Author

Felicity LuHill

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This was originally published in The Inquisitive Eater Anthologywhich you can now purchase online.

What’s your go-to snack when you’re reading or writing? I make picnics on my desk – slices of apple, chunks of cheese, cornichons, crackers. Anything salty. 

What’s your favorite piece of writing that has to do with food? The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher. And Seamus Heaney’s poem “Oysters.”

What do you think is the most writerly food/drink? Unfortunately, alcohol. I like mine in a Campari soda.

What’s a food you’ve read about that you wish you could actually experience? Freshly harvested white truffles in Alba, Italy. I’ve had them in the states but I can’t imagine the scent fresh out of the ground.

If you had to live off one food for the rest of your life what would it be? Toast.


Stephanie Danler is the author of the internationally best-selling novel Sweetbitter, and the creator and executive producer of the Sweetbitter television series on STARZ. She is currently based in Los Angeles, California, and at work on a book of non-fiction.

Featured image via Pxhere.

This piece was originally published in The Inquisitive Eater Anthologywhich you can now purchase online.


From 1968-1971 Gordon Ball managed Allen Ginsberg’s upstate poets’ retreat, recounted in East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg. From 1969-1997 he took numerous photographs of “Ginsberg & Beat Fellows”; some appear in books, exhibitions, and journals, including the New York Times Sunday magazine. His website is http://www.gordonballgallery.com. He’s authored essays, including “A Nobel for Dylan?” in The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, and two additional memoirs—’66 Frames and Dark Music. His short stories, On Tokyo’s Edge, appeared in 2017. The Museum of Modern Art and Anthology Film Archives have shown his films; the DVD Films By Gordon Ball collects seven.

This was originally published in The Inquisitive Eater Anthologywhich you can now purchase online.


What’s your go-to snack when you’re reading or writing? Raw arugula.

What’s your favorite piece of writing that has to do with food? The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams.

What do you think is the most writerly food/drink? Scotch.

What’s a food you’ve read about that you wish you could actually experience? I have never had a Christmas goose. I’d like to try that.

If you had to live off one food for the rest of your life what would it be? Raw clams.


Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, a New York Times critics’ choice, and the novel Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times first fiction prize. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, McSweeney’s, The Baffler, and other journals, as well as anthologies. She lives in Florida.

Featured image via Flickr

This piece was originally published in The Inquisitive Eater Anthology, which you can now purchase online.

I

When people ask me, “Are you excited to live somewhere new?” I respond, “I’m excited to buy groceries somewhere new.”

Buying anything heavy in New York is a luxury. Am I sure I’m out of milk? How many cans of soda do I need, really? In my mind, I become hostile when guests come over, start drinking a can of my La Croix and don’t finish. It’s not about wasting money, it’s about wasting labor.

Plastic bags are out of the question. There’s the environment to think of. And by environment I mean the environment of my microscopic kitchen after it becomes filled to the brim with plastic bags.

Then there’s the sensation of the plastic bag’s handles slicing my fingers with every step I take. Paper is better, but nothing beats a well-structured tote bag, one I can put over my shoulder, comfortably, big enough that I don’t need multiple tote bags—it’s difficult to juggle more than two tote bags while walking—but small enough that I don’t accidentally trick myself into loading it up too much.

In New York, there is only one grocery store: the one closest to my apartment. All other grocery stores do not exist, unless I’m bringing food to someone else’s apartment in someone else’s neighborhood. Why should I be expected to carry my groceries up and down subway steps?

On many occasions I’ve stopped while walking home to take a break from these heavy bags. I watch people pass by, sans tote bags, and wonder if they are strong enough to buy groceries.

In the suburbs I don’t have to be strong. I can get whatever my wallet and my waist allow, pile it into my cart and then pile it into my car. I can stop by three different grocery stores to get the best deals on different items. Suburban apartments have more room for La Croix, more room for plastic bags.

II

Something about this city makes me want to eat in public spaces. Not restaurants, but places that aren’t meant for food: nail salons, home goods stores, subway platforms, the C line.

An incomplete list of foods I’ve eaten on public transportation: onion bagels with plain cream cheese, plain bagels with strawberry cream cheese, buffalo chicken salads, breakfast burritos with bacon.

Salads are easier to eat in trains than bagels. It’s the cream cheese. I used to think I could bite into a bagel whole, like a sandwich, but with a real New York bagel, cream cheese will always come out the other side. It will get on my hands and my clothes until I’m nothing but cream cheese.

Once when I was eating a breakfast burrito on a crowded subway, a piece of scrambled egg fell out onto the leg of the woman sitting next to me, before falling to the floor. She was wearing jeans. To my surprise, she said nothing. She didn’t even move her leg. I wrapped up my burrito without another bite. I didn’t want to acknowledge what I had done. I didn’t want to look at her. When I finally did, I was relieved to find she was sleeping. But then I looked up and saw a man standing close, towering above the sleeping passenger and me. He had watched the whole event transpire. There’s always someone watching.

Only in New York do I want to eat while walking. New Yorkers are supposed to have a fast paced lifestyle. There’s no time to sit and eat. All of the foods listed above I have consumed while walking. Others include: gyro wraps, triangle sushi, string cheese, dollar pizza, a donut.

I love donuts but almost never eat them. Donuts are delicious but unsatisfying, an undesirable trait for a cheat food. Once, I bought two donuts, a decadent treat for myself. I ate one on the way to the subway, and felt too unhappy with it to eat the second. I decided to give the other to the first person on the street asking me for something. To my surprise, no one did until I was almost at my destination. When I told the man he could have my donut, still wrapped up in a paper bag, he looked uncertain. 71

“What kind is it?” he asked. I told him it was chocolate glazed. Wait, no, it was chocolate frosted. He looked pleased with this response.

