Copper & Heat Radio (Copper & Heat)

On March 9th, Chef Irene Li, owner of Mei Mei Restaurant in Boston, opened their finances to the public at an event called Open Book Open House. The purpose? To get people having more open and honest conversations around restaurants and money. But just a week after the Open Book Open House, restaurant dining rooms closed due to COVID and all of a sudden restaurant finances were on everybody’s mind.  

Thank you all so much for listening to our second season! We really appreciate each one of you. If you have any thoughts about season 3, send them our way. 

We’re also very grateful for Pared, our season 2 sponsor. Sign up to be a member now and join the community of other foodservice workers. 

Help the restaurants and organizations featured in our second season: 

Kin Restaurant in Boise, Idaho - support them by ordering delivery

Otono Mercat in Highland Park, Los Angeles - support them by visiting their location they’ve converted into a Spanish market. They also have gift cards and an employee relief fund.

Otono

Homeroom in Oakland, California - They are still open for take-out and delivery and they also have an employee fund.

Opening Soon Podcast and Tilit in New York City - Opening Soon has done a great job covering talking to restaurant folks about how they’re affected by COVID. Tilit is also selling masks with a buy-one-give one policy. If you buy one through them, they’ll donate one to a food service employee volunteering or a medical professional.

Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement in Emeryville, California - Fernay and team are doing Saturday and Sunday orders right now and they also have a relief fund. 

Le Pigeon in Portland, Oregon - Le Pigeon is currently doing a cellar sale for bottles of wine. Plus they have other merch and gift cards for sale. 

One Fair Wage - One Fair Wage has set up a relief fund for foodservice workers in need. You can donate to the fund or volunteer to help call applicants. 

Giving Kitchen in Atlanta, Georgia - They are still helping foodservice workers in financial crisis so you can donate to that. They also have a COVID-19 resource page.  

Mei Mei in Boston, Massachusetts - They are still doing bulk orders, virtual dumpling classes, and selling gift cards. 

Meat in the U.S. has had a complicated history which in recent years has spurred on the resurgence of interest in whole animal butchery and neighborhood butcher shops. But even as meat prices have risen, how have the people working behind the counter been affected?

In this episode, we speak with 2 butchers who have had very different careers within the world of butchery. There’s Edgar (he/him), whose career includes 20 years at Texas Roadhouse and 5 at Belcampo Meat Co. Then there’s HJ (they/them), who has worked all over the country including Blue Hill at Stone Barns, The Meat Hook in Brooklyn, and now co-owns Pasture PDX, a small craft butcher shop, in Portland, OR with their business partner Kei.

Guests: 

HJ Schaible (they/them)

Their website  |  Instagram

Edgar Cisneros (he/him)

Instagram 

Resources: 

To read more about what we talked about in this episode: 

• The price of plenty: how beef changed America
• Whole Animal Butchery: The Growth, the Problems, and the Future
• Chef’s Fable: Blue Hill at Stone Barns’ alluring story — that a fine dining restaurant could be a model for changing the world — seduced diners, would-be employees, and thought leaders alike. But former employees say that narrative often obscured a more complicated reality.
• After sourcing scandal, Belcampo Meat Co. abruptly closes stores, restaurants
• Former sustainable meat darling Belcampo suddenly shuts down all operations: The news follows a summer controversy over mislabeling meats
• The Instagram thread of the employee who called Belcampo out

This episode is supported by BentoBox and Clover. To learn more about their all-in-one platform for websites, online ordering, world-class point-of-sale, and payment solutions, check out getbento.com/better.

As cooks and others from the restaurant industry leave traditional jobs to strike out on their own, what does it mean for the craft of cooking?

Food is an inherently sensual thing. Sure, it needs to look visually appealing, but that doesn't necessarily say that you are good at the craft of cooking. Does it taste good? Does it smell good? As social media becomes increasingly essential to growing a food business, how does that affect the people working in food every day and how they approach their craft?

In this episode, we're talking to 3 different people who work in food and the different ways they use social media – and how social media has affected their identities as food professionals.

Guests: 

Chris Martin (she/her)

Her website  |  Instagram  |  Reddit

Hanalei Souza (she/her)

Her website  |  Instagram  |  Her book

Devan Rajkumar. (he/him)

His website  |  Instagram  |  TikTok  |  YouTube

Resources: 

To read more about what we talked about in this episode: 

• $10,000 for one Instagram post? How food influencers can make or break restaurants
• How to Be Food Famous
• ​​How to tell the difference between a journalist and a food influencer
• Food Instagram: Identity, Influence & Negotiation by Emily J.H. Contois & Zenia Kish

The video clips in this episode come from:

• How Instagram can make or break a restaurant
• Restaurant Owner Slams Influencers Asking For Free Stuff In A Pandemic
• TikTok opening ghost kitchens 
• How Taking Pictures of Food Can Be a Full-Time Job — The Business of Going Viral Part 2/4

This episode is supported by BentoBox and Clover. To learn more about their all-in-one platform for websites, online ordering, world-class point-of-sale, and payment solutions, check out getbento.com/better

What does the popularity of culinary foam say about the types of food – and the kinds of chefs – we value?

When Geraldine DeRuiter wrote about her meal at “the worst Michelin starred restaurant, ever,” she didn’t expect to start a global controversy. The tasting menu she had at Bros, in Lecce, Italy, was a bizarre, avant garde dining experience, the pinnacle being the “Chef’s Kiss” dish, a plaster cast of a mouth with foam dripping out of it. What followed was a whole conversation online about the nature of food as art, the role of a chef, and the pretentiousness of fine dining. 

And as we dug in more, we started to see how the “Chef’s Kiss” was not just a ridiculous dish on a bizarre menu, but how foam was a metaphor for the flaws of fine dining and the toxicity of the “abusive genius” chef. 

You can find Geraldine (she/her):

Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

On her blog

Buy her book

To read more about the international culinary incident:

• Geraldine’s original blog post and her follow up
• The story from Today with Floriano’s “Man on a Horse” response
• Of Mouth Molds and Michelin Stars: Chef Finds Fame After Epic Takedown: Panned by a prominent blogger, the Italian restaurant Bros’ and its celebrity chef became a global target for critics of pretentious cuisine. There was a good side for him.

The Reels put out by Bros: 

• “Limoniamo, Let’s Make Out”
• “Floriano Pellegrino in the Spotlight”
• “Strange Posters Around the City”

More about foam:

• The article from 2002 in which Ferran Adrià declares “foams are out” and announces that they are now making “air”
• Once Declared Passé, Foam Returns to the Restaurant Table: From a dragon-fruit cloud to aerated lobster bisque, chefs are breathing new life into the most clichéd of culinary techniques.
• Ferran Adrià, Master of Foam, Whips Up Dinner: First he created avant-garde cuisine. His next challenge: Getting you to make an affordable three-course meal…every night of the week

This episode is supported by BentoBox and Clover. To learn more about their all-in-one platform for websites, online ordering, world-class point-of-sale, and payment solutions, check out getbento.com/better

It’s been a wild few months for us at Copper & Heat! Back in April we won a James Beard Broadcast Media Award and we’re still reeling. In this episode, Katy talks to Geraldine DeRuiter, another James Beard Media winner, about some of the complicated feelings that come along with winning an award, being in the spotlight, and how we keep creating.   There’s a couple of Geraldine’s blog posts that we talk about in the episode, here they are!  “I Made The Cinnamon Rolls From Mario Batali’s Sexual Misconduct Apology Letter” “I Won A James Beard Award and I Think You Are So Great”   For more info on this year’s James Beard Media Awards: View the full list of winners here View the full Media Awards Ceremony here   Geraldine and I talk about some of the issues with representation and recognition in awards, but there’s so much more to the topic. Here are a couple other articles about what’s happening (or not happening) to improve representation in food media:    Five Major Takeaways From the 2019 James Beard Awards by Hillary Dixler Canavan A Critic for All Seasons by Korsha Wilson For Our Food Culture To Diversify, Our Restaurant Criticism Needs To, Too by Irene Li

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Family Meal, we hear from Ray Delucci, a cook and host of the podcast Line Cook Thoughts. He shares his experiences with making financial decisions in his cook career and thoughts on staging. Plus, Katy was on Line Cook Thoughts this last week and she and Ray have a great conversations. Check out that interview on the Line Cook Thoughts feed.

