Growing up, I fantasized about dinner consisting of Chinese takeout eaten straight out of the takeout boxes—just like I saw on TV (specifically, I had my dreams of very Gilmore Girls-esque meals where my family and I would order a week’s worth of Chinese takeout, eat it out of the containers, and live off it for a week).
However, I grew up vegetarian in a small town in Alabama, and there weren’t a lot of vegetarian Chinese takeout options—clearly an obstacle to my master plan. As a kid, I felt like I was missing out on a quintessential dining experience (we would eat Indo-Chinese food when we went to the city, and I absolutely loved it—if you’ve never had it, this is my plug for it). When I got older, I moved to bigger cities and my culinary world seemed to expand. Vegetarianism grew in popularity, and I started trying meat; I could finally live out my Chinese takeout dreams and it met every expectation and hope I had for it.
Courtesy of the Asian American Historical Society of Dallas. Photo: Stephanie Drenka.
What I didn’t know was the rich history behind Chinese takeout and cuisine. However, Leftover: The Enduring Legacy of Chinese Cuisine in Dallas, a recent exhibition showcasing the city’s Chinese food culture, demanded my attention and my interest was piqued. The exhibit itself was thoughtfully coordinated by creative director Christina Hahn: it featured old menus from the historic Dallas Chinese restaurants (what I would do to pay $1-3 for an entire meal); replicas of restaurants; photos and videos from decades past highlighting the various restaurants and people who created them; and art installations created by high school students from the DFW area, including a mobile constructed of paper fortune cookies. The talent and depth that came through the student pieces was especially striking. It all told a complex but meaningful story as you walked through the rooms–imagining what this time in Dallas looked like through the lens of the Chinese American community in Dallas. Stephanie Drenka (who I had the opportunity to meet and let me just say that she is who I want to be when I grow up) and Denise Johnson started the Asian American Historical Society in Dallas to preserve the amazing history of the Asian American community in Dallas, and this was one of their first public exhibits.
You can feel the effort and pride in the Chinese restaurateur community throughout the exhibit. I came to learn that the history of this community was one that required fight. Around 1872, the first Chinese immigrants arrived in Dallas after working on the railroads. Ten years later, the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed. By then, hate sentiment toward the Chinese community had already set in. Chinese Americans couldn’t get jobs outside the community, and many turned to starting their own businesses and supporting each other. Eventually, many established restaurants as a way to provide their cultural food for the community. As restaurateurs struggled to access ingredients, as many ingredients had to be brought in from San Francisco, the Chinese culinary scene in North Texas continued to innovate; entrepreneur Buck Jung supplied wonton wrappers, fortune cookies, and noodles to the the Dallas Chinese community, and ultimately became a major supplier for the eastern United States, allowing for a more expansive map of Chinese cuisine. This was all a direct reflection of the community’s constant resilience in Dallas.
Courtesy of the Asian American Historical Society of Dallas. Photo: Mark Quach.
That’s what showed in the exhibit and the work Drenka and Johnson are doing—resilience. The Dallas Asian American Historical Society hosted a private showing for the families of the restaurateurs who were such an essential part of this history, and according to Drenka, the sense of community that was in the room during the event was palpable. Even during my visit, family members were walking through the exhibit and you could feel the emanating pride.
What to me was a dream based on TV and movies is so much more. It is a community that is resilient, that fought, that innovated—in the face of hatred. It is a community that has left its mark not just on Dallas but on the entire country. It goes beyond the food: it is a rich history that deserves to be highlighted and preserved.
Courtesy of the Asian American Historical Society of Dallas. Photo: Stephanie Drenka.
I could sit here and tell you of all the stories, of all the people whose histories make up this exhibit, but that would do a disservice to the curation of art and artifacts at Preservation Dallas’ Wilson House, where these families and community members are telling their own story. Rather, I implore you to read the stories for yourself which are being highlighted by the amazing team at the Asian American Historical Society; or, for those in the DFW area, go to the exhibit before September 22 and feel the magic yourself.
The exhibit program rightfully says on the back: “The legacy is here” and I couldn’t agree more.
“Leftover: The Enduring Legacy of Chinese Cuisine in Dallas” will remain on view at the Wilson House, located at 2922 Swiss Ave, through its closing event on the evening of Friday, September 22nd. For further information, please visit the exhibition page.
Shivani Patel is an attorney by day, baker and lover of all things food by night. She graduated from the University of Georgia with BAs in Linguistics and Public Relations and a JD. She currently lives in Dallas, Texas with her soon-to-be husband, and with this piece, she is fulfilling her dream of being a food writer.
a little bit of magic exists everyday think of the blue
liquid that turns dull clothes whiter and brighter
a chemical romance I wonder about absorption
love has unblinded me to the many ways holding
brings joy how I prefer a cigarette over a vape
your mouth held many silences so that you didn’t
have to become a liar there are many ways to kill
a cat has nine lives I want to see a pink flamingo
for real not the décor lighting before I die let me tell you
there is no substitute for experience except
experience and even god cannot stop time
from turning so I teach myself to mimic the rain
relish the pain repurpose like Marie Kondo
I get the flu from eating an orange is just another memory now
of where we met so I peel it dry it grind it mix it
with milk into a glow mask
January
Sifting through grey days in a shoebox room overlooking the Hudson and helicopters flying to and fro over it carrying people obsessed with aerial view some days it’s the delicious call of pork tacos on 42nd street, and on others it’s the 99 cent pizza slices down at 9th street that pull me out of my bed and winter misery.
Turning the page of The Crying Book and disembarking at 14th street only to find that I have layered all wrong again find myself walking to 16th and 5th to my favorite café creamy spinach quiches and potato burekas on display outside hats flying, dead leaves dancing in circles levitating marrying the smoke from kebabs sizzling in halal carts at street corners
hands become ice from collecting the 8 PM rain craving for the warmth of a mocha cappuccino from the little patisserie in East Village the familiar attendant at the register smiles puts in a free chocolate glazed donut in my bag Enjoy! And I start to think of the promise of summer as I bite into this kindness.