“I’d like to share a donut with you,” he said.

III

My favorite thing about you is something you did when I wasn’t around. Late one night, after we went out, and you left to go home, you ordered food from a halal cart. The halal guy asked if he could have a kiss. You kissed him through the window of the cart and later said the kiss tasted like meat. He came out of the cart to kiss you more but then you disappeared into the night. It’s the kind of thing you never do. You don’t even kiss strangers in bars.

There are days when I work from home, but really I’m just waiting until it’s ok to eat again. I’ll look at the clock and it’ll say five, or maybe it’ll say five thirty. I turn to you and ask if we should order in. You say, sure, you could eat. But then I say maybe we should wait another thirty minutes. It’s that awkward in between. We agree we could eat or we could wait. “It’s the brink of dinner time.” I said it once and now we say it whenever this happens. But with an exaggerated British accent: “It’s the brink of dinner time!”

I want to show everyone that text you sent me once, Are you near union square do you want to get pizza hut. I had told you I had been craving those little personal pizzas for years, and you wanted to remedy that. We met up at the Pizza Hut / Taco Bell, and a man followed me in. He looked so normal. He stepped in front of me to open the door, saying I was “lovely like the weather” or something like that. I nodded and smiled. I couldn’t quite hear him. At first, I thought he just wanted pizza or tacos but then I approached you at a table and we chatted and watched as he stood in line staring at me. After a few minutes like this, he left without getting anything. We couldn’t stop laughing at the whole affair. Hit on, stalked even, at a Pizza Hut / Taco Bell.

Back when we were in college you loved ordering in Domino’s to watch SpongeBob and scary movies. You still love these things. This was important to me back then. Because we were just starting out as friends and you were the most beautiful person I had ever met and I thought for this reason your interests had to be beyond my comprehension, perhaps posing nude, while holding a very large book.

It’s important for all of you to know that on more than one occasion when I was shopping at Walmart in the suburbs, visiting the love of my life—the other love of my life, the one I’ll one day marry—I didn’t cart the groceries to the car. Instead, I left my shopping cart by the large sliding doors and carried the groceries, placed carefully in well-structured tote bags, across the vast parking lot to the car, laughing along the way. “How capable I am,” I thought. “How prepared.”

Walking while eating a gyro wrap means dropping pieces of ground meat on a dirty sidewalk. From behind it must look like I naturally produce just a little bit of cooked, seasoned meat wherever I go.

You know, you can always follow the trail if you ever need me.


Felicity was the Deputy Editor for The Inquisitive Eater in 2017-2018. A recent graduate of The New School Creative Writing MFA program, her work has been published in Brooklyn Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater, and Enchantress Magazine, and is forthcoming in LIT. In 2019, she was a finalist in the Voice Over Competition. Her writing can also be seen with Barbershop Books and Healthy Materials Lab. Felicity enjoys writing in all its forms. You can find her on Twitter @charmingfelic

Featured image via Flickr.

Photo by Mia Penaloza.

 

Glynn Pogue is a powerhouse. A fellow New School MFA alum (2017), with several pieces published in reputable magazines, and named Brooklyn Magazine’s 2018 “30 Under 30,” Glynn is ambitious, eloquent, and a total bad-ass. I was lucky not only to sit down and talk over a meal with her, but in her home where she made me a delicious vegetarian dinner of tacos, beans and rice. We got to talking about her childhood in Bed-Stuy and discovered that both of us grew up with ambitious mothers who traveled a lot for work. Sated with homemade cocktails in hand, we got started with the interview.

Felicity: What’s your writing routine if you have one?

Glynn: I think I write in bursts. This is kind of a whack analogy, but it’s like a faucet. So if I start to think about something, it just continues. The faucet opens, and it continues to run and run and run all day. I might wake up in the morning with an idea, and I’ll start to jot something down as I’m walking to the train station. Then, while I’m on the train, or at work, the story is writing itself in my head, and I’m constantly taking notes. So then, by the time I sit at my desk, it’s already there.

Felicity: I’ve recently started writing in my Notes app and it’s really helpful.

Glynn: I write in my Notes. I send myself emails constantly of exact lines that I want to use, or stories I want to write so that I don’t forget, and then it’s about finding the time. But I sort of see it before it happens.

Felicity: Do you snack on anything when you’re reading or writing?

Glynn: I love gummy bears so much. Little snacks like that, that you can just constantly grab. If I get into a full meal, then there’s no writing happening probably. Maybe some takeout sushi, which is like my favorite thing to order. But usually, whiskey or red wine, if I’m honest about things.

Felicity: I haven’t heard sushi for writing before. That sounds good because it’s something you can kind of pick on.

Glynn: It can’t be something that I’m really digging into and enjoying, it has to be something kind of like mindless, where you’re biting and continuing to move. I also don’t even know how often I actually eat while I’m writing. It depends. If I’m writing a piece that’s kind of kicking my ass, and that’s usually something that I’m writing for an assignment or something, it’s just coffee and wine. If it’s a piece I’m really digging into for passion, then maybe I’m writing and then maybe I’m taking a break to go cook, which is a thing that really fills me. I love cooking. It’s a whole creative process in itself.

Felicity: What’s your favorite broke artist meal?

Glynn: Oh my god, I love this question. Literally, what we just had. I can buy five cans of beans from the grocery store for $5. So I get a black beans, a red beans, a chickpeas, a black-eyed peas, and pink beans. And I plan my whole meal around that bean, that protein, and some kale, and a boiled egg, and some tomato. I just cut up some tomatoes and put them on top. That’s my favorite.

Felicity: That’s so healthy!