What kind of strength does it take to make it in a kitchen? Why is it that weakness is gendered as female (“stop being a little girl”)? How does the pressure to be tough affect cooks? How do cooks and chefs deal with that pressure? We talk about stress, anxiety, and depression in this episode. For those struggling, The Chefs With Issues Facebook Community and Website are wonderful and have helped me personally a lot. Remember, you are not alone.

In this Pre-Shift we’re talking about boundaries - why it’s so hard to set them, how to figure out what our boundaries are, and how to have those awkward and sometimes scary conversations.

Guests:

Hassel Aviles and Ariel Coplan - Co-founders of Not 9 to 5 @not9to5_ 

Grace Guber - hospitality professional and host of The Family Meal podcast @theguberosity Rachel Ramsey - owner and operator of Measured HR @rachelrramsey

More resources to help you set healthy boundaries:

• Primary Concerns of the Hospitality and Culinary Industry course from Not 9 to 5
• Not 9 to 5 Resources page
• “10 Ways to Set Healthy Boundaries at Work” from Forbes
• “4 Ways to Set & Keep Personal Boundaries” from Psychology Today
• “Boundaries” from @blkfolxtherapy
• “Navigating Situationships: Getting What You Want and Need in Your Relationships” by Jardin Dogan

Sponsors for this episode: 

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165. 

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to 

chefstreams.com

, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

In the second episode on tipping, Katy digs deeper into a different question: if the money coming into the restaurant industry is a pie, who has access to that pie and who is controlling how that pie is drawn? Turns out, there’s a lot of money being spent every year to keep wages low and to keep the tipped minimum wage at $2.13.

Surprise! The tipping system is incredibly complicated and contentious. So we want to hear how it affects you! FOH, BOH, good or bad, all stories are welcome. Send them on over to hello@copperandheat.com

We are so grateful for our first ever season sponsors: Pared! They find vetted hospitality professionals to fill your shifts. Copper & Heat listeners get 30% off their first gig. Use the code COPPER when booking. 

If you want to go down the same rabbit hole Katy did in researching for this episode, here are a few links: 

• National Restaurant Association Profile - SourceWatch
• Do You Know Where Your Tip Money Is Going? - Eater
• “After Years of Litigation, Tip Regulations Begin to Line up with the FLSA” - Press Release via National Restaurant Association
• National Restaurant Association Opposes H.R. 582, “Raise the Wage Act” - Press Release
• National Restaurant Association Influence and Lobbying Profile - OpenSecrets.org
• National Restaurant Association Organization Profile and 990 tax forms - CauseIQ
• Restaurant Opportunities Center United

Why do servers and food runners in the front of the house make so much more money than the cooks? Why do they get to keep all the tips? 

When Katy was working in fine dining kitchens, the cooks were asking these questions a lot. It just did not seem fair that servers were making as much as 3x more than cooks because of the tips they were bringing in. And it sent her down a long path. Turns out, these are the wrong questions to be asking. 

In the first episode of the two-part series on tipping, Katy talks with the owners at Le Pigeon, a fine-dining French restaurant in Portland, Oregon, about an experiment they did in 2016 where they eliminated tipping altogether. In talking with them and her friend Lee, a former dishwasher at Le Pigeon, and Katy uncovers the racist history of the tipping system, the ways it perpetuates sexual harassment culture in the industry, and the much bigger and more complicated issues behind trying to get rid of tipping.   

We are so grateful for our first ever season sponsors: Pared! They find vetted hospitality professionals to fill your shifts. Copper & Heat listeners get 30% off their first gig. Use the code COPPER when booking. 

An upcoming episode is about staging and we want to hear some of your stories! Send them (and any other thoughts you may have) to hello@copperandheat.com. We can’t wait to hear from you. 

More info:

• Le Pigeon to Eliminate Tipping in June - Eater PDX
• Le Pigeon and Little Bird Bistro Bring Back Tipping - Eater PDX
• The Glass Floor: Sexual Harassment in the Restaurant Industry

 - ROC United Report

Geraldine has started not one, but two international controversies with her blog "The Everywhereist." A three-time guest on Copper & Heat, we first chatted with her 5 years ago about imposter syndrome after winning a James Beard Award for her blog post about Mario Batali's cinnamon rolls, and then again 2 years ago after her blog post about her disastrous meal at Bros in Italy went viral. 

Geraldine's new book, "If You Can't Take the Heat: Tales of Food Feminism, and Fury" explores themes similar to those in her viral blog posts about the systemic challenges of being a woman working in food. In this interview, we talk about the challenges faced by women and non-binary individuals and the importance of speaking out against injustice. Geraldine shares her experiences with her viral blog post about Bros and the subsequent New York Times article, highlighting the biases and dismissive attitudes she encountered. The conversation delves into the pressure to perform a personal brand, as well as the experience of imposter syndrome. 

For more from Geraldine: 

Buy her new book

Her website

Her Instagram  |  Threads

In this episode, we catch up with Edalyn Garcia. Of the 5 women we interviewed in Season 1, she is the only one still working full-time in restaurants and she's worked her way up to Executive Chef. Plus, Katy and Rachel get some updates on the stats of women working their way up the brigade in restaurants in the past 5 years. Last, we talk about why women chefs don't get as much media attention and funding when they are doing more innovative things to change the restaurant industry. 

The innovators that we mention in this episode: 

• Telly Justice from HAGS in New York
• Reem Assil of Reem's California in San Francisco
• Jenny Dorsey from Studio ATAO

What happens when you get sick or injured and you work in a restaurant? You keep working. At least, that’s how it’s always been. With low wages, lack of access to benefits, and usually nonexistent paid leave, the workers living paycheck to paycheck can’t really take care of their health. Giving Kitchen, a nonprofit in Atlanta, Georgia, is attempting to mitigate those challenges in their local Georgia community by providing financial assistance and resources to workers going through a financial crisis from injury, illness, a death in the family, or housing crisis due to flood or fire. 

We have been working on this episode for months, but as we write this, restaurants and their employees are facing a challenge unlike any other in the past due to the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19. We’ve compiled some resources and tips for workers on our website at copperandheat.com/coronavirus. 

• Look into workshare programs in your city or state like this one in Massachusetts.
• Many states are making applying for unemployment easier for those affected by COVID-19. So look it up in your state. 
• Bartenders - there’s an emergency relief fund that you can apply to through the USBG 
• See if your local restaurant association or any other nonprofits have an emergency financial assistance program like this one. 
• Some folks are starting GoFundMe pages for emergency relief like this one in Boston. Give if you can, start one in your area, apply if you need help. 
• Participate in telling city, state, and federal governments to announce a plan to help workers and small businesses.    

And some resources: 

• Resources for Restaurants and Workers Coping with the COVID-19 Emergency - Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation
• Unemployed Due to Coronavirus Pandemic? Here’s Where to Get Help - United Way of King County (for Seattle folks)
• California employees sidelined by coronavirus may get these benefits - San Francisco Chronicle
• How NYC Restaurant Workers Are Getting Help So Far - Eater New York
• Resources for Businesses Impacted by the Coronavirus - Cherry Bombe
• Resources by state - Gig Workers Collective

Industry Support Groups: 

• Chefs With Issues
• Industry United

If you’re not in the industry, do your part in helping them out. 