Aditi Bhattacharjee is an Indian writer, currently matriculating her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School, New York. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in Lunch Ticket, Evocations Review, Vagabond City, The Remnant Archive, Pile Press, SLAB and elsewhere. When not cooking poems, she is found reading war histories or experimenting with different kinds of curries. You can get in touch with her @beingadtastic
I usually just eat it like this. Kiwis with their skin on seeds in spices turned black the squash splitting its hairs from inside out just right there on the plate in its skin I usually eat it like that. Usually the skin and all I’ll just eat it like that when we wake up. Raw franks the real snappy ones or the Vermont beef ones the beef in Vermont ones like that with the skin on too. I liked when you ate things just like that after we’d fallen asleep and woken up because you weren’t afraid dirty hairy sweet potato skins or morning acids acrid on shriveled green whatever’s pink and gone sour deadened legumes lime halves in quiet disarray whatever’s separated from that which lies underneath it whatever’s separated from that which cooks right there next to it
anything that grows the way grass does that floats down brooks.
Ginger with its skin on downstairs ginger with its skin on raw the cooked the rotten. I usually just eat it like that in a little fur coat that is there’s no need to undress yet I just eat that on top of some rice I just eat that with rice. Everything’s been left dirty enough to eat passed round the city like this on hands wheels laps crates pillows been left clean enough to lack in tins of oil or tight plastic
I just eat it with my hands in front of the fridge light like that like a bear by a river or at a cafe for sixteen fifty downtown like that like a girl.
Who am I my tail is melting in a sour broth my morning stomach on two tortillas. You fried me up with two eggs flu eggs you wanted to mix my oil and mustard at the lunch counter get me on hot salad at the sandwich shop my ribs floated above your noodles my shoulders have caught your snot by the open kitchen. I’m for the people in bits inside a one-way street or tied up in strings for not the people I’m good for more than a buck thirty don’t you think you liked each other because you liked me.
Kath DeGennaro is a writer originally from Long Island. A graduate of The New School with her BA in The Arts, she currently lives in Brooklyn, where she is most often focused on documenting the Gowanus Canal.
I’ve become fascinated by birds. By no means am I a budding birdwatcher—I don’t have the patience nor does a pair of field binoculars with an eye relief of 15.1 millimeters fit into my shrinking budget. But I have discovered that the mourning dove’s melancholic coo calms me like pouring a glass of wine and listening to Sam Cooke croon throughout my kitchen.
For the past couple of summers, a family of mourning doves has thrived on our porch, their leather-brown nest of twigs and leaves glorious in its ramshackle construction. Their home is equally grotesque and beautiful, a one-bedroom flat overflowing with pea-sized droppings. If you stand on a ladder and peer into it, you’re likely to be both delighted and disgusted; as far as I can tell, the mourning dove is not a neat homemaker. But when you see the first blind slate-gray chicks raise their heads in mournful song, you forget about the specks of feces that inevitably rain down on your porch. You realize you’ve been invited to a celebration of nature, a welcoming of new life into the great web of things.
Birds Pursued by an Eagle, Japan, late 17th century. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
That said, what I love most about the mourning dove isn’t the chicks. It’s the way the mother and father’s brains are perfectly synchronized, how during a “shift change” one bird returns to the nest while the other bird flits away for nuts and berries. Often, this shift change happens simultaneously. On more than one occasion, a glass of Gamay swirling in my hand, I’ve watched the pair trade places without even so much as a passing glance at each other or the nest. Their instincts appear to be so finely tuned you could set them by an atomic clock. To me, it’s as mind-blowing as the language of bees. Or the fact that cheese exists.
This is the first summer our mourning doves haven’t returned to their home. Go figure: just when we started raising a baby in our own mottled nest, the doves have sought other real estate. Perhaps this is natural; bird pairs, like humans, might need to relocate for their own sanity. Or perhaps the doves no longer feel safe on our street in West Asheville. Recent evidence may support this theory.
Last summer, a stray cat we’ve subsequently labeled “The Murderer” crouched into our yard right as the first dove chicks haphazardly left their nest. I don’t know how long the chick waddled on the ground before the cat pounced. All I remember was the bird’s head hanging on, quite literally, by a single tendon, its body bloody and lifeless in the shadow of my tomato garden.
Unlike a smashed insect, snake, or even rabbit, a dead bird fills me with grief. Birds are supposed to soar effortlessly in the air, not suffer rigidly on the ground. They are symbols of love and hope, freedom and possibility. Even when I eat them, I prefer not to think of them clucking across a meadow or ambling out of a coop but riding the winds south for the winter. In my animal hierarchy, the bird occupies a tier near the top.
Even still, I understand that not all birds are created equal—both biologically and symbolically. Whereas one usually thinks nothing of consuming three hen eggs for breakfast, dining on an ostrich egg is (or at least “should be”) a memorable experience. During hunting season, a turkey is a prime candidate for an arrow through the gullet but not the peacock. The goose is stuffed, the chicken plucked, the mallard roasted. But one almost never sautés the cardinal. In short, be it for color, tastiness, intelligence, or abundance, some birds are more revered than others. And when it comes to reverence, few birds are more celebrated than the swan, that feathery symbol of purity and love. You can kill the sparrow, but you must always spare the swan.
Two months ago, three teenagers in upstate New York killed and ate a swan. The three teens allegedly hopped over a fence and decapitated Faye, the swan mother, with a knife. Then, they stole the cygnets. When they were caught, the teens confessed to eating Faye, claiming they thought the swan was a duck. Fortunately, police recovered all the cygnets; they arrested and charged the teens.
As one can imagine, the small town in upstate New York felt a mixture of grief and elation: immense sadness over the death of beloved Faye and spirited satisfaction over the apprehension of the avian murderers. Yet I couldn’t help but find the town’s response somewhat odd. Had the victim been a farmer’s pig, the teens still would have been charged, but the injustice would not have seemed like such an intolerable act. Pigs, after all, are routinely slaughtered. Moreover, had the fowl been a plain old duck, the town may have been outraged, but I can’t imagine the story reaching a national audience.
There’s something about killing a swan that borders on sacrilege. It feels like a demonic act, one that’s sadistic no matter how goose-like the animal tastes. Eating a swan simply doesn’t feel right, and I had to know why.
Regardless of whether the swan is a trumpeter or mute, black or tundra, the animal is beautiful. Exceedingly so. In many ways, the swan feels like the platonic ideal of a bird, its long, curved neck swiveling through the lake’s cool breeze like a periscope. With its wings back, the swan looks deceptively rideable—as if it could carry Neptune himself. The swan is also famous for its coupling. Unless a pair “divorces,” swans mate for life. No wonder we’ve appropriated the bird’s sleek, plump body for romantic canal rides.
