Found Voices™ Episode 8, Elizabeth Falkner

I had an incredible conversation with Elizabeth Falkner. She’s passionate—not just about cooking, but about writing. But really, she’s passionate about everything she does.

If you think you don’t have enough hours in a day, you’re wrong. You do. Elizabeth proves it. She’s a chef, author, entrepreneur, television personality, documentary producer, and she still finds time to work out. She's always looking for what's next, always looking for new things to create and explore. 

Elizabeth Falkner is an award-winning chef who worked her way up in fine dining and operated groundbreaking restaurants in San Francisco and New York. She continues to cook at private events, Food & Wine Festivals, culinary tours and events, and has cooked for countless celebrities.

She has appeared on television on multiple networks and in many of the cooking competition reality series over the last twenty years. She is a world-recognized pioneer and leader in culinary. Chef Falkner is a fitness advocate, loves playing sports and stays “Fit to Cook” and practices a work-life balance.

She’s an author of three cookbooks, she cooks, speaks and teaches allover the world. She was a James Beard Awards finalist in 2005 and she currently serves on the board of trustees of the James Beard Foundation and serves as the chair of the awards committee.

In 2020, she re-located to Los Angeles and produced and hosts a documentary called “Sorry We’re Closed”, which made festival circuits and won Best Documentary Feature at Pasadena Film Festival 2023, streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

Elizabeth also works as a recipe/formula developer/consultant and has worked on projects and brands such as Molino Bianco/Barilla, Starbucks, Hershey, Pepsi, Compass Group, Nestle, Cliff Bar, Mondalez, Wrigley’s, Quaker, General Mills, Emmi Cheeses from Switzerland, M&M/Mars, Behave Candy, and more.

On the beverage side, she and her partner, Heather Freyer founded T’MARO Brands Inc. launching three innovative natural spirits in 2024. T’MARO Amaro, T’MARO Eau de Vie and T’MARO Cacao Nib. All made with organic California dates.

For more, visit her website: https://www.elizabethfalkner.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hello, this is Carolyn Zeal. Welcome to Found Voices, episode eight, where I talk to Elizabeth Faulkner. She is an award-winning chef who worked her way up in fine dining and operated groundbreaking restaurants in San Francisco and New York. She continues to cook at private events, food and wine festivals, culinary tours, and events, and has cooked for countless celebrities. She has appeared on television on multiple networks and many of the cooking competition reality series for the last 20 years. She's a world-recognized pioneer and leader in culinary. Chef Faulkner is a fitness advocate who loves playing sports and staying, quote, fit to cook and practices a work-life balance. She's an author of three cookbooks. She cooks, speaks, and teaches all over the world. She was a James Beard Award finalist in 2005, and she currently serves on the board of trustees of the James Beard Foundation and serves as the chair of the awards committee. In 2020, she relocated to Los Angeles and produced and hosts a documentary called Sorry Work Close, which made festival circuits and won Best Documentary Feature at Pasadena's Film Festival in 2023, streaming on Apple, TV, and Amazon Prime. Elizabeth works also as a recipe formula developer consultant and has worked on projects and brands such as Molino, Bianco, Barilla, Starbucks, Hershey, Pepsi, Compass Group, Nestle, Cliff Bar, Mondales, Wrigley's, Quaker, General Mills, Emmy Cheeses from Switzerland, Eminem Mars, Behave Candy, and more. On the beverage side, she and her partner, Heather Freyr, founded Tomorrow Brands, Inc., launching three innovative natural spirits in 2024. Tomorrow Morrow, Tomorrow Ow de V, and Tomorrow Cacao Nib. All made with organic California dates. And I have to say, talking to Elizabeth was fascinating, fun. She's so passionate, she's so inspiring, and she's really, really, really creative. And if you think that you don't have time in your schedule to do all the things you want to do, listen to this podcast and you will find time. So I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed getting to know Elizabeth even more than I thought I did. She's amazing. Thanks for listening. Hello.

