Serve It Forth
There’s a funny story about how I came to learn about M.F.K. Fisher that involves chatting with a chef and his wife at my local pub, going back to their house for further drunken carousing, and eventually blinking out into the sunrise with a hand-selected curriculum of food writing that included Fisher’s anthology, The Art of Eating. There’s an even funnier story about how I managed to “borrow” those books for about eight years before running into the chef again and ultimately returning them. Further still, I was so moved by her writing that I inked a permanent reminder of her call to “Serve it Forth” on my own body.
Where was I going with all this?
Right. Well, recently I picked up (my own) copy of Fisher’s book, and embarked on a re-reading. Her observations remain as keen as ever. Take for example this gem:
"Now asparagus sells for the asking, almost, in California markets, and broccoli, that strong age-old green, leaps from its lowly pot to the Ritz’s copper saucepan. Who determines, and for what strange reasons, the social status of a vegetable?”
("The Social Status of a Vegetable" in Serve it Forth)
Who indeed?!
It was when I was reading ‘Consider the Oyster’ that I got to thinking: Fisher’s writing, her binding together of recipes and references and anecdotes reminded me of today’s hyper-linked round-ups, much like the format of this letter. She deftly connected the popular with the arcane in a witty and wry and openly personal style. Her writing can feel occasionally fussy and over-wrought (ahem!) but is always acutely self-aware and cheekily self-deprecating.
Making this connection was like a lightning bolt to my soul, a reminder that jolted my own mission to ’serve it forth’ into bright clarity.
In one of my first letters sent last year–right around this time, in fact–I crafted my own round-up of evidence that the future of food is decidedly female. I’m not calling myself prescient by any means, but, like woah, what a year it’s been for women, amirite?!
There’s been plenty of bad and heaps of ugly, but one of the greatest goods I have seen lately has been the exponential growth of platforms and communities built around gathering at the table for serious conversations about feminism and food. Whether through digital and print media or in-person events, women around the world are serving it forth mightily to a hungry audience with an insatiable appetite.
Just think. Only five years ago, Time published it’s infamous “Gods of Food” issue which failed to include a single female*.
That same year, in 2013, and arguably as an in-your-face response, Kerry Diamond and Claudia Wu created Cherry Bombe, with the stated mission to “...support women in the world of food by sharing their stories and to build a community of people making the world a better place through food."
Since then, if you can name any influential woman in food, chances are she has been prominently featured by Cherry Bombe, whose Jubilee conferences (now both in NYC and SF) top themselves year over year with lineups of who’s who: Ina, Alice, Ruth, Martha, amen.
This year, queen Bombe-shell Nigella Lawson and the iconic Ruthie Rodgers of London’s River Café will deliver the keynote addresses to the 6th Jubilee in NYC on April 14th and 15th.
As the pre-eminent platform for women in food, Cherry Bombe has always been forward-thinking in facing pressing topics like cultural appropriation, gender imbalance, and parenthood as a chef. Following the tidal wave of allegations and revelations of sexual harassment in the food industry, Cherry Bombe has been hosting #86This, an ongoing online conversation for women in food to address the issue as a community and to take collective action.
Earlier this year, OpenTable CEO Christa Quarles invited some of the industry’s most powerful women (including CB’s Kerry Diamond, natch) to join a similar roundtable discussion. The group did not shy away from challenging questions, including whether chef (and CB covergirl) April Bloomfield was complicit in business partner Ken Friedman’s rampant culture of abuse in their restaurants.
Having identified a wide-open space with an open invitation to help fill it, Cherry Bombe has unsurprisingly and consistently grown a formidable #bombesquad over the past several years.
Launched in 2015 by entrepreneurial friends Ariel Pasternak and Atara Bernstein, Pineapple Collaborative began as a DC-based series of gatherings ‘for women who love food,’ but has since grown into a 20,000+ strong community that’s attracting some of the industry’s emerging voices, like writers Alison Roman and Marisa Ross. While focused on hosting experiences that bring women together in real life, Pineapple Collaborative is also building a media platform for facilitating open dialogues on issues such as food justice and the inextricable relationship between food and identity.
With a similar appetite for social enterprise, Bon Appétit’s side hustle, Healthyish, will kickoff a new series of traveling dinner parties focused on wellness and inclusivity that will pop up in cities across the US over the coming months. The first ‘Superpowered’ event will take place in San Francisco, hosted by the superstar chef of Cala and Contramar, Gabriela Cámara, with half of the proceeds going to Bay Area food business incubator, La Cocina.
Itself a force for the advancement of women of color and immigrants, in celebration of IWD, La Cocina hosted a special dinner series featuring nine of their alumni chefs.
Given that these are times that try women’s souls, female food communities are sprouting up in cities everywhere.
A pair of girlfriends in Crown Heights, Brooklyn started Sister Circle Brunch as an inclusive gathering in the wake (I feel like we’re still in the wake…) of last year’s election.
In Portland, The Nightwood Society is a design collaborative of sorts, forming the ultimate girl gang of talented women to conceive and create food experiences that bring women together in conversation and hands-on activities.
Finally, closer to home, Vancouver-bred and now Amsterdam-based Julia Khan Anselmo recently sold out the London debut of her massively popular (and gorgeously produced) supper club, Feisty Feast, held in celebration of International Women’s Day.
Something special happens when women–when any of us–gather to share a meal. What is it about the simple rituals, the generosity of being fed and looked after that sets us at ease and inspires us to exchange confidences, to really talk to each other? M.F.K. Fisher has an idea:
“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.”
At the table, if nothing else, we have simply what’s in front of us in common, and sometimes that is all it takes to feel nourished.
Let's eat!
*NB: Coincidentally, one of the "Food gods", top bro and restaurateur-turned-media-mogul Dave Chang this week announced the launch of his own platform, Majordomo, building on the empire that began with now-shuttered mag, Lucky Peach, and the momentum of his latest venture, the highly addictive document-series, Ugly Delicious. (Btw, I love Dave, I’m not harshing on him one bit here).