Salomon Gessner, Leda and the Swan, 1770. Courtesy of
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund and the National Gallery of Art.
Like most majestic animals, the swan occupies a special place in mythology. In Greco-Roman myth, the swan is a symbol of love, purity, immortality, and the soul. And yet, perhaps the most well-known (and surely infamous) myth concerning a swan involves the rape of Leda. The story goes that Zeus took a swan’s form to rape Leda on the night she slept with her husband, King Tyndareus. For Yeats, this grotesque, forced coupling results in the birth of the Greco-Roman tradition and thus the modern Western world:
A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and towe And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Though Yeats’ history is interesting, I’m infinitely more fascinated by the juxtaposition of the swan imagery with the violence of the sexual act. If society traditionally views the swan as a symbol of love and hope, mythology suggests that the animal simultaneously embodies violence, rape, and death. When I picture a swan boat floating down a canal, I think of lovers intertwined. I also think of “A sudden blow: the great wings beating still.”
The swan isn’t confined to the Greco-Roman tradition. In Norse mythology, the Valkyries donned swan outfits to ferry the valiant dead to Valhalla. Similarly, in Hindu theology, the god Brahma rides a swan. In fact, Hindus who’ve attained enlightenment are often called Paramahamsa or “Supreme Swans.”
Given the swan’s beauty and grace, the animal often functions as the object of desire, an attribute encapsulated in myriads of “swan-maiden” myths found throughout the world. Though the specifics of these folktales differ in slight degree, they share a common thread: swans cast off their feathery skins, revealing the bodies of beautiful women. Unbeknownst to the swans, a hunter watches from a distance. As the swans enjoy a naked swim, the hunter steals one swan’s clothing, forcing the swan-turned-woman to become his wife.
Félix-Hilaire Buhot, Lady of the Swans, 1879. Courtesy Rogers Fund and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
While the swan-maiden folktale is less violent than its Leda counterpart, the swan still takes on a sexual dimension, still forms the center of a story revolving around possession and control. For all its regality, grace, and splendor, the swan is complicated by human lust. It is this struggle between the need to preserve beauty vs. the drive to possess it that makes the swan-as-food seemingly unpalatable.
Until the late 17th century, the English considered swan meat a delicacy. In fact, many swan recipes remain from this time. In her 1670 cookbook titled The Queen-like Closet; Or, Rich Cabinet: Stored with all manner of Rare Receipts For Preserving, Candying and Cookery, Hannah Wolley provides a recipe for baked swan:
Scald it and take out the bones, and parboil it, then season it very well with Pepper, Salt and Ginger, then lard it, and put it in a deep Coffin of Rye Paste with store of Butter, close it and bake it very well, and when it is baked, fill up the Vent-hole with melted Butter, and so keep it; serve it in as you do the Beef-Pie. (Wolley)
Delicious as the recipe appears, not every diner could enjoy filling up the swan’s “vent-hole with melted butter.” By the 16th century, a court case between an English monarch and two commoners found that swans were, in essence, government property. This meant that only the English elite could feast on swan meat. The poor were restricted from enjoying the bird doused in butter sauce and nestled on a plate of potatoes.
However, even the English elite soon considered eating swan meat taboo. While we may never know the exact reasons for the changing tastes, Renaissance art, especially Leda and the Swan,helped codify the bird as an object of grace, beauty, desire, and sophistication. Like the dog and horse in Western cuisine, metaphor and symbolism saved the swan.
Robert Havell after John James Audubon, Trumpeter Swan, 1838. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Contrary to popular belief, no extant species of swan are endangered. Nevertheless, the swan is a protected bird in the U.S.—a holdover from the overhunting of swans in the early 20th century. Other countries also have laws on their books protecting swans from consumption.
If the rarity of the fowl isn’t the reason for the swan’s legal status, what is? Again, the bird’s emotionally charged symbolism is mostly to blame for the refusal of contemporary eaters to partake in swan feasting. In some circles, diners value the bird on such sociocultural and mythic levels that even the mere thought of preparing a swan is met with protest.
In 2013, for example, a German chef faced severe criticism after adding swan to the menu. Although the chef’s restaurant, a local farm-to-table operation on the Baltic Sea (where it’s legal to hunt mute swans), argued for the necessity of serving the “region’s offerings,” local protests forced him to eighty-six the bird. German diners seemingly could not stomach the thought of eating the regal, glorious swan.
I’ve long been fascinated by our refusal to eat some animals while gleefully sticking a fork into others. All things being equal, why does society largely turn a blind eye to chickens slaughtered in Tyson’s bloody factories but views swans with impeccably clear vision? To be sure, I’m not advocating for the consumption of swan. But I do wonder about the consequences of attributing human virtues to animals—especially in a symbolic sense. Our belief that the swan is sophisticated spares the animal. The same cannot be said for the pig. Although the pig is highly intelligent, the creature’s supposed “lack of sophistication” (if animals can even possess such a thing) makes it easier to justify its transformation into ham, pork loin, and bacon.
For Michael Pollan, these gastronomic preferences stem from the “omnivore’s dilemma,” that conscious (sometimes unconscious) choice about what to dine on in a world of plenty. According to Pollan, “When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety…” (3). In the case of the swan, art and mythology reduce much of this anxiety: we are taught to believe in the swan’s superiority to other fowl. To put it another way, in anthropomorphism we trust.
Could more anthropomorphism ultimately result in a vegetarian West? Would believing in the majesty of the cow lead to a rejection of beef? I’m not so sure. Moreover, I don’t know if the conscious anthropomorphizing of animals is inherently a good thing. It may help us become more compassionate of the animal world, but it will also surely exacerbate the very human drive to apply a harsh moral code to the kingdom of fauna. Society cannot abide the killing of the “good” swan, but it gives the “evil” snake no quarter. I’m much more inclined to believe that evilness resides in the swan as much as goodness lives in the snake.
Albert Besnard, Leda Sleeping (Léda s’endort), 1913. Courtesy of
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Bell, and the National Gallery of Art.
I’m at least relieved that people are outraged by the beheading of the swan in upstate New York. To kill a beautiful creature with such wanton abandon seems an apt metaphor for our times. Even the most graceful among us are destroyed by bloodlust and stupidity. Even our most cherished symbols are subject to erasure. When I think of Faye separated from her cygnets, I think of immigrant families torn apart at the border, of police brutality killing the fathers and mothers of BIPOC households at routine traffic stops. If we truly believe that all humans are beautiful by virtue of their ability to infuse the world with food and music, poetry and purpose, what else could these attacks be if not assaults on the very idea of beauty? Like the massacre of swans, state-sanctioned violence against marginalized communities functions to remove beauty from the world.