unknown 3:08

Hi.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

How are you? Good. How are you? Good. It's so good to see you. I feel like it's been forever.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

It has been a little while.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

You're one of the busiest people I know, which is like a totally great thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

I think I'm so a busy person because I'm a chef person, like it the personality of a chef is just that you've got a million things, like especially in restaurants, you've got so many things going on, so many fires to put out, so many customers, right? You know, like you're back in front, back of the house, front of the house. And so it's just getting it's I'm just so used to that. And I think, yeah, and I think like I just even when I I don't own any restaurants today, but I feel myself still running around kind of in that mode constantly. But I have to say, writing and and writing is the is similar, but but totally different. It's like I just I'm I do have a million other projects, but I also have to give myself the space to write. And I, you know, I and I'm also like somebody who can't sit for too long. I gotta get up and do stuff. So I don't know if that's normal for writers, but I I'm training myself. I've been training myself, I think, for like 10 years to just have the space to write and focus on that. And it's very easy for me to get distracted and to and pulled into cooking, which is uh strange to call it a distraction. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Well, they're both super creative. Well, number one, I want to hear how writing uh is sort of like that juggling like cooking. And how long have you been writing?

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Well, in my writing, I end up wanting to express uh movement and gesture like cooking is, uh like up close and the thinking uh the thoughts that go on. Cooking can be meditative too. Like I'm always thinking a lot. And in in all these professional kitchens I've worked in, and we're standing over a table chopping and doing this, you know, for a good part of the day. It's not the assembled finished dish that's like theater. It's like that's the stage, the you know, performance time, but there's so much that happens before you ever get to the performance. So it's that period of time where you're just doing your mise in plus and that it, you know, there's so many other thoughts going on. So I feel like the writing is another art form and it reminds me of cooking, it reminds me of music, it reminds me of like improv music, it reminds me of theater, it reminds me of painting scenes and you know, especially abstract painting, because that's kind of how I've grown up. I'm my dad's an abstract painter, so I've that's sort of my first language, and then I think it's that language has been translated into cooking, and now I think it's really translating into my writing. And I've been writing for I mean, I've always kind of written things down and journaled and stuff, but I really started wanting to write something like a book, you know, like I've written a couple cookbooks, but I wanted to write uh more of a memoir about 12 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

And I wrote something and then it never uh I wasn't I wasn't a very good writer. I wrote something, I you know, thought it was so emotional and all this stuff, and had an agent, and they it didn't sell. It was uh loved by Anthony Bourdain, but it just now when I think about it, I'm like, oh thank God I never published that book because it wasn't that good. It was I wasn't a good writer. I had good stories to tell, but I wasn't a good writer. And then I really started working on these workshops before I even met was introduced to Jack. I started writing, you know, just some different workshops based in Massachusetts, and they were prompt driven. But then I started writing some good short stories and then uh and listening to other writers, you know. So that was that's very helpful. That was a good period of time, and it went through it. I think I started doing those really around the pandemic. And then uh maybe three years ago, somebody mentioned Jack Grapes to me. And now that I live in California and I was living in New York for a while, but and I was like, oh, that sounds great. So I took Jack's first class and was already and was just immediately hooked and love this breakdown of literature, you know, just different techniques. And I feel like I've just learned a lot from Jack and from you and some of the and Josh and Adrian and some of the other people that teach some of Jack's um style of writing. Anyway, so I'm just I feel like I've really been focusing on it for the last three years more than than I could ever imagine. Yeah, I love it so much.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

