discuss the complicated history of colonization in the Phillipines (and lasting effects on the diaspora), Edward Said's orientalism, Karl Marx's primitive accumulation, the importance of curation in a digital (trash) age, and how to criticize Asian diasporic art as a member of the Asian diaspora.
And yes - this all ties back to food.
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Mark Padoongpatt has written on Thai-American foodways, Asian-American Suburbia, and is currently researching the history of Asian restaurant health inspections in the United States. Coral and Mark discuss the history of Asian migration to the suburbs, the impact of Asian-dominated strip malls, and who these public spaces really serve. He is a professor of Asian American Studies at University of Nevada Las Vegas. Look out for Mark’s forthcoming podcast on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Las Vegas, called “Neon Pacific”!
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A conversation with Michael Kideckel.
Today we’re talking about capital W capital T white trash. Deemed the “most intriguing book of the 1986 spring cookbook season”, and the ”most beautiful sociological document” by Harper Lee, White Trash Cooking is a collection of Southern recipes and photographs by the late Ernest Matthew Mickler. Michael and I discuss meanings of the words ""authenticity"" and ""folk"", why cookbooks are valuable sociological documents, and how to cook a possum.
Photo Courtesy of Ernest Matthew Mickler.
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Andrew Tam's research on Singapore Hawker Centers (Gastronomica Spring 2017) reworks what food reveals about multiculturalism, capital-A Authenticity, and socio-economic distinction. We discuss origins of hawkers, their change in perception (general nuisance, to emblematic of culinary heritage), and the cultural capital of knowing which stall to frequent and which to avoid.
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Kate Young is the author of the book, The Little Library Cookbook, and the brains behind @BakingFiction. Tantalized by Bruce's chocolate cake, the Joloff rice from Americanah, and Winnie-the-Pooh's honey, Kate shares her literary-inspired recipes on her blog, The Little Library Cafe.
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Producer of what may be the majority of scholarship on chou farci in existence on this planet, Allen Weiss is the author of multiple works (theoretical, gastronomic, and creative), creator of the ""Ingestion"" column in Cabinet, and had served on the scientific committee that proposed to UNESCO ""the French gastronomic meal"" be named part of the world's immaterial heritage. He currently teaches at NYU.
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Sociologist of food, Alan Warde is the author of Eating Out (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and more recently The Practice of Eating (Polity Books, 2016). We discuss how Alan's work ""deals both with abstract issues about theories of practice and substantive analyses of aspects of eating, demonstrating how theories of practice can be elaborated and systematically applied to the activity of eating.
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A Conversation with editors of Food Across Borders (Rutgers University Press, 2017): Matt Garcia, E. Melanie DuPuis, and Don Mitchell.
Food Across Borders ""highlight[s] the contiguity between the intimate decisions we make as individuals concerning what we eat and the social and geopolitical processes we enact to secure nourishment, territory, and belonging."" We discuss the slipperiness of ""our"" vs. ""their"" food.
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A conversation with Paul Freedman.
Professor of History at Yale University, Paul Freedman, is also the author of Ten Restaurants that Changed America (W.W. Norton, 2016). We discuss the ten selected restaurants, and how each restaurant reveals a wider story of race and class, immigration and assimilation in America.
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Professor of French & Comparative Literature at University of California Riverside, Michelle Bloom's work shows how cinema – like the culinary arts, both made for consumption – combines art and science, embodies culture, and incorporates tradition and innovation. We also discuss how food preserves individual, as well as cultural, memory.
Photo Courtesy of Michelle Bloom
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Megan Elias's work and research explores the history of food and culture through food writing, markets, and home economics. Elias is the author of Food on the Page: Cookbooks and American Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) as well as four other books about food history. We discuss how idealized versions of cooking and living that appear in cookbooks and on TV encode complex ideas about gender expectations.
Photo courtesy of Headshot (BU)
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A Conversation with Jennifer LeMesurier.
Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Colgate University, Jennifer LeMesurier is interested in how terminology gets weighted down with a number of assumptions. We unpack the idea of 'authenticity' (cultural, biological, environmental), and discuss how some of the mainstream rhetoric that is currently circulating impacts how people view and consume food.
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A conversation with Meredith Leigh.
Currently based in Asheville, NC Meredith Leigh is a farmer, butcher, chef, educator, and author of two books: The Ethical Meat Handbook and Pure Charcuterie -- all in search of realistic solutions for sustainable, ethical, good and REAL food.
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A Conversation with Kimberly Chou and Kimberly Jenkins.
Fashion historian and lecturer/professor at Pratt Institute and the New School, Kimberly Jenkins discusses the intersection of fashion and race throughout history. Writer, co-founder of Food Book Fair, and fellow HRN host Kimberly Chou discusses how we similarly use food in de/constructing identity.
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A conversation with Melina Shannon-DiPietro and Chris Ying.
MAD, the danish word for “food” – is a nonprofit dedicated to bringing together a global cooking community. The first book of their Dispatches book series, You and I Eat the Same, is devoted to inspiring, educating, and creating sustainable, lasting change in how the world eats.
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Suzy Spence – Artist and Curator and the creator of The Online Archive for Womanhouse – and Irina Milahache, Author and Professor of Museum Studies at the University of Toronto, join Coral in an interdisciplinary discussion of the woman's role in writing culinary history.
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[1]http://www.womanhouse.net/
[2]https://www.suzyspence.com/
[3]https://ischool.utoronto.ca/profile/irina-mihalache/
The Los Angeles Times wrote: “It seems like every time you hear someone mention processed food, it’s accompanied with the words ‘bad’ or ‘unhealthy,’ plus a shaking finger. Unless you’re author Rachel Laudan.” As a historian, Rachel has concluded that never have such a large proportion of humans enjoyed such healthful and tasty food, a case she makes in A Plea for Culinary Modernism: Why We Should Love Fast, New, Processed Food (2001). Her most recent book, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History won the 2014 IACP Best Book in Culinary History award. Rachel Laudan is currently a Senior Research Fellow at University of Texas Austin, and is working on a new book about the use of the grind-stone.
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[1]https://www.rachellaudan.com/
[2]https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520286316/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Natalie Doonan is a multimedia and performance artist, writer, and educator with a PhD in humanities (specializing in sensory studies, cultural geography and performance studies) Natalie’s work focuses on the connections between taste and place -- something we discuss on this show. A lot. We discuss her essay, Wild Cuisine and Canadianness: Creeping Rootstalks and Subterranean Struggle, which can be found in the most recent issue of Gastronomica. (n.b. her email signature ends with a quote from Jody Emel and Jennifer Wolch: "Our political project is the creation of many forms of shared space.")
Sarah Fouts wears many hats; a writer and professor; she’s taught at Tulane and is now at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Interested in the way food acts as an entry point to issues like labor and migration, she’s written prolifically on the contemporary Latinx food landscape in New Orleans: from simultaneously overly and underly policed loncheras, to the drag and transgender community. Her work can be found in Gastronomica, on the Gravy Podcast, and at her website: sarahfouts.com (or @sbfouts).
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Today’s episode will be the first of a two-part series, exploring the politics and current state and culture of “professional" urban foraging. Mallory O'Donnell works for a landscaping company by day, while (like many other "professional" urban foragers) documenting various foraging and harvesting projects utilizing local weeds, fruits, and plants by night. Why this popular desire to “return to our roots” in understanding where our food comes from? How are present and aspiring-“pro foragers” working to make this an economically viable and environmentally sustainable (and respectful) business? And lastly, but most importantly – if our lands are being over-run with so-called "invasive" weeds, can food, truly, be free for all?
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Suzanne Cope, PhD is an educator, narrative journalist, and scholar. She's written on food near and far: from small-batch cheesemakers in Northern California to cooking schools in Marrakech, on the popularity of sauerkraut in Cuba, the feminist history of food journalism, and to the ever-changing streets of Bed-Stuy. How did/do we define American culture, if not by constituent parts? How did immigrants and early-wave feminists interpret American cuisine differently than “Americans” do today? And why, now a push for gastro-nationalism? Cope is currently working on a book about the back door restaurants of the civil rights movement and how the government worked to stop them; she also teaches writing at NYU.
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The late, LA Times critic, Jonathan Gold, so describes today’s MTBE guest. An author of 3 (soon to be 4) tomes on Japanese cooking, Nancy Hachisu is proof in the pudding that another, once-foreign culture, cuisine, food, and mannerisms, can be studied, learned, and embodied...sensitively, accurately, and holistically. Nancy and Coral discuss why Japanese cuisine enjoys higher prestige than others, in America, and why is it more often creatively appropriated, rather than mis-appropriated.
Michael S. Kideckel is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Columbia University. His dissertation "uses the breakfast cereal industry’s advocacy of 'natural food' as a case study to explain the industrial roots of American ideas about nature". We discuss key figures in/against the Slow Food Movement (Pollan, Waters, Laudan), the history and evolution of food branding, and the state of health and food activism today.
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“Twitter Roaster”, and author of Reel Inequality – a book that examine the barriers African American, Asian American and Latina/o actors face in Hollywood and how they creatively challenge stereotypes – Nancy Yuen studies the ways in which Asian-Americans are represented (or not) in media.
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What's in your grocery basket, and what does it reveal about you– your economic bracket, most personal food memories, current dietary restrictions, cooking fears, and go-to weeknight dinners? Aimee Brodeur is the founder of FeedbackNY (feedbackny.com), a "growing collection of stories about the choices we make to nourish ourselves and our loved ones".
