127: How Local Journalism Explores Foods of the American South with Hanna Raskin of The Food Section

“Part of food coverage, by me or another news outlet, is hopefully facilitating some media literacy and helping people understand that there are payments, there are influencers taking money. Understanding there is also media that doesn’t do that and being able to distinguish between the two. That’s why I have The Food Section’s ethics code posted on its front page. This stuff is important for when people start asking not only how is their food reporter reporting, but how is all media coming together? It’s a nice way to get people into this news and media ecosystem. ”
— Hanna Raskin

News media at large is in a challenging position this year: we’ve seen mass layoffs across digital media, local news, TV, print, even podcasts and documentaries. There’s shifts in audiences, loss of journalist jobs, and shaky foundations of social media platforms like Twitter and Substack that make even the strongest bylines at risk of being swallowed up. As a public, that means how we consume and analyze media changes too. Here on AnthroDish and across food media platforms, food is a jumping off tool that can offer alternative avenues to navigate complex sociocultural and political issues. My guest today is Hanna Raskin, founder of The Food Section, who is here to explore how her newsletter is creating a nuanced space for food media coverage across the American South.  

One of the leading voices for high-quality local food journalism, Hanna has received widespread recognition for her writing and reporting. She previously worked as a food editor and chief critic for The Post and Courier newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, which earned her the James Beard Foundation’s inaugural Local Impact Journalism Award. Since then, she founded The Food Section in 2021 as a twice-weekly Substack newsletter, and subsequently moved it onto its own independent platform in 2024. The Food Section has been named one of the best newsletters in the country by several prestigious industry organizations. 

Hanna sits down with me today to share her experiences building The Food Section after transitioning away from newspaper reporting, what the dimensions of local food journalism can offer that other beats cannot, and how to navigate the concept of rigour in a food media world that can otherwise easily swing from buzzy big media to surface level content creator coverage.

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126: The Ikaria Way: How Mostly Plant-Based Foods Maintain a Greek Island's Longevity with Diane Kochilas

“The older diet is plant-based, it’s a diet of poverty, or what poverty was 50-100 years ago, which was... seasonal plant-based foods, greens, vegetables, things you’d grow in the garden. In the case of Ikaria, olive oil in copious amounts… It was never a vegan diet, that’s a myth. It was always a diet in which meat was eaten judiciously, not so much by design as by default, because people were poor and couldn’t afford to eat meat every day. So, in that regard, it is the classic Mediterranean diet of 50 or 60 years ago.”
— Diane Kochilas

You may be familiar with the Greek island of Ikaria through the popularity of “Blue Zones” and the idea that these regions of the world can provide insights into living longer, healthier lives. Yet as with most trends around diet and health, there is so much unspoken about the nuances of what an Ikarian lifestyle and diet entails, and the cultural relationships that Ikarians have with their food and communities.  

My guest today is Diane Kochilas, who is here to share her insights on these relationships with food through her new cookbook, The Ikaria Way. Diane has been at the forefront of bringing healthy, delicious Greek and Mediterranean cuisine to a wide international audience for over 25 years. She is the host and co-executive producer of the award-winning PBS show, My Greek Table, and she runs the Glorious Greek Cooking school on her native island Ikaria. She’s released 18 cookbooks on Greek cuisine, and has consulted with American universties to bring healthy Greek foods to their dining programs.

Today, Diane unpacks what it means to live and eat in the spirit of the Ikarians, discusses the differences between food preparation and preservation in Greece compared to other Mediterranean cultures, and unpacks how the anxiety and disconnection between North Americans and their food has shaped how we think about cooking and eating, and how she navigates these perspectives through her recipes.

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125: Sesame, Soy, Spice: Using Plant-Based Recipes to Honour Heritage and Healing with Remy Morimoto Park

“When I was thinking about the language around the food I was creating in the cookbook, I had to keep in mind that perspective as someone with a history of an eating disorder: I’m a little more conscious to verbiage when it comes to how we talk about food. I really wanted to stay away from things like “oh this is clean” ... Language can really reframe the way that you think about food, and so instead, it’s “oh this is very simple, whole food ingredient recipe, that’s easy to make” and making sure there’s no emphasis on diet or skinny this/that. That was really important to me. ”
— Remy Morimoto Park

Thinking about “typical” types of veganism can reveal a lot of fascinating Western stereotypes or biases around what it does and doesn’t entail. And yet so many cultural cuisines from around the world are rooted in plant-based meals that have been passed down through generations to shape contemporary ethnic cuisines. So what happens when someone adopts a vegan diet and lifestyle, in terms of navigating heritage, identity, and family connection?

My guest this week is popular recipe developer and creator Remy Park from Veggiekins, who is here to explore these themes and discuss her beautiful debut cookbook, Sesame, Soy, Spice: 90 Asian-ish Vegan and Gluten-free Recipes to Reconnect, Root, and Restore. Originally from New York/New Jersey area with an international upbringing, she shares vibrant plant-based recipes that take inspiration from her three cultures: Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese, and all the countries she’s lived in. Remy is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher as well as a holistic nutritionist. Her work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Shape Magazine, British Vogue, BuzzFeed, Elle Vietnam, CBS News, and ABC News.