• Tip generously. Like 30%. Workers are relying on these tips more than ever.
• Order delivery and take out from local restaurants if you’re practicing social distancing. A lot of local places are expanding their take out options. If you order through a delivery app, ask the restaurant which they prefer (some take lower commissions and some are waiving the commission fee altogether)
• If you’re working through your stockpile of food, buy some gift cards from your favorite local restaurants to keep them in business until we’re on the other side of the pandemic. 
• Some folks are starting GoFundMe pages for emergency relief like this one in Boston. Give if you can, start one in your area, apply if you need help.
• Participate in telling city, state, and federal governments to announce a plan to help workers and small businesses.   

In this episode, Katy sits down with Chef David Kinch, the chef-owner of Manresa Restaurant, a 3-star Michelin restaurant in Los Gatos, California. They discuss everything from work-life balance to the media’s role in bringing more equity to fine dining.  

Katy spends some time reflecting on the last year - and shares some of our favorite podcasts for you to listen to. We share a few clips from those shows in this episode and the links to the full episodes (plus some extras) are below. 

Long Distance Radio is a documentary podcast about stories in the Filipino diaspora. Hosted and produced by Paola Mardo and Patrick Epino. 

Featured in this episode: Long Distance S2, E1: Cendrillon

Another recommended episode:

Long Distance S1, E6: Filipino Tiki Bar 

Long Distance TV: Cendrillon Fish Sinigag with Amy Besa & Romy Dorotan

Racist Sandwich - Hosts Stephanie Kuo and Juan Ramirez interview chefs and purveyors of color and tackle food’s relationship to race, gender, and class in their bi-weekly podcast. 

Featured in this episode: Episode 71: Nourishing the Soul (w/ Karla T. Vasquez) 

Another recommended episode: 

Episode 58: Erasing Black Barbecue (w/ Johnny Walker, Adrian Miller, Daniel Vaughn, and Brent & Juan Reaves)

Salt & Spine is the podcast focused exclusively on the art and craft of the cookbook: the compelling stories behind their creation, evolution, and lasting legacy. Created and hosted by Brian Hogan Stewart. 

Featured in this episode: Ivan Orkin + Chris Ying // The Gaijin Cookbook

Other recommended episodes: 

Leticia Landa, Nite Yun & Nafy Flatley // We Are La Cocina

East Bay Cooks LIVE

We are so grateful for our first ever season sponsors: Pared! They find vetted hospitality professionals to fill your shifts. Copper & Heat listeners get 30% off their first gig. Use the code COPPER when booking. 

Send your thoughts, feelings, and stories to hello@copperandheat.com. We can’t wait to hear from you.

What kind of pressures do cooks face to always be at work? How do you find balance while working in kitchens? Why is being a mother seen as the biggest barrier for women working in the industry? What options exist for people who want to have a better work-life balance, but still want to work in interesting restaurants?  

In this season of Copper & Heat we're exploring the concepts of value and craft in the world of food. Why are some cuisines considered more valuable than others (and therefore command a higher price point)? Is food art, craft, or both?  Why is restaurant labor considered "low-skill" and undervalued? 

We're exploring these questions and more in season 4 of Copper & Heat. Follow along wherever you get your podcasts.

When Katy was working in the Bay Area in her early 20s, she would have given the Michelin Guide 3 stars, because those were the restaurants she felt like she had to work to learn about the most innovative and interesting food. How has that changed?

In this last episode of our fourth season, Katy and Rachel dig into the history, the data, and the money behind the Michelin Guide in the U.S. with help from Krishnendu Ray (professor at NYU) and Beth Forrest (professor at the CIA). By the end of the research, Katy and Rachel had very different ratings for the Guide than what their 24-year-old selves would have given it. What about you?

Guests:

Beth Forrest

Her faculty bio and books

Krishnendu Ray

His book  | His faculty bio

Articles mentioned and other resources:

• Florida’s Tourism Board Will Pay Michelin $150,000 to Rate the State’s Restaurants
• Why California Paid Michelin Guide $600,000 to Cover Los Angeles Again
• The Inspection Process
• Michelin Scatters Stars on New York (2005)
• The Fed-Up Chef
• The Untold Truth Of The Michelin Guide
• The High Price of a Michelin Guide: South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand have spent millions to get their own Red guides
• The History of the Michelin Guide
• How Restaurants Get MIchelin Stars: A Brief History of the Michelin Guide
• The Secret Life of an Anonymous Michelin Restaurant Inspector
• Confessions of a Michelin Inspector

In this last episode of our 5 Year Reflection miniseries, we catch up with Kiah Fuller, co-owner of Far Out Catering in the Bay Area. Plus, we ask the question of all three of our interviewees: what's your biggest takeaway from the last 5 years? 

In this Pre-Shift, we’re talking about how we can learn new ways to cope with stress.  

Guests:

Laura Green - counselor and owner of Healthy Pour @healthy.pour

More resources to help with coping with stress:

• Healthy Pour Resources page
• How to Build a Self-Care System by Ashtin Berry
• Building a Self-Care Action Plan by the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center
• Learning Healthy Coping Skills with Laura Green and Studio ATAO
• Therapy 101 with Laura Green and Studio ATAO

Sponsors for this episode: 

West Michigan Pasta and Provisions - Traditional, Artisan, Dried Pastas

Check out WestMichiganPastaandProvisions.com for their awesome selection of extruded pastas and use the code COPPER for 15% off your first order. Let us know what you make!

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165. 

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

Welcome to the first ever Copper & Heat Family Meal, the mini episodes for you, our listeners, to share your stories. Help us as we ramp up for season 2 by taking our listener survey here.  Take out your phone, record a voice memo and send it to hello@copperandheat.com. 

For season 2, we want to hear about your experiences with money. Here’s a couple ideas, but feel free to tell us any wild story you have.  Was there a time you were scared shitless to negotiate a raise?  How about your first experience staging and how you figured out how to pay for it, or figured out you couldn’t? What was the first time you experienced the divide between FOH and BOH? Or maybe you have a time (or several times) where you weren’t paid what you thought you were going to be paid. Can’t wait to hear from you!

Jenny Goodman and Alex McCrery founded Tilit, a chef and restaurant industry workwear brand, in 2012, and they’re killing it. But before they had a successful workwear brand they opened a restaurant in Brooklyn called Goods - and it closed in 6 months. We talk with Jenny and Alex in this episode about what happened to Goods, what they learned through the experience, and how they’ve used that experience to help others learn how to better open and run a restaurant. 

Check out their podcast:  Opening Soon

We are so grateful for our first ever season sponsors: Pared! They find vetted hospitality professionals to fill your shifts. Copper & Heat listeners get 30% off their first gig. Use the code COPPER when booking. 

On upcoming episode is about staging and we want to hear some of your stories! Send them (and another other thoughts you may have) to hello@copperandheat.com. We can’t wait to hear from you.

In this first episode of our second season, we’re going to Boise, Idaho, to talk with the team at Kin Restaurant. In a small city that’s growing and changing rapidly, what does a small, fine-dining, tasting menu restaurant do to not only educate diners on the value of good food, but also educate their employees about the value of themselves as restaurant workers.   More info:  Kin Restaurant: http://instagram.com/kin_boise   This season is sponsored by Pared. Copper & Heat listeners get 30% off their first gig. Visit pared.com/copper to get started and use the code COPPER when booking.

How have chefs and the restaurant industry contributed to the near-extinction of abalone, the prized mollusk often associated with fine dining?

Indigenous tribes up and down the coast of what is today California have been eating abalone for thousands of years. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the influx of non-native folks led to the hunting, fetishization, and overconsumption of abalone. From San Francisco bohemians who were inspired by its beauty to Japanese fishermen making a business out of exporting it back home, the rapid decline of the abalone population led to the government instituting a ban on abalone fishing. 

In this episode, we explore the various forces that led to the near-extinction of abalone and how the government ban has criminalized the millennia-old culinary customs of indigenous people like Hillary Renick, a Pomo-Paiute woman who has risked jail time and fines in order to keep those food traditions alive.

TW/CW - we discuss the trauma associated with the colonization of the United States and topics such as genocide and gun violence. 