That's so great. Well, it's interesting because people think, oh, I can write. I were whether they studied in college or whatever, all of us, we talk about good writing. Yeah. For you and the way you are with your writing and the way you look at not knowing, I didn't know about your dad. That's so cool. I think when we talk about like the adventure of language, I think that's all about you and how you are. And this will lead up to the weird question I'm thinking about. I like the question of voice, in that what I've noticed, because I've been with Jack since 2008, and there was this moment where I sort of honed in on my voice, and it changed everything. I mean, obviously, I became a teacher doing this podcast with four listeners. I don't know. But it changes, I've seen people kind of grow and change, also though in their lives. Sort of a two-part question. One is when you did hone in, and you know, and we're always, I think, always honing in on our voice as we continue, because writing, I would assume like cooking, it's a practice, right? It is sort of meditative. So, how has that changed how you look at chefing? But also, what does it mean to find your voice as a chef? So it's like uh it's interesting to me.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yeah, it is. Well, it's kind of I do think about that sometimes. I think it's funny to say, you know, it's almost like any craft, right? Uh, I want to be a painter, I want to be a I I'm an artist. I I've always like corner kind of question people that sort of bl bluntly say, I'm an artist, you know, or I'm a writer. I mean, I get it. If you are, you're somebody who writes all the time. And if you're a chef, you probably are cooking all the time. I remember like when I first started cooking professionally in kitchens, thinking, oh, I know, you know, I know some stuff and I have a good palate and I'm pretty good at this. But then at some point you kind of realize, oh my God, there's there's so much to learn. There's like I remember like my first year after cooking in this little French bistro. I think I'd like been to a few fine dining restaurants in San Francisco, and and I was like, oh my God, there's just so much out there, it's so much more to learn. And so and I'm humble, I was humbled then and continue to be humbled by cooking because it's sure I know how to do a lot of things, and I am a master of a lot of techniques and because I've been doing it for almost 40 years, so I I better. There's still so much, and it's also so much to remember. I can't remember all recipes all the time, but I can, you know, if you throw me in a kitchen with a bunch of things, I can come up with I could come up with quite a few things, you know. So writing is like, I think kind of the same. It's so, you know, you have to have your voice in it and not a fake vocabulary. You know, you can't just sort of start slapping things. It's kind of like that's very much like cooking. You can't just like say, oh, I'm gonna use some truffle butter and it's gonna make everything better. No, it's actually not.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Well, the word truffle anything for a while. There was truffle salt, there's truffle butt, now there's truffle popcorn.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Wait, let me just turn off the oven really quick. I'm always cooking something.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

I love that. I'm not editing this out that you ran to the kitchen to turn off the oven. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Yeah, it's funny. So, and I I the other thing is like I've had this conversation with Jack a few times too, where I'll, you know, I do end up writing about flavors and smells in the scene, and it makes people hungry. And then they want the recipe. And I'm like, that's not the point of this kind of writing. I don't want to write a story with the idea of a recipe, or even it might give you a few hints on what's what's distinguishing it, but I don't want to write down a the formula afterwards because even recipe writing is a a strange documentation of a process. And it may not, it doesn't have the poetry in it necessarily until you actually make it. And then it's such a different, it's such a rigid format compared to um writing fiction or non-fiction. It's I've been I've been writing more fiction uh in the last six months than oh great. Yeah, and not memoir-driven work, and I really like it a lot. I mean, I'm working on a first draft of a manuscript right now, so I love that.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I've been working, I've been taking Adrian Bloom's classes.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Oh, he's great.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Yeah. And it's and I like how small and intimate they are too, like yours. But honestly, it's everybody's different classes that have been just great help really helping, helpful.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

I think it's important to just study with as many people as you can. I like thinking, I would a imagine.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Yeah, and the workshops are great because you know, honestly, listening to other people's work and progress in their own way of speaking is just I mean, it's fun.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Yeah. It's so fascinating. It is. I think we learned from each other. When my husband and I we went to Utah, you know, we drove around. We had so much fun. I'd never been to all the places. And at night, there was, I'm gonna forget his name, but you you've written about him, and I'm gonna Oh, Bobby Flay. Yeah, Bobby Flay, and he has like the the girlfriend.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