Moreover, I think of cruelty for the sake of politics, politics for the sake of cruelty. I think of a deep-rooted hatred that exists simply because it can. The act of killing and eating Faye seems both rational and irrational: unthinkable in a world of “civility” but almost inevitable in a culture subsisting on a diet of violence and intolerance.
After reading about Faye’s murder, Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan” wasn’t the first artwork that popped into my mind. It was Dali’s surreal depiction of swans in his 1937 painting Swans Reflecting Elephants. In the painting, three swans float on a lake which cuts through a fiery, desolate landscape, a landscape that appears to have been recently bombed. Above the swans, the bruise-blue sky holds the cream of melting clouds. The trees are leafless and warped. But the three swans look gorgeous and regal, their arched necks and plump bodies reflecting the shapes of elephants in the water.
The painting asks us to contemplate the illusion and irrationality of “seeing” the world as it appears. But it also asks us to consider the complex entanglement of all living things. It asks us to ponder the purpose of beauty in a world increasingly bent on destroying itself. I stare at the painting intently, thinking of the juxtaposition between the empty dove nest on our porch and our own home, bristling with the energy of a newborn. I think of my exhausted wife, my sleeping daughter. I imagine Dali’s swans swimming past their ravaged landscape with cygnets in tow, the wedge finally reaching open water.
Works Cited
Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
Wolley, Hannah. The Queen-like Closet; or, Rich Cabinet: Stored with all manner of Rare Receipts For Preserving, Candying and Cookery. Very pleasant and beneficial to all ingenious persons of the female sex. R. Lowndes at the White Lion in Duck-Lane, near West-Smithfield, 1670.
Joshua Martin is an Assistant Professor of English at Tusculum University and the poetry editor of The Tusculum Review. The winner of the 2023 Randall Jarrell Poetry Award from the North Carolina Writers’ Network, his poems, essays, and reviews have been published or are forthcoming in storySouth, Rattle, The Kenyon Review Online, Baltimore Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Bitter Southerner, and elsewhere. His first book, Earth of Inedible Things, won the 2021 Jacar Press Book Award. He lives with his wife and daughter in Asheville, North Carolina.
Salad forks scrape across scalloped plates from a window I watch them serve the main course: duck au confit avec herbs de provence satin dresses & designer suits each face same choreography: chew, dab, smile, laugh, chew I eat a stale peanut granola bar and turn back into the wind naked limbs of winter stretch towards me while indoors they pop Moët & Chandon for one moment my eyes meet another’s: gentle brown, they might have been hers but the mouth is rigid, a life in training to live in opulence without ever understanding its decadence and by the time I glance back she is lost on the ballroom floor
Erin Jamieson (she/her) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University. Her writing has been published in over eighty literary magazines, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is the author of a poetry collection (Clothesline, 2023) and four poetry chapbooks. Her latest poetry chapbook, Fairytales, was published by Bottle Cap Press. Her debut novel will be published by Type Eighteen Books (November 2023).
He’s a rebel and he sees with eyes close to crystal.
With their Harleys outside leaning their great weight on their sighing kickstands, the Cali Scarecrows sit twelve strong at a long and sturdy wood table, holding lengthy menus in their meaty hands. Steps away, the waitress is waiting, pen tapping pad, but Ken can’t choose. Fingering the finger that used to penetrate a wedding band, he feels sick to his stomach, no appetite at all. Not for food anyway. Sometimes a long walk out of a doctor’s office only leaves you hungry for more life. He stares at the menu another second or two and decides to make his stand instead, his thoughts a string of wasps exiting their hive.
“What they should do is, instead of listing calories, they should tell you how much life your food will take from you. A hot dog is a half hour. Bang, just like that. You eat it, you die a half hour sooner than you otherwise would. Eat two and it’s a whole hour. That’s what I learned recently, and I haven’t been the same since. That knowledge is a black star in my brain. Food gives and food takes, but we never know how much. We’ll eat something and we’ll know that it’s unhealthy, but the consequences hold no weight. And this needs to change. We should go to the supermarket and instead of reading a list of ingredients, we should be able to see that a bag of Doritos will steal forty-five minutes from your life, a box of Trix 15, that a pint of blueberries will give you back five minutes, because it’s far easier to lose than to gain. This is what life should be, right? Let the buyer beware. What do we know of calories? Of grams of fat and vegetable oils? These are phantom threats. It doesn’t feel real. We speak in minutes and days. Months and years. We speak in life. We speak in death. It’s much harder to eat those fries, those cookies, when you know what they’re stealing from you. Are they worth ten minutes of life? A conversation with your kids? Are they worth a ride through the mountains when the stars are out and you’re still going up and up and up and you think you might just reach them? What about hearing an accent you never heard before or having your dog’s head in your lap in front of the TV while it plays the last ten minutes of the best damn show you’ve ever seen, something that actually inspires and changes you? What about one more chorus of “Happy Birthday” from your friends and family before you blow out your candles and make your wish, one more glimpse of lightning so bright you’d swear it was day? Are you willing to make that trade? Those numbers add up fast. Ice cream goes down differently when you know it’s an assassin. This should be our purpose. Go to the scientists, get an approximation, and if they won’t do it we’ll print up the labels ourselves and stick them on every package all across this cemetery of a country. People will learn. They’ll follow. This is our mission. This is our fight in the world. I see it now. Scarecrows keeping Death away. That’s what we are.”
He’s surprised that he’s standing. Everyone’s silent and staring, even the waitress whose mouth is open wide enough to show her pink wad of gum and the indentations in it. They all look incredulous, as if a spell has been cast. Even beyond their table, everything’s as still as a desert landscape at night, but Ken senses a glorious dawn. Then someone belches something volcanic and laughter immediately follows as does the rapid string of familiar jokes and conversations of decades old sitcoms, as if it were life that was in syndication. They go on to order the usual meals of spicy buffalo wings and bottomless cokes, mozzarella sticks and two fingers of scotch, double burgers, loaded fries and bottles of Guinness, almost as if Ken had never said a word. Feeling heavier than ever, he sits back down and doesn’t speak again. They’ll understand tomorrow.