Guests: 

Ann Vileisis (she/her)

Her website  |  Buy the book

Hillary Renick (she/her)

About Hilary  |  The High Country News Article  |  TEDxArchivorium with Hillary

Doug Bush. (he/him)

Cultured Abalone Instagram  |  Buy Cultured Abalone 

Resources: 

To read more about what we talked about in this episode: 

• Native Food Profiles/Oral Histories
• Abalone Tales: Collaborative Explorations of Sovereignty and Identity in Native California
• History: Hidden Treaty of Temecula robbed Indigenous people of their lands
• Genocide and the Indians of California, 1769-1873
• The Gold Rush Impact on Native Tribes
• California’s Little-Known Genocide
• Traditional Foods and Indigenous Solidarity by Hillary Renick
• Abalone : It takes two years to grow one small mollusk, but biologists are trying to make all that time pay off with a crop that will be a big hit with gourmets
• California Is Destroying Its Cultural Heritage as Abalone Verges on Extinction
• Troubled Waters for Abalone Farms Proposal
• In California’s abalone country, the hunt continues to evolve
• How Chinese Immigrants Built—and Lost—a Shellfish Industry
• The Abalone King of Monterey: "pop" Ernest Doelter, Pioneering Japanese Fishermen & the Culinary Classic That Saved an Industry
• Abalone, That Delicious Rarity, Being Farmed in Bay Area
• Abalone's luster grows / Eco-friendly aquaculture lures endangered mollusk back onto Bay Area menus
• Abalone grows as a cash crop

The video clips in this episode come from: 

• San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition 1915
• 100 Story Project - Roy Hattori: The Japanese Internment
• 100 Story Project - Roy Hattori: Diving for Abalone
• How Chef Daniel Boulud Makes His Signature Abalone Dish at Two-Michelin-Starred Daniel 
• How a Master Chef Built One of the Country's Best Restaurants In Elk, California
• How a Master Chef Runs the Only Two Michelin-Starred Mexican Restaurant in America
• @highspeeddining at Minibar by José Andrés
• Astounding Eats Get Better at Aubergine Restaurant

This episode is supported by BentoBox and Clover. To learn more about their all-in-one platform for websites, online ordering, world-class point-of-sale, and payment solutions, check out getbento.com/better

Why are restaurant kitchens organized the way they are? What is a kitchen brigade? What does a typical day of a cook look like? How does someone move up the ranks? And what do women do to work their way up the ranks in a kitchen?   

Some of the stats: 

Women make up a little over 50% of students graduating culinary schools 

Women make-up over 50% of total foodservice employees 

Somewhere between 30%-50% of back-of-house employees identify as women 

27% of line cooks are ladies 

19% of chefs are ladies 

7% of head or executive chefs are ladies.

In this Pre-Shift, learn about valuing the work you do and negotiating a pay raise or promotion.  

Guests:

Rachel Ramsey - owner and operator of Measured HR @rachelrramsey 
Adan Callsen - owner of Under the Table Boise from @under_the_table_boise

More resources to help with negotiating: 

• “15 Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer” by the Harvard Business Review
• Minority Negotiations: Breaking Glass Ceilings TED Talk by Loren Bass
• Know your worth, and then ask for it - TED Talk by Casey Brown
• How To Ask For A Raise, According to a CEO by NowThis
• How to Negotiate a Restaurant Management Position by the Chron

Sponsors for this episode: 

West Michigan Pasta and Provisions - Traditional, Artisan, Dried Pastas

Check out WestMichiganPastaandProvisions.com for their awesome selection of extruded pastas and use the code COPPER for 15% off your first order. Let us know what you make!

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165. 

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

What happens when tech startups backed by venture capital create food delivery apps, and a whole new system, that is relied on by restaurant folks across the U.S.? We chat with the folks at Homeroom To Go - the takeout-only location of the popular Oakland, CA mac and cheese restaurant - about how these apps have affected their business. David Yaffe-Bellany, business reporter from the New York Times, joins us again to talk about some of the larger national trends. 

More info:

The Rise of the Virtual Restaurant by MIke Isaac and David Yaffe-Bellany

The Cloud Kitchen Concept: An Addition to the Restaurant Delivery Marketplace by Allie Tetreault

Custard’s Last Stand: Mission Pie vs. the gig economy by Joe Eskenazi 

This season is sponsored by Pared. Copper & Heat listeners get 30% off their first gig. Use the code COPPER when booking. 

Send your thoughts, feelings, and stories to hello@copperandheat.com!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this guest episode from Loading Dock Talks with Chef Preeti Mistry, Preeti talks with Chefs Norma Listman and Saqib Keval, the duo behind Masala y Maíz and Marigold in Mexico City. The chefs share their unique culinary backgrounds and the melding of their heritages — Mexican, South Asian, and East African — into their cuisine. They discuss the process behind their lamb barbacoa recipe, a melding of Norma's Mexican family tradition with Saqib's South Asian flavors and spices. The discussion also explores the significance of maintaining cultural integrity while innovating with traditional recipes, avoiding the pitfalls of fusion for the sake of novelty. They also discuss the broader responsibilities of chefs in society, touching on labor rights in the restaurant industry, creating a supportive work culture, and the importance of political engagement through food. 

Listen to more Loading Dock Talks here or wherever you get your podcasts.

More about the Copper & Heat Radio brand refresh: 

Many of you know us as Copper & Heat (the newly dubbed Copper & Heat Radio) which explores the forces that shape our meals through narrative, sound-rich podcasts.

Copper & Heat Creative is an expansion of our award-winning storytelling. As a production studio, we focus on helping brands engage food-curious audiences with unique and thoughtful content. Over the past few years, we have done work we are really proud of with some amazing brands on projects ranging from podcast production to social media strategy and in-person event activation.

At the heart of all of our work is our belief that food is a conversation. We tell stories that, like the best meals, challenge preconceived notions and delve into the forces that shape them.

You can learn more about all of our work on our newly refreshed website: Copperandheat.com

Welcome to the Copper & Heat audio tasting menu. This 6-course experience takes you through dishes from pivotal points in the history of the modern tasting menu. 

Vote for us in the first inaugural Signal Awards! We were nominated for a Signal Award in the Food & drink category, and we need your help! Vote for us for the Listener’s Choice Award at the link above. 

Guests:

Beth Forrest

Her faculty bio and books

Sam Yamashita

His piece on the Japanese Turn  |  His books  | His faculty bio

Krishnendu Ray

His book  | His faculty bio

The courses:

1. The restaurant by Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau
2. Hassun from Hyotei in Kyoto
3. Rouge en ècaille de pomme de terre by Paul Bocuse
4. Sukiyaki
5. Toro and caviar by Masa Takayama
6. Nixtamalized butternut squash en tacha from Lenga Madre in New Orleans

The articles mentioned in this episode: 

• 'Tasting’' Menu: A Good Idea Sours by Mimi Sheraton in the New York Times
• Nibbled to Death: Tasting Menus Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing by Pete Wells in the New York Times
• The New Generation of Tasting Menus Won’t Test Your Patience (or Your Wallet) by Brett Anderson in the New York Times

More resources:

• The Japanese Origins of Modern Fine Dining by Meghan McCarron (2017)
• The Never-Ending Pivot: Amid the Omicron Surge, Restaurants Have Turned to Tasting Menus by Jeremy Repanich (2022)
• The death of the tasting menu by George Reynolds (2022)
• The Backlash Against the 'Tyranny' of Tasting Menus by Amy McKeever (2013)
• The Not-So-New Nouvelle Cuisine by Mimi Sheraton (1979)
• Celebrating the Ringmaster of the Restaurant Circus by Florence Fabricant (2014)
• How America’s First 3 Star Michelin Sushi Chef Serves His Fish on Eater’s YouTube (2015)

For this first Pre-Shift, we’re talking about why it’s so hard for us in hospitality to give and receive feedback effectively and how we can do the work to be better. 

Guests: 

Laura Green - licensed counselor and hospitality industry professional at Healthy Pour @healthy.pour

Zach Ferguson - hospitality industry professional and podcast host at Restaurant Tales Podcast @restauranttalespodcast

More resources to help with feedback:

Fixed vs Growth Mindset Infographic

Dr. Carol Dweck “The Power of Believing You Can Improve” TED Talk

Building a Feedback Culture

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Sponsors for this episode: 

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165. 

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to 

chefstreams.com

, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

In this Family Meal we hear from Luis Aldana, kitchen manager at Homeroom in Oakland, California. Luis talks about being proud of his team on a day when they were short-staffed and very busy. 

Share your thoughts and stories at copperandheat.com/share-your-story

Can't wait to hear from you!

In this episode, Katy talks with chefs Reem Assil of Reem’s California in San Francisco, and Carlo LaMagna of Magna Kusina in Portland, OR, and Magna Kubo in Beaverton. 

Reem is a Palestinian-Syrian chef and activist who was a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation Best Chef West award in 2018 and ‘19 and a finalist for the Outstanding Chef award in 2022. She won a 2023 IACP award for her cookbook, Arabiyya: Recipes from an Arab in Diaspora. 

Carlo’s restaurants highlight modern Filipino cuisine, and he was named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs in 2021. He was nominated for a 2022 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Northwest & Pacific.

In this episode, Katy, Reem & Carlo talk about redefining success and failure, cultural and family pressures when cooking their food, and how they take care of themselves.

We recorded this episode in collaboration with the Southern Smoke Foundation and Visit Houston. Southern Smoke exists to take care of our own. As a nonprofit founded and powered by current and past F&B workers, they’ve felt the heat of the industry firsthand. Their efforts are dedicated to creating a meaningful safety net of support that doesn’t exist for most people in our world. 

To learn more about their emergency relief and mental health programs, visit their website. 

Reem Assil

Instagram  |  Reem’s California  |  Her book, Arabiyya  | Hospitality for Humanity

Carlo Lamagna

Instagram  |  Magna Kusina  |  Magna Kubo

Southern Smoke

Instagram  |  Get Help  |  Donate

Visit Houston

Instagram  |   Website

In this Pre-Shift, we’re talking about how, despite all of the challenges to dealing with conflict, we can reframe the idea of conflict and how we approach those tense conversations with coworkers. 

Guests: 

Laura Green - licensed counselor and hospitality industry professional at Healthy Pour @healthy.pour

Rachel Ramsey - owner of Measured HR @rachelrramsey

More resources to help with conflict resolution:

“How to Have a Disagreement Like an Adult” in the NYT

Make All Your Arguments Win-Wint by NPR’s Life Kit

“What Productive Conflict Can Offer a Workplace” Jess Kutch TED Talk

Amy Gallo “The Gift of Conflict” TED Talk

Sponsors for this episode: 

West Michigan Pasta and Provisions - Traditional, Artisan, Dried Pastas

Check out WestMichiganPastaandProvisions.com for their awesome selection of extruded pastas and use the code COPPER for 15% off your first order. Let us know what you make!

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165. 

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

Telly Justice and Mike Sheats worked together at Five & Ten in Athens Ga., where Justice worked her way up to chef de cuisine and Sheats was an AM chef. Once they started their own projects, the chefs knew that the strict brigade system, codified by Georges-Auguste Escoffier more than a hundred years ago, wouldn’t be the right fit for their businesses. “In the kitchens that Mike and I came up in, there was not much room for challenging anything,” said Justice. For both Justice and Sheats, the rigidity of the structure left no room for mistakes and little room for being themselves. 

Telly is now chef/co-owner of HAGS, a small tasting menu restaurant in New York City “by Queer people for all people,” and Mike, with his wife Shyretha, runs The Plate Sale, a pop-up inspired by community events like plate sales, barbecues, and fish fries in his hometown of Athens. 

This conversation was recorded as a chef-to-chef conversation for the Plate Magazine print edition. You can read an edited version of this conversation (and see some awesome pictures!) in their magazine here. But a less edited version of the conversation is here for your listening pleasure. 

Guests: 

Telly Justice

HAGS  | HAGS Instagram

Press: 

• When ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’am’ Miss the Mark: Restaurants Rethink Gender’s Role in Service
• HAGS Will Be Queer First, and a Restaurant Second
• A First Look at HAGS, New York’s Revolutionary New Queer Fine Dining

Mike Sheats

The Plate Sale  |  The Crowdfunding Campaign  |  Instagram  |  Email 

Press: 

• Honoring the History of the Plate Sale
• An inside look at The Plate Sale
• Meet Shyretha and Michael Sheats: Founders of The Plate Sale

Resources:

• Understanding Anti-Intellectualism in the U.S. by Studio ATAO
• Anti-Intellectualism int he Restaurant Industry: Why an equitable future requires overhauling the brigade system
• An Investigation in Culinary Life and Professional Identity in Practice during Internship 
• Escoffier Kitchen Brigade System Then and Now
• “OUI, CHEF!” A Sociohistorical Analysis of Organizational Culture in the American Fine Dining Kitchen Brigade and its Effects on Health from 1903 to 2019
• Why is anti-intellectualism so popular in kitchens?

In this episode, Katy talks with chefs Ana Castro of Lengua Madre in New Orleans, and “G” Benchawan Painter from Street to Kitchen and Th_Prsrv in Houston. Ana was one of the 2022 Food & Wine Best New Chefs and Lengua Madre was a Bon Appetit 50 Best New Restaurant. G won the 2023 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Texas.

In this episode, Katy, Ana, and G talk about dealing with bad customers and reviews, discussing mental health with family, and the different ways they support their team.

We recorded this episode in collaboration with the Southern Smoke Foundation and Visit Houston. Southern Smoke exists to take care of our own. As a nonprofit founded and powered by current and past F&B workers, they’ve felt the heat of the industry firsthand. Their efforts are dedicated to creating a meaningful safety net of support that doesn’t exist for most people in our world. 

To learn more about their emergency relief and mental health programs, visit their website. 

Ana Castro

Instagram  |  Lengua Madre  |  About her new project

G Benchawan Painter

Instagram  |  Street to Kitchen  |  Th_Prsrv

Southern Smoke

Instagram  |  Get Help  |  Donate

Visit Houston

Instagram  |  Website

In this episode, we’re headed to Los Angeles to talk with Chef Teresa Montano about her experience opening two restaurants and trying to find staff in a time when there aren't enough cooks and there's a crackdown at the border - two overwhelming issues that overlap and make life hard for chefs and restaurant owners. David Yaffey-Bellany, reporter for the New York Times business desk, joins us to break down the complicated context on a national level. 

More info: 

“Hiring Is Very Hard for Restaurants These Days. Now They May Have to Fire.” by David Yaffey-Bellany

National Immigration Law Center

“What To Do If Immigration Comes to Your Workplace”

“What to Do If ICE Raids Your Workplace” by Leila Ettachfini on VICE

“Restaurant Owners Grapple With Hiring Undocumented Immigrants” - Morning Edition   

This season is sponsored by Pared. Copper & Heat listeners get 30% off their first gig. Use the code COPPER when booking. 

Send your thoughts, feelings, and stories to hello@copperandheat.com!

Named for the pre-service meetings where staff gets all the updates, specials, and other details, Pre-Shift is about getting you tips, tools, and resources of working in hospitality. 

We're focusing on the issues that hospitality workers face every day - from coping with stress to setting boundaries, from intersectionality to community organizing. We've talked to experts to get advice to help you navigate your work environment.

Though it's from the point of view of a restaurant person, the advice is helpful for anyone! 

Less than $2. That’s how much the Santa Ana Unified school district can afford to spend on one student’s lunch each day. The $14 billion budget of the National School Lunch program stretches thin, and school nutrition workers are often the target of kids’ complaints. Reporter Jessica Terrell explores the cultural figure of “the lunch lady,” and how students and workers lose when bureaucrats focus on cost over care.

This episode includes an annotated transcript with links to sources used in the reporting. This podcast was created by editors at The Counter and produced by LWC Studios. It is made possible by grants from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  

Today's episode is from our friends over at The Sporkful. 

Zahra Tabatabai’s parents grew up in an Iran that would be unrecognizable today. “The pictures I see of my family in Iran in the sixties and seventies, they're in bikinis at the beach, drinking beer,” she says. Now, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women are legally required to wear hijabs and alcohol is banned. A few years ago, Zahra became interested in the long history of beer brewing in Iran — a tradition that included her own grandfather. She began brewing her own beer, experimenting with traditional Iranian ingredients like sumac, black lime, and barberries. Now she’s using her company, Back Home Beer, to change the narrative about Iranian people and culture. And one day, she hopes to bring her beer to Iran without fear. Nowruz Mobarak!

The Sporkful production team includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Nora Ritchie, Tracey Samuelson, and Jared O'Connell.

Copper & Heat explores the unspoken rules and traditions of the kitchen. Our first season, Be A Girl, follows host Katy Osuna's experience as a woman working in kitchens of fine dining, Michelin-star, restaurants.  

In this re-release of the first episode of our second season, we’re going to Boise, Idaho to talk with the team at Kin Restaurant. In a small city that’s growing and changing rapidly, what does a small, fine-dining, tasting menu restaurant do to not only educate diners on the value of good food but also educate their employees about the value of themselves as restaurant workers?

You can find KIN: 

On their website

On Instagram

This episode is supported by BentoBox and Clover. To learn more about their all-in-one platform for websites, online ordering, world-class point-of-sale, and payment solutions, check out 

getbento.com/better

.

Mei Mei in Boston has been an open book restaurant since 2017. They train their entire staff on the finances so that everyone can have a voice in making the restaurant run more efficiently. But on March 9th, Chef Irene Li, owner of Mei Mei decided she wanted to take the education a step further and open their books to the public. What do the finances of a small independent restaurant really look like? Turns out, it’s even rougher than everybody would like to admit.

We have a guest episode this week from our friends at Opening Soon. 

In this season of Opening Soon, we’re undertaking a project we’ve been wanting to do for years. In The Build, we’re going to follow one chef’s journey to open a brand new restaurant as it’s happening. From the moment that they signed the lease until the doors are actually open, you’ll get to witness the emotional highs and the lows, how things go well, how things get delayed; all in real time.  

In this episode, we meet the subject of our series, hear a bit about their food journey so far, and get a sneak peek at what’s coming this season.

Is culinary school worth the investment in terms of money and time? 

This is a question posed by hundreds of thousands of people as they enter the culinary field. Is it worth spending the money to go to culinary school when I can just work my way up in the industry? 

Culinary schools have long been more of a trade school to train potential cooks in the culinary field. However, in the ‘90s, the Culinary Institute of America put in a concerted effort to professionalize the career of chef, and therefore give more value to their school, by educating their students on more than just technical skills. 

But as the systemic and cultural pitfalls of the restaurant industry have become more apparent in recent years, people are leaving the industry in droves, and even fewer are looking to enter. So as more culinary schools close their doors, how do educational institutions answer the question - is culinary school worth it?

Guests: 

Krishnendu Ray

His book  | His faculty bio

Beth Forrest

Her faculty bio

Hanalei Souza

Her website  |  Instagram  |  Her book

Annika Altura

Instagram 

Kiah Fuller

Her website  |  Instagram 

Resources: 

To read more about what we talked about in this episode: 

• Pros & Cons & Thoughts: Is Going to Culinary School Worth It?
• A Fast, Frugal Track to a Cook’s Career? Community College
• Culinary school enrollment drops even as need soars at restaurants
• Does Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Extend to Culinary School Students?
• Three Charts That Show Why Culinary School Is Not Worth It
• Is Culinary School Still Worth It? Four Chefs Weigh In
• Culinary School: The Pros and Cons of Culinary Education

What makes a Chef? What’s the difference between a home cook and a professional one? Why is cooking at home seen as work for women and cooking professionally seen as work for men? How do food media and awards reinforce these stereotypes?   

A segment of the episode focuses on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. To learn more about the list and the controversial Best Female Chef award, check out these links: 

The World’s 50 Best official website (https://www.theworlds50best.com/) 

World’s Best Female Chef award official website (https://www.theworlds50best.com/awards/best-female-chef) 

Crenn Says Best Female Chef Award Is 'Stupid,' And This Former Judge Agrees With Her (https://www.forbes.com/sites/clarkwolf/2018/05/07/crenn-says-best-female-chef-award-is-stupid-and-i-agree/#77bd365d2db9) 

Why we believe The World’s Best Female Chef Award is affirmative feminism in action (https://www.theworlds50best.com/blog/News/why-we-believe-worlds-best-female-chef-award-is-affirmative-feminism-in-action.html)  

How does traditional masculinity affect the culture of a restaurant kitchen? As a woman, how do you gain respect? Why are women cooks so rare? How do traditional gender roles play out? Why is the burden on women to change to fit into the culture, rather than the other way around?   

We talk a lot about my experience as a woman in kitchens, but there’s a lot more to the gender conversation. 

Here are a few articles about gender and sexuality from different perspectives: 

“I Hid Who I was for So Long Until I Became a Cook” by Andy Baraghani 

“What It’s Like to be Queer, Trans, Black and a Line Cook” by Charlie Anderle 

“Queer Food Is Hiding in Plain Sight” by Angie Wang

In this Pre-Shift, we’re talking about how we can support each other through mental health challenges. 

Guests: 

Hassel Aviles & Ariel Coplan - co-founders of Not 9 to 5 @not9to5_

More resources to help support your friends and coworkers:

• QPR Institute Suicide Prevention Training
• Mental Health First Aid Course
• Primary Concerns of the Hospitality and Culinary Industry course from Not 9 to 5
• Not 9 to 5 Resources page
• We Could All Use This Therapist's Advice Right Now by Priya Krishna with Melody Li of Inclusive Therapists
• Inclusive Therapists resources, books, and articles page

Sponsors for this episode:

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165. 

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

In this first episode, Katy talks with chef and co-owner Emmanuel Chavez of Tatemó in Houston. Emmanuel was recognized as one of the 2023 Food & Wine Best New Chefs, and Tatemó was named a finalist for the 2023 James Beard Foundation Award for Best New Restaurant. In this episode, Katy and Emmanuel talk about his journey to quitting drinking, the responsibilities of leading and taking care of your team, and the ways he stays grounded as Tatemó gains more media attention. 

We recorded this episode in collaboration with the Southern Smoke Foundation and Visit Houston. Southern Smoke exists to take care of our own. As a nonprofit founded and powered by current and past F&B workers, they’ve felt the heat of the industry firsthand. Their efforts are dedicated to creating a meaningful safety net of support that doesn’t exist for most people in our world. 

To learn more about their emergency relief and mental health programs, visit their website. 

Emmanuel Chavez

Instagram  |  Website

Southern Smoke

Instagram  |  Get Help  |  Donate

Visit Houston

Instagram |  Website

We’re taking a brief break from our second season to introduce you to the other project that the Copper & Heat team has been working on. It’s called The Makers - a four part mini-series brought to you by ChefsFeed in paid partnership with Maker’s Mark bourbon. In each episode of The Makers, we talk with chefs about their one-of-a-kind approaches to their craft.  In this episode, Chefs Gabe Erales, Rico Torres, and Diego Galicia discuss how they are challenging their diners’ expectations of Mexican food at their restaurants in Texas. Check out more at chefsfeed.com/makers.  We’ll be back in a couple weeks with the next episode in Season 2: Overhead!

Fernay McPherson is the chef and owner of Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement in Emeryville, California. In this episode, she shows me around the Fillmore District of San Francisco - her home and the place her family has lived for three generations. She’s been trying for years, with the help of the business incubator La Cocina, to open a restaurant in the neighborhood that was once a cultural hub for African Americans, but she's run up against so many barriers. 

Fernay is a graduate of La Cocina, a nonprofit in San Francisco whose mission is to cultivate low-income food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses. Learn more about their program here. 

There are over 30 brick-and-mortar restaurants and cafes in the Bay Area that are graduates of the La Cocina program. If you ever need a place to eat, check out their business map to support excellent business owned by women and people of color!

The LEE Initiative is still accepting applications for their awards until February 1st! More information and application is here. 

We are so grateful for our first ever season sponsors: Pared! They find vetted hospitality professionals to fill your shifts. Copper & Heat listeners get 30% off their first gig. Use the code COPPER when booking. 

An upcoming episode is about staging and we want to hear some of your stories! Send them (and another other thoughts you may have) to hello@copperandheat.com. We can’t wait to hear from you. 

Some Other Resources: 

• Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement video
• How Urban Renewal Destroyed The Fillmore In Order to Save It
• The Fillmore from PBS
• Sad chapter in Western Addition history ending
• Gorgeous photos from the ‘Harlem of the West’ show the glory days of the San Francisco jazz scene
• San Francisco continues destruction of its black community

This episode is an excerpt from The View From The Kitchen panel event hosted by the New York Times and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in the summer of 2018. Kim Severson, a New York Times correspondent that was on the team that broke the #MeToo stories in the food industry, has a conversation with Chef Reem Assil, Chef Dominique Crenn and Chef Tanya Holland about issues facing the food industry. 

Chef Reem Assil https://www.eater.com/2018/4/27/17263640/reem-assil-dyafa-daniel-patterson-oakland-opening https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/mbkqvv/the-tenacity-of-chef-reem-assil 

Chef Tanya Holland https://www.tanyaholland.com/ https://sf.eater.com/2018/1/26/16938936/tanya-holland-bro-culture-top-chef-season-15 

Chef Dominique Crenn https://sf.eater.com/2018/11/29/18118124/atelier-crenn-three-stars-dominique-crenn-san-francisco https://www.eater.com/ad/16090818/dominique-crenn-investment-living-wage 

In this episode, we catch up with Courtney Moisant, former pastry chef of Manresa Restaurant, pastry consultant, and founder of soon-to-open Gelato Coco. When Manresa Restaurant closed for good at the end of 2022, she decided to leave fine dining for good to start her own thing, a trend that Katy & Rachel explore more in the later part of this episode. 

In the last year, Boise was featured in two vastly different pieces of food news. First Chef Kris Komori of KIN brought home the first Boise James Beard Award. This same year, In N Out opened its first of four locations in the Boise area. 

In this episode, Katy discusses the rapidly changing restaurant industry in Boise, Idaho, recorded live at the Treefort Music Fest in March 2024. Katy and a panel of expert guests explore how the city's food identity has evolved with an influx of new residents and rising tensions over real estate and cultural shifts. The panel included local restaurateurs and industry advocates, who share their insights on the current state of Boise’s food scene, the workforce challenges, and the potential implications of Boise’s rapid growth. The episode also addresses the difficult questions raised by a local restaurateur about fostering true community and supporting independent restaurants amidst increasing competition from larger hospitality groups and real estate investors.

Guests:

Remi McManus from KIN Restaurant

Katie Baker from FARE Idaho

Dr. Amanda Ashley from Boise State University

Reno Rodriguez from the Hotel Renegade/Geronimo Hospitality Group

Audience question from Cal Elliot of Little Pearl and The Avery

The business of running a restaurant is incredibly complicated. There are systems in place that owners, chefs, and cooks have to learn to navigate, often while operating on razor-thin profit margins.  From questioning long-standing traditions like the tipping system, to adapting to new trends like the explosion of food delivery apps, each episode of Overhead tells the story of a restaurant approaching their business in a way that is different than the norm.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The United States is the top producer of corn in the world, yet only 40% of that corn is destined for someone’s plate. The industrialization of corn in the Americas is a story of colonization, appropriation, and capitalism. But there are also stories of people finding ways to celebrate biodiversity, culture, and history through great corn products. 

In this episode, we talk with Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate and Wendy Downing, 2 of 3 co-owners of Three Sisters Nixtamal, an organic and traditional masa maker. We also talk with Angel Medina, co-owner of Repùblica and Co, a Mexican-forward restaurant group. 

Guests: 

Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate & Wendy Downing

Three Sisters  |  Instagram

Angel Medina

Repùblica & Co  |  Instagram  

Resources: 

To read more about what we talked about in this episode: 

• Keepers of the Corn: Despite economic pressures, Oaxaca remains a stronghold of Mexico’s wondrous criollo, or native, corn varieties
• How Mexico’s iconic flatbread went industrial and lost its flavor
• The Tortilla Cartel
• United in Tradition as Peoples of the Corn
• The history of the world according to corn - TEDTalk by Chris A. Kniesly
• Corn: Origin, History, Technology, and Production
• How Indigenous Seed Savers Safeguard Agricultural and Spiritual Tradition

In this episode of Copper & Heat Family Meal we hear from Meagan Stout, Chef de Cuisine at Madeready Libations & Liberations in Nashville. In this Family Meal, she talks about her experiences as a black woman navigating wage negotiation and confronting HR about making less than an inferior. Thank you so much for sharing your stories Meagan!  It’s your turn to share your stories about money and finances! Take out your phone, record a voice memo, and send it over to hello@copperandheat.com.  And please don’t forget to take our listener survey here!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this live podcast recorded at the Cookbook Fest in Napa, California, Copper & Heat Radio host Katy chats with Bricia Lopez and Brandon Skier. 

The two authors share their backgrounds, discuss their newly published cookbooks, and reflect on their personal journeys in the food industry. They delve into the nuances of restaurant versus home cooking, the significance of the chef title, and the challenges of translating professional culinary techniques for home cooks on paper.

Guests:

Bricia Lopez

Instagram   |   Website  | Her books, Asada  & Oaxaca

Brandon Skier

Instagram   |   TikTok  |  His book, Make It Fancy

The systems that the restaurant industry is built on don’t work - they’re built on power imbalances and devaluing the labor of hospitality workers. More folks than ever are questioning these systems and looking to make change in the industry. As we’re trying to make changes to labor and wage issues in restaurants - who are we looking to as leaders? Are we looking to the chefs that are just now getting to the conversation - or are we looking to the chefs that have been doing the work and putting their necks on the line for years? 

In this episode, Katy is joined by Dahlia Snaiderman in talking with four people that have been leading the way in labor and wage issues in the restaurant industry. Katy talked to Reem Assil and Preeti Mistry, two chefs from the San Francisco Bay Area. Dahlia talked with Yamila Ruiz and Jeanie Chunn from One Fair Wage and RAISE High Road Employers. 

For more information: 

About Reem’s California

About Preeti’s new restaurant concept

To join RAISE High Road Employers email: heythere@highroadrestaurants.org

About One Fair Wage and ROC United

This is the last episode in the Be A Girl season. Over the last 7 episodes, we’ve talked about a lot of the challenges facing women working in restaurant kitchens - from the hierarchical structure of the kitchen, to the stereotypical view of women’s cooking. Though there aren’t any clear-cut solutions we ask: What has changed? How are those changes affecting people in the industry? Where do we go from here? 

We're sharing a special preview of the new podcast, What’s Your Problem? from Pushkin Industries. 

What’s Your Problem? explains the problems really smart people are trying to solve right now, from creating a drone delivery service to building a car that can truly drive itself. Jacob Goldstein, former host of Planet Money, talks with innovators about the future they’re trying to build – and the problems they have to solve to get there. In this preview, Jacob talks with Katherine Sizov, founder of Strella Biotechnology. Her problem: Tons of food is wasted before it ever gets to the consumer. Katherine started working on this problem in 2018, when she was a junior in college. Her idea: imitate the natural world and build a device that detects when fruit is ripening. It worked. Now some of the biggest apple and pear packers in America use her device. You can hear more from What’s Your Problem? At podcasts.pushkin.fm/wypheat.