The Brooke is um, she's a really great shadow.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Yeah, and and then there was another gal. And they like people come in and challenge them. And my husband and I would watch that, you know, at night, we'd be in the hotel room, and we just would say, Wow, they just throw ingredients, and we're so impressed with the fact that you, Elizabeth, when you said this, they will throw you in a kitchen with whatever ingredients, and you can just do something. And I liken that a little bit as you were talking to language. Prompts are fine, prompts are different than an exercise. If you go in and say, okay, I'm going to focus on consonants and do as we call teeth and mouth and really crunchy language, it changes what you produce. Yeah, that's right. So it's almost the same.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

It's that's a good, I like that analogy.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

It's interesting. It's pretty impressive that all the recipes that you must have in your head and all the things, and much like language and writing, I mean, there's so many books and authors, you know, literature out there. For as much as someone might say I'm well read, I think, yeah, no. Never. There's so much.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

And it's also like, sure, like prompt or just daily writing, writing like you talk, writing in your uh doing a journal is uh a really good practice and just keeps you writing, right? It keeps you fresh and uh like all the different angles of like write, like a one of the muses or read and sung or all these different ways. And but then it's a really different thing to say, well, I'm gonna write, write a book now, and I'm I'm gonna write a story, you know, an arc that makes sense and do that without it being so overthought or something. I mean, it's kind of a weird space, right? It's kind of like writing a putting together a menu or a body of menus. You really have to work on it. There has to be improv in it and like there has to be freedom in it, and there has to be some structure.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

I it's funny. I just uh I wrote a newsletter yesterday something about an outline. How I spoke with someone who had been working on an outline for I don't remember how long he said. In the newsletter, I say 18 years, but it was some a lot, a lot. Yeah, it felt like and the word stymied. And it does, I think for some people. Now I know Pam Houston, I think it's things may shift in flight, the name of the book. And she in a workshop, she talked about it like a Rubik's Cube, and it had this many parts and this many things. And as she spoke, it made my brain hurt. But some people need an outline. What's so fascinating about method writing is I mean, a whole arc can kind of form if you just keep writing. The story is one thing, the plot is how you put it together, and that can change. It's like puzzle pieces. Once you have it all written, that's true. Story is one thing. It's so the characters that we are so driven by, you know, attracted to that will follow if wacky things are going on in the story or in the story in the arc. My dad used to talk about movies and say, if you notice a lot of movies, it starts with someone driving into town and then stuff happens and then it's ends with them driving out of town driving out.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

That's so true.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah, you know, and that can be one way, or it can just be not a lot happens and it's all internal. You know, maybe a lot doesn't happen, or maybe it does, but it's that internal growth of the character. So arcs are a funny thing.

unknown 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

I like that. Uh it is feels like a Rubik's Cuber matrix of some sort that you're trying to find the pieces that match, you know, together.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah, I mean, I think in the editing process, there there is a lot of that. Jack once said, I said in class, it's like putting together a puzzle, and he said, Yeah, except the puzzle pieces have no picture on them. Moving things around. Did you have an idea that popped into your head, or did you just start writing one day and then all of a sudden you realized you were writing fiction?

SPEAKER_01 17:02

No, I really, you know, after kind of working in this sort of memoir world, because you know, I have a really good friend in New York who's a great chef and memoir author. Uh, her name's Gabrielle Hamilton. And uh she wrote a book at least a decade ago called Blood, Bones, and Butter.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