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An engineer by day, Rich Shih moonlights as Jean Dough, Koji Extraordinaire, by night. We’ll be talking about his hugely popular blog, Our Cook Quest, his crazy ferment projects — can you really umeboshi anything and everything?! — why he’s here in NYC this weekend, and the exciting projects he has brewing for the near future.
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Chef and fellow Heritage Radio Network radio host Jenny Dorsey’s culinary mission is grand– to cook food and create environments that are deliberately uncomfortable, in an attempt to change the world with her art. We discuss what it takes to be a "model minority", how the phrase "less is more" suggests privilege, and why it's not a culture's responsibility to make itself accessible to those unfamiliar with it.
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Today’s guest is Rupa Bhattacharya— the newly-appointed EIC of VICE’s food website and digital channel, MUNCHIES. We discuss the responsibility and power of food media, current issues food media is facing, and why non-“foodies” should care.
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Joining me today is artist Rosemary Liss; food is her medium. Eloquently put, her website states: “Rosemary Liss (b. 1988) creates nourishing experiences that provide a symbiosis between mouthfeel and carnal perception.” We’ll be talking about her start at Hex Ferments, nuka performance piece/residency at the Noma Ferments lab, and her current role at Bar Clavel in Baltimore.
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Born in New Orleans, Lolis Eric Elie is now a Los Angeles based writer and filmmaker. A prolific writer, Elie has written multiple cookbooks celebrating New Orleans's cuisine, for TV (currently, AMC's Hell on Wheels), and documentaries. His work can be found in Gourmet, The Washington Post, NYT...and most recently he was on David Chang's docu-series, Ugly Delicious.
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Why and how do we gather around food? Food photographer, Penny de Los Santos, discusses her "anthropologic findings" while shooting for Nat Geo, her research in Dearborn, MI, and what exactly "food landscapes" can reveal about their respective cultures. Penny's photographs have been in National Geographic, Food & Wine, and Saveur, and she has spoken on the TedX stage about her work.
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Kicking off MTBE’s 3rd season, is author and professor Thomas Parker. His most recent book, Tasting French Terroir: The History of an Idea, explores the origins and significance of the French concept of terroir. We also discuss his event series and blog, Subnature and Culinary Culture, which examined the history of foods that have been marginalized and re-appropriated by different cultures throughout history.
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Josey Baker of The Mill SF on how industrialization has led to false expectations as to how much a loaf should cost, the changing aesthetics of bread (dark, burnt crust + open/airy crumb à la Tartine), and how food businesses can best and responsibly serve its communities.
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Maria Zizka has cooked and written with numerous authorities on California cuisine-- co-authoring with Sqirl's Jessica Koslow, Tartine's Elisabeth Prueitt, and a.o.c.'s Suzanne Goin. We examine the tenets of California cuisine, and Maria's role as not just mediator between chef and home cook -- but translator as well.
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Coffee is a complex subject within the greater culinary landscape. Parlor Coffee’s founder, Dillon Edwards, speaks on the cross-cultural journey coffee beans take when going from producer to roaster, what it means to stay “honest” as a sourcer, and when a café serves or indirectly hurts its local community.
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The I-Collective is a group of Indigenous chefs, activists, herbalists, seed, and knowledge keepers. Indigenous communities have been wild-foraging, cooking farm-to-table/snout-to-tail, and manipulating closed loop agricultural systems before it was cool. So why don’t we see Native American joints popping up everywhere? We examine colonialism’s lasting effects on health and identity, define “Indigenous food sovereignty”, and discuss how we can work together to present a more truthful history.
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Sarahlynn Pablo and Natalia Roxas are the founders of Filipino Kitchen. Pushing past questions of appropriation and authenticity, provenance and legitimacy, we discuss how Filipino food serves, nurtures, and heals its eaters.
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Andrea Fazzari is the author of Tokyo New Wave: 31 Chefs Defining Japan’s Next Generation, out mid-March from Ten Speed Press. Born and raised in New York, Andrea has since lived in Italy and France, finally following her fascination with Japan and its culture to Tokyo. Tokyo New Wave profiles 31 chefs largely responsible for the changing food landscape in Tokyo. We discuss what it means to be “Japanese” (to both Andrea and the chefs), the importance (socially) of an introduction, and how to combat “ethnic tourism."
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Jen Monroe is the founder of Bad Taste, a Brooklyn-based project committed to exploring new ways of thinking about food and consumption. Instagram has transformed eating into an aesthetic activity. Does ‘gramming your runny egg yolk have larger repercussions than you think? We discuss the inherently political message of food, how certain foods have come to act as lifestyle signifiers, and what your #foodporn reveals about you.