Glynn: But it’s like the cheapest thing too, because it’s just all vegetables and canned goods and shit. And my favorite broke meal eating out: I love a good dollar slice, the dollar slice spot even right by The New School, right by the A train.

Felicity: What food do you think is the most fun to write about?

Glynn: Okay. I’m going to give two answers. I was actually recently working on a piece for a travel publication about the Civil Rights Trail in Alabama. It was an interesting piece to write because I was going to the south as a person with southern roots who doesn’t know a lot about her southern heritage. My grandparents were all from Virginia and South Carolina, but they lived in New Jersey and DC. The only thing I actually knew about my southern heritage was the food, that’s the only thing that had trickled its way into my history or my memories. The food was so present; the greens that have been simmering on the stove all day, and yams, and mac and cheese and, like, soul food. So I love writing about that cuisine because it’s so steeped in tradition and there’s so many memories there. And when I think about it, it reminds me of my grandparents who’ve all since passed. There’s so many stories there. As soon as I think about that food, it reminds me of being in the kitchen with my grandmother. Now I’m thinking about her and her stories and how she looked. They’re so much tied to that food. And then, in general, I like writing about food while traveling. I like the process of discovering a dish and the history of that dish. I love a food that’s steeped in tradition, that people have been making forever, that has sort of transformed as it’s been passed from hand to hand to hand to hand.

Felicity: Do have an example of a food that you discovered?

Glynn: When I was living in Cambodia, my favorite thing to eat every morning was called bor bor, which is just basically a rice porridge, like a congee. Which is crazy because I’m a vegetarian, pseudo-vegan. But they made this broth out of all sorts of bones and bits of pigs and cows and chickens—everything. And then, like, rice is in it. And they’re stewing this out all day and they’ll put some lemongrass in it and some scallions and all kinds of spices, I still haven’t determined what they were. So it’s a beautiful base of this rich, ricey broth. This is a beautiful soup basically. And then they’ll add fish to it. And then they’ll add beans sprouts. I’d always load in a ton of chili and fresh lime. And I would have it every morning. And that was really interesting to me because from my understanding it is a result of the Khmer Rouge when there was literally no food because the country was going through genocide. And it’s a country that produces a lot of rice, so rice is always the base to all meals there. I’m always interested in traditions or practices that come out of necessity that have been turned into something that people have made beautiful.

Felicity: Some of the best dishes are made that way.

Glynn: It’s interesting to think about a meal like that porridge and just talking about soul food, as well, which was also like, “We don’t have anything. These are the things that we have to make, and we’re going to pour our love into them.” Oh my god, I just connected these dots. I like food born out of “struggle” or “hardship” or something that has been repurposed and filled with love, and that has stories and tradition.

Felicity: It’s kind of like art made from hardship—that also tends to be really beautiful. What is your favorite piece of writing/art that has to do with food?

Glynn: The first thing that comes to mind is Cigarettes and Coffee. It’s this film where all these different scenes are intersecting with each other. It’s a lot of short vignettes, all these conversations that take place over cigarettes and coffee, in a diner in all these places. It’s just dope. And I think I like it partially because I create fantasies of a writer’s life, and a lot of that is always linked to black coffee and cigarettes and, like, a black turtleneck. This is my artist identity. So, I think the Cigarettes and Coffee thing kind of tells some sort of story about that lifestyle. Also, these people are in a diner and all they can get is the coffee that is, like, bottomless.

Felicity: Unlimited refills!

Glynn: I love films that are discourse-based. I think of that movie, My Dinner With Andre. It’s just a conversation. Or those films Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, they’re like movies of dialogue, which is interesting when you think about any kind of art made about a meal, because…

Felicity: It has to be around discourse.

Glynn: It has to, right? If it takes place where people are sitting down and they’re sharing a meal, then there’s conversation and that’s it. Unless something crazy inserts itself. But now that I think about it, if you choose to make a piece of art around a meal, then you want to highlight the characters that are at the table and what’s being discussed there, which makes me think about that Master of None episode, “Thanksgiving.”

Felicity: That is such a good episode.

Glynn: Really beautiful. That’s also another great one. And similar to what I was talking about earlier with the soul food. So much of the episode is all the preparations to make these dishes that they’re going to have there. And a lot of what they made is really familiar to me.

Felicity: What’s your ideal meal, finances put aside? Like, the opposite of a broke artist meal.

Glynn: I think of that guy, Jiro, the sushi guy. I’m obsessed with sushi. I really fucking love sushi so much. It’s probably one of my favorite foods. And Jiro supposedly makes the best sushi of all time. There’s a film called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Really beautiful. If you ever watch Chef’s Table, where they make food look really poetic and there are these slow shots of people cutting things and the music is really dramatic and beautiful—Jiro Dreams of Sushi is similar to that. So this guy Jiro, in Japan, it’s impossible to get a table at his restaurant. Two of my friends, when I was in Cambodia, flew to Japan just for the day to go to eat there. And it’s like the kind of thing where he’s constantly putting plates, putting plates, putting plates. He’s just there all day. You have no choice over what he’s going to give you. You just take it. I would love that. I’m bougie as fuck, even though I’m very, very poor. I’m just really trying to get to a point where money is never a problem. I want bougie-ass dinners all the time. Chef’s choice. Sitting at the chef’s table, and every dish has a wine pairing. So like Jiro, but, like, any place where I can have that kind of thing where every little bit of it is thought about.

Felicity: That sounds amazing. I want to experience that.

Glynn: In Cambodia, it’s really strange, they have a really good food scene there, and I ate at a Michelin star restaurant for, like, nothing. And it was like a six-course dinner where there was foam and random shit—you know when there’s foam, we’re doing things now.