And she's got a new one out called Next of Kin. And she has, you know, a master's degree in creative writing. And she runs a, or she used to run a gem of a restaurant called Prune in the East Village. And I have another friend who's written quite a few books and screenplays and stage. Her name's Syntra Wilson. And Sintra is somebody I've known forever. And she used to write for the New York Times and like as a fashion columnist. And she's so eccentric. She like used to do a she a long time ago, when I think in her 20s, she did a series, like a um what do you call it? Like a figurine series on MTV called Winter Steel. And uh it was kind of like Barbies that were badass bitches on bikes. Like, just did this weird, fabulous, like, you know, tough girls, you know, like miniseries, whatever it was. I used to be so intimidated by both of them because their vocabulary was so in so rich and intense, and they definitely write like they talk. And I didn't even, I mean, I never even knew that phrase before until you know a couple of years ago, but like I would be around them and I just love their character, them them, the the writer themselves, you know. I think I wanted to write a memoir, a chef memoir, because I felt like at some point I had gone through some crazy stock market crash stuff. And when I was in the Bay Area, I owned restaurants, and then everything just sort of unraveled uh in my mid-40s. And and I felt like I had to like figure it out. I needed something, there was something I needed to solve. And so I I worked on that for so long. And then I ended up making I it just sort of like I ended up making a documentary during the pandemic that that story came out in it. And that was that was never even intended in the documentary, but it came out, and so then I was like, well, now okay, I've that I've kind of done that. I don't need to write that story anymore. It's it's basically out there in a in a film. I think just after taking a bunch of these method writing classes, I sometime last year I said, you know what? I think I'm just gonna turn this into my stuff into fiction and create another character and who knows. And then I really just sat down and started thinking about all these different pieces, kind of like the puzzle pieces that I had painted some pieces of, you know, and tried to was trying to figure out like how can I I have like a whole bunch of stuff food stuff, ideas that this how am I ever gonna put that into anything unless it's but just a fiction, fictional piece? So that's kind of where I I just landed on that and said that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna turn these other wild ideas I have into a piece of fiction. And then it I just sat down and started saying that's I'm I'm gonna start in the first scene. That's just where I'm gonna do. And I just kind of that's what I do every week. I just find myself like going, where would they go next? But sometimes I already like know that they need to be over here. I just have to figure out how to get over here.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Yeah. And sometimes what happens too is you have all these pieces and they they do fit together, but they maybe need a bridge, or they maybe and other times there's too much because maybe they've been written separately and we've already heard that. So you just cut that.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Or sometimes you just go in and say, What I need is this little piece of that. Yeah. I don't need that whole story because that's that was fine. That lives over there, and now I just really want this little yeah, patch.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

When I get to that point, it it's just it's fun. It's like that's my my slicing, those are my knife skills.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Yeah. But it's it's so true, it is so much like cooking like that, because even like when you write recipes or you make a dish and you get like attached, like people get attached to it, you get attached to it, and you like think, well, I don't want to mess with that because it's kind of perfect, right? Or and then at some point, especially after cooking all these years, I'm like, it's not nothing is that precious. It's cool to document that and it's interesting, right? Can come back to I was thinking about a cake. I was eating a passion fruit, a fresh passion fruit today this morning, and I was thinking, gosh, when I had my citizen cake bakery, I had a passion fruit cake, and I was thinking in a moment, just like over in the by the kitchen sink, I was thinking, like, yeah, I guess that was a really groundbreaking cake, because really nobody was making that flavor in cakes. I mean, we were we were doing it in fine dining, but not in a bakery. And then I thought about this uh French pastry chef who lives in New York, Francois Paillard. And now he I was like, Oh, he must. I mean, we all like all of the best pastry chefs back in the early nineties, loved passion fruit. And we but we basically brought it to mass market because it was just a flavor that wasn't in everything. And it's not in everything, but you see it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Well it reminds me to the discussion you were writing a piece where your character, you went on stage and with that birthday cake.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

That's for Guy Fury.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Guy Fury. But that idea of you creating something amazing and beautiful and stunning and then just like slashing it stage is to have that quality to not think of everything as quote precious. It's that idea of risk and it would make the artist even more expansive because everything isn't so every word on the page isn't so precious that you can't cut it. And to take something so amazing and just in your in your hip leather, you know, one I mean that's pretty amazing. And just I'll never forget that writing that you did. Even now as I speak about it, I can see the scene in my head, which is good. I mean that shows good writing.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Well and it's also what you know whatever version of that I did is one version. So there are so many parallels to music and writing, cooking, painting my you know my dad is still a prolific painter. He just like has to paint every day. And he's like just got so much work and it's all just you can see some similarity sometimes in some pieces but then it's like there you know it's just he just keeps going and well the next one isn't more beautiful than the last one. It's just wild. Yeah I feel like writing is I mean that's why there's people that write lots of books or series on TV and I mean just keeps going. You know they it's amazing. I like that so much. I like this just I like being able to be in that space where I can say oh look at all these pieces that I've written and that one's kind of good like that kind of you know I I could riff on that you know and do and go somewhere else with it. Yeah in trying to encapsulate a whole novel right now it's like I want some of those pieces that I had but sometimes I have to kind of rework them or reinvent them.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

And it's just like cooking.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

I love the similarities. I knew it would be so fun to talk to you. Share the name of your documentary and where people can go and see it.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

It's called Sorry We're closed. It's on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. It came out in uh August 2023.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

We shot it in in the heart of the Black Lives Matter protests and the pandemic in 2020. I went I went around and interviewed about 50 chefs in the film. It's very different than other documentaries. It's not a bunch of B-roll and then talking heads meaning like you would shoot those in studio or somewhere it's really having chef-to-chef interviews from LA starting I mean and can you imagine we were filming right when we were allowed to go back outside after quarantining. So we were all wearing masks we couldn't shoot people's food but we could get I it was a moment in time where I could wrangle all these chefs and say I'm gonna be in LA for two we're just shooting for two days. I just need you for 30 minutes. It's not going to be a whole big production there's only like five people on the crew because nobody wants to get COVID. We're we're sitting outside their restaurant or we're sitting somewhere else and we're just talking about like the space that we're in what's what's the where the fragile uh restaurant industry independent restaurant industry even before the pandemic and then what we're doing with our time and how food is evolving and changing. So it's a really interesting little section of time of like of time. Yeah it's a time capsule we filmed in LA we filmed in on San Francisco Bay Area, Oakland Berkeley and then also in New York and New Jersey and then I did a couple of virtual interviews because we couldn't fly everywhere and we didn't have a budget for it. But we also got really amazing footage because like nobody was there was nobody we didn't need permits. We were just like at Griffith Observatory or on Hollywood Boulevard and like Rodeo Drive and then in front of the Hamilton set in New York City and in Times Square and there's nobody there. I mean we're just like it's like me and an Elmo and a lady doing yoga in Times Square. That's it. There's like the most bizarre time to see the world. And I was still technically living there during the um quarantine time but I was I came out here to do some events in Los Angeles and I had this I was just doing this pizza pop-up tour and my meaning like I was working with uh cheat Emmy cheeses from Switzerland and I had gone to like Radza in New Jersey Marta and in New York City and um and Kim's amazing restaurant uh Pizzeria Lola in Minneapolis and I went to San Francisco to a restaurant that's not there anymore called Zero Zero um with my friend Bruce Hill and I did all these little pizzas I went to Nashville to Manit Chohan's restaurant and my last stop was at Moza. I was just gonna ask you about Moza and what yeah my last stop was in Moza and so it was that that was one of the reasons and I had another event or something. Well and Nancy is a key figure in the film too she's my first interview anyway so I was you know supposed to be doing this pizza papa tour. That's why I ended up being out here and then coincidentally the director and I had been talking before the pandemic in New York and he was from out there too we had we're talking about making this film about the mental health state of chefs but when the pandemic hit we I was like Pete we got to go out and make this film now because everybody's totally freaking out and thinking it's the end of the world and uh it's I need to I just need to go talk to my restaurant people. Like I just need I for some reason I just was so driven to like get out and just talk and like help people wrap their head around how to evolve with this shocking change that was happening. And Pete had coincidentally moved to California too and so we just like got it together June 1st and went outside and first interviewed Nancy and it was like the right after the first protest on the streets of um for Black Lives Matter and you know uh part of the restaurant had been burned from a somebody throwing a Molotov cocktail in there and then Nancy was just so resilient and like this is what happens this is part of life you know and there's a scene in there where I say oh yeah it's it kind of is like the I mean what's happening right now is like the way we are as chefs we people you know we get a bunch of tickets you got to get the food out another group of tickets you like you just kind of keep going yeah you know you gotta figure it out the film is um a really good parcel of that period of time and I think it still has legs today because I mean here we are six years after that I'm well first of all I'm gonna do another I'm finally doing my pizza pop-up at Moza coincidentally March 30th this year um six exactly six years later from what it was supposed to be right so it's kind of perfect and I mean I I live like 10 minutes from Moza so I go there a lot it's very different filmmaking because of the way we had because I really wanted the voice the collective voice of all the chefs because it's really not about one or two chefs in the world. It never is it's there's hundreds of talented people thousands of talented people in this country it shows all the different kinds of chefs that there are meaning like there's some you know some you might recognize because they've been on TV, some of them you won't because they're just like a mom and pop little place or different ethnicities, different kinds of restaurants, different, you know, some are Michelin starred some of them are not so it's really I think that's what's so powerful in it is that you get this how tough chefs and restaurant people are and how resilient they are.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

I think that comes through in your writing too. So when we talk about voice it's not just the words on the page but it's the perspective the way the writer looks at the world what they write about who they write about or and how they do it that energy somehow comes forth in your work in a really cool way. That ability to pivot is so important in life I think in creativity you know I I always look at the parallels between writing and life in anything we do that's important to us whether it's career or job or what have you how we are with other people there's like an openness and a courage that must come forth. You know Jack's definition of courage is the capacity to give which I love that definition. So when I think about voice and writing and how we show up in life and the capacity we have to give is uh I I just think it's all kind of life changing. And I think that comes across in your work.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

So your piece that you're going to read do you want to share a little bit about it before you read I have a piece that is a good example of how I've written a lot of shorter pieces. So it's it's very much writing like you talk just sitting down and I mean I have this always in front of me just do the exercise.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

That's brilliant along with my dice.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

It's kind of how I often sit down and start to write something and I might have something I usually have some kind of food thing in my brain at least one it's kind of how I just c get into it. Yeah okay it's called phylode and I I decided to I actually was making phylodo yesterday and making something so i I was like this just makes sense. I have lost trust in people everyone in their own private jet stream other passengers sitting by some friendly some not so for example on my birthday several exes reached out to me. I thought it was weird I don't know I know it was my birthday and all it seems like they all they are all trying to get oh seems like they are all still trying to get something from me. This is what I don't trust. Made me pick up JD Salinger again but I couldn't remember exactly why or what happens in the book. They must still love you said my girlfriend referring to the exes Hmm I'm not so sure about that I decided I better start figuring out what to make for my client for dinner and I knew I had lots of spinach in the refrigerator refrigerator. Heck I was craving my slightly warm spinach salad with roasted potatoes, bacon and a poached egg with mustard shallot vinaigrette for breakfast anyway. This is how my brain goes in the mornings I have to eat anyway. And if I'm in the kitchen how much can I get done that has to hurry up in 321 I was irritated by this manicopoda that was served at the restaurant last night at dinner with a couple of my friends. A new modern a new modern Middle Eastern restaurant. This open kitchen was lined with copper pots above the hotline and featured a wood burning oven where puffy hollow pillows of pita were pumped out of the kitchen and set in wire baskets lined with parchment paper for all the tables all night. I ordered a Zatar margarita on the rocks but it had to be served up. We're not allowed to modify the cocktail because the Zatar would on top would get lost. I suppose it was somebody someone's opinion, but I like margaritas on the rocks to dilute the concentration and keep it cold. That's a thing about me I like hot things hot and cold things cold. I got my ice slash rocks on the side Sam I am my margarita came quickly though a little sweet with a tiny pea sized pinch of Zatar on top of the foam. About one speck each of the herbs, whatever. Everything was buttoned up at this restaurant and we had a great time. I am hypercritical about food if it's just gone the wrong way. It comes with the territory how could I not be it was a well conceived menu and execution but the spanicopoda I was excited about was a crazy disappointment. It wasn't phyllo around the spinach feta mixture and it felt deep fried. There was a skin around the filling Chef Michel Richard would have rolled his eyes in DC at this fat cigar version and he would have said his was bigger and better double French entendre. Felt the need to correct all of this this morning so I decided to make lamb tonight and use that tahini sauce in the fridge I made a couple days ago to go with the lamb chops. For the spanicopoda I would make homemade phyllo on top and bottom of my kill spinach feta filling with a touch of Meyer lemon zest, lemon juice, oregano, dill, mint, and nutmeg not creamed out bright texture of the greens present. Right homemade phyllo I'm going to explain how easy it is to make phyllo dough. It looks like two cups of flour with a pinch or two of sugar and salt, a spoonful of white wine vinegar and two spoonfuls of olive oil. Enough water to bring it together knead and rest the dough. I divide into eight pieces and roll each into a tortilla size dusted heavily in a mixture of flour and cornstarch stack up four of these and roll out thin. The pressure of all four rolled out thin makes the best phyllo dough. The clarified butter brushed between a few thin layers to be baked into a crisp savory pie later in the day. The trouble with me is I like it when someone digresses it's more interesting and all I love this piece.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