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Pietro Quaglia owns Pietro Nolita, an all pink (some would call it "Millennial Pink") restaurant in NYC. His aesthetic has drawn fans and social media influencers from all over the world to Elizabeth Street to snap pics and model for selfies over bowls of al dente pasta. But Pietro, who didn't have an Instagram account before his restaurant became Insta-famous, says he didn't even know Millennial Pink was a thing when he opened up shop. Now, he's fully embracing the wave of pink adoration...but not without some hiccups and heartbreak along the way.
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Chef Rob Newton was born and raised in Arkansas before joining the army, kicking college to the curb for culinary school and then starting a flurry of successful restaurants in New York City. We talk about what inspired him to pick up Vietnamese cooking, certain chef stereotypes and the evolution of his food as his personal and professional journey continues to unfold.
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Has the first mainstream wave of cultural appropriation activism achieved its goals? Andrea Wien talks to Soleil Ho, writer, chef and co-host of the podcast Racist Sandwich, and Kimberly Chou, co-director of Food Book Fair and co-host of the HRN show Recommended Reading with Food Book Fair, about where we're at in the conversation, what needs to happen to move these concerns forward and why this discussion seems so frequently to center around Asian food and activists.
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When Josh Grinker, chef and co-owner of Kings Co. Imperial started out, he first fell in love with the technique of cooking Chinese food, specifically working the wok. Only years later did the question of cultural appropriation start to arise. But for Josh and his business partner, chef Tracy Jane Young, their respect and passion for Chinese cuisine has never been about profit: it's always been about paying homage to Chinese philosophy and flavor. On this episode, we talk about how the discussion around appropriation has evolved, the difference between appropriation and multi-culturalism and what lessons Josh has learned outside of the kitchen.
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Author Sarah Lohman joins us today to talk about how America's culinary history is far from "white" and how the flavors we all know and love were brought here and evolved from places far, far away.
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Oft-quoted and well-loved by the MTBE team, Krishnendu Ray--NYU Food Studies Professor and author of two books on immigrant foods in America--joins us to talk about why searching out the most "authentic, ethnic" cuisines can be a problem, how social media has democratized food and why expensive Chinese is in our future food forecast.
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Trigg Brown and Joshua Ku of East Wililamsburg's Taiwanese-American joint, Win Son, talk about Taiwan's complicated history and how they're working to educate diners on Taiwanese food.
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Ben Van Leeuwen on the Van Leeuwen’s ice cream empire and his side project— the Balinese-inspired restaurant, Selamat Pagi, in Greenpoint. Ben talks about driving a Good Humor truck and why it prompted him to start his own shop, how he designs flavors and how ingredients know no cultural bounds.
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On this episode of Meant To Be Eaten, Fred Opie, professor of foodways and history at Babson College and author of the book, Hogs and Hominy joins Adedoyin Teriba, a professor of architectural history at Pratt, to discuss soul food and the spread of African-American culture and food across the globe. How do major historical events like the Civil Rights Movement influence food? And what feelings arise when you find a food from your homeland in an unfamiliar place?
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Tea culture spans thousands of years, from India and China to Japan and Britain. But what exactly is tea? And what do tea purists think of the rise of fast casual tea joints? Are these types of places watering down the meaning and significance of this historic brew? On this episode, Andrea Wien talks to Timothy Hsu, proprietor of the Mandarin Tea Room and Chinese tea master trainee and Zach Mangan, the founder of the Japanese tea shop Kettl in Williamsburg.
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At the end of a long work week, there’s nothing more we love than breaking bread with good company. But what if someone prefers a sourdough over a baguette? A paratha over a pita? Or, is gluten-free? Today we're talking with Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful podcast, about his recent mini-series, "Your Mom's Food". Dan spoke with 4 families who had been divided over food; through tough conversations with 4 different families, he shows the simple question – “what’s for dinner?” – may not be so simple to answer after all.
Today's episode of Meant to be Eaten follows a conversation between Coral and JT Vuong--head chef at Okonomi in East Williamsburg. Okonomi straddles the line between convention and craze: serving traditional Japanese breakfast by day and not-so-traditional ramen by night. Does Okonomi's stress on locally-sourced ingredients inherently limit its ability to remain wholly traditional? The majority of Okonomi's staff isn't Japanese--how do you learn the subtle nuances of another's culture? Who and what determine "authenticity?"
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Who and what define authenticity? Can shopping in the “ethnic” aisle ever become more than “ethnic tourism?" Is cultural appropriation a real issue in the culinary world? These are the types of questions we’re looking to answer on Meant to Be Eaten...because what if those Korean tacos...are just really tasty tacos?
We're kicking the season off with an interview with Jeremy Umansky, leader of the koji movement and owner of Larder--an Eastern European deli in Cleveland powered by Japanese ingredient, koji.