Michael Paul Kozlowsky is the author of SCARECROW HAS A GUN. Writing as M.P. Kozlowsky, his children’s novels include JUNIPER BERRY, FROST, ROSE COFFIN, and THE DYERVILLE TALES. He lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.
The wait to be seated for our 6:00PM reservation at Namo is short and deliberate. Nestled beside a permanent jewelry store and a spa also claiming to be an “apothecary,” the sushi bar in Dallas’s West Village has caught our eye before—it’s dark, tinted windows and elusive signage obscuring what’s within—but tonight, we become the mysterious patrons behind the glass. It’s late May, and while the heat is still bearable, it serves as a warning of the summer to come. We are asked by the host to wait with the other guests on the patio before being brought inside, one couple at a time, to our seats at the U-shaped bar. A. and I are to be served sushi omakase-style—meaning chef’s choice—an exclusive, Wednesday-only offering for a maximum of fourteen guests. We’ve anticipated this to be a religious if not deliriously indulgent experience, and thus one we’ve been saving for a special occasion.
Happy anniversary to us.
Barely wider than the bar within, the interior of the restaurant is small but sophisticated, simple yet unmistakably cool. On the back wall, inset in floor-to-ceiling wood are rows of whiskey bottles tightly shelved, their labeled bellies shown proudly outward. Behind us on the wall are additional shelves and more Japanese whisky punctuated by pops of red: a Takashi Murakami skateboard deck and two LPs—a Japanese edition of a Stones album and a well-worn copy of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
We are propositioned with the first of only two selections we’ll make ourselves: “Still or sparkling water?” As in, Acqua Panna or San Pellegrino? Already, we’re in love.
The second selection is sake. A semi-dry for A. For me, a glass described as pear and round. I choose it because it reminds me of my favorite line from the movie Meet Joe Black in which Death (Brad Pitt) chides Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) for speaking about love in “round, pear-shaped tones.” Don’t you love that? The poetry seems an appropriate prelude to the evening ahead: a promise of sensory pleasures abundant as ripe fruit in the summertime.
There are three sushi chefs behind the bar, one head and two sous. A. and I watch hushed and reverent, eyes wide as children’s as the head chef—a handsome Japanese man, bald with high cheekbones—lifts a length of white fish from a wood box to lay it on the cutting surface of the counter. He draws his knife’s blade along its flesh like a bow angled along a violin’s strings.
His cuts are elegant. Precise.
The first piece of sashimi is served on a blue and white plate the shape of a four-petaled flower. Painted gold lines curve from edge to center. The fish—kochi, or flathead—is transparent white, delicately rolled and topped with a tiny purple flower (what kind, I am too shy to ask). The chef explains that the sauce, so clear and light I’m not sure it’s sauced at all, is a soy reduction made with bonito flakes.
A. and I smile and nod, pleased with ourselves for recognizing the ingredient. “We love bonito flakes,” A. tells Chef. “At home, we make cat rice.” Cat rice, a simple Japanese recipe we learned from a charmingly low-budget Netflix series called Midnight Diner, consists solely of steamed white rice, soy sauce, and a topping of bonito flakes: the fragrant, salty shavings of smoked and fermented skipjack tuna.
This makes Chef laugh. “You like that?” he asks, and I’m not sure if he’s questioning our taste or if it’s surprising to him that two Americans know cat rice in the first place. “When I was young my mom used to yell at me for that,” he tells us.
“Really?”
“She was old-school,” he continues. “You know, nothing on the rice. Not even soy sauce. You’re supposed to enjoy the flavor of the rice by itself.”
Each bite of food for the body is preluded by a feast for the eyes. The chefs in their close-quarters dance of prep and presentation. Their bare, graceful hands perfectly manicured as they grind fresh wasabi into paste, shape soft rice. All the surfaces are warm and wood. I am reminded for a moment of the old butcher-block countertop in the apartment A. and I would eventually share, where on my first visit he cooked me a simple meal of summer squash and rice. I remember how quietly he moved then, how humbling it was to be cared for that way. At the heart of my favorite memories with A. there is always a meal—modest or extravagant—that we are enjoying together.
In Japanese, omakase means something like “I leave it up to you,” but what I’d anticipated to be the free-styling performance of an experienced jazz musician reveals itself instead to be a carefully curated setlist of intentional cadence, the thoughtfulness of which extends into every detail. Each of the first five servings are presented individually on small stone or ceramic plates unique to that bite, a backdrop chosen consciously to compliment the fish placed upon it. I’d listened to an episode of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s podcast Wiser than Me in which she interviews legendary food writer Ruth Riechl. In it, Riechl explains that she tries to describe food not by referencing flavors, but by transcending flavor—comparing the taste of food to an experience so that someone who’d never had anything like it might understand the feeling evoked by eating it. For example, she compares eating a soufflé to catching a snowflake on your tongue: “it just evaporates.” I think about this, and I think about uni, the sex organs of a sea urchin, which holds a place among sushi’s delicacies. While it’s true that uni is undeniably oceanic, underlying its flavor is something more grounding and sensual than seafoam. With each small, wooden spoonful, the pumpkin-orange meat recalls the bubbling excitement and warmth of a first kiss, not unlike the one I shared with A. in that little apartment four years ago today, when a friendship was alchemized into something deeper, more devoted, more precious.
During the second course, A. asks Head Chef what question other guests ask him the most. He thinks for a second. “They want to know what my favorite fish is.”
We too press him for his answer.
“I don’t like sushi.” He shrugs and smiles. He likes fried chicken. “And French fries with ranch,” he says and mimes dunking fries—not one, but a greedy bundle of them—into an imaginary side of ranch. We laugh and so do the other chefs. We agree that Mike’s Chicken is superior, and Head Chef gives me an enthusiastic fist-bump. I beam.
For all the sophistication of the sushi ritual, the staff and other guests are friendly and relaxed, and we begin conversing more with one another as the night (and the sake) flows on. We learn that to the left of us, a mother and son are celebrating the mother’s birthday. She, like A.’s mother, introduced him to sushi as a young boy. They take a typical vague interest in us. How long have we been married? In what neighborhood do we live? Are we from Dallas? When they ask what we do, I want to say, I’m a writer! In my head, I am writing right now!, but A., sitting closer and more easily heard, gives our day jobs.
I gather from eavesdropping that I am the only person in the restaurant for whom this is their first omakase experience. Moreover, while A. has had omakase in the past, it seems that we as a pair are the only two who haven’t actually been to Japan. (Most others, I gather, have been at least twice.) Needless to say, I am out of my league. This is, by a comically-wide margin, the most expensive meal I’ve ever had. It’s worth it. And whether I belong here or not, I feel so glad to have the chance to be.
I am uncomfortably full by the time service is over, but I can’t miss a bite. We end the night with miso soup, tamago (a sweet, fluffy bite of egg custard), and a yellow scoop of yuzu sorbet in a little glass dish. The images of the evening are settling warm and blurry in my mind, softened by sake and the food-stoned feeling brought on by raw fish. I didn’t want to take pictures or notes for fear of interrupting the experience, and as I begin to worry I’ll have no momento of the meal, the waiter brings around a single printed note card for each guest. It’s a typed menu for the evening which lists each fish, first in Japanese, then English, followed by the city in Japan from where it came. In the lower right corner is today’s date.
I might frame mine.
A. does indeed have our trusty film camera with him, and before we leave he asks the waiter if he’ll take our picture. “Would you mind getting the chefs in the background? Is that okay with you?” he asks them. They oblige. I have yet to see the photo, but I imagine it will look something like this: Behind the bar, the chefs standing a little apart and (I hope) smiling. In the foreground A. and I, his arm around me, our heads together, my belly (I worry) visibly full, and my eyes (I’m sure) shut from smiling so widely.
T. S. Cuccia is a writer and interdisciplinary artist based in Dallas, Texas. You can find her work at tscuccia.com.
When I was young, early every fall our elderly neighbor would bring by a large paper bag filled with McIntoshes he’d picked out in the country. Those apples were nothing like the store-bought specimens sealed in plastic bags that we ate the rest of the year. Mr. Holt’s apples still had their leaves on, and were vividly lime-green and red. And unlike their grocery store counterparts, they had a crisp bite and a lemon-and-honey contrariness to their juice.
Mr. Holt took pity on us. He was soft-spoken and gallant, always dressed in a pressed flannel shirt buttoned to the collar. He would cross the street with the sack of apples held close to his chest, then hand it to my mother with grave ceremony. He’d leave as suddenly as he’d come; I remember watching from the window as he disappeared into the shadows cast by the purple beech trees that dwarfed his house. An ancient air hung about the scene: Mr. Holt’s bright white hair, the beeches that were more dinosaur than tree, the house made of smooth gray rocks, gnarled wisteria vines reaching toward its dark windows. I wondered if this was what grandfathers were like.
After Mr. Holt’s visit, we’d set about making pie. The simpler, the better was my mother’s motto, with cooking as with most everything else. We kids sat around the small gingham-covered kitchen table helping peel, core, and slice with our old everyday knives. In my mother’s square hands, the apple peels came loose in long rosy spirals. My hands were small and clumsy and had trouble grasping the whole fruit as I scraped off irregular patches. But no matter, the job got done. We mixed the cut apples with cinnamon sugar, then reached into the bowl to sneak slices into our mouths. Rolling out the dough took concentration and a light touch. This is the way we learned how to use our hands and to cook. The radio would be playing in the background, and dusk would be fast turning to night.
Nothing bad could happen when we were making apple pie, could it? The project bought us some time. There was a recipe in the middle of the table, and we were following it. We were focused. If my father came home, how could he be angry seeing us like this? Besides, the smell of apples cooking is something special in the world. Throw in the peppery whiff of pie spice and the browning butter of the crust, and you have the very essence of a happy home. An extra kindness is that the scent lingers, and you can smell the sweetness of apples in your own hair as you lie in bed late at night, listening for the sound of the back door and familiar footsteps. And for a little while after that there are small noises from the kitchen—a plate laid on the table, the fridge door thumping closed.
Karina Borowicz is the author of three poetry collections: Rosetta (Ex Ophidia, 2021), Proof (Codhill Press, 2014), and The Bees Are Waiting (Marick Press, 2011). Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in journals, anthologies, and other media. She cooked professionally for many years and sometimes blogs about food at http://repast.home.blog. Her author’s website can be found at http://karinaborowicz.com.
The naughtiest release of the season is here. Tanya Bush and Aliza Abarbanel have launched Wicked Cake, the second issue of their self-described “hedonistic” publication, Cake Zine. While their first issue, Sexy Cake, was an examination of the sensualities, seductions, and heartbreaks of the eponymous dessert, this next iteration takes a pointed shift into the sinister machinations of cake.
Wicked Cake, like its sister issue, is a literary triumph, warping the boundaries of food writing into something fresh and provocative. There are recipes, sure—Death by Chocolate, anyone?—but the issue also includes essays, poems, and visual art that tackle murder, witches, diet culture, and AI all within the context of cake. Following Sexy Cake, which explored such realms as cake-sitting and historical implications of phallic cakes, Wicked Cake grounds itself as a darker foil to its playful predecessor.
Wicked Cake is the first issue that sourced contributors through an open pitch call, and includes works from Sohla El-Waylly, Bronwen Wyatt, Haruka Aoki, and many more. While Cake Zine recently announced this will be the last cake-centric issue of the zine (at least for now), the founders have no plans of slowing down; rather, they are ready to offer new sweet treats for your consumption in the future. Bush, a baker who rose to recognition through @will.this.make.me.happy, and Albarbanel, a food writer and contributing editor at TASTE, are not done pushing the boundaries of food writing, no matter how messy it gets.
Below is a conversation with the founders over a series of interviews which tackle societal norms, cake-to-the-face, and the production of Wicked Cake.
Madison Ford (The Inquisitive Eater): The next theme is Wicked Cake. What do you visualize for Wicked Cake and what is coming to light in the pitches that you didn’t expect from that theme?
Aliza Abarbanel: I would just say to start like Tanya and I are both twins—not together, separately. And the first two issues of Cake Zine are our fraternal twins as well. And maybe Wicked Cake is the evil twin to Sexy Cake. Or vice versa. To be determined.
Tanya Bush: TBD.
AA: We did kind of conceive of these issues at once and wanted to have a nice through line and also duality between the two of them. And I think Wicked was actually the first theme that we came up with. It just felt surprising and fun to talk about something like cake in a more dark context. And I know for us, and probably a lot of people around our age, the scene in Matilda with Bruce Bobtrotter devouring that entire cake is a very traumatizing scene in a book or movie of “wicked” cake. And once we started talking about that there was so many other things that came to light. Tanya is really interested in this history of cake as a vehicle for poisoning and cake as a murder weapon.