I love puffy pill puffy hollow pillows of pita and I like the narrator likes her hot things hot and her cold things cold. But I think my favorite I mean I love the whole jet stream thing I felt like the whole piece was on a jet stream. It was so great. I love that the Hispanic hopeta wasn't a disappointment it was a crazy disappointment. That's so amazing and and um you do love your Meyer Lemon. I love that I know you love your Meyer we have that in common I love a good Meyer Lemon. So I haven't heard your writing in about a year but I feel like it's really you're honing in even more strongly on your voice and there's a confidence in this piece of writing the narrator is I I love where her mind goes you know she goes over to Salinger. She goes over to Salinger she comes back but where it's easy to follow and I'm with it the whole time and what a great piece of writing I knew I knew I knew speaking with you on this podcast was going to be so much fun. I really appreciate your time thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Oh my God. So um I was gonna just mention one more thing that because I always do have so many projects going on um we talked about my film but I also have you know a spirit company so my that's right my love of food and beverage comes out a lot in my writing too intentionally because I really um think that sometimes people don't understand how I could be a pastry chef and a savory chef and how in the world could how in the world little lady can you also still can you also make a line of alcohol spirits my partner and I have come across really a unique line of spirits and we use dates and that's what's so cool about it. So we have it's called tomorrow and I have all of them behind me here. T apostrophe M-A-R-O because the root word is tamar which means date and date palm in ancient Hebrew and Arabic but we make everything with dates from Coachella Valley. So we make a marrow and a O de V, which is a brandy and a chocolate liqueur every everything's made with dates. So it's only sweet the liqueurs are only sweetened with dates and the spirit is 100% organic dates that's been fermented and distilled. I'm actually going I have an internship at a distillery in Austria for a month this spring and I'm gonna learn how to um distill lots of different fruits because that's going to help me even make even more interesting product. I can't uh I I have no background in that I have my background is culinary and I've had some I've come up with formulas for you know different beverage companies and I've worked on beverage somewhat and this this is a whole other world of like owning this brand developing a brand and trying and wanting to give it the same treatment as food like meaning like I really want it everything to be just masterful and beautiful and thoughtful and it they are already if anybody says I don't have time I'll just send them your way and or I'll make them listen to this because I think when we're passionate about things that we want to do in our lives we'll find the time which obviously you have you're amazing. Well you just make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Yeah just do the exercise yeah yeah you're great exactly well thanks for your time thank you so much so much fun