A Dash of Drama

I started this blog last year. I had very eventful but sad few years as a food entrepreneur, and was taking a Timeout to recover. I wanted to share some of my experiences, or at the very least, document them in a meaningful way in case no one ever read this blog. For a long time, I struggled with the first entry. What should I say about myself? or begin with a series of trauma porn based on my horror stories running a restaurant? Do I upload beautiful food images to catch people’s attention?

Then, last month, I stumbled upon a podcast that spoke to me so beautifully and inspired me to sit and finally begin my storytelling journey…online (scary).

In a recent episode of “Modern Love” from the New York times, host Anna Martin interviews Chef and Author Samin Nosrat, who reads an essay: “You May Want To Marry My husband,” by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. The essay is about love, food, death and time. Not having enough time. After reading the essay, Nosrat says this:

“Time is really precious, and a lot of people don’t have time to cook…If we can shift something in the way that we look at this thing that we do everyday to nourish ourselves and to nourish the people around us (who we care about) and understand that this time we have is a GIFT. I’m pouring my time into making you something, and this is me sharing my most precious currency….with YOU. I’m giving you all of the time and energy and thoughtfulness that I put into that. “

I was listening to this, a familiar sting came and I found myself blinking back tears. For anyone who has a livelihood that involves food (servers, chefs, business owners and even working parents), you know all too well, that there is always a tug-of-war with food and time. They say that cooking for someone is “The Original” way to say I love you, but cooking takes time and there is never enough time. Then when you work with and around food, you must maximize efficiency and productivity. You must produce results. You must make good food, but don’t spend too much time.

In my opinion, this is actually the most difficult part of being the restaurant business. For most of us, we start out making and serving food because we think mold people’s everyday lives with a meal. We help create memories and magic with our recipes and our know-how, or so we think. Over time, we realize that we are just in a rat race to produce something that passes as good food, but more importantly, our food should be the following:

1. accompanied by pretentious “chef-driven” description with some on-trend ingredient 2. photogenic 3. be cheap. Number 1 and 2 are negotiable if number 3 is checked.

The compromises that we make as restaurant professionals speaks to just how difficult it is sometimes to be ourselves and be in this industry. If I make good food but spend too many resources doing it, does that make me a bad proprietor? Or, if I’m profitable and stay open but my food doesn’t taste the way I want, am I being true to myself? On the business side of things, these are the questions that I still haven’t answered. Listening to Chef Samin made me pinpoint this deep internal conflict that I had with always had with food and time, and how it spilled over into my personal life. This quote challenges us to change the way we thinking about the tradeoffs between food and time. Deciding to make food food; to take times is a choice, and so in challenging us, it also gave me to permission to take time, to make the food I want, to show my love the way I want. This is me taking care of myself. So here is a short list of things that I’ve committed to doing (that are big steps for me).

1. Make my own cappuccino and sit while I drink it.

2. Try to learn one recipe a month that nourishes my family (and not feel guilty that I spent too much time making it).

3. Invest more time in procuring quality ingredients in my home cooking (visiting a local egg farm each week, more on that later)