Within the cookbook, Remy’s personal wellness journey is woven throughout her accessible plant-based takes on international and Asian-ish dishes. In our conversation today, we explore the traditional flavours and diets of her Asian cultures, and how the book formed a love letter to Remy’s family heritage, how she navigates food as communication across American and Asian understandings of snacks and salads, and the power of language in recipe development when healing from eating disorder experiences.

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124: How Microgreens Weave Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science for Food Futures with Natalie Paterson

“Knowledge is power but self-knowledge is self-empowerment, where we have that self-knowledge of what is right for us and bringing our culture into it. When a newspaper says some sort of food isn’t great, but it’s been in your heritage for a long time and brings you nourishment, maybe nourishment for your soul and community, and that time with family. That’s the beauty of food. That’s the connector. ”
— Natalie Paterson

One of the pitfalls in sustainability movements is this assumption that we’re all working from an equal playing field, when the reality is that oftentimes we don’t have the home space or the time to grow our own food. What we don’t always ask is whether we can make the comproimses that allow us to meet those desires to grow our own food without the high demands often required of it conventionally. 

My guest this week is Natalie Paterson, who has brought together her Indigenous cultural background and her scientific training to explore what we can do with microgreens. Growing up in New Zealand, Natalie was inspired by her Māori upbringing to explore the value of growing your own food. Natalie completed a BSci in nutritional biochemistry and an MS in food science at Chapman University in Orange County, California. Natalie pursued food science (the study of food from farm to fork), as she recognizes that food is intrinsic within every facet of life, thereby holding the power to promote health while preventing and curing disease. 

Natalie speaks on her previous experience bringing scientific expertise to the market, identifying through her move to London, England, that there is often no connection between food, people, and nutrition. With the demand for at-home fresh vegetables persisting regardless of one’s location, Natalie speaks today on the ways that indoor hydroponic smart gardens can help make people’s cooking more simple, nutritious, and sustainable.

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123: The Power of Showcasing Immigrant Restaurant Stories with Maggie Leandre of CharisMaggie

“It’s very hard to get immigrants who have restaurants to talk about their story... They’re very humble, they’re very shy, they just want to be in the background. And with the world we’re living in today, where the hottest restaurant can get traction because of the power of social media, and they have a PR team behind them – your mum and pop shops in Toronto that are serving the most amazing ethnic cuisine, that’s really true to the taste of the country, they are usually at risk of not getting enough customers or coverage because they’re not as savvy. I want to get more of these stories out there, going beyond the food. ”
— Maggie Leandre, Host of Kitchens of Toronto

If you’ve been a regular listener to this podcast, you know that food is central to all of our discussions around identity, culture, belonging, and sense of place.

My guest today is someone who excels at bringing these relationships to life through her YouTube channel, and speaks to the layers of personal experience she has had growing up and living across multiple countries and cultures. Maggie Leandre is here today, who is the host and producer of CharisMaggie on YouTube. CharisMaggie content showcases countries and cultures through lived experience. Maggie’s cultural background is Guyanese, Haitian, and Jamaican, and she uses her YouTube platform to share her journey of learning about her roots while unlearning biases and stereotypes that society portrays about different cultural groups and countries. 

Through her visually stunning videos, she explores cultural histories, creole languages, and ethnic cuisine. Today, we’re speaking about how she structures her video content to position food as a learning tool for diverse cultural cuisines and languages, and she shares some of the stories about her brilliant Kitchens of Toronto series on her YouTube channel. Season 2 just dropped a couple of weeks ago so be sure to check that out after this interview, too!

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122: Celebrating The Diversity of Torontonian Food Through The Depanneur Cookbook With Len Senater

“The strength is in the diversity we have. The Depanneur, by inviting all these different people in, really became a mirror of the remarkable diversity of the city. And so that’s one of the things I’m proud of in the book. It’s going out with cooks from 80 different countries in one book. That speaks to the food culture of Toronto more than any one particular kind of dish.”
— Len Senater

When I think of a quintessentially Torontonian food experience, I tend to think of The Depanneur. Founded in 2011, The Depanneur was a tiny old corner store that transformed into a place where interesting food things happen, featuring hundreds of talented cooks and home chefs serving thousands of eclectic meals through unique Drop-In Dinners, cooking classes, table talks, and supper clubs. It was also the birthplace of Newcomer Kitchen, a non-profit social enterprise that helped create social and economic opportunities for Syrian refugee women through food-based projects. 

Today on the show is the founder of The Depp, Len Senater, who speaks to the way he created space in Toronto’s increasingly gentrified hospitality world to maintain experimental approaches about food’s role in building community and celebrating diversity. He shares the story behind his recently launched cookbook, The Depanneur Cookbook, which launched as a Kickstarter campaign in November 2020. Equal parts documentary, manifesto, and cookbook, the book features delicious food, poignant stories, and beautiful photography by Ksenija Hotic. More than just a collection of authentic home cooking from around the world, it is the only cookbook that truly captures the incredible culinary diversity of Toronto.

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