TB: There’s a lot of that. There’s all this folklore around you know, baking your enemies into cakes and then consuming them. There’s all these sort of really crazy, interesting tropes around the way that sin and cake and Devil’s Food Cake all sort of are coming together. There’s a lot that feels sort of intrinsically wicked about cakes specifically.
AA: In the imagination. And then also just looking at food systems and colonization and the sugar trade and the diet industry, these kind of more macro forces as well. So I think that’s all territory that definitely, based on the pitches we’ve received, will be covered in Wicked Cake, which is exciting.
How did this food writing project diverge from the type of food coverage each of you had done in the past? Of course, you both have backgrounds in food and food writing. Were there other publications that you took inspiration from? Or is this more like uncharted territory in the food writing space?
TB: I feel like there’s, in sort of larger glossy publications—you know, the Gourmets, the Bon Appetites of the world, the Food and Wines—there are sometimes personal essays that chefs or cooks will write. But I didn’t feel like there was really a forum in which all kinds of different artists, makers, creators could sort of converge around a topic and use their experience to take it on in a particular way. I was thinking a lot about how history, literature and art are so entwined with food and the way that we think about food, and a really interesting access point for the layperson. So I think that I didn’t really see much of that out there. But it felt like just sort of an obvious thing to me. And then obviously, as a baker, I think a lot about cake, and I eat a lot of dessert and it felt to me like—you know, it’s really very much like the last bite at the end of a meal and people often don’t take—it’s not often carefully considered, the history and culture surrounding desert. And so it felt to me like that was a fun and engaging access point.
AA: Yeah. I think desert is such a good vehicle to talk about significance, because it’s not necessary for anyone’s survival, right? It’s inherently something that people are using to bring extra meaning into something. So I do have a food media and a media background in general. But I honestly don’t bake that often, or particularly love cake compared to other desserts even. But when Tanya presented it as the focus, I thought it was just such a rich subject material. And I would say that I don’t really think there’s a one to one to what we’re doing. But there are definitely other things in food media, whether it’s the Vittles newsletter that’s based out of the UK—I think they do really great work talking about the history of different dishes. And it’s definitely something that I admire. I feel like the “Short Stack” cookbook series that is focused on pancakes or soup or a specific kind of dish is a good through line as well. And beyond that, I don’t know, I’m interested to see. I think Wicked Cake, we want to bring in formats that we haven’t done previously.
I’ll say that when I was in high school, I was definitely dousing myself in Victoria’s Secret perfumes that were like “vanilla body birthday cake.”
Something that was really interesting in Sexy Cake: I kind of saw this correlation with a coming-of-age developmental stage of sexuality of people in their teens and early twenties. A lot of the stories and essays were harkening back to the time when people’s lives—like the “Eau de Cake”(Nicolaia Rips)and“I Made You Something” (Sanaë Lemoine) and I think there was a teenage portrait too. What do you think there is between cake and burgeoning sexuality? Did you expect there to be a lot in that age range of essays when you first called for this subject matter?
TB: I mean, I’ll say that when I was in high school, I was definitely dousing myself in Victoria’s Secret perfumes that were like “vanilla body birthday cake.” Nicolaia writes about this in her piece: fashioning yourself into sort of a consumable dessert felt like a pretty obvious and relatable experience for a lot of people. It’s interesting that to your point with “Teenage Nightmare,” Tatiana Dubin’s piece, there are harrowing experiences that come about in the context of cake and burgeoning sexuality. And then also more sort of flirty, playful, “I’m trying to date SpiderMan.”
AA: I think also, to be a little critical of the scope of our first issue, I think all the contributors were around a certain age range where talking about burgeoning sexuality is relatively recent, and nostalgic and funny. And also our audience definitely has a lot of people in their late twenties, early thirties. So I think talking about nostalgia is something people are always interested in talking about. And you can maybe laugh at yourself at this point in time. So I think that naturally t kind of led to teenage sexuality being talked about. But I also think that, you know, everyone loves talking about teenage sexuality. That’s why PEN15 and Big Mouth and all of those shows, the high school TV show, will eternally be relevant because everyone has had that experience. And of trying to attract somebody and thinking that a body wash that you bought at the strip mall is going to be the way to do it.
Speaking of humor, there was such a great level of humor in Sexy Cake. It felt more like an undercurrent to it. Do you think the tone of Sexy Cake is going to sort of permeate throughout the rest of the volumes? Or do you see each one kind of having its own tone?
TB: It’s something we’re asking ourselves right now, because a lot of the types of pitches that we got for Wicked are obviously more macabre and dark, and there’s cake as a metaphor for empire. And there’s a lot of just darker shit that comes about with a wicked theme. So I think that trying to figure out how to balance that. We don’t want to take ourselves too seriously. This is ultimately a publication about cake. At least for now, and dessert. But also every issue is going to have its atmosphere and tone. And I think that, while we’re going to have levity as a part—because there’s some just totally crazy weird stuff that is kind of hilarious, in the context of “wicked” cake and sin eating and all of that—I think that we have to sort of honor that each issue is going to stand alone in terms of tone and format and content.
AA: I feel like it’s like a “yes, and” situation, where obviously you don’t want to read a whole magazine that’s everything is really dark and depressing. And there is a lot of humor, I think, that can be found in Wicked. Whether it’s something that was originally viewed as wicked, that now we would not think of that way, such as women eating full fat desserts, or a horror story, something like that. But at the same time, I think that the beauty of this premise is that it is making you think about something like cake that maybe you don’t think about in a darker context in that way. And as something I’m sure you think about with food: food is not just something we do for pleasure, right? It’s linked to all of these major systems like labor and capitalism and advertising.
I do think one of the most wicked things you can do with cake is smash it into your partner’s face in front of everyone.
While I’m reading Sexy Cake, I was thinking about the wedding ritual of people feeding each other cake. And how oftentimes people kind of turn it into the comedic thing where they wipe it on their partner. They make it messy. When originally it was kind of this sensual exchange. I thought of the individuals you’ll see who, when it gets messy, they’re almost a little upset by it. They don’t love the fact that their partner decided to go comedic. It made me think about that more in the context of cake as a sexual, sensual symbol in our lives. Do you have any thoughts on the wedding cake ritual? Do you think the sensuality of cake has to do with how people choose to go about it?