Felicity: Yeah, things are not usually in foam form. Okay, if you had to live off of one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Glynn: I think I want to eat pasta—but then I would have problems staying snatched! I think, ultimately, pasta is my favorite thing. Damn everything’s connecting even more, talking about soul food and the congee dish. I like comfort food. I like things I can eat in a bowl, like cheese and saucy stuff and savory things. So yeah, pasta. Like a really, really good spaghetti.

Felicity: What is your favorite book and what food would you associate with that book?

Glynn: I think I’m going to say The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Junot Díaz is my favorite writer. He’s Dominican, so just literally Dominican food. When I was in high school, there was this Dominican restaurant that me and my friends loved to go to. We ate a lot of mofongo and tostones and all that kind of stuff. It just reminds me of Dominican food, in general. Mashed plantain and dark meat. All of the seafood and the good rice and a good ass bean and some fucking plantains. Perfect.

Felicity: That sounds really good—definitely, want to try that now. What do you think is the most writerly food/drink?

Glynn: Seriously, coffee, red wine, and whiskey.

Felicity: Ok. All liquids.

Glynn: Yeah! And cheese and, like, grapes, and crackers and figs. I could eat all those things at The New School’s readings and every other literary thing ever. For a while, I was just like, “I’m hanging out with the wine and cheese set,” which is the literary group.

Felicity: The snacks, the bougie snacks.

Glynn: Yeah, the bougie snacks. But also on a pseudo-budget because I buy Cracker Barrel and saltines from the corner store then eat it with cheap wine.

Felicity: But it’s delicious.

Glynn: And it fills you up and it looks fancy.

Felicity: That’s like a metaphor for being a writer: looks really fancy but is actually broke.

Glynn: That’s what I think that the cheese and wine thing is about.

Felicity: Bougie with no basis.

Since we were in Glynn’s apartment, I decided to do food associations using the books on her bookshelf. Glynn went through different books she had and discussed which foods she associated with them.

Negroland by Margo Jefferson – Immediate association is fucking cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Like a high tea, like you’re at cotillion and you’re trying to learn how to cross your legs.

Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlancRandom Family is really one of my most favorite fucking books of all time. It’s written by a journalist, so it’s reported, but it’s this layered story about these people who live in the Bronx, who live uptown. It’s super New York. So let’s go with Italian ices, New York City summer stuff you’re eating when you’re out on the block, at the block party kind of thing.

Meeting Faith by Faith Adiele – This book is written by one of my mentors. She was one of the first black monks in Thailand. So let’s just say a pad thai, which is also one of my favorite things. I think Thai food is another amazing broke writers’ meal to feel bougie, too, because Thai restaurants always will have some fly-ass décor inside and it’s like super dark and moody and shit. But your meal is like $20. It’s like a good cheap date.

The Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique – I would say it makes me think of roti and escovitch fish, like Caribbean food, West Indian food. Which is another big part of my food love, being from New York and being of a diasporic black New York experience where a lot of my friends are West Indian and black American. So I was introduced to a lot of this kind of food and culture. I actually really, really, really love stories about the Caribbean. Love it.

Here Comes this Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn – That’s a beautiful book. It’s set in Jamaica and makes me think of like jerk chicken and oxtails and all that stuff.

Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch by Carolyn Keene – I read all of these as a kid. I read them every summer with my parents when we’d go to the Jersey Shore, where we have a bed and breakfast. So it makes me think of saltwater taffy, and steamed shrimp or, like, fresh seafood off the wharf.

All Tomorrow’s Parties by Robb Spillman – I actually interviewed him when I was at The New School, and it’s about his times in Berlin just being an artist and being Bohemian and all that shit. I was in Berlin a month ago, two months ago. So my food memories are still semi-fresh. The thing that was dope about Berlin was I didn’t eat anything that felt distinctly German. It actually felt fairly international. So I had amazing falafel but it was Sudanese falafel, I’m pretty sure, Sudanese or Somali. It had a spicy peanut sauce, and you could add halloumi to it and tofu along with the falafel. It was a really interesting falafel that I’ve had only in Berlin.


Glynn Pogue is a 26-year-old writer from Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. BedStuyBrat was her AOL Instant Messenger name back in the T-Mobile Sidekick days, and the moniker still applies, as much of Glynn’s works centers around her community of brown people and brownstones. Named one of Brooklyn Magazine’s 30 under 30, the do-or-die dreamer’s writing has been featured in Vogue, Guernica, Essence, and National Geographic Traveler, among others. A graduate of The New School’s MFA in Creative Writing program, Glynn is currently crafting a collection of essays on race, class, identity and her beloved Bed-Stuy. Find more of her work at glynnpogue.com.

Headshot by John Midgley.


Felicity is a recent graduate of The New School Creative Writing MFA program, her work has been published in Brooklyn Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater, and Enchantress Magazine. Her writing can also be seen with Barbershop Books and Healthy Materials Lab. Currently the Digital Publishing Assistant at The University of Chicago Press, Felicity enjoys writing in all its forms. You can find her on Twitter @charmingfelic

Roly-poly, one tooth missing, and all shiny with sweat, pudgy little hands buried in bread dough on Gran’s dining room chair—you’re happy, all of five years old. It’s my favorite snapshot of you in my memory.

Those early days are all flashes and snapshots. Soaking up the essence of anise and molasses and dried squid in your skin, you thrived in that quaint black-and-white kitchen. You watched the fruitcakes baking all October and November, nose scrunched from too much sherry wine and sugar in the air. You crunched on mounds of crisp chicken skin and steamed baby prawns with bowls of white rice. The last Oreo, you stole off my post-homework snack plate.

I was over twice your age at the time, so, of course, I had to let you.

At seven, you hit a short noodle phase. You ate too-sweet spaghetti, dug out the hot dog slices first, then sopped up the sauce with the pasta. You smiled with big carbonara noodle moustaches on purpose. You spooned Sadiq’s corn and carrots over everything squiggly as often as you could. When you discovered instant yakisoba, you fell into a new obsession. I’d never before met anyone who considered the merits of rich beef versus spicy chicken so seriously. Or ate so many “testing” cups every week.

I’m not quite sure who you bribed to get your first stick of street-side barbecue, but that first bite turned you into the incinerator, the food disposal unit, the bottomless, gaping pit. Mom’s half-eaten roast chicken breast with the overflowing gravy boat on the side, the last four bites of my pumpkin ravioli at Puccini’s, maybe a third of Dad’s porterhouse steak—it all disappeared into your gut. Uni and unagi? Yes, please. Balut and laing? Of course! Escargot and frog legs? They slid down your throat before I could blink. You traded a slice of your braised pork loin for a bit of mom’s parchment salmon and a slice of my rainbow quiche in one go. You cajoled us all into ordering different entrées, explicitly to swipe forkfuls of everything. Except the steamed veggies. I’m sure you thought I was insane when I hit my salad phase. Was it you or me who called it rabbit food? It certainly threw a wrench in your dining room barter system.

You were twelve the night I found you searing sea bass in Mom’s new copper-toned kitchen. You said that you needed help with photo documentation for Home Ec and that we had to eat on the good china in the formal dining room. Normally, I hate sea bass, but what you made melted on my tongue. Through your teens, you turned hobby-cooking into an art. First appeared the seafood risotto, all creamy rice with sweet-soft scallop and shrimp in fine-diced little pieces. You did it because you were hungry and stressed, you said, but I didn’t even know what saffron looked like until that afternoon. One night I stumbled home late after a long afternoon at the gym, and Jane told me dinner would be ready at ten. You were making ramen that took six hours to cook, broth included, from scratch. And your truffled mac n’ cheese, that sharp gruyere, Parmigiano-Reggiano shavings, mozzarella, and a sprinkling of pecorino? I asked you for the recipe and you said to Google Giada de Laurentiis. Hers doesn’t taste the same.

You began waxing eloquent about food notes, flavor profiles, and the difference between smokiness and gaminess in meat. One sip and you determined if it was marsala wine or port in the sauce. One whiff and you could tell if the salmon had been cooked in a deglazed pan. One touch and you knew if the foie gras had been left out a bit too long before it was fried. No one believes me when I say, “Migs has never gone to cooking school.”

That all changed, the year of your first prom. Your cheeks hollowed out, your pants slipped off your waist, and you gave ‘dietary restrictions’ an entirely new meaning. You thought you were too fat, so you started eating rabbit food. You stopped cooking. The kitchen, the heart of the home, became a cold, perfunctory place. Visiting friends and family alike swore you’d turned into a skeleton. As for the rest of us in the house? I subsisted on protein shakes and lukewarm café sandwiches, while Mom did what she could with Eating Well recipes. Red cabbage salads, plain grilled chicken, okra in faux jambalaya—running on 1,200 calories a day was insane. Dad was only fine because, well, Dad eats anything (and he probably ate what he wanted at work). The whole house sighed a collective breath of relief when you put the suit and tie away and returned to the stove. For the next prom, you remembered moderation instead.

I learned one thing that year: I absolutely despise okra in every way, shape, and form.

I learned a lot about food from you. It’s best to dig into crab with your hands in Singapore, to suck off the chili juices from your fingers at the table. No steak tastes better than when it is served medium rare. Brussel sprouts taste best with bacon. EVOO is just olive oil, extra virgin. Slurping soup isn’t bad, as long as you do it in a Chinese restaurant, never in a French one. You must hit up every Michelin-starred and Michelin-recommended restaurant in every city you visit.

The world is your oyster, quite literally, I think. Kangaroo stew, spiced a la boeuf bourguignon in London. Fresh xiao long bao after a midnight flight to Hong Kong. A feast of wursts in a Berlin train station. Trdelník sugar highs in Prague. That unpronounceable seafood spread in that Yucatan restaurant in Cancun. Seven courses of fugu in Tokyo—does the danger of the poison make the fish sweeter? Tom-yum in a roll from that experimental place, Gaggan, in Bangkok. Real Roman pizza, one whole pie per person—you pulled me into hamster-cheeking alongside you. Can you ever forget the fresh sambal from Made’s wife—or was the babi guling your best meal in Bali? I can’t remember the name of that vegetable soup in Florence. Can you?

There was a five-foot-nine hole missing in my life when I moved to Vancouver. I heard you whispering in my ear that the mjadra at Nuba was too cold, but the salmon in that city was the freshest you’d ever had. That you-toned voice in my head prompted food lists of each city quarter, including pulled noodles, baby back ribs, poutine, and Nero’s Belgian waffles. You never got to visit me there, but the list is in my old notebook whenever you want it.

I’m now in Manhattan, full of tiny bodegas with goat meat burritos and speakeasies with five dollar-signs on Yelp. We’ve been continents away for years, so I’ve learned to cook for myself. Our Viber and Facebook chats are full of shared food pics.

You’ve come a long way from the giggly boy with snow-milk and cereal on his chin, but you’ll always be my favorite chef. You’re 21 this year, so I’m raising a bottle of Stella Artois for you.


Maikie Paje is currently earning her MFA in Fiction at the New School. She is a former English teacher and her work has been published in the Philippine Star, Home Lifestyle and Interiors, and BLush Anthology.

Featured Image via Pixabay.

I recall a man with a dream,
cholesterol filled wonder
coated in breadcrumbs,
fried in a scorching heat.
His spirit fills the bucket.
Flesh and bones are on
the menu, each come with
a coke and fries. Blood brushes
the lips of the customers.
Greasy marrow slips through
stained fingers. Hits the dirty
floor. Where he used to stand.


Oliver Loch is a twenty-one-year-old writer, currently working on a BA Honours degree in Creative Writing. Originally from Cardiff in Wales, he moved to Cheltenham in England for his degree. His university work keeps him busy, but he always has his own unique way of addressing different creative projects. Oliver continues to work hard at his degree with many future publications to come.

Featured image: Col. Sanders working in his kitchen in Corbin, KY

Featured image by Lou Bank

 

We are so thrilled to announce the launch of The Inquisitive Eater Anthology. The Anthology is our premiere print issue, and includes works by Ann Hood, Mira Jacob, Mila Jaroniec, David Lehman, Honor Moore, John Reed, Jessica Siskin, and Abigail Thomas, as well as our Food & Writing series with Sarah Gerard, Stephanie Danler and Min Jin Lee.
 
Join us to celebrate the launch!
June 20th, 7-9PM
KGB Bar’s The Red Room (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003, 3rd Floor)
 
The party will have a cash bar and free snacks by La Contenta Oeste & The Press Shop. 
This is an open event, so spread the word! RSVP on Facebook and share on social media.

 

85 E 4th Street houses the Kraine Theater, the famous KGB Bar, and, its latest edition, the Red Room. Though there is much discussion about its individual parts, the building as a whole has a long and rich history, much of which is evident. The owner, Denis Woychuk, is one of the wittiest, warmest people I’ve ever met, and is quick to open up.

As we sit and chat in the Red Room, he’s quick to relate everything that’s happened in 85 East 4th: “In 1838 this building was built. Think about this. The Civil War is almost 30 years in the future. Lincoln’s wearing short pants and studying his grammar, he’s… I really don’t know what Lincoln was doing.”

Almost since the start, the building was used for political purposes. “In 1878, this building was the first headquarters for the Women’s Aid Society in America,” Denis says. Concerns for worker’s rights, particularly immigrant worker’s rights rose at the beginning of the 20th Century, and by 1911, the same year as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the building was occupied by the cloak maker’s union. “This was a big union part of town,” Denis notes, saying that Union Square wasn’t named after the café. The building became such a political hub that Emma Goldman, perhaps the most famous anarchist of her time, presented to the Secret Society of Anarchists in this building. “The irony, of course, is ‘as reported by The New York Times,’” Denis chuckles. “So, ‘big secret,’ you know?”

But its rebellious history doesn’t stop there. During Prohibition, the bar became a speakeasy run by Lucky Luciano, the father of modern organized crime. This is where the art deco style of the bar comes in. “The stained glass behind the bar, that’s original,” Denis says. Fifteen years after the Prohibition ended, because of anti-communist attacks and McCarthyism, the building went back to its workers’ rights beginnings as the Ukrainian Labor Home bought the building and took refuge in this space which had now become so accustomed to keeping things hidden. When Denis talks about the building, he does so like it’s an old friend he’s had the pleasure of knowing. The building was still a Ukrainian Labor Home when Denis, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, started going with his father, a Ukrainian immigrant, who would come to the Ukrainian Labor Home to drink.

Felicity LuHill

After college, Denis put himself through law school by teaching. He found he enjoyed teaching his art students better than his law students. “Surprise! Shocking, right?” he says. “It was much more interesting, what [the art students] had going on in their heads.” This inspired him to open up Kraine Gallery and Kraine Theater on the first floor of 85 East 4th. ‘Kraine’ was short for ‘Ukraine.’ “That’s what a hipster I was, right? ‘Take that ‘U’ off there. Kraine club baby!’” Denis laughs at himself. While Kraine Gallery is long gone, Kraine Theater remains, and so does the Kraine Gallery’s legacy. Fun fact: though Denis wanted to call the bar KGB because of its covert history and the covert nature of the bar when it opened, KGB actually stands for Kraine Gallery Bar. It was the only way Denis was given permission to call it ‘KGB.’

Around this time, Denis became a lawyer for the criminally insane and wrote and published two children’s books. Meanwhile, the second floor of 85 East 4th was still run by the Ukrainian Labor Home. He became close friends with the little old ladies who cooked upstairs. “You could get a soup, a salad, a three-course meal with meat, potatoes and a vegetable and a shot for five dollars,” Denis says. “It was insanely cheap even then.” He held parties in the Ukrainian Labor Home once a week, letting artists eat cheap and giving the 80-year-old owners some customers. It was this friendship that got him the bar in 1993, when they couldn’t run it anymore. From the start, he knew, “I didn’t want to have a sign. I wanted it to be true to the whole speakeasy thing.” People told him again and again that this was a bad idea, “A business with no sign is a sign of no business,” they said. But he stuck to his instincts. “The thing about New York is, if nobody knows about it, everybody wants to go.” Along with not having a sign, he kept the original art deco glass and the original propaganda posters from days past.

In 1994, KGB Bar started doing literary events, thanks to a helper of his from Columbia University. When they had a reading for Frank Browning’s Culture of Desire, The New York Times sent a reporter. The article read “New Literary Series at KGB Bar.” Denis remembers his reaction: “Oh, look, we have a new literary series. The Times can’t be wrong.” He hadn’t thought of it as a series before. He started getting people to read every Sunday night. Then with the help of Star Black and The New School’s David Lehman, KGB started a poetry series. It didn’t take long for KGB to become a literary hub. They popularized readings in bars with no fee, with the hope listeners might buy a drink or two. “I was influenced by the beats,” Denis says. Going to bars in New York after coming back from college, Denis says “it was disco balls and pinky rings,” the era of John Travolta. He remembers thinking, “smart people want to have drinks, too.”

