114: Honouring Maternal Ancestries through Cooking and Restaurant Development with Ruben Rodriguez of Nai Restaurant Groups

This is the first episode back after the holiday break, so I hope that this finds you rested, stuffed, and balancing all the new year expectations as well as you can be!  

For today’s show, I am chatting with chef Ruben Rodriguez, who is a Galcian-born chef and restauranteur of Nai Restaurant Group. Ruben immigrated to New Jersey with his family when he was 11 years old and found inspiration by the Galician food traditions he grew up with. This led to him eventually opening his own first Spanish tapas restaurant, Nai in 2010 in New York City’s East Village. Nai means “mom” in Galicia, which honours his mother and maternal ancestry through his cooking practices and has gone on to shape his more recent expansions through Nai Restaurant Group. 

He's on the show today to discuss his journey navigating the New York restaurant scene as he started out, and how it led to three new concept restaurants, Amigo by Nai, Café Emilia, and Kobo during the thick of COVID-19 lockdowns that involved honoring the mother-work of chefs from different ethnicities and backgrounds, and creating fun and creative strategies to make restaurants work with ever-changing health restrictions in that time.

Sarah's Upcoming DesignTO Event with Mason Studios and Pastiao:

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113: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security with Dr. Matias Margulis

Before we jump into today’s show, I wanted to give listeners a heads up that today is the last AnthroDish episode for 2023, but we will be returning with more episodes this season on Tuesday, January 9th so be sure to tune back in this new year! 

Today we’re exploring a topic that I personally find sometimes quite challenging to access and fully understand the nuances of: international food policy. Discussions about international food regimes are critical for understanding how broad choices trickle down to local economies, though often we default to looking at global issues in isolation, rather than thinking about how trade, intellectual property rights, human rights, and many other aspects inform food policy. What happens when we address them in tandem to address global problems around food – and which world trade rules are shaped by certain organizations for food security efforts?

My guest this week is Dr. Matias Margulis, who is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. His research and teaching interests are in global governance, development, human rights, international law and food policy. In addition to his academic research, Matias has extensive professional experience in the field of international policymaking and is a former Canadian representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He has also advised the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and the Scottish Parliament and consulted for international NGOs and the Brookings Institution.

Matias discusses his most recent book with me today, Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security, where he unpacks how UN organizations chose to intervene in trade law making due to concerns about how specific trade rules could have negative consequences for world food securities. He unpacks the complexity of international organizations, their roles, and the limitations or exercises of power in their representations of international communities.

Learn more about Dr. Matias: 

112: Dinner on Mars - How Technologies that Could Feed the Red Planet Can Transform Agriculture on Earth with Evan Fraser and Lenore Newman

What happens when two food scientists get bored in a pandemic? It turns out, they start to brainstorm how they would feed a colony of humans on Mars. What might seem like a trivial question is actually a more nuanced exploration of how we can sustain ourselves on Mars, and what we can learn from this thought experiment back on Earth, too.

My guests this week are Drs. Evan Fraser and Lenore Newman, two food scientists that started a series of conversations to pass the time during lockdowns, which then turned into something much more important. Dr. Evan Fraser is the director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph, and Dr. Lenore Newman is the Canada Reseach Chair in Food Security and the Environment at University of the Fraser Valley. They developed the series of conversations into their book, Dinner on Mars: The Technologies That Will Feed the Red Planet, and Transform Agriculture on Earth. Using leading-edge agricultural technology, the answers to their questions are weird, wonderful, and sometimes disgusting – like lab-grown chicken breast or cheese and ice cream made from vats of fermented yeast! Evan and Lenore structure their book through online conversation, and show how setting the table off-planet can allow for thinking about how to supercharge efforts to produce sustainably here at home as well. 