AA: In Lexie Smith’s essay “The Phallus Fallacy,” she talks a little bit about the kind of significance of the Western wedding cake as the artifice of virginity for the bride specifically, and that everyone watches you cut into it. And that’s like the cake being deflowered kind of in the same way that there’s the garter ritual at some weddings or things like that. So I think I see couples, and I assume we’re talking about, or maybe I shouldn’t assume, but straight couples specifically, making a joke about the smashing because maybe they’re uncomfortable with the significance of the wedding contract and the bride’s virginity. Or they don’t like the attention in that way. But I do think one of the most wicked things you can do with cake is smash it into your partner’s face in front of everyone. If they didn’t want it, especially if it’s the bride who spent hours getting ready and putting on makeup and, you know, becoming this artifice of what femininity is—and then having the cake smashed in your face and ruining all that makeup? That’s not something I would fuck with.
TB: No, but it’s an amazing photo op. It’s literally all about the photo op, isn’t it?
AA: But it’s like “haha, we’re not like other couples.
TB: “Yeah, we’re so fun and flirty.”
AA: “We’re just getting legally married, haha.”
TB: We received a couple pitches about the potential wickedness of cake smashed in the face. And that’s a whole sort of genre of content out there.
Something I was thinking about since I talked to you last, and with the announcement, I feel like there’s this societal sentiment about eating cake that kind of runs along the lines of “It’s so bad.” Like: “I had two slices, I’m so bad,” or “Should I be bad and order dessert?” etc., etc. How do you think this issue of Cake Zine kind of confronts or unravels the “badness” of eating cake?
AA: I’m so glad you mentioned that, because that obviously is something that we were thinking about a lot. I think the most obvious connection in this issue is that there’s a historian KC Hysmith that wrote a piece for us about SnackWell’s. Their tagline is “be bad, snack well.” So it was very much like a marketing mechanism rooted in the idea of categorizing, you know, “most desserts are terrible for you, but this low fat line”—which was being marketed towards women in the 90s and 2000s—“this is the good version.” And this historian does a really great job of talking about the history of moralizing desserts in America. And it connects back to [Sylvester] Graham who invented graham crackers. He was basically like a dietary reformer, who thought that refined flour and sugar would lead to masturbation, which he thought was a bad thing. So he created graham crackers from this very whole grain flour. Basically a way to keep you on the straight and narrow and not be eating tempting flours that could lead you towards untoward behavior. So that piece is kind of looking very far back and then also talking about this more present day mechanism of the way that desserts have been moralized.
Maybe it’s not actually “bad” but it’s just outside of the norm or debauched in some kind of way.
We’re living in an interesting time when it comes to relationships to food, because I think so many adults now lived through some sort of societal upbringing that was kind of rooted in disordered eating. And people are trying to unravel that to some degree. And so now, it’s like we’re all kind of tiptoeing back to what our relationships with “bad foods” can look like. And it’s interesting having literature to explore that as well, which is kind of what you guys are doing.
AA: We spent a lot of time talking about what the title for the issue would be, and I think that wicked is the word we landed on as opposed to evil or even bad or something like that, because it kind of has all these meanings behind it. Like wicked can be a wicked grin that has some joy behind it, or wicked can be something being categorized as evil like witchcraft or ghosts. Maybe it’s not actually “bad” but it’s just outside of the norm or debauched in some kind of way. So I think that we are drawn to ambiguity in that term.
Following Sexy Cake with Wicked Cake, is there some sort of specific sentiment or reading experience you want readers to take away that differs from the first issue?
AA: I think the larger goal of inspiring people to look at something like cake or food in general and think about it in different historical or cultural or personal contexts remains the same for sure. And I think that like some of the larger themes in terms of challenging mainstream conceptions of things or certainly diet culture or gender roles in society, like patriarchal norms, things like that. I think those kind of remain constant but you know, obviously I hope people will be a little scared reading this issue. We very much tried to make an issue that felt appropriate for this kind of darker, internal time of year.
Well, I’m excited to grab a copy and hopefully it does not completely haunt my space…
In celebration of its release, Wicked Cake is having a launch party hosted at Farm to People in Brooklyn on November 10, open to the public. The issue is available now for pre-order.
Madison Ford is a Brooklyn-based writer and actor. She is the Editor-in-Chief of The New School’s food writing publication, The Inquisitive Eater, and her work has been published in Texas Monthly, The Brooklyn Rail,Architectural Digest, and Dujour. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School.
Welcome back! After a temporary, pandemic-induced publishing hiatus, we are excited to once again bring you the food writing you have been craving. For a decade, The Inquisitive Eater has provided a platform for writers, academics, and artists to explore the role of food in our lives, and to inquire where it intersects with history, culture, and societal trends through dynamic modes of, poetry, creative essays, visual art and more. In many ways, we are that same Inquisitive Eater.
But we are also different.
A decade changes you. A pandemic changes you. Our inquiry of food demands a diversity of storytellers, of stories, of ideas. While The Inquisitive Eater has always been hungry for new and inclusive approaches to food (our original tagline, “Food and…” certainly got at that desire for more) we are hoping to take these sentiments and run with them. We are ready to see how far we can push the genre.
We encourage our writers to submit dynamic content that digs into “The Story Beyond the Plate”: the unsettling, the strange, the untold parts of food and cooking and dining; art which explores topics such as how eating has ravaged our bodies, or spirits, and where it has saved them; art which examines the underbelly of bacchanals and the welcome sobriety; which asks where we have been and where we are going; that uplifts unheard voices; that writes old stories in new ways; that is funny; that is pressing; that is dark or wonderfully weird.
Tell us about how food played a role in your childhood, without the hackneyed scene of a matriarchal hand kneading dough. Tell us how Y2K diet trends messed you up in a poem. Send us a portrait of a decaying jelly donut. Send us digital art that rethinks still life. Send us an essay underlining the historical and culinary reasons why eating with your hands is better for your health, for your soul. Pair it with a video of hands as utensils.
We are excited to read your submissions, and to continue to evolve and explore the world of food and drink, while keeping the heart of our mission—hosting an artistic forum for the social, economic, political and cultural impact of food—alive. And we strive to publish thoughtful and exciting content for you. Fresh out of the oven.
This is food storytelling. This is: The Story Beyond the Plate.