At the same time the reading series started getting popular, Denis wrote a book, about his experience representing the criminally insane, Attorney for the Damned, which was published in 1996, the same year he decided to quit his day job to manage the bar and raise his children full time. The reading series started picking up a lot of famous people, Denis recalls, “We got Jonathan Ames, Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Safran Foer… some more Jonathans.” Junot Diaz was discovered by an agent while reading at the KGB. Michael Cunningham and Daniel Handler enjoy reading there. Joyce Carol Oates was the first to read in the Red Room, though it wasn’t what the Red Room is today. It was formerly a black box theater painted red, and Denis was forced to book it because he had accidently double-booked Joyce Carol Oates and Victoria Looseleaf for the same night. He deprecates his management skills. Nowadays, the managerial duties are performed by Lori Schwarz. “I’m expecting her to take over the KGB any day now,” he says. And what’s Denis’s favorite reading? “After Robert Polito and David Lehman?” Denis laughs, remembering he’s talking to a New School rep. “After those two? Those are one and two in whatever order you decide.” His “third favorite” is David Foster Wallace. Denis remembers fondly his bartender, Dan, famous in his own right as the bartender of KGB since its inception, was Wallace’s opening reader.

Jennifer Boyer via Flickr

The reading series became so popular that he eventually had to refuse readings on the weekends. He remembers being recognized by George Plimpton from The Paris Review: “He awards us the best literary series in New York…. He says, ‘You know, in terms of the quality of what they offer, it’s very high level, but the 92nd Street Y charges 15 dollars to get in and KGB has a live, full bar, so I’m going to give the award to KGB.’” At this time Denis was forced to get a sign since writers were having such a hard time directing their fans on where to attend their readings, the irony being that he didn’t need to get a sign in order to gain business but because of it. This was also around the time reading series in bars were catching on. “But here’s the thing, you don’t open a reading room to make a lot of money, because it doesn’t.” Denis says. “People will not pay 5 dollars on a regular basis to see someone read.”

He decided to remodel the black box Red Room into today’s Red Room, when his youngest daughter went to college. “I need a project every year,” Denis claims. In addition to his aforementioned projects, he has also written a few musicals, including one by the same name as his book Attorney for the Damned. On New Year’s Eve of 2013, his project for the year was complete and the Red Room opened, a true revival of the speakeasy 85 East 4th once was, complete with a bath tub made for bath tub gin. Once a month, the Red Room hosts a 20s-themed Absinthe party, called the Green Fairy. Though the Red Room as it stands today is by far the youngest performance space of the building, it maintains a busy schedule, hosting readings and jazz gigs every week. The Red Room is also reminiscent of the days of Kraine Gallery as it frequently hosts art shows, showcasing different visual art forms on the walls of the space. While Denis views KGB Bar as his “25-year-old dive bar,” he sees the Red Room as a performance space, a place to take a date, “you can have live music, but it’s not so loud that you can’t talk.”

In everything Denis does at 85 East 4th, he sees himself as someone who is there to serve and support artists. “[Artists] need to commune. No one is an artist in a vacuum. They’re usually part of a movement…. I’m here to give people the opportunity to share their art.” Denis smiles. “I’m here to serve my community. What can I get you?”

Felicity LuHill

Come see this historic place at our launch party. You can also visit KGB Bar & The Red Room.


Felicity is the Deputy Editor for The Inquisitive Eater. A recent graduate of The New School Creative Writing MFA program, her work has been published in Brooklyn Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater, and Enchantress Magazine. Her writing can also be seen with Barbershop Books and Healthy Materials Lab. Felicity enjoys writing in all its forms. You can find her on Twitter @charmingfelic

Featured image by Jennifer Boyer via Flickr

When you think of a New York deli, words like “cool” and “hip” aren’t usually the first ones that come to mind. They do, however, when you walk into NoHo’s The Press Shop.

Though you wouldn’t know it by his mature and down-to-earth nature, owner Oliver Ressler founded The Press Shop at the ambitious age of 24, a little over a year ago. When taking into account its fresh design, eclectic music and creative take on sandwiches, you can see how the shop was curated to perfection by an innovative mind. Recently, I got to sit and chat with Oliver about his journey.

Felicity: Why sandwiches?

Oliver: It’s funny, a lot of people ask me that in New York, because when you think of big cities, you think people are more health conscious. I wanted to disprove that sandwiches are unhealthy. I disagree with that. Also, sandwiches were my favorite food growing up as a kid. When I thought through this concept, all the emotions, all the memories, all the nostalgia came from having sandwiches with my father at the Jewish deli, going to my favorite Italian sandwich shop in LA after school with my buddies. That’s what gave me the impetus to want to come in and start the shop. For me, it was all about what foods I loved as a kid. Sandwiches were where this whole thing started.

Felicity: What was your vision for The Press Shop?

Oliver: I couldn’t find a place that put heart and soul into the sandwiches that they were making. I wanted to try to create something that put a little bit of story and nostalgia into how they did it. You come to New York and there are thousands of restaurants, and one of the things that struck me as amazing is there was nothing that bridged the gap between the sit-down, fancy sandwich panineria-type concept and Subway or Potbelly. I was looking to do something in that niche, in that in-between, because, I think people want to enjoy an experience, and they want to come to a place where they’re listening to great music, where they’re seeing cool people, where they’re seeing cool food, and enjoying that all under the guise of it being pretty damn good food.

Felicity: It’s like a work meal but still an enjoyable experience

Oliver: That’s exactly right. I think that’s where a lot of fine casual’s starting to move. It doesn’t matter if you’re eating out of a cardboard bowl or if you’re eating it off of fine china, the food has to taste really good and it has to give you an ambiance. That’s what I love about the differences of quick service restaurants, you can help tailor an experience that’s ten minutes long. Our job is to brighten someone’s day when they think it’s gonna be a pretty monotonous normal experience. Our job is to make them bob their heads in a line, and then get a sandwich that’s really good. The idea is to have them savor those ten minutes, and say, “We hope you come back for another ten minutes.”