Learn More About Evan and Lenore:

 

111: Reframing Cookbooks, and Salad as Comfort Food with Nat and Bec Davey of Reframeables

When you think about comfort food, what types of meals or dishes come to mind – is it mashed potatoes and gravy, the best of your grandmother’s kitchens, or a chickpea curry? Often we have this idea around “comforting” foods that is rooted so deeply in our family ties and meaty or hearty cultural dishes. Yet sometimes, comfort food can be a bit more imaginative, if you reframe it. 

Today I’m talking with Nat and Bec Davey, two writer sisters who like to use art and conversations to reframe more than themselves – you might say they practice socially conscious self-help. Sometimes they do this through conversations with each other, and othertimes they bring in artists, thinkers, and creators to help us along. They always leave their audiences with some new reframeable to chew on as we all work through life’s big and small stuff together.

Our conversation looks more directly at their cookbook, which is called A Different Kind of Comfort Food, and unpacking what traditions and expectations we have not only around what food can be classified as comfort, but also how language and structure can shapeshift recipes and the kitchen experience in more accessible and creative ways.

Learn more about Nat and Bec!

110: Creating Safer Community for Breweries and Vulnerable Neighbours with Ren Navarro of B.Diversity

Alcohol has been navigating a new social landscape in America and Canada since COVID hit. While there were signs that alcohol consumption was rising with lockdowns, there’s also been more spaces for conversation around the use of alcohol as a drug, or trickier relationships with drinking and binge drinking, amidst a backdrop of the drug use crisis that is sweeping across families of all types with changes in drug supply and challenges with cost of living. It is a lot to navigate, so I brought back my favourite beer and diversity expert to talk through it, Ren Navarro.

Ren runs B.Diversity Group, and is certified by some of the world’s largest alcohol programs, including Prud’homme, WSET, Cicerone, and AFicioNAdo (an alcohol free certification). She has appeared on national television talking about the historical aspects and new trends in alcohol, and the benefits of stronger communities. In 2018, Ren created Beer. Diversity., a company and advocacy group whose focus was for folks to be able to have open conversations, one beer at a time. With the evolution of this company into non-alcoholic spheres, she introduced B.Diversity in early 2023. This amalgamation aims to create safer spaces in which to have more open and honest conversations to support and create meaningful change in a multitude of industries.

Today she’s on the show to speak to what has shifted with the beer industry since she was last on in early 2020 (pre-COVID, which is wild!), and her transition into championing diversity and inclusion through working with breweries to train and aid those affected by the opioid and drug crisis in Canada. We also discuss the variety of non-alcoholic beverages on the market, along with how to learn about and access them, and the lessons she’s learned as she’s evolved her company while continuing to bring diversity to the forefront of learning and working relationships.

Learn More About Ren:

109: Campus Food System Alternatives as Organizing Tools with Dr. Michael Classens

When we think about food security and food systems, it can easily be imagined as a large national or state or provincial level experience. Yet many young adults increasingly are experiencing the unique dynamics of food systems on campus landscapes, which offers a concentrated and specific food environment that can feel limited as food prices increase and food vendors on campus continue to produce some questionable (and now expensive) meatloaf. 

Yet post-secondary campuses are spaces of resistance and social justice, and it seems only fitting that students can push back to create food systems alternatives that navigate long-kept colonial structures in the academic institution.

 My guest this week, Dr. Michael Classens, is here to explore how these alternatives have played out through his and his students ongoing research. Michael is a white settler and Assistant Professor in the School of the Environment at University of Toronto. He is broadly interested in areas of social and environmental justice, with an emphasis on these dynamics within food systems. As a teacher, researcher, learner, and activist he is committed to connecting theory with practice, and scholarship with socio-ecological change.

Today we’re discussing the work he and his students have been doing for the past few years focused on what he calls campus food systems alternatives – which are initiatives started/operated by (mostly) students that employ food as an organizing strategy to effect broader socio-ecological change on campus (and beyond). Examples include campus farms, student-run cafés, community fridges, and the like. 

Learn More About Michael: