An Open Letter to Rachel Laudan

Professor Laudan, what are you getting on about exactly? 

In a piece entitled “Towards A Culinary Ethos for the 21st Century”, you propose several frameworks for understanding both our food history as a country and proposing a “culinary ethos” as you refer to it. In the end, you walk away with a conclusion that the first step in developing such an ethos for the 21st century is to abandon the slogan “our food system is broken, we must fix it”, which is described as being 

“…at best unhelpful, at worst misleading. “Our food system” suggests a monolith, perhaps even a conspiracy, with problems that no one except a chosen “us” has noticed or is trying to improve. “Broken” suggests that in the past this imagined food system was whole when it never was. Instead of such sloganeering, I urge continuing the steady, ongoing work of identifying and solving the multiple problems of our multiple food systems so that, without exploiting workers or endangering the earth, the riches so many have come to enjoy can be spread yet further.”

This call to action is many things, most of them fundamentally disappointing to me as a student of history and practitioner in food systems spaces. This piece, and its final conclusion, are ahistorical, cobbling together a series of assumed relationships that have little material basis in reality. It ignores, through intention or via oversimplification, years of food systems work conducted by a multitude of disciplines and organizations that directly feed to the notion that the dominant food system requires reform and change. And that yields the last issue — that in never asking where such the notion of our food system comes from, you perpetuate an intellectual violence against those most directly affected and living through the experience of our food systems, attempting to depoliticize and diminish a specifically political program of increasing economic and political agency within our food system. 

It’s not that there isn’t material to be agreed upon: our layers of production and supply chains operate in a way that has changed what we eat, how we eat it, and the expectations we draw from our food supply greatly in the last 60-plus years. But how we read that story matters; Mike Davis pointed out in his “Late Victorian Holocausts”, sometimes grand narratives of history, in the work of simplifying complex events down to more digestible stories, obscure important voices and eliminate the agency of responsible parties. And in your historical framing of America’s moral economies of food there’s a lot of, shall we say, abridgment that goes on. The civil rights movement may have used restaurant counters as a protest stage, but their political call to action wasn’t about eating “like everyone else” — it was about political and legal agency and the rights of full citizenship. The detailing of the Industrial Revolution, the Westward Expansion, as just things that happened that changed our relationships to food and not as intentionally pursued parts of a national policy program feels jarring, especially given their impact on varying foodways. To talk of a counter-culture cuisine or moral critique of food production starting only in the 1960’s means rejecting not just the work of those like the Frances E. Willard (on food purity and women’s work) or Sheila Hibbens (on diet), but Upton Sinclair, FH King, and WEB Du Bois, who were pointing out failures in systems of production and labor and their impact on agricultural, urban, and minority communities of their time. The frameworks you shoehorn food history into aren’t chronologically consistent nor necessarily contemporary with each other, and raised my eyebrows for the sweeping generalizations and inaccuracies they make. 

The generalizations matter because these narrative frameworks are not neutral; if there’s a simple nobility to the republican ideal, the social democratic counter cuisine has disappeared, overturned by conscious capitalism. Or, in some romantic solipsism promoted by college students, Michael Pollan, and Alice Waters, it’s responsible for holding back progress in the underdeveloped world. And while there’s an admission that no food system is perfect, you are seemingly willing to give all benefit of the doubt to the existing predominant system of food production, while reducing criticisms of it to an opposition to plenty and progress — never minding that most criticism of the food systems that exist is that they not only fail to provide plenty, but that they actively hinder the progress of communities through the lack of political and economic agency within them. These voices do not exist in your reading, or if your citations of Pollan, Waters & Petrini ought to be enough, ventriloquizing them without acknowledging their belief that food that is “good, clean and fair” is a political right (for Petrini and Waters, at least) is intellectually convenient for you, but is frankly a dishonest interpretation of their words and work. What is really gained by eliminating the voices of the food sovereignty movement, the voices of labor history, minority history, and environmental history, those data points and those lived experiences? That environmental sustainability hasn’t been part of the picture? Maybe read nearly a century of affairs, from Bennett to Rachel Carson to critiques of why monocultures may be bad in Sub-Saharan Africa and see that they have been part of the conversation for those who cared to look or think on them. To quote from Davis in the conclusion of Late Victorian Holocausts: 'How do we weigh smug claims about the life-saving benefits of steam transportation and modern grain markets when so many millions, especially in British India, died alongside railroad tracks or on the steps of grain depots?’’ The same can be said of the argument you pose here.

Getting rid of the statement “our food system is broken, we must fix it” is a form of intellectual violence, as is repurposing the moral economy of food that underlies it in the ahistorical fashion you ask for. In your final section, you ask for a depoliticized action, one where a sort of bureaucratic scientism will save the day and deliver an optimal ethos. That vision denies the history of those affected and the needs that they voice, as if the systems that gave us this supposed abundance did not also design much of its harms. There are legitimate, intricate and interconnected harms — economic, environmental, social, political, historical and otherwise — that lead many to say the food system is broken. Their call that “we” must fix it is a call to action, to claim agency that for many has been long denied, restricted, or limited, oftentimes through bureaucratic or political means. It is a reclamation of political agency for what is fundamentally a political project — not a nostalgic Romantic mythology. The first stage of engaging with as complex a notion as a culinary ethos is understanding the stakeholders and hearing them, not speaking over them with half-thought through pronouncements that nullify their experiences and community histories. As Amartya Sen wrote, there are “disastrous consequences of fierce economic inequality combined with a drastic imbalance of political voice and power…that exemplify a wider problem of human insecurity and vulnerability ultimately related to economic disparity and political disempowerment.” The type of history that you tell, Professor Laudan, is engaged in a politics of removing voices from the table by pretending as if they do not exist, in history or the present.  And that is what makes me angry about your piece, Professor Laudan — you have elected to silence these histories and claim their words as your own, without even acknowledging them, and you have pretended to disavow the politics of your decision to do so.  

Where We Find Warmth

Some naming conventions are moods, inspirations, an instance or item that is totemic, encapsulating a particular series of values or ideals. Sometimes it’s in metaphor, or in tale. As hinted on Tuesday, there’s kind of a personal story around the reason Campfire, when it came to mind, resonated strongly for me. And the scene that occurred, and the events that lead up to it, tell a story that I hadn’t even pieced together until I happened to brainstorm around changing the name from Diaspora. While it might sound silly, this all begins at Burning Man.

It was on a windy, sandy night of my third Burn, the night of the man burn, in 2013. Leading up to the Burn, I wasn’t in good headspace: I had come in from NYC to SF, exhausted, and had spent most of the summer mulling my frustrations with work and my post-graduate school life. I had to immediately go to pack out our truck, drop off bags, and pick up supplies. Upon arrival the next day, our group had issues on entry. The camp itself was larger than it had been in years previous (45 versus 15 and 22 my previous years), and I was feeling completely disoriented. I was finding myself not cohering with anyone in camp the entirety of the event, and I wasn’t able to find a groove for myself in the city. I felt fairly isolated and alone, and in attempting to push through, dedicating to myself that i could enjoy the event “on my own terms”, which often meant alone, pushing myself to the next event, the next party, trying (and failing) to access some connection. I turned to a lot of drug salad that year, mixing and taking more surprises than I usually would, and that complicated my ability to process both my feelings and responses to them. FOMO hit hard, and I couldn’t shake it, not from myself, not from my group, not for the rest of the trip. In that space, that isolation can be daunting; you’re in your head, questioning all variety of things — your relationships, your pride, sense of self, angry about why you were out there. Why you bothered caring to be there. It’s something that happens a lot at Burning Man, the tension of being responsible for yourself and your community while in conditions that can pretty quickly test your mechanisms for assessment and care.

So when Burn night came around, in the wind and dust and fire, and another series of emotionally rocky surfs and tidewaters pulled at me, I quested off to try and enjoy a Stanton Warriors set, only to discover that their set had passed, or that I had not gotten to the right noise camp, and something kind of broke. In retrospect, I probably had a panic attack. And in the midst of those feels and the hippie flipping I had to calm my mind and my nerves and make my way back to camp (imbued with the sense of failure for retreating to camp on a party night). That wander can feel like a shot in the dark; after the Man burns, some camps begin to wrap up and leave the city, and physical markers of your topography start to disappear. Between those missing monuments and the raucousness of the night city swirling around, and every step forward feels like 3 steps back. Line of sight elongates into the night, stretching, spacetime warpeding around me, feeling akin to the distended sounds and screenshots of the third layer in Inception, where everything was happening in slow motion and real time all at once. And when I fought through that distortion and got to camp, I found it much as I felt at the moment: empty, dark, devoid of any people, energy, music. (And not to be dramatic, life.)

In that moment, I recalled that there were friends who were laying low at their camp at the adjacent corner, and so I quickly muddled myself over there, and found them camped out, with whiskey and blankets and a calm, cackling fire. A friend of mine brought me over, gave me the bottle, and let me rest my head and just…hang for an hour or two. I didn’t talk much, and I didn’t have to; I was allowed to laugh when I wanted, and nap for a second when I wanted. And for a while I got to feel some semblance of normal for the first time in a week. The fire was almost a little too warm for the night, but it was entrancing. People came and went, strangers passing by warmed themselves up and proffered stories and booze, and the night proceeded like a scene from Koyaanisqatsi, a swirl of people, words, laughter and quiet all around the constant of the fire pit.

I eventually got back to camp, went to bed, and closed out the event; got off Playa, unloaded, and immediately had to fly back to NYC and work the very next day. I was a physical and mental wreck with no recovery time to process what had happened that during my time on Playa. I came back dejected, and kind of torn; there was a lot of bad energy that came back and I ended up second guessing myself for a long time. Learning that your head is one of your greatest assets and can also be your greatest enemy can be a lot to work through. It took some time to realize those events, to understand the implications and places where its impact began to hide itself in my everyday life, and the project to unroot a lot of those things is still ongoing, but it is moving process. It took me three years to get back to the Playa, and thanks to the very same people who gave me that moment of calm, to get me back out on Playa again in 2016. They brought me back to my senses, and reinvigorated my relationship to both the event and the values, feelings, and connections it instilled in me.

The campfire of 2013 was a highlight, once that I can recall and to this day reminds me that there are people I love and that, even when things get crazy, we can find each other. And it’s that memory that bounded back when I was brainstorming new ways to think about the renaming of Diaspora, with the full sense of warmth, communing, and movement that the particular moment holds for me, and hopefully, to be shared with our guests and community. It’s easy to knock the Burn, thinking of it as some bougie hipster nonsense taken over by tech money and partiers. And I’ll never say there isn’t that element at play there. But it’s also a place that gave me a pretty foundational education, in 6 years of attending, the importance of immediacy, gifting, communality, engagement, and putting into practice a lot of the things that people like Arendt, Etzioni, Habermas, and a bunch of other political theorists spend a lot of pages theorizing about. It gave me an actionable understanding of how to treat certain values like presence and agency, and gave me new vectors for understanding actionable Judaism. And most of all, it gave us the space to dream that a better world is possible with intention; that the “default” world is one of many possible set-ups that we are capable of building, that a world filled with wonder, care, and empowerment, both individual and communal, is possible — but only if we work to build it.

There’s something about building a space that, yes, is fundamentally about food and sustenance but also serves as that same sort of meeting place, facilitating the act of connecting dots and seeing people, and in some small (in)direct way activating them to those things, to something more than just consumption. As others, have pointed out, sometimes a space can be a space of comfort, warmth, and sustenance, and that’s fine. But what if we could have a space that also raised questions and gave people the tools to answer them? What if it was also a space to build resiliency and power? If Campfire can be a spark to do that kind of work, along with making delicious foodstuffs…well, wouldn’t it be neat?

I’d like to think so.

What's in a Name?

Sometimes you begin a project, and something about it that doesn’t sit quite right. A product can feel forced; an event an obligation rather than an intention. Sometimes it’s a matter of following a trend and when at the time of launch, the realization the fashion has already changed. Like a a piano tuner, you hit on something and it just doesn’t ring true to who the company is, or what you’re attempting to do. And depending on what is out of tune, it can be a minor key, or something that can mean everything is out of sync.

In my case, it was the issue of our name, an issue I would qualify as being pretty significant. If my original name, Faygele, felt too personal and specific (my Los Angeles-based baking project, which emphasized Jewish pastry and breads from across its ethnography), Diaspora was both too broad (which diaspora, really?) and perhaps more importantly, invoked something I hadn’t thought about during the initial planning phase: the violence that tends to engender diasporas in the first place.

Diasporas are, first and foremost, according to a variety of researchers of demography, geography, and historical sociology, defined as a dispersal, usually forceable displacement (see Safran and Reis for some of the better elaborations of diaspora identity). Both the Jewish and African diasporas can be defined in this condition, and while both share strong shared histories and newly cultivated traditions amongst their diaspora communities, their experience is one of trauma; violence and displacement are cornerstones and are regularly invoked by their living communities. For a place specializing in a desire to bring people together over food, drink, and workshops, even the most charitable reading of diaspora as a group coming together in shared values didn’t quite evoke what it was we wanted the company to be, or the energy we wanted to put forth. (And to top it all off, no one could seem to pronounce it.)

Good names, as silly as it sounds, are incredibly important to a project: they evoke strong feelings and impressions that set the tone and act as a connector for the many things a project may intend to do. Alice Waters and partners decided on Chez Panisse in part for their love of the films of Marcel Pagnol, but also because of the romance, the love that paints not just the love triangle but also the seaside scenes of Marseilles and Provence generally, feeding into the desire for the space to be filled with natural light and some textiles, and at its start a very French approach to food (that has evolved some in time). Supermoon Bakehouse is well named to project the otherworldly looks of their pastry and 2001-A-Space-Odessey-styled decor choices. Like many of the small touches that happen in a hospitality-driven project, a name can convey so much, so getting it right can be important.

Diaspora was a name chosen in a moment, perhaps appropriately, of some duress. Finishing my masters project at NYU, which was the initial build of this business, I had a hard time choosing a name; many of my classmates came down hard on the number of choices I had come upon (Kiln? Too abstract and hard to pronounce. Faygele? Same, even with the precedent. Commune? Already taken by a design firm. And does anyone like communal tables?), and at the time I lacked confidence to defend some of the choices. I was also working forty hours a week while going to school full time to so I could keep my loan repayments down, so my mind wasn’t fully in the game in terms of anchoring what I wanted to bring to the table. And so Diaspora, a name for a business with no home, and being in New York City, a place filled with people from elsewhere, seemed an easy fix.

For a while that worked; we did a few pop-ups under that name, which we learned in NYC are logistically frustrating and maddening, and got to supply a few shops for a while. I did this while working at paying off my loans continued working in a variety of other places picking up new skills and relationships. I kept returning to more experiences from the West Coast, what my favorite places were managing to accomplish there, and parts of the vision began to get buttressed and affirmed. As those wheels turned, the ideas became more coherent and the name less so; Diaspora felt less attached to notions of hospitality, warmth, gathering, and easygoing approachability. Nature, and agriculture, were not referenced or even in near imagination, let alone specific notions of food that were evoked by such a name.

As I began to come back to the the idea of running my own shop, and coming out of the confidence building exercise that was my time with City of Saints, I began to have confidence in what I wanted to do with this project, and began to return to workshopping the business plan. In a moment of brainstorming, a name that evoked almost precisely what I wanted materialized; one that I could grow from, and one that was tied to a very specific memory to me*, but could be generalized for anyone who had experienced it in reality or in imagination, and a name that left little room for interpretation.

That name is Campfire, or specifically for purposes of legal woo-woo, Campfire Coffee + Bread. The concept of being a cafe and bakery hasn’t changed; neither has the notion of being a community food hub in the underlying principle of the place. We’ll be slinging coffee and baked goods, making our own bread, jams, and preserves of various sorts, but also workshopping stuff like home baking and pickle making on off days and hours, or doing the occasional one-off dinner series. Yes, there’ll be a toast bar. And we’ll be doing it in a space that feels genuine the my sense of hospitality, which means literally coming into my home: chairs and tables that are welcoming to a variety of dispositions, a southwestern color palate, and a lot of blankets, throw pillows, wood, clay, and hopefully a backyard space for an actual damn fire pit (and some greenery). All of the ideas about progressive pay schemes, educational programming, and hospitality driven by surprising, supporting and delighting both our guests and each other will get to see the light of day.

So in all that, there’s been a few changes: the website, the instagram/twitter page, and even the shop got a little update and tidying up. A new logo is in the works, and we’re formally looking for a space to open up shop in, probably in the New York City area. I’m preparing some funding statements, and getting some things together for a kickstarter. It’s fulfilling the promise to myself that i set up earlier this year, if taking a little longer than expected. And while there are some other irons in the fire, job-wise, there’s no reason not to get onto this project. So we’re taking the leap, saying yes, now with a little more confidence and understanding of what this project should be. As it is said in the Tanchuma: In life, you discover that people are called by three names: One is the name the person is called by his father and mother; one is the name people call him; and one is the name he acquires for himself. The best one is the one he acquires for himself.

The story of that particular campfire in the next post, later this week. In the meantime, there’s some good grooves that still #standbythejams, and a good way to liven your week as it goes. Give it a listen, yeah?

How Complicated Can A Slice of Pizza Be?

Alicia Kennedy recently reached out to me to discuss the nature of class and its intersection at the discussion of food culture and food systems more broadly, namely the sort of point-counterpoint-missed the point nature of so many discussions that occur in food media. The most recent article reviving this particular style of debate is courtesy of Bon Appetit, bringing us uproar over four-dollar slices from smaller artisanal purveyors of pizza being superior replacements for the dollar slice. In turn, many raised up to decry the piece, both for its eyeroll-emojicon worthiness of its shitty rhetoric as well as many anecdotes about the wonder of the dollar slice for students, young arrivals to New York City, and impoverished workers of this fine city. 

There’s a multitude of truthy kernels in the morass of the BA piece and its responses. The four dollar slice represents good possibilities — qualitatively better ingredients (helping sustain local agricultural economies or better ecological practices, building new supply chains and opportunities), ostensibly better pay for those making it (or is it paying for increased rents of those workers or the business itself? i digress) — but couching it in the terms of moralism (four dollar slices inherently better than dollar slices) tends to ignore the reasons — structural, qualitative and otherwise — that people tend to frequent the dollar slice joint rather than the alternative. It could be the ability to pay and the financial access of the dollar slice; it could be the social access to the four dollar slice (or lack thereof) which keeps people at bay (as four dollar slice places may be perceived as “fancy” or unwelcome spaces for those of lower economic means or people of color). And this doesn’t even touch on the nature of the dollar slice — how it came to be, how its ascension in NYC may have destroyed the New York pizza as we know it, whether or not the cash-only nature of the business leads to underpaid (and under the table) workers with little to no benefit or recourse. And to touch on the very personal nostalgiamancing that happens around food, personal and historical? Gevalt. 

In this one example, its easy to see the myriad intersections and issues that confront questions on food. Questions of healthcare, environmental policy, or foreign affairs don’t tend to raise these kinds of complexities (or at least, the number of clades and digressions that can exist within them tend to be more directly binary than not). Food is, predictably, plenty personal; and that complicates matters because it effects all of us in very real and very different ways. And therein, as the bard says, lies the rub: it makes reading, evaluation, and the reporting on it all the more fraught than reporting on any of those other topics tends to be. 

When working for the Greenmarket, we held a number of field days where we held stakeholder evaluations of the grains project, which yielded a lot of different data about a number of clades of stakeholders: we had farmers, breeders and researchers, extension agents, millers, bakers, and consumers in the same room for evaluating what their needs and agencies were. And within each of those groups, clades broke out pretty readily: were they large farmers or smaller ones? Certified organic farms or practicing in other methodologies? Co-op or single grower? bread bakers or pastry makers? Looking for higher resiliency to disease, yield, or flavor of the grains being cultivated or all of the above? How much could one pay — and how much did one need to cultivate to sell it at that price? Is there a middle ground between those spaces? What was the capacity window between production and need? Small farm program or large-scale agriculture interest? A small local bakery or a large wholesale bakery? Home baker or someone who used whole grains? High income? Low income? Person of color or not? Stone miller or roller miller? Willing to pay more? Less? Each of these items changed and showcased how many differing interests were at play, many overlapping and worded differently, some in contest to the other. But it was never as simple as an up or down on a given topic; there were distinctions in how each stakeholder viewed the process and its outcomes, and how each one presented those viewpoints mattered, as it impacted how each other stakeholder felt about their role and priorities in the outcomes of these meetings. 

The difference is, in these meetings, the outcomes mattered to all participants, so coming to shared expectations, outcomes and appreciating each parties needs mattered; that’s now how food media tends to frame or look at these topics. And so thusly, nuance gets lost, as do the questions about the beneficiaries of certain moves, those who can and cannot have entry to these changes, and even how it effects the broader survey of people who work in these given areas (the way in which sustainable food advocates are often framed by the words or actions of Michael Pollan or Dan Barber, regardless of whether or not their work is actually promoted or engaged in the ways those two men aspire to, is a key example). Food media tends to take the various issues at play in the food system and simplifies them, sucking the air out of the room and inflicting on public opinion bad frames of what the food system has to offer. 

Or rather, I should say, what one system has to offer; when we tend to talk about food systems, it tends to be a desired outcome — a move to fresher foods and more access for them, more options for lower income communities and culturally appropriate foods, and revitalizing local and regional food economies. But there is also a a debate about the food system we want versus the food system we have, and within that, commentators also get lost; to some in the latter camp, the food system we have is immutable, the result of some longstanding measures of policy and historical outcomes that is unchangeable or so hard to change that to talk about changing it is tantamount to naivety and unthoughtful hubris. And those voices, in the occasional horserace-style reporting on food issues, tend to also bifurcate voices, taking those looking at systemic change as not understanding “real food” or “real agriculture” and using selective examples to downplay issues in food; much of it can be seen in the way certain actors portray food access issues, and how sustainable food systems advocacy of fresh fruit and veg is “irresponsible” due to low nutrient/high cost considerations and how really the poor should just eat more oats (which is a fine, and laudable goal from a number of ways, but more often than not, taken with other conjoining pieces on the topic, tend to have a “let them eat cake” kind of vibe). Rather than resolve to rectify the issues around food access in lower income communities (and often times POC communities) studies about what poor people purchase are lauded about as immutable facts about consumer habits and that to change those things is an impossibility. Local food economies and the like are a historical relic, and should be relegated to being the equivalent of public parks for large urban centers of the future. While not uniform in its composition, these expressions of the food system we have tend to be as harmful as the eyerolliness of the Dan Barber pronouncements that small scale sustainable ag should just focus on rich people. While these are expressions of particular ways of moving food systems along, I wouldn’t see them as equitable, just, or looking at bigger picture ways of moving processes along to a desirable goal. 

What most of this comes down to is the necessity of letting a thousand visions bloom; food systems change is complicated, non-binary, and never a clean narrative. There are plusses and minuses to much of the work, and like all sorts of social and political change, many of these things take time (though lord and lady know that climate change will make many of the changes necessary much more immediate and much more radical than what we anticipate). Food media would do better to be open to that messiness, in short and long form work, and diversify the base of people who are go-to’s as contacts or spokespeople for a variety of movements and activities (less Dan Barber and more Quiana Mickie, please), and for digging deeper when it comes to reporting on issues that will touch on lots of hot spots. But further, there is no view from nowhere when it comes to food — we’re all very much rooted in the experience of it and its impact when we’re without it. And in that sense, trying to root more reporting in the lived experience and desired outcomes of the food systems we want to see — and the types of desired outcomes, expectations, and externalities that come from those systems — could be investigated better and do more service to all of us, polemic, reporting, or even in lifestyle pieces. 

Because in the end, it’s not about a one dollar slice or a four dollar slice. It’s about finding a slices that meet the conditions of affording convivia and nutrition, along with being considerate to a host of externalities that we are both aware and in control over. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s a thing we must do — which means trying to get away from binaries, and in the case of media, to have an expansive notion of who the audience is, not just who particular media want their audience to be. It’s not easy — trying to make a lot of this stuff sexy to an audience that just wants to eat can be a lot. But in the face of our political and ecological climate, questions of equity and access matter. Questions about who benefits and who doesn’t matter. And questions about how everyone can get to afford a qualitatively and quantitatively “good pizza” should be ones that matter to everyone. And when there’s a failure to do so, the question becomes, why not?

Two Weeks Notice

It’s been two weeks since I’ve left my position at City of Saints, ending a nearly year-long run as both the general manager for Bryant Park but also the interim director of retail for a couple of the shops. It was a good learning experience, as most jobs are, on a number of fronts: managing expectations, stakeholder evaluations, and doing all the long and short term P&L forecasting that I know and love to do. I enjoyed getting to train and educate a good cadre of staff, and seeing the feedback mechanisms and pedagogies, modified and elaborated upon from my time at Union Square Hospitality, and how they worked or required modification. While I knew at an instinctual level that I could do the work, it was good to have a chance to actually be responsible for the work and showcase to myself (and a degree, others) that I can, in fact, do it, and do it well. 

That’s something that, as was pointed out to me, comes from my mother; I have difficulty with internal validation of my own talents and capacities. Imposter syndrome is real; and awareness of the privileges and things I’ve had access to over others can sometimes compound that, wondering if I haven’t just gotten ahead by the stint of having the right skin color or sex. I’ve often confused braggadocio and pride in ones work as one and the same, and so often, unintentionally rudely, dismiss my own work as not particularly significant or all that good when others compliment it. (Learning to just say thank you and express appreciation for the expression of gratitude was its own step, and I’ve become more graceful in it.) To be blunt, despite being bright, thoughtful, and more than competent in my works, I often have had difficulty thinking or valuing myself in that way. External validation — through hiring, promotion, or a good relationship with my mother — has been the prerequisite for affirming my ability to myself. 

This has changed over the last few years; my time with Union Square Hospitality I had more self awareness over my needs and ability to communicate them with my management, who in turn were amazing being forthright with me. And in the case at CoS, I knew the value I was bringing to an organization, displayed it well, and when it became clear those skills were no longer appreciated or being used by that organization, I knew it was the time to make a clear, elegant exit. It took me into my thirties to understand fully what that kind of valuation is like, and even now, it’s still taking time for me to stock that in conjunction with a host of other valuations — my personal self, my sexual self, my social self, all of which over the last 4-5 years kind of got sublimated as I immersed myself in providing value through my work life. 

Which is why the last two weeks have proven valuable — spending time in the markets, having lunch dates, developing an alt-twitter account for thottiness, and taking the occasional trip to the Guggenheim or the Neue Gallerie while on mushrooms, a talk at the LGBT Center with Alexander Chee, and just spending time with people, places and headspaces I haven’t had the opportunity to indulge in a long time, or what feels like a long time. That sort of holistic sense of self has been elusive; and spending some time to commit to re-balancing my life before digging deep into work in the near future. It’s a work in progress — I still want to have a regular shabbat dinner happening near weekly, as well as more regular dance happenings that don’t involve needing to take a cornucopia of candy to enjoy the vibe, a little more Honcho and a little less Wrecked, a little more Danny and Francois K, a little less industrial sounds I may have done combatives training to in the 90’s. 

It’s not to say I haven’t been searching for work; I’ve put out a few applications, and pitched some articles; those have been good to get my juices flowing and keep my mind intellectually checked in. Been reading more, and not just in culinary work; revisiting old political economy texts and readings on cultural autonomy and agency. It’s revisiting old activist work and how it fits into the work of the now, which brings up the big project, which is, how best to move forward with Diaspora.

We only did one pop up last year, which was fine, and limited production last summer as my free time was limited for actually making jam. That said, we did a good run and the products have been awesome. But jams don’t make money; many a convo has been had about that. And while there have been a number of notions around whether or not to pursue the project, I had been on the fence, hooked in by two factors: resources and location. The former I’ve been working on — I have a number of folks who have spoken of confidence in me and I can tap onto if I wanted to launch. But the latter issue of location is harder; setting up shop means setting up roots more intentionally, and while the long-term isn’t fearful to me, it does mean making decisions that require a long-view, and the willingness to leap, like Haruman, into the uncertain with confidence and grace. 

New York City is a pleasing place to me — I’ve found a home here with many good people, a community of sorts, and many a kindred in the professional and personal worlds. It is also a bit like living with Stockholm Syndrome, saying the things are fine when in reality there is a high cost to living here, ones that, with Cuomo in the governors office, are unlikely to subside quickly. Starting costs for a business here are higher; and there are certain lifestyle things that, even in the last two weeks, I’ve been unable to easily indulge in the way I’d aspire to or be able to on the West Coast (like hiking). I’m not yet decided on the thing, but it’s a question I need to answer in the next week or so, and with it, launch into a course of action, because, as Seuss put it, the waiting place is the most useless place, and there’s a difference between actively meditating and waiting for the thought to happen to you. And while not a judgment on myself, I feel like I’ve spent the last few years waiting too long for the thing to happen, instead of making it happen for myself. 

With that, I have two more weeks, til the end of the month, to determine a course of action; to hear back on some actions while laying the groundwork for others, and in the meantime, building up that life that I desire to have versus the one I’ve let take over mine for the last several years. Spending some time building myself up rather than tearing my past down, and greeting things head-on, rather than responding to events all the same. Taking ownership is a process, and while I want to fully own my own what’s next, the feedback from my community, my friends, lovers, and relations, are equally important in this next step. So I hope to see some of you there, as we leap forward, hopefully together. 

Cool Screed, Bro: Or, How do We Overcome The Fixation with Coolness?

Back in 2008, I was just getting my start in the serious coffee industry; I had worked for Peet's for some years in college, and after spending some time at Monmouth and other shops in London I felt compelled to dive deeper into the industry. Barefoot Coffee Roasters was my first "serious" job; I was doing wholesale for a company that was doing some very good sourcing, and some very good coffee, out of a strip mall in Cupertino and a renovated house in a semi-industrial/residential neighborhood in San Jose. It was an exciting gig, both for seeing the inner workings of a small company, but also for getting introduced more seriously into the industry. So when Tony K mentioned on twitter that he was putting together the team to do the coffee at Slow Food Nation in San Francisco, I reached out and put Barefoots name in the game. What better way to get introduced to the industry than to get to work with players like Counter Culture, Ritual, Intelligentsia, Stumptown, and others in a veritable hotbed of foodie interest? (At the time, it also seemed like a perfect opportunity to sell a wider public on the "coffee culinarism" that Barefoot prided itself on and a great wholesale pitch.)

The event itself was an education in pop-up operations, flo-jets, and interacting with producers, but also representation within the coffee community in general. Because the thing that struck me was, in some cases, the attitude that was given to folks who worked for Barefoot and showed up by folks who worked for other firms. A certain manager for Intelligentsia made a comment, in passing, that he wouldn't pull coffee from the company because, and I quote, "they don't do serious coffee" (he would later only be found pulling shots for, or making coffee from, Intelligentsia the entire weekend). There were lots of lovely folks there, but it was easy to remember moments like that, where by virtue or stint of (a) not being in San Francisco, (b) operating out of a strip mall, or (c) serving beverages that used home-made syrups or anything beyond the 6-item menu that was the model for much of the early "Third Wave" of coffee (for lack of better descriptor), there was a lot that seemed to disqualify Barefoot from being taken seriously by parts of the industry. 

I learned quickly to get over it and not care about it, but it was a lesson: people could be drawn in, very easily, to the notion of gatekeepers, cool kids, or that there's a hierarchy of achievement in the coffee industry. It was also very easy, I noted early in my consulting work after leaving Barefoot, to see how people mimicked or replicated the trappings of those popular cafes or roasters without every understanding the systems underlying those cafes and how they worked. (i.e. how many cafes modeled themselves after Intelly Silverlake or Venice?) (Also, I swear, I'm not trying to rag on Intelly! There was this window of time where a lot of its staff were loud and its shops super trendy amongst owner-operators.) The same came to pass when I transitioned into hospitality more generally; whether it was farmers, bakers, or restaurants, there were whiffs of where people got angsty because they wouldn't get to hang with the Josey Bakers, or wouldn't get the invite to such and such event. So when the random good coffee dude instagram/twitter scramble happened last week, it wasn't necessarily surprising; I've seen a lot of new entrants to the industry flail and fail based on the fact that (a) they model their businesses on impressions instead of structured plans, (b) they do so with a chip on their shoulder and (c) I don't think they ever seriously got involved or interested in the industry for their own interest/sake, but because they're effectively the culinary equivalent of stock market or tech bros. 

When reading the coffee guy story, there were so many details of their own practice that were jarring, like expecting to be able to do viable wholesale off of a 5kg roaster (narrators voice: you won't). There are a lot of mystifying decisions people make based upon observations of and nods to the stylistic choices of major players in the industry, and not based on sound propositions on paper. We exist in a time and place where people don't open businesses based upon an interest or capacity of enjoying the work, but because they see the measure of it as a lifestyle or an income flow; "cafe owner" is, like "chef" a category that many cast aspirations on but don't actually understand what it requires, or actually enjoy the work attached to it. While a lot of folks move up the coffee ladder to get away from day to day barista-ing -- the early hours, occasionally shifty pay, and so on -- I don't think you'd find many who don't fundamentally have an INTEREST in the work they're doing, or a compulsion, philosophically, morally, or otherwise, to IMPROVE the practice of the industry they are in. The returns are not just financial, in the sense of a business doing well, but also intellectual, and feed on the notion that, notionally, most of us want to do work that is productive, thoughtful, interesting, and fulfilling to ourselves and hopefully useful for others. It's part of the reason I stay in the food world generally -- it's a great medium for being able to introduce people to all variety of newness and lessons in much bigger things in our world (like nutrition, policy, agriculture, economics). 

It would be wrong to ignore, though, that in-crowds do exist in the industry -- I don't think part of this discussion would feel so weird if it weren't for the fact that there is a sort of bro-core to parts of the coffee or food industry, or the way we have to create enclaves in order to feel ownership in the industry in response to it. Professional orgs, media, and other vectors also amplify this, based around who gets profiled, how our professional media gets distributed, the types of events and spaces that get promoted (and those within them). And unless there's that degree of personal conviction or satisfaction around the work one is doing, it is easy to get sidelined into resentments about the industry, especially if one feels as if they are following the right trends, the right marketing, the right model, as those sources have promoted or otherwise set the expectation of "successful" shops. 

In restaurants as in coffee, there have been moves to correct for a lot of the hazy and unquestioned promotion of certain types of peoples and practices as being exemplars of the industry. Some of this has been internally driven by some fantastic people who have stayed in the industry because of their interest in seeing it made better; some of this externally by those who have created new mediums for assessing value in both business plans and media work. The latter camp are the people who quietly do the work, often not seeking acknowledgment, other than people appreciating what they bring to the table. Both groups are important for the same reason: they bring attention to the good work because of their investment in seeing myriad things outside of themselves improve, not just the success or viability of their shops or operations (or as is the case many times, the owner-operators need for self-validation). 

While it is satisfying sometimes to drag people for rants like last weeks, it's also important that we talk them through it. Getting people to that moment where they pivot out of the industry or pivot into better working norms and behaviors isn't noble if its all done through hitting rock bottom; it does neither a service for the industry, or for our respective psychological health (because Lord n Lady know, these types of folks can be exhausting). But it's important that, within our industries, we chose to be supportive and constructive (and when the need arises, really really real) with folks who have elected to be part of the industry. If they choose not to listen, that's on them; if they chose to remain cynical, its also on them (and in the grand tradition, if someone choses not to listen, then it's also instructive on us, to never help again). 

Breaking the cycle on these things is important; getting people to orient themselves towards personal rather than profit motivated behaviors is one (and don't get me on how they're one and the same -- they can be, but rooting ones values in profit is different than rooting ones values in personal or community improvement). I'd rather hospitality writ large weren't about who gets more printed about them or who gets better reviews; i'd rather a lot of the support structures of our industries were more attuned to doing better rather than doing what clicks. There are many great examples of this happening right now; the question is how do we get there, to build an industry where people have reasons to contribute to its continual improvement, and encourages a mindfulness around why we're engaged in these projects, beyond just making a buck.

I got to writing about this because in (maybe) anonymous coffee dudes attitude I saw where I was over a decade ago, 22 years old feeling slighted because some industry "vets" didn't seem to care for the company I worked for, and therefore myself. I learned quickly to ignore it, and focus on the reasons I was in the industry to begin with: to work towards improving livelihoods in coffee work, to make people excited about food stories, and to see coffee as a culinary product, not a commodity. And being able to reorient towards working on that mission made clear that there was better work to be done than being sore about not being popular, and better ways of going about it that some of my "cooler" peers were able to do themselves.

For A Physical Space Where Taste Lives

When I first began Diaspora, it worked under a different name: Faygele. The name was perhaps a little too on the nose -- the Yiddish slang for faggot, or effeminite male, it also refers to little birds, like finches and juncos. It felt like a cute nod to both myself, a Yiddishkeit young man of the homosexual persuasion, and also, to something cute, affable, and easy to wrap your tongue around (not, actually, referring to myself still). We scoured the Ashkenaz tradition for pastry inspiration and produced some bread for a couple of pop-ups, and did a scattered, low-key dinners. It was swell, but also a smidge limiting; I didn't feel I could dig deep into the Sephardic and other traditions that I also felt attuned to, and also beggared questions of appropriation, which I was sensitive to in that time. 

I had been raised in a household that was kind of an exemplar of the rootless cosmopolitanism that Judaism sometimes claims as its cornerstone. My mothers parents were both Europeans (her mother German by way of Spain, her father Polish by way of the Netherlands and Morocco) who landed in the Palestine mandate by circumstance (she by being an educated woman in a relatively religious family, who thought her only prospect for marriage was to one of those lowly Zionist secularists; he, by way of Anders Army, a Polish British military brigade, after he was released from the Soviet prison camps as a Polish POW, taken to Baghdad, and eventually smuggled into Jerusalem after the war by a gentleman named Menachim Begin), and after having two children, decided to leave for the United States. They settled up in New York City, and stayed there until the end of their days; my mother would return to Israel for her undergraduate work at Hebrew University, where she met a gawky American Peace Corp serviceman from the sticks of Washington State who would later become her husband. When they married, Los Angeles was the great in-between from their families, and thusly where they stayed, and likely will, till the end of their days. 

My parents raised us in a household that made certain choices on our behalf; public over private school, travel and eating out over a lot of eating in. When we did eat in, it was a lot of things that, at their core, were kind of poor foods: chicken schnitzel and frozen peas, mac n cheese from the blue box, and the one that lingers, turkey a la king (where leftover meats were tossed in white sauce laden with black pepper, over boiled rice). But when we went out, the majesty of Los Angeles' culinary landscape, and my mothers connection to specific foods and places, came alive. There was Shul & Esthers, on Fairfax, a Yemeni workmans cafe, where I had my first shakshouka; Carnival, the place owned by a Lebanese Christian family on Woodman, where I had ful mudammes and molokhia; Webby's was our local Jewish deli, split three ways so it had a meat section, an appetizen for dairy and smoked fish, and the bakery, which produced acceptable, though not mind-blowing things; a nameless Persian place on Melrose in West Hollywood where I became enamored with fessenjen and mast-o-khiar. There was the aptly named Baklava Factory in Tarzana, where we would get all variety of pastry from a mixed family of Armenians, Syrians, and Persians. We travelled to Israel often, to see my mothers family in Tel Aviv, where multi course meals that lingered for hours, sometimes all day, had their role; the amazing spreads of salads and pitas that were meals unto themselves, the occasional bifurcated irregularity of seeing Ashkenazi dishes alongside Sephardic or Misrahi dishes in weather that didn't do much for the former, the European style cafes where espresso coffee offered central European baked goods in the same breath as baklava. Delis made occasional appearances, like Arts, where I fell in love with Lox, eggs, and onions; but holiday foods were almost always homemade, from cholent to kugel, and all in between (save challah, which almost universally came from, of all places, Noahs Bagels). Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican food all came with the territory, in myriad flavors; but these were always flavors that I knew weren't mine, per se; I grew up with them, but they always lacked the emotional connection that other places had for my mother. 

All of this is to say, when I did start cooking on my own, which started young, I had a big pantheon of flavors to choose from, and many of them felt comfortable to me. Using zhug, or zataar, or baharat (let alone pronouncing them) seemed easy; same with techniques like yogurt marinades or sour applications like pomegranate molasses. I understood that there were myriad Jewish cuisines, that embraced a wide range of flavors and associations that I knew were rooted in a place, and often served well outside of them. And in that I learned of the ways those flavors hit home; when I was traveling through Vienna on my own on my year abroad, I stopped in a cafe where I ordered a coffee, and a gespritz, sparkling water with fruit syrup (in this case, himbeer or raspberry). The flavor stopped me in my tracks, as it was a reminder of a syrup my aunts would bring to family gatherings for the kids to have in lieu of Coke. One was the other, a tradition probably brought over by the Jews of Germany and Austria and habituated as a refreshment in the (much warmer and drier) Palestine mandate. From having lachmajun in Turkey to blintzes in Berlin, certain things resonated, and continued to provide strange familiarity in places I had never been. 

So when I began piecing together my new proposal, having now bounded from LA to the Bay Area, to London back to the Bay, Los Angeles and then finally NYC, Diaspora seemed an important renaming, insofar as I not only had come unsettling myself from elsewhere, but so did my food. On top of that, it felt like whomever I met in New York, that story followed -- bounding from place to place, feeling at home in a city none of us actually could lay claim to having been born in. Despite that, we all carry things with us, the flavors of familiarity, of places we no longer either can or want to lay claim to, or things that feed us on a spiritual level, even though those places that gave them to us are gone. Food can ground us on a spiritual level, and remind us that there are things we can commit to, or want to, despite the hardships and difficulties we come to face in the geographies of our choosing. Birds are migratory creatures, but they always have a place to roost. Diaspora, in whichever iteration it may take, hopes to be that physical and spiritual place. 

Restaurants for Dining, Not For Data.

What does it mean to be a restaurant today? What is hospitality, and what is the point of dining out? Over the weekend, two articles came up that beggared these questions. Several of last weeks articles about the restaurant of "Salt Bae", Nusr-Et, featured a restaurant where the cooking is off kilter, the cost is well above market rate, and that the appeal seems more the instagram moment of the man himself rather than the actuality of dining or sating hunger. The other, the review by Jay Raynor in this weeks Guardian, looked towards Henry's in Bath, England, which ruminated on the way fine dining (and some fast-casual attempts by the same industry) has become almost preternaturally concerned with data capture and information gathering in ways that seem leery, rather than useful for guests. As Raynor puts it:

“Listening to all this at the conference I made a prediction: that with the rise of data-friendly restaurants would come a counter-revolution; one which would ape the craft beer and artisan bread movements. Let’s call it the Craft Restaurant Movement: the small place that has no interest in data capture or personalisation, which does its own precisely delineated thing to its own eager, willing audience who are interested only in a table, a chair and a well thought-out plate of food.”

While I disagree with the overly glib phrasing of the thing, I do agree with the overall sentiment: one can run a restaurant with the concept of offering good food, good environment, and good treatment. This can be done without having to resort to the variety of data retrieval that tends to feel one leaving cold rather than being taken care of -- the restaurant equivalent of algorithmic reminders of your parents passing or repeat photos in a non-chronological timeline -- or to the type of theatrics that contains everything from Salt Bae to Unicorn-ification of nearly every food imaginable.

If you think that these two phenomenons are not connected, you're half right; a lot of these trends we see are determined by marketing groups and metrics that are seen in sales data. A lot of personalization that we see in fine dining is measured on the same variety of metrics, attempting to predict our desires on the table. These twin trends -- whether GrubHub or Gramercy Tavern -- are placed as a way of improving guest or customer experience, refining the preferences and options of the kitchen, and helping guarantee fewer missteps from a service team. Sometimes this is possible; working with Resy at USHG allowed for us to confirm allergen information, birthdays, and other information that allowed the team to not only surprise and delight, but also to ensure no one got an epi-pen or something they couldn't eat over the course of their night with us. But many times the effort overshoots -- it attempts to predict what a diner wants before being offered the possibility; makes assumptions about them based on past experiences (and headspace), and lacks the immediacy and presence of seeing where a guest is in that moment in favor of a strange form of optimization, treating the guest as a metric rather than as, well, someone visiting your home. 

(The marketing of market-trend and social influence-driven foods and restaurants is also an issue, insofar as the foods are boring, usually without culinary merit, and are predicated on being flash-in-the-pan social media sensations for a news cycle, only to burn out and often disappear. As such, they make issues for others insofar as they're the bushfires of the culinary landscape in cities, taking them by storm and taking business away from other places, only to shut down themselves not too long after the trend has ceased to be at the front of the news cycle. Like bush fires, they burn fast, and they take up a lot of oxygen. In doing so, they represent one of the stranger threats to the dining and food landscape, as they take up real estate and get charged, typically, higher than average rent rates for shorter than average times, and that creates issues for brick and mortar businesses in it for the long haul.)

This would be, in a way, less galling if it weren't for the fact that many sectors of fine dining are not delivering on their premise of value. This was intrinsic to Pete Well's takedown of Per Se two years ago, but has been reflected in a number of places, including personal experience. I've been lucky; a lot of my early dining experiences were in fine dining establishments. Gramercy Tavern, at 17, was one of my first big name dining experiences, and taught me a lot about the overall nature of dining; meals out elsewhere over the following decade informed much more as I began to explore the industry as a professional calling. Eleven Madison under Meyer. The Progress and State Bird Provisions. Providence, L'Orangerie, the deceased Cyrus -- all of these places talked to me about the nature of fine dining versus the more everyday dining experience one could have at a Pizzaiolo, Frances, Northern Spy, or the like. And as those developed, it became clear the types of things that made restaurants that provide a value and distinction to diners versus those that do not, or cannot.

My recent experience at Nightbird reflects this. The restaurant in Hayes Valley is the home to Kim Alter, whose food we enjoyed at Haven, where she was working on behalf of Daniel Patterson. Her food was bold, impressive, and featured a broad palate of flavors. The portions were generous, as were the staff and their give. It was always a delight to eat there, and served a (somewhat underserved) Jack London Square. After she left there was a wonder where she would end up next, and Nightbird, opened in 2016, ended up being the place, her own restaurant. Fixed menu restaurants tend not to be my bag, but I was interested in seeing what she and her team could do; the price tag, higher than I tend to be able to afford, also left me a bit off, but was willing to dive in having had positive experiences in the past. I went with my sister, probably one of the few people who would dig it as well. 

This is not to say the food was bad; it was fine, well executed, technically proficient. But for the price, fine doesn't cut it. Precious ceramics and steak knives don't cut it. A takeaway with 2.5 grams of granola not only doesn't cut it, but feels disingenuous. Cold formality and mechanical service don't cut it. And for what you ended up paying, there was no sense of where you were dining; this meal could have been at any fine dining restaurant of a certain class under any chef. It was anonymous. It was without personality. And if it did, the personality didn't signal anything I'd like to remember. The flavor was beige, like the lighting, the woven napkins, and the personality of the service. As someone with (presently) limited income, the frustrations of such meals are not only reminders of the ways that much of the broader public perceives and engages with fine dining, but also the attitude around their treatment around service and hospitality employees generally; when value fails to be delivered upon, it can leave folks with a sour taste in the mouth.

That's the frustration behind too much trend and too much specification. It can, without fail, end up robbing the experience of dining from the guests who its intending to serve. It would be one thing if the lived record showed that most staff are trained to be considerate to modifying such information as it comes in, or pivoting when intuition shows that the specified information may be incorrect or undesirable in that moment. But as the meal at Nightbird showcased, and many others in recent memory show, most staff are not trained that way, or lack the emotional intelligence (or perhaps, are disincentivized from utilizing it by untrusting and ineffective managers) to be able to use a suite of technology to that effect. The technology becomes a crutch that too many managers see as a replacement for intuitive and emphatic service, and in turn limits the entire guest experience; dining becomes less of a jewel-box experience of delight than a Skinner box of behavioral determinism. 

It is this flaw I want to avoid and hope more restauranteurs, hospitality professionals, and coffee folk choose to avoid in our coming future. Technology is a tool in the box; it is not the box itself. It can inform our actions, our menu building choices, our offerings, but is not the be all end all of such things. Doing so leads to the ubiquitous menu selections, the never-ending assault of shitty avocado toast, wan matcha lattes, and spaces that feel as if they were designed by algorithm than by an individual personality. They lead to spaces that end up suppressing rather than supporting staff growth. As I learned at USHG, it can be done -- but it also comes with having to build up staff and training that helps them utilize it effectively, and empower staff to be able to provide the wonder, excitement, and true theatre of good dining. 

Beyond that, it's about asking ourselves why do we do restaurants, cafes, and other places where food and drink are served. What is our desire and intention? And much like stakeholders in a community planning capacity, what are the needs and wants of the people we serve? Because if there is one thing that the Nightbird case also showcased, its that it feels as if "chef-driven" restaurants are failing at the basic premise of the restaurant itself -- to restore, or otherwise provide sustenance, literal and figurative -- to diners.  Specialty ceramics, imported cooktops, and specially designed cutlery don't do anything to work on those particular issues; instead, they just add cost to the diner, and do so without adding much to the overall experience. And in this period where commercial rent increases, employee welfare, and costs of good product all have an impact on the cost of doing business, one wonders if the focus on those kitchen and dining room treatments aren't simply another costly indulgence of chefs, rather than something that could be saved for staff, guests, or both.

I have my disagreements with Danny Meyer, having seen the inside of that organization, but one thing remains clear: people want to be listened to, and heard. Staff want the ability to rise up and perform to their utmost, to be trusted with the responsibility of taking care of people, with the proper support and training. Guests wish to be taken care of, and while they're there for a performance, they are not there for a paint by numbers experience. Both parties want sustenance of the physical sort (food made well, interesting, something just beyond the reach of what they could do at home, with a point of view) as well as the, for lack of better word, spiritual (the sense of being taken care of, indulged, to be caught up in the theatre of the restaurant experience). This is as true in cafes as it is in fine dining -- spaces and people can make for magic, leading to inquiry, engagement, and the creation of buy-in from guests, the type of investment that leads to regulars and a community of diners. And this should be the goal of our restaurant and cafe work: to build these communities, to be the places where people feel an investment as diners to do more, be more, than simple consumers of food. Its good for business as much as it is for our communities and our staff. 

Which takes us back to the Craft Restaurant of Raynor, which at its core, is a restaurant of everyday dining. It does not lack ambition, nor skill, but it does emphasize the traits that best exemplify warmth, familiarity, and community. It's not a one and done; it is a space that holds the line between that special occasion joint and the weekly go to when you don't want to be in the kitchen. It feels like a treat, even when its a regular occurrence (this is the goal of any future coffee endeavor of my own). And most importantly, it is human scale; unlike The Pool, Quince* or TFL, these are places that aren't charging you for real estate and kitchen grandeur, but for qualities that are what most people seek out in dining, with some degree of flair and personality; more a quirky comedy of players than some tightly wound-up drama. Something that gives excitement without the need for gaudy trimmings or over-wrought marketing tricks, but satisfies at 110% the physical and emotional needs of guests. 

My hope is that there is still room in this world for those restaurants and cafes; that we're not trapped into a world of fly-by-night sensations and too-expensive-to-correct institutions of dining, cafes designed by the same brush and Eater-centric menu plan, where the notion is the consumption of experience rather than sustenance. When we view our guests as members of our communities rather than pieces of data, it pays dividends; it also influences how we actually interact and build our relationships with guests. Regulars and our communities are the people who build the everyday profitability of food enterprises, and the hows and whys they come back to us is, at this moment, one of the most important questions we can ask of ourselves. Data is important, but it remains the tool, not the product, just as instagram and press-worthiness have their perks but are not the reason we do the job. Can restaurants, cafes, and hospitality be about flash in the pan trends and data-driven decision making? Sure. The question becomes whether or not we sustain ourselves in pursuing that route, and what we lose in doing so. 

* Quince, it should be noted, is also one of the places which represents this particular transition, perhaps even mores than Nightbird. Quince, while not cheap, was still very accessible, its dining environment warm and pretty well integrated when it was up the hill in its original location. When it moved downtown, it got an amazing kitchen makeover with tons of imported cooktops and marble, and an interior design makeover which made it look a less less rustic Italian farmhouse and a little more like the inside the Tower of Isengard. The a la carte left in place of a fixed price menu, and a boost to the by the glass offerings. It had Michelin stars at both locations, but the new space was devoid of warmth and whimsy, and coupled with the nearly doubled ticket price (I could leave the old Quince for around $100, the new fixed price was $250 when we last went, now $275, and it feels like most of that ticket price comes from paying for the interior design and imported kitchen tops), makes it an impossible go-to now. And while they have Cotogna as a casual counterpart, it lacks the finesse that Quince brought to the table. 

Election Cake, or: Food in the Time of Trump

I guess we could say the election cake had been an omen. 

A trend of last year, prior to the election, many celebrated bakers, professionals and home bakers alike, got onboard to produce versions of the historical election cake, a treat of boozy fruit and spices that is naturally leavened. Under the (somewhat) clever banner of "Make America Cake Again", the election cake was to be a celebration of civic duty, local foods, and putting some spirit back into an election cycle that, in many cases, seemed to reveal divisive and frustrating tears in American society. The cakes on instagram were light-looking, moulded pound-cake looking affairs, elegant shapes topped with powdered sugar, stately, baked constructions that alluded to civitas the way that Jeffersonian architecture does. Restrained yet inspired. 

So perhaps the fact the cake fell flat was no surprise; the levain i used didn't take, and the entire cake turned into a flat puck of gooey, just baked pancake batter studded with rummy currants, a veritable let down as humorous as it was heavy against the the roll out of the evenings events. The cake was a comic let down; the election itself, a tragic one. It was a reminder that history is never, in itself, a progressive treadmill of consistent progress. That there is still darkness in this world. And while the lessons picked up from baking mistakes leave little room for rancor and a lot of room for learning, the lessons of that night, and all that came with it, were a little less clear cut, the anxiety and disappointment of a different flavor. And having at that time began again in the hospitality world, it made the work I did there, and with food in general, seem inconsequential and almost trivial in light of the things going on around us. 

Food has a way of seeming frivolous; photos of cakes, jam making, farmers market ingredients can seem superfluous as healthcare edges towards possible elimination or as executive orders get thrown about like cheap confetti on everything from environmental deregulation to preventing transgendered individuals from serving in the armed forces. And a lot of the time, the culinary IS a triviality; after all, it's eating and sustenance. But it can serve as escape of people wanting a distraction from the reality of what our political and civic landscape is at this point in time. A couple of hours respite away from the TV, and the seemingly insurmountable amount of harm that is happening close to home and further away. And there is legitimacy to wanting that -- cooking and food can be therapeutic, a social bonding experience with food as a medium or excuse to get people together. It allows one something to investigate, build skills, and otherwise feel empowered in a space and time when one can feel disempowered or lacking the agency to make changes to bigger issues of the day. Saul Alinsky, in his "Rules for Radicals", even points to the necessity of taking breaks; that even full-time professional advocates and folks doing what I call "warrior work" need things that revitalize and re-energize the emotional/psychological labor they engage in. We aren't endless wells of energy, despite some of our best notions of ourselves. We need a break. 

This is in part why I think people respond so negatively when folks attempt to reconcile the disconnect between food and the politics underlying it; one need only look at Food52's attempts at dipping their toes into the realm of looking and analyzing ethnicity and appropriation in the food world to more in depth pieces on Eater or individual food blogs attempting to break open the breech and use their influence to talk about the issues related to their writers, and the way they in turn influence what they do on the plate. But there's a vociferous cry of "just stick to writing about food" that is never as neutral as the writers of those comments make them out to be -- they are the folks for him this is as much an entertainment as it is an escape from consequences. In some cases, there is simply straight up racism -- no one wants to think about the complexity of the cultural appropriation of tortillas, or how white southern chefs may be doing more harm than good when it comes to their promotion of southern slave foods. But in a latter, more trying case, some people just don't want this to be part of their picture -- they're consumers of food and food media, and the realm is sacrosanct for a consumption that doesn't questions their immediate needs/wants. And for those folks, they can afford the privilege enough to not care about the world around them, or choose not to, consumers of food in the truest sense -- as an activity of acquiring a product in ever increasing quantities, regardless of cost or consequence.

This is a flaw, when so much of our food culture is wrapped up in many of the same economic, ecological and social issues of our time. The racial character of Southern food, who gets to profit off of Mexican ingredients, the ecological damage of current farm policy, culturally appropriate foods and SNAP, or even the more obscure issues of urban planning, green space, and food accessibility are all woven into questions of the now. The human cost to farming and hospitality services, and the current governments policy on immigration; the current status of the farm bill and the ACA are both tied to well being within our communities for food access versus handouts to the incredibly rich (and less reach but no better deserving); even just the food that gets put out at the White House dinners -- these are all reflective of issues of our civic culture, our collective ethos, and demand action that relates to much of our overall food environment.

Andrea Reusing, of Chapel Hill's Lantern Restaurant (that I've long admired -- I still have the Gourmet Magazine clipping from their profile ages ago during the Reichl era), touched on some of that this week in a piece she wrote regarding the hollowness of "Farm to Table" cooking when it came to labor. In her piece, she denotes that the labor -- both in the kitchen and in the field -- is often degrading, poorly paid, and rarely protected, and most farm-to-table restaurants or people identifying with that trend are equally hollow, using it as window dressing and feel-good-ism without doing much of anything. It's a half-truth -- there's a lot of eyeroll-emoticon like behavior by a lot of restaurants who ID as farm-to-table, reflecting a view not dissimilar from online food media consumers. But it's also a sweeping pile of nonsense, because people have been working at various levels -- from the CIW in Florida, Fight for 15, to various farmers markets authorities across the country -- working to improve workers conditions, food access, and a variety of other causes. Restaurants should, as she points out, support these efforts, and guests should be willing to support the cost of those endeavors, in part through the slightly higher prices one would be paying at any restaurant. 

The problem being all of these efforts aren't incredibly centralized; they are not systemic. Each cause is fighting at a particular vector, reactive to that individual topic, at which point nothing seems to get resolved, or seems to succeed in a partial victory. Systemic efforts are hard -- not only rectifying the harms of existing policy, but overhauling current regulatory regimes in order to improve outcomes for all stakeholders -- requires an intense amount of work. And portraying all of these issues as being morally indicative and weighted by individual actors (restauranteurs, guests, or even individuals such as you or I) ultimately belies that while there is some truth to it, it also weakens the idea that there may need to be the intervention of a larger authority or collection of stakeholders than simply ourselves. It's one thing to collect compost in your household (which is great! totally do it!), but its far better when municipalities mandate it and write good policy to enforce it. Most of us should pay more for food, but we also should be shifting the way the subsidy payment system works, to level costs, and frankly, after 30 years of declining real wages for most American labor, jobs programs and basic income assistance isn't a bad fight to be thinking of either, because demanding people pay more for food with declining wages is a classism that we should not abide by. 

This all requires both a systemic action (such as working on Farm Bill reforms and other large projects at the federal, state, and local level), but also requires a communal vision, a civic vision, for politics and policy, and even our individual actions. And this means getting people onboard with the notion of politics as a part of everyday life, which also means shifting the norms around "just food" and having that be about a "just food" system, so that the latter becomes to norm, the "farm-to-table" being a given, but in a real, substantial way, and not just as marketing ploy. Building a civic vision around good public policy (that then informs good civic culture) is an incredibly broad project, and requires a long view. And it means having some grace and hospitality when it comes to engaging with the entire population, because it is something we will have to engage the entire population on if we want to see movement or traction. To build a movement that isn't just about the moral righteousness of food choices or consumption, but building one where we can be producers of our own food choices in real and meaningful ways, and build community, economies, and good environmental planning around it, is a real thing. Creating a society where we can talk about pie and not worry that the environment, workers, or our health have been negatively effected and be able to show off on the internets is possible.

That doesn't mean it is easy -- it means it requires work. The lesson pulled from election cake was easy. The lesson pulled from election night took a little more consideration. But I learned that the internet is a shitty place for activism, and being present in our communities and in places of activism was a better move than only being peripherally involved as I had been in the Obama era. (it's also a great way to meet people, feel proactive, and get out of  your comfort zone.) Phone calls to reps was one thing; but I also started attending meetings of the DSA in NYC, and have been putting together a subcommittee for food and agriculture, a subset of the Urban Planning and Housing committee. I'm encouraging friends, relatives, and strangers, when and where I can, to get involved in the ways that make sense for them, and for the causes that make sense to them. And I've been having more uncomfortable conversations these days -- and forcing myself to have them -- with folks who would rather retreat into their lives than participate in a broader community action. It's small actions, amounting to bigger things over time, and shifting our energies into productive daily actions.

I'm also still cooking -- this summer I've completed a month of Tuesday jamming sessions, that have been one part meditative therapy, and one part honing recipes and getting the Diaspora business plan in motion. I still go to the market and take informative pictures that I post to instagram, go dancing crazy late at night, and I still go to restaurants that I like and support and cook dinners with friends, because these are what make us human and stop us from completely going spitballs crazy. If I sat and did nothing but farm data for days, I would get unhinged; we need mental breaks, and things we enjoy, in order to better pursue our work. In the time of Trump, use of time, our mental time and energy, has been the biggest lesson I've taken away. Using it better, to do better, especially on behalf of food and agriculture issues, has been something I've been striving towards. Because it touches all of us. It can empower all of us. And because no one should feel guilty about posting a picture of cake.

My election cake was an epic fail. My response to this election is not letting the same happen to the place I call home. 

Tuesday Jams

So today marks the 4th consecutive week I've taken my "Saturday" (Tuesday), to do some work on Diaspora, by canning the summer fruits here in NYC. It's been a good meditation; testing flavors, tempering the influence of buttressing flavors, and the impatient, nagging watching of proper set points. There's plenty of science to jam making, but also a fair bit of in the moment considerations, and there is the art part of artisan* that comes into play. It's fun to be getting to toy around with products that aren't citrus, even if it keeps the apartment a little warm (NYC apartments aren't known for their ventilation nor their AC units, and our pre-war is especially true in this case, along with being encased in enough brick to be the inside of a thermal oven).

Rather than work on classics, I've given myself the permission to work on new, and decidedly more northeastern flavors. In past years, I've gone to the fruits that I worked with in California -- nectarines, plums, peaches, and briar fruits like raspberries and blackberries. Part of it was familiarity -- i love the acid in those fruits, the flavors, the brightness, and that they can take a little less sugar than some other fruits. But unlike their California brethren, things out here and not like they are out there; the strawberries (short of the Tristars, which are fiddly AF to process), the worst California peach is still more aromatic and sharp than the best NY/NJ/PA peach, and finding varieties of some fruits is still an exercise in aggressive backtracking.

But holding one geography to  the standard of another is silliness, and for someone whose entire proposition is a taste of place, it wasn't the right thing to do, to hold East Coast growers to West Coast standards (the humidity alone makes it rough to do a lot of stone fruits, as do spring rains). And luckily, this year a new grower (to me) arrived at Union Square who made the turn a little bit easier. I knew Wilklow Orchards from other markets -- many market staff professed a love for their fruits, and a couple of my greenmarket grains regulars also mentioned running to different markets than their norm to go and get their produce. With so much of my professional life running around Union Square, I hadn't had time or inclination to check them out at their other markets. But when they replaced Red Jacket at Union Square, it ignited something new -- when someone puts blackcurrants, gooseberries and sour cherries at the forefront of their display, even behind strawberries and rhubarb, it was a good hint something could work.

For a month and change now, I've annoyed their staff with questions about cultivar, their IPM practices, and about their timespan for various oncoming fruits (no gages, but there will be damsons), and they have been stellar; talking out, making calls to Fred to inquire, and generally being pretty generous with their time and energy. In the meantime, I've been doing smaller overall doses, which has refined the method, and engaged with different fruits than I have and generally been experimenting more than I have in recent years. Gooseberry jam, blackcurrants, and sour cherries have occupied most of my time, and some new ways of formatting the jams has made me happier with the outcomes than my previous years efforts. 

Jams aren't profitable, per se. The economics of it make it egregiously expensive, even on a mass scale, to make jams in a small way. For us, its been about showcasing, in a small way, the idea of what we do. When you can make things taste so distinct from what you can find on a supermarket shelf, you can create inquiry. You can generate pleasure. And you can excite tastebuds and other things. This season, I've been able to re-engage with the things that I enjoy about this process, and hoping to figure out the direction this project is taking. 

When I make jam, I listen to music. It helps pass time, create a mood, a space. And that's something that the pop-ups were not quite capable of doing; they were productive, a crazy build up of energy and explosive activity, but not the type of space where we could jive with people, talk, and partake in their enjoyment. While I'll still be doing a pop-up or two in the near future (September!), I want to start doing something more regular, something with an ability to create an environment that generates the types of things we want to do in Diaspora -- a little music, a little food, and a lot of convivia. A Sunday night dinner party has been the idea for a spell -- and figuring out where the jams come into this picture will just be a matter of time. 

Weaver Work

One of the more useful readings I had at the Food Studies program was an essay by G.W. Stephenson at U-Wisconsin (where I almost ended up for graduate school), talks about the three primary actors in the world of developing good food policy (and really, most policy and community building models out there): warriors, builders and weavers. The points are fairly obvious: warriors are the worlds of advocates, litigators, and other "enforcers", oftentimes the true believers who push for the "110% ask", or calling for the strongest vision of a plan available. Builders are the financiers, the business folk, but also organizers and folks who create the structures, physical, social, spiritual and otherwise, that help build momentum around the visions in question. Weavers are every sort -- they're the ones who connect the dots, see the connections, and access the broad landscape to find commonality and try and organize the efforts of both warriors and builders. These are great simplifications, but the orientation of the piece had a profound effect; if you have the time, read the essay as linked above. For anyone seeking the hows and whats of future action and activism of various stripes, its an important read, even if its frame is in the food world. 

I've long considered my role as one of weaver work; having one foot in hospitality and another in the policy realm, I've gotten to see a lot of lay lines between farmers, markets, restaurants, consumers, and the various levels of law, regulation, and politics that lie between them all. I've looked at it from demographics to geography flows, from agricultural applications to regulatory schemes, to restaurant purchasing to consumer habits. These are things I evaluate every day, and continue to learn about, process, and think about. Even while barista-ing, or working the grain stand, every job I have I relate back to the roles and work within a network of moving parts, interests, and relationships. In any position, I try and create connections, enliven interest, and engender enthusiasm for the causes and institutions that I involve myself with. 

It's in that mindset that it's taken me a while to re-center after the election. The mind reels at all the things that are endangered, quite really, by the Trump administration. From climate change to LGBT protections, women's health, voting protections, redistricting, the Supreme Court -- the list grows, and it feels daunting. The mind feels it needs to share every corrupt appointment, every hateful act engaged in the name of the new administration, and the viscera of trying to do all this while still asking "what the hell happened", taking apart the hot takes, the analysis, the real/fake news michigas...and you can feel your mind and heart implode. It is daunting.

I didn't give myself time to mourn, partly because I thought I didn't have the luxury to mourn, to pity, to be in shock. Not when I -- as a white male, Jewish, yes, and a homosexual -- have the degree of privilege I do to be relatively unaffected by the results of this election if I so chose. I read through the long-forms, reposted what felt applicable, made phone calls. I still am. This is reactive work. It's demanding responses and thinking from my peers, my elected officials, and in some cases complete internet strangers. But as we near inauguration, some things have begun to crystalize in my mind and I'm beginning to feel a role return to the core of my work.

There is a lot of narrative being driven about the election: working class revolt (it wasn't, entirely), a rural versus urban divide (less so than it appears), the win of reactionary forces of misogyny, racism, and homophobia (in part, in certain geographies and demographics more than others, and it has certainly unleashed a spike in hate crimes nationally, without question). Was it the failure of Democratic outreach and campaigning? (In part. )  The role of Russian subterfuge and Republican voter suppression? Also relevant -- in part. 

There are a LOT of reasons the ship turned the way it did. Any of one of them alone doesn't explain the totality of the event; in tandem (along with a 3 generation look at the general political and economic histories of many of the spaces in question) and we see a lot of threads. There are a lot of issues at play. Some of them are maddening. Others heartbreaking. Some I can offer no legitimacy for. But no singular narrative provides the absolute reason why we are where we are: not every action the Clinton campaign took was senseless. Not every voter who didn't turn up had malicious intent. Politics, elections aren't a morality play; they are force and values by another name. Politics is about vision to which I ask myself: what next?

I believe in the greater mission of the enlightenment project. I believe in the power of liberal civic society, of Democratic Republicanism, of education and literacy, of creative forces, and the communitarian vision of people building up a better society for everyone that participates in that society. We do so even if we do not directly benefit -- the nature of public schools, of libraries, of public works projects writ large rely upon these principles. It is a humanist vision. And it is constantly in a state of self-correction and remediation; it is not impervious, nor monolith, both as a concept, and in its execution. I believe in the American dream in the same vein as Langston Hughes, that it is a dream unfulfilled, get the promise exists and is possible. This isn't naivety -- it is how social change occurs. It's when we relinquish that vision, absolve ourselves of it, or retreat to the domains that say it is only for us that the idea dies, slow, quiet, and righteous. 

There is good policy to be pursued, good plans to engage in and fights to fight, now, tomorrow, after January 20 and into 2016. And as with that liberal vision of society it must apply to everyone for it to work. Will some fight it? Of course. Will others kick and scream at its implementation? Certainly. It does not mean we deny it to them, or write off whole swathes of people because they reside in the singular dimension and sort they've been painted to be in. Baby faggots will grow up in those areas -- would you deny them protections of the law because their predecessors caused their disenfranchisement? Young women will be raised in those areas, would you deny them your assistance or vision to break the ceiling put upon them? The environment, the ecological spaces of this country which are imperative for practical concerns like drinking water and climate mitigation reside in these areas. All of this requires us, mandates the need for our immediate attention, defense, and proactive engagement. Because more often than not we do not get to choose the where's and whens of our making. 

I do not forgive nor condone those who voted for Trump. But they aren't the only ones who occupy the rural areas I see being blamed and beleaguered by some friends on a daily basis. Maps, data, information shows us this picture is far more complex than that. And especially in farm country, that picture is not uniform, nor singular, nor easily described. I know there is ignorance, there are those who would rather not see, who are selfish and do not share the vision being given above. I grew up with some of those people in my life and there is no quarter I give to them. But this isn't about them -- at least in part. This is about everyone else. This is about building the vision we want to see and make it happen. To throw our support behind them, to show they are not alone and that another work is possible, workable, allowable. And if consuming that anger, frustration, ennui to work towards preventing the world I fear is about to happen, to mitigate its effects, and to prepare to build for the better world after, I can take that. I cannot sit and be angry. 

In the meantime, I'm returning to food work in the way I know how. There may be some fundraising dinners planned. I'm planning on going to some meetings. I threw my hat in the ring for the board of Slow Food NYC. And I'm pitching to several publications the possibility of traveling to the rural communities across the country -- in part to explore the proud progressivism that exists in those corners and the policies that help them (but also, checking out mills and grain growers for the book I'm working on). There'll be some jammin', and I'm still slinging coffee, but I understand now how I can do more than I could before. 

I want to put a better possibility on the table. And the way I know how is to connect the dots, to connect them. To weave together something stronger. 

A Furnace...

The fire at Smoke Signals Bakery earlier this year. Using this woodfired oven at various stages of the fire, we could bake off different things all day. Hypnotic, in the best way.

At Burning Man, there is a tradition of being named. Your Playa name lives on Playa, and sometimes is carried back to the Default World with you. You don't name yourself; the name sort of comes up, often from circumstances around you, and declared by the people around you. Some names change; others remain the same for years and into death. Some people never come into them. But the best names are a totem, a singular word letting you know everything about a persons character, their drives,  providing you with what in old White Wolf parlance may be referred to as a persons nature and demeanor. A word that says a thousand. 

Two years ago, I was cuddling up against a cute fellow on a particularly chill evening, blanketed up at the fire pit of a neighboring camp. We were cozy, and just shooting the shit at the later part of a night/earlier part of someones morning, that time when it's still dark out but there's hints that the sun may be lingering, somewhere, over a horizon, somewhere. The air was crisp, mild winds carrying the cacaphony of twenty different songs and sounds from across the city and every passing art car. We were there for quite some time under the blankets, shooting the shit, warm, cozy, and slowly getting comfortably sweaty. At a certain point, my gentleman friend opened up our blanket, letting out a refreshed sigh. 

"You ok? Not too cold doing that?" I asked, pulling him back into me.

"Not up against you, cutey. You're a fucking furnace," he said, rubbing my chest for emphasis. 

Furnaces give off warmth; they are not singular items, but a multitude of them -- the latin root for a furnace, fornax, means oven. And just like ovens, furnaces are places of congregation, innovation, and activity. Sometimes used as a synonym for a kiln, furnaces also produce things, whether it be steam, or heat, pottery, bread or other bits and bobs affected by heat and pressure. They can be used for practical purposes as well as they creative. Furnaces are things that have kept people warm, fed, and in a way, innovating socially and culturally for ages. 

In that moment, Furnace became a sort of soul-sister self to me,  something that captured more than just the fact that I (a) run hot, and (b) have a hirsute upper body. Reflecting on that name, I got to self reflect, and understand better my natural self is a warm and comforting person; I have no real desire to harm or hurt others. I want people to feel loved, appreciated, worthwhile. I like engaging in those crafts, but especially where hospitality is concerned, I love being able to deliver appreciation and warmth to people through the foods I produce and the environments I put them in. I want that warmth to be infectious, to be a catalyst for other people to go of and bring their best into their own lives, whether that is on matters practical, creative, or otherwise.. 

It being Rosh Hashanah, and in the lead-up to the next Diaspora Kitchen pop-up on October 20, there's been a lot of introspection going on, both in a large way, and in a deeply personal way. Leaving the playa this year I wanted to understand better the ways of bringing more of Furnace back into the default world with me, and specifically how I could bring it into my professional work. I've always given good hospitality, but when it came to our efforts with Diaspora, I realized that desire for creating really awesome environments conducive to interactions, socializing, and leaving feeling warm, almost improved upon in disposition. (And hey, if it invigorates people to go out and create, all the better.). I want to live a life where my work encourages and invigorates others to do better in their own, a stimulating environment that also sustains them physically through eating. Convivia, and a touch more.

I may be miles away from the desert, but each day I try and bring a bit more back with me.    

[There's also the practical matter that, in the last two years, I've gotten to play around with some furnaces as well -- mostly wood-fired ovens at various occasions. The primacy of wood-fired cooking is less so than it used to be, but something about it resonates, and not just because of the naming convention. I like the results that come out of woodfire, the way that it can engender all sorts of feelings, questions, and results. It requires a bit of planning, and foresight, and a little romance. I'd like to figure out how to use one more prominently in my work, and how it could factor into the plans for Diaspora down the line. The oven itself introduces a bunch of fascinating variables for people to engage with that food alone does not. If anyone has a lead on one in NYC, or a place to use one off hand, lemme know.] 

Cleaning Pantry

Tonight I did something I haven't done really in far too long -- I baked.

Not for a client, or a pop up or for testing, but just to bake. For myself. And perhaps one other person, the sisterwife, who dutifully cracked open many of the black walnuts whose meat is going into the particular baked goods in question -- namely, that all comfort all star of chocolate chip cookies done the Diaspora way*. It's theraputic when you bake this way, no intentions or goals other than making it; the mind slips away, as it can sometimes in production baking, and you seamlessly enter into a zone of clear headedness only ever afforded to you in the best of yoga or the high point of a hike**. 

This sort of mental clearing house is useful these days -- I've just left one gig, and I'm entering a round of negotiations with the other. If those negotiations fail, I leave that position too, and for the first time since my bout of unemployment in 2010, I won't have a formal job, short of some consulting that will keep me busy through parts of January. There are second thoughts, apprehensions, certainly a fair amount of behind the scenes stressing, and just maybe a dash of imposter syndrome. For being 30, a lot of my professional record is scattered between industries and academia, some white papers and a couple of solid letters of rec and lessons learned. Nary a burned bridge, but nary a feeling that any of my career development is as good a launch point as others tell me it is. 

Taking stock of all this -- the last ten years, the next two weeks -- I begin to clear out the pantry. Baking is good for this, too -- clearing out old product, figuring stuff that needs tossing, reorganization. Getting perplexed as to how certain things got in there to begin with (multi-color jimmies in kettle corn? giant still sealed canister of Cougar Gold?). Looking at the reorganized set, there's a certain order -- the things you forget, the things you use regularly, and the things you use sparingly but necessarily. (Cougar Gold, btw, is definitely the last, and makes a mean mac-n-cheese.) 

The things you forget are occasionally useful, novel, but mostly they lack something that resonates deeply. The sparing but necessary group is the inversion -- novel, useful, and highlight something that wouldn't normally come into your wheelhouse. Each occupies the extremes of the storage pantry. The eye-level stuff the big choc-a-block materials are the everyday, the things that resonate - flours, nuts, dried fruit & beans, but also the spices, the hawaj and the zataar and the marash pepper and things that I don't think i spend a day not somehow throwing into any home cooking I make. It's the stuff that, besides making the practical kitchen and easy stuff you throw together in 5 minutes function, is also intensely personal -- it says a lot like your bookshelf does, spelling out interests, common activities, themes, and the occasional guilty pleasure. 

I miss cooking at home, for people, or having a place/time to do that. I actually derive a large sense of pleasure out of it. It allows me to do the best kind of weaver work, drawing people together and getting to see sparks happen between them. To draw connections others might not see. I like building, tinkering, and having options to do so, to go beyond my comfort zone and trying new things. It allows me the ability to evaluate, experiment, and learn as I traditionally have, on my own, not in a conventional kitchen environment. So when I reorganize, it becomes a recharging thing; an ability to spy what I need to feel at center (more zataar, more hawaj, more rice, oddly enough), and to see where i could grow next (need to get back on the bread making wagon). It reminds me I want a profession, a job, that allows me to do these things, and occasionally be a warrior. One that allows me to explore and tinker in the service of others. And if I can't actually do that in these positions, well, maybe i need to build it myself.  Just like we do with the pantry. We build it up ourselves, all the time***.

But for now, time to go bake off some cookies.  

*which is to say, we brown the butter, caramelized the sugar (ATK style), and use half whole Red Fife wheat flour in it, and throw in some Manjari fevres, because Lord and Lady know those walnuts need something to counter-compliment them. 

** minus, you know, sweat, heavy breathing, and sometimes less lycra tights. 

*** see the amazing Trouble Coffee & Coco

Specialty Coffees Wallpaper Problem

In the last week, there have been reverberations from the Dallasfood.org piece breaking down the falsehoods behind Mast Brothers Chocolates, and the subsequent media firestrorm that has followed since. Much of the post-facto deliberation has focused on issues of authenticity, the anger and schadenfreude over the hipster-$10-a-bar chocolate hating crowd, and sometimes asinine thought pieces such as the one in Eater by Helen Rosner, which attempts to blend the two in one of those navel-gazey thoughtpieces that attempts to downplay outrage and talk to consumers (and for that matter, professionals) as if they were children. Thankfully, most commentators, and indeed, other chocolate makers and experts, have made clear that these are not the reason for outrage; rather, it comes down to matters of trust, and more importantly, the ways in which deliberate obfuscations such as those the Mast Brothers have engaged in (and continue to engage in), potentially inflict a lot of damage on an industry that has many practitioners who actually desire to change the way that individual consumers, supply chains, and economics work around cocoa production and chocolate making. 

No one has made this case more clearly, nor more eloquently in 140 characters than Colin Gasko at Rogue Chocolatier. Key among them, Colin has built a strong case for the characteristics that craft chocolate can be said to abide by, and the way in which the Mast Brothers harmed, failed to participate in, and in some ways undermined those norms and behaviors. (Carla D. Martin has also been filling in a lot of beautiful print on the matter, adding history, economics, and sociology to the mix.) The key point they, among others, is spelling out should sound familiar to those in craft industries, specialty coffee, and sustainable agriculture circles: that fundamentally, what craft chocolate is about is redefining the relationship between people and chocolate, from on-farm cocoa production & economics, to chocolate production & sales, to the interactions with customers and shifting expectations as to what chocolate is/can be/should be. That one can have an ethical production practice around cocoa and chocolate and perhaps make a buck at it too. And that there is an education, a learning curve, that can be built upon as being the basis of those activities, understood and recognized in individuals who participate in that process as a craft producer of chocolate. And that one of the key issues of the Mast Brothers case is not the beards nor the fine wallpaper wrappers of their chocolate, but that they broke trust -- with the industry they actively chose to avoid and decry, with the public to whom they knowingly obfuscated the truth and history of their practice, and that they took the moniker of bean to bar as a marketing ploy, less an actual statement of their activities. In an industry that, above all, was encouraging transparency in production and sourcing, they chose to engage in marketing over entertaining those values*.

While there is a furor over the nature of how much of a scandal this constitutes -- from Rosners piece to those who laugh over hipsters buying overpriced chocolate to those who feel shamed or shammed -- there is a clear sensibility that what happened in the Mast case does constitute a failure in what Arjun Appadurai refers to as the "regime of values of goods". The concept is a way of evaluating the "true value" -- moral, financial, and symbolic -- of a particular good. Producers, consumers, and all variations in-between carry with them a distinguishing sense of value over a given product, influenced by media, market information, cost, and a host of other concerns. What speaks to me in the Mast circumstance is twofold: that in an age of increasing consumer consciousness over sourcing and knowing where products are made, the Mast valuation of their goods was decidedly different from those primarily purchasing their goods; however, a willingness to co-opt the values of the industry were part of their marketing and origin branding, in turn damaging the industry they were in, and potentially harming plenty of businesses who were, in fact, engaged values-focused production and sourcing work. 

Unlike Nick Cho's piece on the matter as it pertains to the Mast Brothers relevance to specialty coffee, I'd like to focus the matter moving forward; or rather, to respond to James Hoffmans piece about the lull in specialty coffee, and the way the Mast Brothers issue is part and parcel of that lull, and how we can perhaps move forward. 

When I started out in specialty coffee, in 2006-7, education was something at the forefront of a lot of roasters and shops who I respected. This was especially true when I worked at Barefoot Coffee Roasters (2008-2010, now really Chromatic Coffee),  where the ability of the staff, in the middle of the San Jose-South Bay suburbs, were able to make geekish enthusiasm and hella tasty language come together in a way that Silicon Valley coffee geeks and soccer moms alike feel welcome, try new coffees, and adventure into the specialty coffee world. It was in that space that coffee as a culinary ingredient was at the fore, community knowledge was applied in shop, and when marketing our beans, clear lines where established on labels as to which farms we bought from directly, which ones we got certified, and which ones were just straight up coffees we bought on the fly. Yes, this meant the labels had 100 different symbols on them (UTZ! USDA ORGANIC! FT! SMITHSONIAN BIRD CERT!) but it had the advantage of letting Joe Customer or Sally Specialty Coffee Pro know what they were getting, and encouraged discussions about what was in the bag -- which is half the point of Specialty Coffee.  

Over that time, I began to develop a clear thinking of what specialty coffee could be -- the ways it could move forward, the types of hospitality it could encourage, the ways we could work with customers to increase the drinking public who sought out specialty coffee, and like Alice Waters cajoling in her cookbooks to inquire about farm fresh and organic products, maybe encourage a similar movement in coffee. Specialty coffee could be a vehicle to improve the livelihoods of farmers, professionalize the barista trade (in turn, improving the economic prospects of the coffee labor force), and change customer norms on coffee, maybe even taking consumers and making them what Carlo Petrini refers to as "co-producers" -- people who take an interest or awareness in the making of things. This became cornerstone to my approach in consulting for coffeeshops; that is where I got my rude awakening.

Since 2010 there has been an explosion of specialty shops. Many are run by coffee professionals making it work on their own; many are also run by people with no affinity or history to the industry. These are both fine, and good examples of both exist. But something became clear between then and now, as more shops opened, the less that clarity of mission became . Fewer shops seemed interested in staff education or professionalism than demanding it at standard wages. Many shops I entered would feature coffees from various roasters of good note, but not know anything about the coffee they were serving. The importance of branding and aesthetics seemed to crowd out understanding what made specialty coffee different from the vast coffee world, and education somewhere became a dirty word, loaded in with pretentious barista backlash (much of it coming from shops where, honestly, the staff sometimes knew little about the product being sold. I'm looking at you, LA Mill).

This issue probably took its clearest form in the way latte art became a measure of a "good" shop, especially for consumers. While latte art is a valid way of ensuring certain quality assurance measures are being met, and is indeed a visual plus that distinguishes specialty shops from a majority of their competitors, latte art became paramount in a way that properly calibrated Fetcos or dialed in espresso haven't. Latte art floods instagram feeds, acting as the calling card for shops or baristas, while for customers, a beautiful cover can many times overlay a less than acceptable experience (not asking for a god shot moment, asking for an acceptable experience).  While a bit of a shorthand, I give you this -- we have latte art competitions, but no one is tasting the shots from those comps, are we? When consulting with shops, several were fine with the notion of ok espresso, but sub-par latte art was something that ranked up there with unfavorable P&L's and embarrassing public behavior. Like the Mast Brothers wallpaper wrappers, latte art became representative, to me, of something of specialty coffees equivalent wallpaper problem -- beautiful to look at, highly branded, but increasingly hiding what was going on beneath the foam -- from sourcing claims and buying, to barista treatment, to the outlook the industry was taking on these sorts of issues (which, much like chocolate, had a live-and-let-live sort of attitude, while mulling somewhat glumly all the while). 

Beautiful shops, beautiful latte art, beautiful stories became the (oft uncritical) refrain, which leads to the issue: the regime of values in specialty coffee is having an issue right now. If the SCAA surveys on consumer feedback are any indicator, there is a notion that specialty stands for a series of values -- ecological and social sustainability, flavor, etc -- but that a lot of it is trend and brand associated. This isn't wholly bad -- I don't expect customers to see specialty coffee the entity as the thing to observe -- but the dependency on brands-as-carriers of accurate execution of values expectations creates an issue. It assists in consumers -- at this point passive individuals -- valuing the wrong things, or making it easy for consumers to bank on certain expectations without any of the values underlying those elements actually being met. $5 pourover doesn't make for well paid baristas, usually. $35 for 8oz of Gesha doesn't lead to improved livelihoods for farmers, ecological soundness, or even good messaging in the broader food world. And sometimes, this presumption doesn't even come with well executed coffee. Consumers of specialty coffee are, IMO, being marketed to, and in so doing, losing a lot of what specialty coffee has to offer -- a richer understanding of product and of the world we live in, alternatives to the status quo of "the market"**, and livelihoods for its participants that aren't built on exploitative practices. I believe, as my explosive Christmas eve-Twitter outburst sort of signifies, specialty coffee, as an industry and its membership, has the capacity to do much more if it embraced those elements and what feels like stagnation or saturation within the industry is too many companies who are willing to market themselves and their cafes in the specialty space but not fundamentally engaging with the alternative that specialty coffee represents. 

This it not a post intended to call out individual companies or segments of the industry; indeed, I dont think we have a Mast equivalent. But this piece is to observe, in the face of a current event, several trends that I have been able to observe within the industry, from the perspective of time spent within it, from the feedback of those with longer histories than my own in it, and from the contextualizing work of people who are in specialty coffee in the spaces you don't always hear about -- the Michael Sheridans and Irene Cardosos of our world. I do not think the choice is between latte art or good extraction, hospitality or knowledge, aesthetics or quantifiable measures of quality (or that bogeyman of authenticity) -- it is all of these things. We can improve where we presently fall short, and prove that there is difference between the experience, the product, and the work we do as an industry. We can leave the aping to the larger chain entities of our world, and prove we have viable alternatives***. We can view our guests and customers not as consumers, but as viable partners in that alternative. And we can reclaim the mantle of specialty from the lull we find it in. And it begins with us tearing off that wallpaper****.

* As is spoken about in a number of texts, modern marketing and branding was, in part, specifically engineered to make consumers comfortable with products whose production origins and materials they might never know, and whose production conditions -- usually overseas factories exempt from American labor laws -- were deliberately obfuscated or determined immaterial. 

** There are a multitude of sources on this, Appadurai and Habermas being two, of the notion that there isn't a singular market weighing the world, but a plurality of markets, that we create, engage in, and participate in all of the time. The structures to some of these markets are monolithic -- they're hegemonic in practice, and perceived of as the status quo. But they are man-made, just as any alternative to them would be. This is of particular importance in specialty coffee, where unbinding production from C-pricing could be said to be of paramount importance. 

***Also the reason the purchases of many specialty coffee roasters has proven problematic, but that's another tale for another time. 

****And no, this is not a re-hash of the no latte art movement. But certainly we can see the forest, yeah? 

Professionalism, Pay, and Specialty Coffee

That thing where Squarespace eats your post, which will make this easier because now I can refine the points more clearly. Thanks, bugs! 

So in the last two posts (really three) have come up that have been highly complimentary and interconnected. On Trubaca, two posts on service and the professional comparison game work on defining the role of the barista and its professional obligations. And over at Barista Hustle, the always awesome Alex Bernson tackles the topic of the tip-less cafe, and muses on the notion of how service charges can ease service environments. I encourage everyone to take a look at both presently, as I'll only be touching on them here.

The two articles on service and professionalism within the barista community point to a key issue: there are, few and far between, many professional baristas. Professionalism assumes a series of understandings as to the role and function of the barista both by employers and by the barista themselves. And yet we only ever seem to think of baristas as people who make coffee drinks and provide hospitality. At their core, a barista should be those things; they should also have a growing understanding of the agronomy and origins of coffee, the ways processing and handling affect coffee, and roasting effects, and how various brewing methods effect the flavor outcomes of those coffees. They should be able to provide effective hospitality and emotional labor. In most cases, I would say baristas should be able to troubleshoot and work on basic technical fixes to machinery used in their shops, from espresso machines, grinders, and basic brewing equipment, to dishwashers and water fixtures. For cafes with events programs or roaster-cafes who run wholesale programs, baristas act as important wholesale associates, being the first thing many prospective wholesale clients see and taste from a roaster, and should know how to segue and read those guests when they're in the shop (i.e. direct them on offerings, give out cards, etc), or promote the necessary programs to guests who might be interested or have use for those services. In a certain sense, a professional barista has to be aware of many levels within the profession of specialty coffee itself, as well as a space within the wider hospitality and business environment. 

This is a lot to ask -- it's also nothing that is paid for in most companies, cafes, or other specialty coffee environments. As it stands, most cafes and baristas depend upon tips, not base wages, to supply a fair amount of the value to a baristas wage labor. But as has been looked at in the past, tips are highly variable, seasonal, and by no means consistent; if we look at a standard 40 hour week on wages alone, the average barista comes in at 400/wk before taxes, social security, and all else are taken out. Clocking in at 20,800 annual before taxes, this is not, in the American context at least, sustainable, let alone incentive to invest in the myriad workings of the coffee profession, or being consummate hospitality employees. Short of companies with employee insurance, annual raises, or other such incentives, there's little reason for baristas to be full time employees, or not having other professions, work, or things that help pay the bills. Passion alone is not going to cover it, nor should it -- expertise and professional standards demand pay. 

This is why, in part, the notion of services charges is so interesting -- a way to boost pay without the dependency of guest whims to generate a regular stream of income for baristas. The practice, initially utilized by Euro-centric restaurants stateside like Chez Panisse to build professional standards within their staff ranks, have recently been revived in places like the Bay Area and in fine dining to remove many of the idiosyncrasies and power dynamics of tipping systems. Operating in one of two ways -- either as a flat fee per customer interaction or as a percentage of sales in total -- services charges, like VAT, are there to supply the value-added to a product (such as hospitality service). The coffee may only cost x amount on a spreadsheet, but when you calculate the costs of trained individuals making the coffee, the means of maintaining a staff of such people, a service charge makes sense as a way of ensuring quality employees. For employers and guests, it oftentimes is a boon, removing the awkward process of tip calculation from the equation. (This is not universal; many, especially American guests tend to view the service charge as subverting their right to judge on service, regardless of the fact that those judgments tend to bear on matters of race, gender, and expectations more than the service environment itself.) 

Service charges may do some good, but only under certain conditions. The individual ticket purchase either has to be high enough, or low with enough volume, to simulate or create a consistently high daily return to provision the wages consistently, or enough to assist the employer in subsidizing a standard of acceptable base pay. The charge, whether percentage wise or fixed rate, Needs to be high enough. And to that end, the onus here is still on the barista and the guest, which is the weak point to both articles in the above -- the fact that owner-operators and managers need to be in this picture. 

Much like previous writing I've done on specialty coffee, the issue of professionalism and pay are closely interlocked. And much of it has to do with how we define ourselves as an industry. This is hard because, in every conception, shops want to operate differently, be competitive within their markets, and be successful, which varies in definition. But specialty coffee, if it wants to remain distinct, must offer a value proposition that is greater than machinery or beverages; we actually need to specialize, with a particular pedagogy and practice. Much like defending and distinguishing the coffees we serve through their pricing, the staff we hire in our industry require distinguishing and defense from their mass market brethren. Much like shops that offer a $2 cup of coffee rather than the $4 cup it should be priced at because "it's what the market will bear", shops that demand the veneer of professionalism without building their businesses to pay for that, or expecting "standard going rates" to cover that degree of professionalism, aren't actually wanting it -- or worse yet, undervaluing it and essentially wanting professionalism for pennies. Investing in education, employee growth, and professional development are methods for staff retention and cutting costs on turnover as well as ensuring that the industry writ large can be differentiated from its competition.   

So where does this leave us? We need to have better structural support -- Barista Guild and SCAA would be well served to do more for business planning and modelling assistance for new shops, and maybe work, like USBG does, to help their members with legal clinics and negotiation methods for pay for individual baristas, especially those obtaining certification to give those certs some gravity more than they do now. Building more expansive training into the Barista Certification program, including basic technical training, wholesale service, and even hospitality management, would go a long way to fleshing out the definition and role of baristas and actually service the things they may actually DO on the floor of a shop. Service charges could help to raise base pay for baristas, either as a subsidy for business owners offering better overall wages, or as a tip-replacement. But none of these on their own will replace revamping the business models of cafes to encourage and promote professional standards, pay for that degree of education and staff empowerment, and generate systemic changes to the way specialty coffee is being bought, sold and made. Shop owners, baristas, and the industry need to have a compact not to demand expertise before pay, or pay without any qualified reason*. In an age where minimum wage increases are expected (and should be welcome), and we keep talking about the role of baristas in professionalizing and holding the head of the industry high, we need to remember shop OWNERS have an onus to create their own pedagogy and identity, and actually invest in their staff and their role in creating this industry. Specialty coffee is an industry, a profession, not a passion project that baristas should be expected to carry on their shoulders for pennies.    

* Short of us entering the glorious age where wage-labor is eliminated in favor of basic needs being met through the socialist dream, and baristas can pursue their careers free from material need or worry. I digress. 

The Mission Statement and Objectives of Diaspora Kitchen

Ari Wienzweig of Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, MI, in his book on business management and planning, talks about the need to establish a firm vision and publicly stated mission. He mentions that sharing, besides opening up about your goals, dreams, and ambitions, also forces you to talk stock, defend your positions, or rethink your plans in a way you wouldn't if you keep your materials close to your chest. Sharing it creates accountability. It also, indirectly, forces me to think concretely and spell out the angles of the strategic plan and objectives (which, note, are NOT what a mission statement details) as I re-write the business plan. 

A month ago we gave a general vision of what we want, a year on, Diaspora Kitchen to be as a business in a fully fledged way. Today I'm putting out what took a weekend to piece together, based on the previous business models and thoughts I had written down within a number of notebooks and sketches, finessed into something closer to a series of key points -- the who's and what's of the mission -- and finally locked into a credo that we think encapsulates our values, and gives an indication as to who we are and how we operate as a business and, in the future, as a community. 

A mission statement follows 4 key components:

* What You Do

* Why You Do It

* Who You Do It For

* Who Are You That Do It

[leaves space for all the snickering over the phrasing of the above ;-)]

Now that we've defined the categories, we spell it out.

Diaspora Kitchen is a coffee shop and community kitchen, dedicated to using the products of local and regional agriculture, as well as traditional kitchen literacy, to make delicious food for our community, and inspire, encourage, and empower them to do the same. We do this through providing a space for convivial interaction, as well as workspace for sharing kitchen skills and knowledge both formally (through classes and workshops) and informally (through our means of hospitality -- as a coffee shop, a bakery, a preservation kitchen, and a larder). 

We take this particular tack because, as indicated in our vision, institutional aggregation is not enough to change food systems. While it is important to get preferential buying for local products into schools, hospitals, and other large-scale buyers, unless it is paired with a strong marketing component (as in institutional buying), or an educational component (as with schools or public health programs) there is still the treatment of food and agricultural products as a commodity, with no context for why it is important, the growing practices behind it, or in certain cases, an actual ability to create a viable financial return for the farms in question. Questions of nuance are often dropped, or considered unimportant, in these environments. Diaspora Kitchen reasons that when we promote good agricultural biodiversity, good growing practices, and develop mechanisms for people to purchase those products and use them in their own home, we do more to promote local agriculture by creating experiences, lessons, and windows for inquiry that go missed in other spaces. Programs like Edible Schoolyard work because students see a variety of products, taste a variety, and cook differently with a variety of a single product (think about different varieties of kale and their utility). This increases the KITCHEN LITERACY of a single class, and has been shown, carries a significant post-school effect on students decisions on diet and comfort in the kitchen. We want to tap into that and provide a number of opportunities to encourage, empower, and promote our guests and community to obtain those benefits. We want to build and utilize aggregation from the community/user-end.

  In short, we do this to build CAPACITY for small and medium-sized farmers, hobby orchards, and food crafters, allowing them to DIVERSIFY their income streams and their offerings. By working in aggregation we look to make these products ACCESSIBLE to a wide population of backgrounds, financial, racial, and otherwise. And with a plan to offer a variety of programs and offerings, we look to become a RESOURCE for home cooks, canners, gardeners, and those looking to build confidence in their own KITCHEN LITERACY on their terms. And for myself, I do this because it is, at this time, the best way I know how to finesse and execute on my skills in HOSPITALITY, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, and SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE writ large, and the chance to put into PRACTICE what to some seem only to be theory. 

Diaspora Kitchen does this for, first and foremost, those looking for a refuge, a home away from home. A place to grab a cup of coffee, a bite to eat, to retreat away from matters of work. We are, after all, a coffee shop and bake house, at least on the front of things. A place to think, a place to ask, and place to pick something up you might not have been expecting. We open our house to our guests, those open to PARTICIPATING and building themselves and their community. We encourage IMMEDIACY, and a willingness to be open to experience. And we seek to be an INCLUSIVE space; our guests come from all walks -- the home cook, the coffee geek, the experienced foodie and the person just curious and stepping into their own, and we seek to respect, interact, and encourage our guests on the path of their choosing.

And we do this as people who, ourselves, are on a path as builders, weavers, warriors, but at the front of it all we are HOSTS. Generous of spirit, and skilled in the range of knowledge that kitchens require, we invite people into our house to relax, enjoy, and learn. We are people who REVEL in that grandiose hospitality, that enjoy nothing more than finding the way to answer the unspoken need of our guests, to build a network of interactions that speak WARMTH, EXCITEMENT, and CURIOUSITY. We want to offer you something that makes your eyes light up, your pulse quicken, and make you say "what IS that?". We are the barista who knows the 20something ways to make coffee but will talk to you about your projects first. We are produce monger who offers you a taste of everything because taste will tell you a lot more than we can. We are the bakers who are happy to bake all sorts of loaves, but will be super excited when you decide to try it too, and will give you pointers to boot.

So to put this into a digestable nugget:

Diaspora Kitchen wants to build community, convivia, and confidence around food.

We bake & brew delicious things, with delicious ingredients, and want our community to do so too.

We do this by welcoming people into our house, and being the warmest, enthusiastic hosts we can be to our neighbors. 

And with the intention of empowering our friends and neighbors, we do this all with empathy, encouragement, and the immediacy of experience.

We do this with an eye towards leaving our community better than when we joined it.

And we do this all in celebration of what we can accomplish through food & drink.

So. What do you say? Sound good to you?  

Where to Go When Home is Where You Are

So last week I had the opportunity to go to San Francisco to look at a potential space for Diaspora. An invitation had come through a friend of a friend to look at a space in the Bayview, one of the city's southernmost neighborhoods. Traditionally a working-to-middle-class African American neighborhood, in the last decade the Bayview has become more mixed, slightly older, and slightly economically depressed. It's a mix of residential, commercial, and industrial spaces; south of the Dogpatch, it's home to the city's water services, the remains of the ship-building yards, and hills of Arts and Crafts cottages, mixed Victorian row houses, and warehouses. The MUNI runs through Third Street, and the space sits between two stations - in some ways, a perfect site. 

I spent a day in the hood. I talked to businesses in the area (including the folks at Ritual's spot at Flora Grubb Garden, Trouble Coffee, and even 4B's Portola location). The walkthrough rates are low in the daytime, and there's no certainty it would be a draw or an anchor for commuters. There's certainly capacity to build, and a community that lives and works there -- and will moreso in the future, as an SFSU STEM campus moves into the neighborhood, and as other commercial endeavors come online in the next year. So there are things on foot in the area, but it is not, on its face, an evident line-up for success. 

The landlord is a gent who's lived in the area for 30 years, and is as far as business planning goes, a dream -- liked by community members (and his current renters), knows the insides and outs of the area and its history, and is a booster to the core, wanting to bring energy and resources to the community. He's willing to offer a rent holiday while doing buildout, his square foot rates are appropriate, and he will support the venture from here to high heaven.  The support he is willing to offer is pretty outstanding from my (frankly) limited experiences with landlords. 

So as I sit here, a week later, contemplating this offer, I sit on some uncomfortable ground. Because aside from the gut instinct that the space isn't for us -- it's not large enough to grow into, and would require a lot of reno work -- I question what happens when I, a Jewish, white gay male who spent seven years in Berkeley and Duboce Park, opens up shop in the Bayview. In other words, this is a question about my role and place in the act of gentrification.

The notion of gentrification has become, in recent years, somewhat protean; its definition has been altered, obfuscated, shortened, or made so nebulous as to be all but meaningless. It is oft regarded as some as a net positive, the act of improving and bringing services to previously underserved areas. While true in part, these sorts of dictionary definitions often fit to serve the interests of those framing gentrification in such a way, removing the process and its actions from context, history, and overall impact . The term, coined by British sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964, focused on the following conceit :: 

" Gentrification commonly occurs in urban areas where prior disinvestment in the urban infrastructure creates opportunities for profitable redevelopment.  It also occurs in those societies where a loss of manufacturing employment and an increase in service employment has led to an expansion in the amount of middle class professionals with a deposition towards central city living and an associated rejection of suburbia. "

This is the standard housing related evaluation of gentrification. Others, such as the one I work with, views gentrification as opposite community economic development; in the former, external sources of investment enter a community and circulate out of a community (investor enrichment), while in the latter external sources of investment circulate through and re-circulate within a community (community enrichment). I find the latter view is helpful in conjunction with the first, as it helps us center the who (is effected by gentrification? benefits from?) and the hows of the development program taking place. 

The process is never just one neighborhood; it is often systematic, happening in many places at once, and oftentimes happens in stages. While nominally about housing or real estate stock, it also has to do with the supporting causes of housing access -- conversions in labor markets and jobs, the structural changes of who is working, where and how, the incentives and programs federal, state and local that deal with property, and the policy actions by various agencies that can cause inter-generational impacts on any and all of these topics (think: redlining as done by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, its financial, ecological, and health effects on middle-class African Americans and their neighborhoods).  More often than not, the picture of a place is not its present, nor solely its inhabitants, but the history of a space, its community, and the structural shifts and changes that have come upon it -- implications often masked by narratives we are told about a place. 

In my time working in the sustainable food world, the question of access and food justice are commonplace, and growing moreso, moving beyond the problematic use of the term "food desert" (in itself a code for spaces that are prime for acts of gentrification) and actually finding ways of empowering communities to build their own food economies and avenues. The realization that food access itself was not an answer -- it is tied to the development packages that cities devise for real estate development, to the types of jobs created by such ventures and what they pay, the whos of access to services and political impact, and the hows of ways in which public decision making is devised -- found that in order to help communities in need, you needed to listen to them, to give them the tools and support to empower themselves and gain traction in the decision-making bodies of their polity. Not too lean too heavily on Burning Man's 10 Principles, but the nascent food movement, especially those working in food justice, realized that radical self sufficiency, communal effort, and civic responsibility were keys to generating access, rather than oftentimes imposing a vision of what that access should look like -- and  for whom. 

Coffee shops are not, on their own, responsible for such weighty matter. But I hold specialty coffee -- with its emphasis on improving quality of life for coffee farmers, baristas, and the coffee we drink -- to a higher standard. And as I've spoken about to other peers of mine on this topic, coffee shops are the canary of community development. Whether acting as community spaces or impromptu offices, coffee shops and cafes provide a sense of gravity and activity. As businesses with thin margins, they oftentimes need to seek spaces where rents are lower -- oftentimes finding their core customers are the people whose professional ambitions oftentimes require them to have cheaper rents. These conditions tend to occur in the neighborhoods of the formerly industrial spaces -- spaces closed down through the international race to the bottom of manufacturing prices, the hardball of managements resentment to union wages and the relocation to "right to work" states, or the aforementioned redlining and other urban policies, official and unofficial (domestic security agencies illicitly dumping cocaine into predominantly minority neighborhoods, anyone?). When cafes move into lower rent areas, what we often mean to say is that they are moving into spaces where communities have often been subject to structural forms of racism and economic oppression, where they are able to take advantage of what that means in terms of real estate pricing.

This is not often conscious, and rarely done cynically -- most small business owners want to be able to find spaces where they can afford to do what they want to do. Ultimately they're responding to the conditions years of policy-oriented decisions have borne. But none of this happens in a vacuum, and the ways in which shops behave in these environments matter. Hiring baristas or coffee interested people from within a community matters. Do people see themselves in these spaces? Invited into them? Do owners do the things that provide their workers dignity, an affirming wage, and a space to grow as people and employees? Does your staff make assumptions about the members of your community, or do they know and understand their de facto neighbors? Do you, as an owner, live in and understand the day to day of your neighborhood, or do you telegraph in from another neighborhood or place? And do you, as a business owner, understand if and when resentment may be raised at your if displacement begins to occur within your space? 

These were questions that racked my brain back when I was writing the various business plans as part of my masters thesis at NYU; more than that, I was attempting to look at ways to both (a) think systemically about the business models of cafes and (b) how to make such things viable business engines for community development. Both of these made reference points to job training, hospitality management, everything from service flow to the offerings on hand. Could I maintain price points that did what we wanted to do for farmers and coffee growers, while also affording to pay my staff above-average (15-20/hr) wages, and didn't fundamentally exclude large portions of the community within which I was located? The answer, as always, was "within reason". Consumer choices and business action alone will never be able to rectify the structural problems that exist in labor, commodities markets, real estate. But we can look upon and question whether we gamely accept those conditions and encourage them for personal gain or whether we can use business as a means to help rectify and organize against some of these conditions*.  

Which brings us back to the blank e-mail I've been trying to write for five days attempting to tell this guy no. Part of it feels purely logistical and business oriented. Part of me is racked -- this could be an opportunity, it could be a great way to test these waters. But part of me is also staring at these questions and wondering what the best move is. I currently have the resources to put one shot out there right now. And that one shot has a lot of work to do. In my mind there's a lot of business side thinking that is telling me no. But these questions that this particular instance raised in me are important questions to be asking, because the same way specialty coffee only succeeds when it really works on the side of its suppliers and growers, the same holds true of the communities and the customers it serves. That's why running a community business is important -- because the community is the element that matters, and how you define and operate your business community matters. And when concerning the role that business play in the drama between gentrification and its alternatives, that can make all the difference.**

*I'm reminded too much of the situation of Yaron Milgrom and the Local family of products in San Francisco as the Worst Case Study in this setting. While the story is still filled with holes, there were a few things interviewers and stakeholders agreed upon: Milgrom didn't really work with Mission residents or consider them his primary clientele or his source of labor. And when things blew up, his response was to get antagonistic, or more precisely, remain silent. While his mission is fantastic, I don't think the same care as say Bi-Rite went into thinking about how his work fit into the neighborhood or how it would effect it. 

** See the business differences between Bi-Rite and Local and you get some of that distinction.

*** On a personal note, this is also about commitment. In an ideal world where resources didn't matter, I'd be bi-coastal between California and NY. My family is in the former, along with communities really dedicated towards creating convivia around good food. In NYC, I have an amazing group of people and an intellectual life that is hard to beat. CA has hiking in close proximity; NY has a truly all night to sunrise nightlife. California has work-life balance; NY has people whose edge of expertise is sharper in some ways than I've seen elsewhere. Choosing one place to put down roots is no small decision. But its a decision that needs to be made. And if the issue of gentrification is one of the meta-sized issues of human existence, this issue -- the one of where my home, my community, my people are, is the big question weighing me down because if my visit to SF proved anything, it's that I have a home in both places, FAMILY in both places, and a community in both places that I strongly support, love, and want to build in. Locating where that home will be is probably as hard a question as what that home will look like, save wherever it ends up, it'll be the place I want to be. 

The 6 Cookbook Kitchen: Or, Things to Look For in Cookbooks

So we found out about a month ago that T'ai and I (and our roomate Dave) would be needing to move. Our landlords are deciding to build condos on the site, and while I'm wistful to give up the mantle of the Celebrity Cannibal Rat Boat Sex Box (memo to self: when naming a residency, think succinct!), it is probably time to move on from our possibly mafia-controlled digs and move on. The Sex Box (shorthand) has been a fantastic home since I arrived in New York, both due to its swell location off the Lorimer L, but also due to a fantastic roomate, who not only made my transition to New York from California much easier, but has also accomodated the large degree of kitchen activity and experimentation that has taken place since I moved in. (I mean, he tolerates having cases of fruit stacked up in the living room. He's a gem!)

As the search begins for new digs, it also means the packup for moving has begun, though not quite in earnest yet. No boxes have been purchased, no sales planned yet. I think there will be a clothing dump and maybe a swell couple of bags on its way to Housing Works, along with some bric a brac that has accumulated over the last four years.  One of the biggest concerns, besides the entire pantry overhaul that is going to need to happen (coconut milk! rando grains! delightful yet minimally used fermented tofu!), is frankly going to be moving the cookbooks. And that has got me onto the idea of (gasp) maybe letting go of some cookbooks and making a visit to the Strand desk. But more particularly, it has gotten me onto the idea of what makes a good cookbook. 

So confession -- that's not actually the question. That's the frame i'd like to use for the question, but asking about overarching qualifiers gets us into the game of Desert Island cookbooks, limiting libraries, and playing that Solomon-esque game of picking and choosing that, while occasionally fun, is rarely useful.  And while I still have reservations about the Great Restaurant Cookbook Rut of 2013-4*, I don't like to admonish people for their selection of what may inspire or get them into a kitchen. Sure, the Manresa book may be completely useless, but damn if the ideas didn't get me jumping just a little to try a couple of new things (make your own vermouth!). So when I say what makes a good cookbook, as I prepare to move a couple dozen titles from one residence to the next**, isn't what makes a good book, so much as what makes a cookbook worth keeping.

While I don't like the listacle nature of the Desert Island books, there are in fact six books from this collection which do make the point of what to look for in a cookbook. And while they won't be the only six coming with me, they do define the characteristics of what to look for in books to keep:

1) "Every Grain of Rice" by Fuschia Dunlop. We used this in the cookbook club I hosted for the last two years, and it was one of the favorites. Dunlop does everything an author should in the genre: have a specific goal (introduction to Chinese home cooking, specifically of the southern Sichuan/Hunanese sort), a good pantry primer and methods primer in the first few chapters, and recipes that have been vetted within an inch of their lives. While not a deeply academic title (like Diana Kennedy's "Regional Mexican Cooking"), it fits along with "Rick Bayless Mexican Kitchen" for a primer in regional cooking. Both books are great for minimizing takeout needs, as the ease with which one can prepare order-in staples makes the effort worth it. 

2) "Chez Panisse Cooking" by Waters & Bertolli. This entire lineage of books, including those made by Chez Panisse progeny David Tanis, Cal Peternell, and soon Russel Moore, could be a 7 book library unto themselves. The cookbooks written from la famille Panisse are accessible, thoughtful, coherent, and written with an eye to encourage cooking from even the most introductory cook. But "Cooking", and its later child "Cooking by Hand" from Paul Bertolli, who wrote the majority of the previous books text, is essential because of its copy. "Cooking" weaves together several categories of food (general categories of "Fruit", "Vegetables", "Meat", and others), in which basic methods for evaluating and shopping for raw product, basic preparation, and the infinity of uses for any given item are thrown together in a linear, helpful way. It takes the reader through such conceptual bits like how to plan a menu, what to consider, and even essays on bread and wine, giving the reader tools with the distinct charge of taking command of their eating and dining habits. In the age of "soylent dining" this kind of book is indispensable. 

3 / 4) Good to the Grain by Boyce & Pure Dessert by Medrich. Spoilers! A two for one because (a) I'm a baking fiend, and (b) because baking, compared to cooking, can need a couple of iterations. Both books (as well as Medrichs entire library) are great for a couple of reasons. Breads and baked goods are different from basic cooking, and the components matter for both flavor and consistency. Both Medrich and Boyce vet out those distinctions and deliver not only good primers, but also means to explore the contours of a pretty wide field (grains) within a constrained field of use (baking). Boyce gives a good intro to both breads and baked goods for the home cook; Medrich does the same with pastry and baked goods, but also goes on the ingredient path, showcasing the way you need to think holistically about a medium, its components, and its additions. Both have been essential to understanding baking. (See also, Robertson's "Tartine Bread" for specifically bread baking). 

5) Like the Chez Panisse books, Deborah Madison's "Vegetable Literacy" is a primer. But it's also, unlike them, completely encyclopedic. Single topic books like this, whether for regional cooking, or for singular topics (like Hugh Fernley Whittingstall's "River Cottage Meat Book") are a value because of their comprehension. They fill in blanks, they go into details general interest variety books leave behind, and they turn over stones you may not have thought to turn over (like the environmental and nutritional impacts of grass v grain fed meat, or the seed-saving potential of the home garden). They are amazing because they engage with information and their reader as a form of advocacy, yet still retain the ability to get someone behind a slab or meat (for grilling or breaking down), or into a market or garden to use produce in new ways. Whereas the Chez Panisse books hold their politics implicitly, these books offer professional depth to counter the notion that cooking work isn't thoughtful work.

6). Death & Co Cocktail Book. Basically, with the advent of the internet, the need for a general cocktail book is gone. And while I love cocktail books that showcase the originality of a chef, I find that, like restaurant books, they sometimes become undone because they feature things only the bar has access to or that can't be accessed by a reader. Great for inspiration, short on function. But a book that explains bar layout and glass type, prototype recipes for cocktails and variations puts a lot more strength in the hands of a reader. I like what bars can do for the home bar person, and the Death & Co book, more than most others, spells it out with little romance and a lot of caveats (which I appreciate). 

A cookbook should make you want to cook and increase your capacity to do so. It should feed your brain as much as your belly. I'm not sure this list does anything to diminish the size of the library, but it does provide a window into what we like to see in the culinary world.  I don't think we need dozens of cookbooks, though they certainly provide inspiration; truth be told, having not spent large amount of time in professional kitchens, most of my knowledge comes from the writing of cookbooks. But it's precisely because of that experience that I'm not sure so many need to belong on a shelf -- because good cookbooks give you a framework to run with, a methodology to approach from, and an encyclopedia to check-in with. But the rest? Well, that's up to you. And that particular joy is exciting, emancipating, and empowering. 

*a rough period of two years when cookbooks came out from places like Manresa, The Restaurant at Meadowood, Noma Part II, Husk, Coi, and a number of other restaurants that fell into one of two categories -- beautiful but completely useless (the majority) or functional but perhaps not well written. It seemed that the promotional aspect of cookbooks reached a fever pitch in this period, and for all the press they received, it was rough as there were far better books out there in the world, but everything seemed to revolve around these restaurant titles, regardless of their actual functionality or literary merit. 

**There is a closet full of cookbooks back in Los Angeles. It is a terrifying thing of beauty. 

The Diaspora Vision: Or, What a Social Enterprise Food Hub Looks Like

Back when i was working on my city & regional planning degree at UC Berkeley, finding the intersection between agricultural sourcing and urban planning, I stumbled upon the body of literature covering the concept of food hubs. At their core, food hubs are institutions that bring products from a number of farms together in one place for the purposes of aggregation, co-processing, marketing work, and gaining access for farmers who otherwise produce too much to scale at farmers markets or for whom the need of institutional purchasers is necessary (think: flour, beans, and other bulk dry goods). The literature is wide-ranging, covering everything from simple aggregation schemes to much larger social enterprise missions. According to some, they are the second stage of development for sustainable agriculture, as some research indicates that we are hitting a plateau of interest (some may say accesss to) local foods in the direct-to-consumer market. 

Food hubs, are, in most cases, pretty solid. You may not ever see them publicly touted or visible in plain sight, but you've likely been serviced by one. If you buy products from Whole Foods in the Northeast, for example, you may be purchasing from Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative and Red Tomato,two groups that bring products together from small and medium sized farms and distribute them to restaurants and larger buyers such as Whole Foods (who have more centralized systems of purchasing that place small and medium size producers at a disadvantage).  Many ideas for them exist throughout the United States, and many are used as economic development cases. At their best, food hubs represent not only an aggregator of product (as any conventional wholesaler would be), but also conduct some degree of value-added work, some form of jobs training and food-based entrepreneurship incubation work, and if one is lucky, also doing the marketing and co-branding along this entire line. When done cohesively, food hubs can not only bring together product from smaller and medium size producers (some of those most in need of support), but also create direct product stream flow into the businesses that can add value and create additional value for those products, with the added marketing, promotional, and business support required to help those products find markets, both big and small. (They can also, as our model we worked on for a food hub in New Rochelle, include a retail storefront that provides a direct to consumer space, allowing for direct feedback to producers and farmers alike.) While some argue that they are middlemen taking value away from farmers, more often than not food hubs can add value by diversifying the types of markets farms have access to, reaching a wider audience than they might have had otherwise and minimizing waste through bulk sales & purchases. 

This all hinges on the caveat of "when". As the momentum on food hubs have increased, so too has the simplification of the concept.  Many interviews and stories simplify the concept as simply one for "aggregation", which has almost become a code word for reducing the cost of produce to increase accessibility. This on its face is a fine goal; getting access to institutional buyers and increasing the possibility for restaurants and other parties to get access to those products is great. But on its own its insufficient; wholesale is, on its own, a poor space for farmers to obtain value, and aggregation can sometimes diminish uniqueness of product when it's not presented well or valued as such. Only if certain stakeholder points are met -- pricing meets a value-plus floor acceptable to both distributor and producer -- and if marketing is sufficient can those elements be overcome. But the dual-income problem -- of producers receiving enough payment to cover their costs and pay them sufficiently for both their social livelihood and the ecological services rendered, and for consumers, generating value for them both nutritionally and access to jobs that can pay to purchase those products at those prices -- still exists and is probably a pernicious issue of the food hub development scheme. At the end of the day, schemes that focus on aggregation alone and forget about the community economic development angle for both rural and urban communities is doomed to replicate the systems that, ostensibly, food hubs are designed to counter. 

Specifically lost in all this is the social enterprise side of the food hub equation -- and the connection between creating channels not only for existing food businesses but specifically cultivating and generating new businesses where connection to local supply chains is built into the existing plans. And furthermore, making products accessible to communities doesn't necessarily reflect the ability or comfort of those communities to utilize those products -- the food access equivalent of bringing a camel to water but being unable to force it to drink. The promotional, education, and use capacity of communities taking part in sustainability enterprises is still fraught -- wanting to respect communities, promoting culturally appropriate and use-responsible methods, and generate an understanding of regional agriculture -- takes time, and oftentimes is seen as an externality that other orgs can take on; the food hub exists just to make it possible. 

So when we devised the business plan for Diaspora, I thought long and hard about those elements. You may be thinking "but don't you guys do jam and baked goods?", and you would be correct -- jams and baked goods are the things we have done while I've worked two other jobs. But at its core, the business plan -- the thing I wrote my masters work on -- was focused on developing a food hub for community use. Jams, breads, preservers and the like are just some of the products one can make in sufficient scale through aggregation. But providing a space where those products and their production are showcased, where communities and individuals have access to purchasing those products at retail or in quantity for their own processing -- that sort of project gets at my core. I love making jams -- I also love seeing people make their own. Much like the Happy Girl Kitchen Food Preservationists, I envision Diaspora as a space where people can come to learn about preservation methods, purchase products in quantity, and make their own jams, preserves and the like. And like the Bi-Rite Market family of products, I want to take on more advocacy and community development work, fostering a space for nascent food producers to be presented publicly.  Diaspora may on its face be a cafe-bakery with amazing coffee, delicious food, and righteous hospitality, but it's also a place that can act as a community food organization, supplying families, individuals, and perhaps yes, even businesses with foods & knowledge they can use, at a price that leaves farmers, guests, and indeed us, a middleman of sorts, happy to do the work we do. We want to use convivia as a mechanism for change. We want to be the conduit that makes a social enterprise, well, social. 

Ari Weinzweig, one of the guys behind Zingermans and a huge contributor to the managerial philosophies to which I ascribe, talks about the need to be public with our visions of what it is businesses want to do. And I believe wholeheartedly in that -- both because our missions and values should be public and because those ideas are inseparable from who and what I am, and what we want Diaspora to become. For that, we not only have to talk about these ideas openly, but also have others know what we want to do, and as stakeholders in our project, hold us accountable to what we hope to become. 

Some spring in our step....

So in our last post we hinted that there are some things afoot here in the Diaspora Kitchen, and by hinted, I mean did that terrible thing where we bludgeoned your over the head with news of an announcement, and thusly, here we are. (I'm pretty sure not following through on such things is like a -1 modifier to your luck roll.)

So first, the more droll bit of news: we're formally launching Diaspora's subscription service for jam. This was a practical thing -- a lot of folks wanted jams sent to them on the regular, with new offerings, and bits of news and updates, and didn't want to have to go through shopping each time to do it. So we're making it easy by setting up a 4-month subscription. At the start of each month, you'll receive 2 jars of decidedly delicious jam plus a little newslettery bit from T'ai & I here at Diaspora, with a little note about the jams, current events, and upcoming events. This all comes at the steal of $100 for the four month run, which amounts to a $20 savings off our retail price. (Imagine ALL THE KOUIGN AMANN YOU CAN BUY WITH $20!!!!!)

The second announcement is far more interesting: starting in May, we'll be starting a weekly community-supported bread (CSB) drop. Like a community supported agriculture (CSA) box scheme, the CSB is a pre-paid, weekly drop, containing two different offerings (at this point): either a single loaf of delicious bread (changing week to week but mostly pullman-style bread loaves) OR a single loaf of delicious bread (same terms) PLUS a delicious tack-on goodie bag, containing anything from additional baked goods to seasonal treats from our friends at the Greenmarket. Loaves and goodies are picked up at a pre-selected (and consistent) location, every week, without fail. we're still working on that particular detail, but that's fine -- we need a minimum of 20 members to make the CSB worthwhile, so we'll be hoping some of you sign up for the subscription -- either option A for $8 or option B for $15 -- on the shop here. (It's also the opportunity -- hint, hint -- to tack on a monthly jam delivery as well. Because bread & jam, you know, kind of go well together.)* 

The CSB model works for us in a number of ways. While Diaspora is making money from our jams and pop-ups, the CSB gives us the opportunity to expand our repertoire and our abilities, and begin scaling Diaspora to a project that we want it to become. It's been a while since I've done production baking, and like any skill, its something that requires practice, and allows me to get back into that rhythm. The CSB also gives us the operational capital to buy fun stuff like bulk flour, kitchen space, and the biggest thing, new equipment. Jams and pop-ups were the first step, and they'll still be our mainstay. But starting subscriptions and the CSB will allow us to also begin building something with regularity -- something that also helps build community, which is a cornerstone of what Diaspora is about. 

But that's another post, no?