Felicity: When did you start cooking?

Oliver: In college my senior year, one of my roommates bought a book of recipes. He wanted to learn how to be a better home cook. We started cooking two or three times a week, and more of our friends would come over to pregame at our apartment, because we had food. It was something that was bringing people together, and I thought it was pretty funny. For us, it was easy and fun and therapeutic, and for other people, they just really enjoyed free food. He became a better home cook and I became passionate about how food gets made, who buys it, and why you buy it.

Felicity: How did you come up with the name The Press Shop? It’s funny, when I first heard the name, I thought it had been around for years.

Oliver: What’s funny about it, going through the trademark process, I was like “100 percent, The Press Shop is taken. Has to be.” and by some grace of something, the trademark lawyer was like, “You’re not gonna believe this, but the name’s available.” I always loved the idea of pressed sandwiches, but to me, being in New York, we have a lot of allusions to newspapers here. The way we thought about the name was a little double entendre, because we’re in a city where the press dominates our daily lives. I’ve always had a passion for reading the news every morning. I wake up and, if I don’t have my coffee and read the news a little bit, I feel like I’m naked for the day. That was one thing my dad harps on me a lot, “You got to know what’s going on,” whether it’s in your neighborhood or globally, you got to know what’s going on in your world. Reading the news was a way for me to connect with my dad, who’s one of the most important people in my life.

At around this point, one of Oliver’s employees comes over to us with a Nutella sandwich. Dessert sandwiches is another facet that makes The Press Shop unique. Oliver and I split the sandwich, which is warm and absolutely delicious.

Oliver: The Press Shop sandwiches are supposed to make you feel something. They’re supposed to make you feel like a kid again when you’re having a bad day. We have a lot of ladies and gentlemen come in here, and they’re like, “I need a grilled cheese and tomato soup,” and they have it, and a lot of them come back in and say, “It just brightens up my day.” And that’s our job.

Felicity: What were some of the challenges that you faced when you were starting?

Oliver: You’ve got to pick the right people. You’ve got to find ways to inspire outside of how much money you offer them. You have to separate yourself by creating a good work environment, and just make sure that you care. There’s a lot to do, but I don’t do it alone, not even close. If I did, I wouldn’t have a business. The food can be great, but it’s only as good as the people and the care that they put into it. They’re doing an amazing job. One of the toughest things for me, being young, you want to tell everyone that you know everything. We’ve gotten bit in the ass by me thinking I know everything. The power of “I don’t know” is one of the most important things I’ve learned in the early parts of this business. Asking for help is not weakness, forgetting how to ask for help is, in my opinion.

Felicity: How do you feel celebrating the Shop’s one-year anniversary?

Oliver: It feels crazy that we’ve had a business for a year. Most businesses don’t make it to this period of time. Most businesses don’t have this ability to work hard to stay consistently good, while coming up with new innovations and new things, in their first year. We’ve gotten to see what works, what doesn’t work, and adapt quickly. Another thing about being open a year is, you see what didn’t stay open for a year. Our block was totally different a year ago. It’s kind of crazy, because you see how New York changes in that regard. You see the waves of people coming and going.

Felicity: How do you see the shop growing? What do you see for the future?

Oliver: So a year from now, I’d like to have more Press Shops. I’m not sure what format we’d like them in. Maybe they’d go in urban spaces, maybe they go in hospital food courts, maybe right smack on campus, but I’d like to have a couple more. Because you want to see what you can do on number two. I have no delusions; it’s super hard to get there. Certain days, you’re cold, you’re waking up early, you’re staying late, you’re doing monotonous tasks that you don’t want to do, like when we put the letters on that board. No one in the shop who worked on that loved doing that. That was not great fun. It was screaming across the shop at 8:30 PM, “Hey, can you throw me an S, please? No, not that S, I need an S half that size.” I remember when I went to get those signs, I called ten places, and one of the guys was like, “You got to come now to show me what you want.” They were an hour-and-a-half outside the city, deep Long Island. I had to call a big Uber, because they were big signs. We were just sitting in putt-putt traffic for JFK, and in that moment I was like, “Man, I really like what I do.” Stuff like that changes the way you look at tough businesses.

Felicity: The restaurateur has to do a little bit of everything.

Oliver: There are days when I’m up on the line, there are days where I’ll help chop stuff downstairs. Yesterday our dishwasher came in late, so you hop in and you wash dishes. That’s probably what I’m best at, because everyone else is so much faster than me at everything else in the shop. They always double take when I’m washing dishes, and I’m like, “Dude, I’m better at this than anything else I can do here. I don’t want to screw up your guys’ efficiency.”

Felicity: Do you have any advice for fellow foodies or cooks?

Oliver: Make up your own mind on food. Food’s supposed to be something that you love. Make food yours. Don’t just go to a place because it has a nine on Infatuation. Go because you want to go. If it happens to have a nine on Infatuation, awesome, that means that you have the same taste as Infatuation that day. Go out and find that place that makes you happy, and ask yourself “Why?” Go find stuff that you love, and keep having it, over and over.

You can learn more about The Press Shop here.


Felicity is the Deputy Editor for The Inquisitive Eater. A recent graduate of The New School Creative Writing MFA program, her work has been published in Brooklyn Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater, and Enchantress Magazine. Her writing can also be seen with Barbershop Books and Healthy Materials Lab. Felicity enjoys writing in all its forms. You can find her on Twitter @charmingfelic

Featured image courtesy of The Press Shop.