The Copper & Heat Creative team has been busy this holiday season producing a new ASMR podcast for Tastemade and Mastercard. Each episode, a chef takes you through their favorite holiday recipes with lots of stories and sounds.

So whatever you’re doing this holiday season, put on some headphones, sit back, get cozy, and listen to the soothing sounds of the kitchen. We've posted one of the episodes here in our feed, but be sure to check out the rest of Sounds Like the Holidays (plus the awesome recipes!) wherever you get your podcasts or at Priceless.com.

Featuring the fabulous:

Holiday Leftovers Grilled Cheese w/ Chef Jumoke Jackson

Gujarati Samosas w/ Chef Preeti Mistry

Broccoli Casserole & Cornbread w/ Chef Samantha Fore

Sasto Family Lasagna w/ Chef Joe Sasto

In this Pre-Shift we’re talking about DEIA - diversity, equity, inclusion, and access - what it is, and how one restaurant has worked to implement better practices.

Guests:

• Terri Evans - owner and operator of Windy City Ribs & Whiskey @windycityribsandwhiskey
• Dr. Erinn Tucker - Director of the Global Hospitality Leadership master’s program At Georgetown University and Co-Founder of DMV Black Restaurant Week @etucker0818 @dmvbrw

More Resources:

• “The Great Service Divide” by Restaurant Opportunities Center United
• RAISE Resources page
• Tipping w/ Ashtin Berry on the Anthropological Podcast

Sponsors for this episode:

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165.

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We're so excited to be a part of the brand new One Star Podcast Network. This week, we're bringing the amazing Sidework Podcast to our feed. Take a listen to hear an interview with activist and baker Cass Vogel about her struggle to organize and unionize her coworkers @donutfriendunited. ⁠

We'll be back with Pre-Shift episodes in a couple weeks. In the meantime, check out the other awesome shows in the One Star Podcast Network!

• In Yo Mouth
• The Modern Waiter
• Confessions of a Server
• Macaroni Zone

In this episode of Pre-Shit, we're demystifying different kinds of organizing and collective action and talking about why unionizing is so hard in the restaurant industry with Jesse Kadjo and Tsehaitu Abye.

Guests:

• Jesse Kadjo - Labor Organizer for City of Oakland Union & host of Leap Year Podcast @jessekadjo
• Tsehaitu Abye - Community Organizer for One Fair Wage @tsehaitu_ @1fairwage_official

More resources:

• Is this Las Vegas hospitality workers union the future of American labor? On PBS News Hour
• “Restaurant Workers Are Building Solidarity Amid the Pandemic” by Alice Herman
• Why don’t restaurant workers unionize? by Sam Bloch
• The Restaurant Industry Needs to Change for Workers. Collectively, They Can Make That Happen. by Cameron Crowell
• The Culinary Union UNITE HERE local affiliate in Las Vegas

Join us for the Aftershow on 2cents!

We’re partnering with a brand new app that will allow us to have conversations directly with you.

Join us on 2cents: www.2cents.audio/copperheat

The app is currently in the middle of beta testing and you, as Copper & Heat listeners, are some of the very first people to hear about it. Register to get access to the app and leave an audio comment in our Aftershow. As a thank you from 2Cents, the first 50 people that sign up and leave an audio comment in this week’s Aftershow by Friday, April 9th will get a $20 VISA gift card.

Sponsors for this episode:

West Michigan Pasta and Provisions - Traditional, Artisan, Dried Pastas

Check out WestMichiganPastaandProvisions.com for their awesome selection of extruded pastas and use the code COPPER for 15% off your first order. Let us know what you make!

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165.

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

In this Pre-Shift, we chat with Jenny Dorsey about how she has developed her voice and how she practices kindness with herself.

Where to find Jenny:

Her website

Instagram

Twitter

Studio ATAO

Check out One Star Podcast Network the first podcast network dedicated to representing voices and stories from the service industry with shows created by service industry workers.

Sponsors for this episode:

West Michigan Pasta and Provisions - Traditional, Artisan, Dried Pastas

Check out WestMichiganPastaandProvisions.com for their awesome selection of extruded pastas and use the code COPPER for 15% off your first order. Let us know what you make!

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165.

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

We're still working on season 4, but in the meantime we're sharing some shows that we love!

Today's guest episode is from the So You Want to Run a Restaurant podcast powered by Back of House. Back of House connects restaurant operators with the technologies and ideas they need to move their businesses forward.

This episode, "Fighting Burnout and Building a Retail Brand" is a conversation with Cynthia Wong of Life Raft Treats, a decorated pastry chef who left the fine dining industry to start an innovative ice cream novelty food truck that has blossomed into a thriving digital business.

If you like what you hear, check out So You Want to Run A Restaurant podcast and subscribe!

In this Pre-Shift, we talk with Jazmin Villalta and Enrique Soriano from Cocina del Corazon about how grassroots growth has allowed them to thrive while sticking to their values.

Where to find them:

Their website

Instagram

Facebook

Check out One Star Podcast Network the first podcast network dedicated to representing voices and stories from the service industry with shows created by service industry workers.

Sponsors for this episode:

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165.

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

In this Pre-Shift we hear about the successful unionization efforts of the Tartine Union in San Francisco from one of the people that was there from the beginning, Matthew Torres. Plus, we hear a little more about the general steps to unionizing from Tsehaitu Abye, a community organizer from One Fair Wage.

Guests:

• Matthew Torres - Tartine Union @TartineUnion @tartineunion
• Tsehaitu Abye - Organizer for One Fair Wage @tsehaitu_ @1fairwage_official

More Resources:

• Tartine Letter of Intent to Unionize
• Statement Against Unionization from Tartine Ownershipsqu
• Tartine Owners Hire Controversial Crisis Flack to Fight Workers’ Unionization Efforts by Eve Batey
• Tartine workers move to unionize by Joe Eskenazi
• Democratic Socialists of America Restaurant Organizing Project
• Inside the Movement to Unionize Tartine Bakery by Ray Levy Uyeda

Join us for the Aftershow on 2cents!

We’re partnering with a brand new app that will allow us to have conversations directly with you.

Join us on 2cents: www.2cents.audio/copperheat

The app is currently in the middle of beta testing and you, as Copper & Heat listeners, are some of the very first people to hear about it. Register to get access to the app and leave an audio comment in our Aftershow. As a thank you from 2Cents, the first 50 people that sign up and leave an audio comment in this week’s Aftershow by Friday, April 9th will get a $20 VISA gift card.

Sponsors for this episode:

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165.

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

In this Pre-Shift we’re talking about privilege and bias - what those words mean, how they play out in our lives, and what we can do to be better.

Guests:

• Chef Jenny Dorsey - chef, activist, and founder of Studio ATAO @chefjennydorsey @studioatao
• Dr. Erinn Tucker - Director of the Global Hospitality Leadership master’s program At Georgetown University and Co-Founder of DMV Black Restaurant Week @etucker0818 @dmvbrw
• Adan Callsen - owner and trainer @under_the_table_boise
   

More resources:

• Studio ATAO resources blog
• The Great Unlearn course by Rachel Cargle
• Understanding Pronouns by the LGBT Life Center
• Check Your Privilege Instagram page @ckyourprivilege

Sponsors for this episode:

West Michigan Pasta and Provisions - Traditional, Artisan, Dried Pastas

Check out WestMichiganPastaandProvisions.com for their awesome selection of extruded pastas and use the code COPPER for 15% off your first order. Let us know what you make!

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165.

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!

In this Pre-Shift, we talk with Zoe Adjonyoh about how she found her niche and followed her purpose as she’s built her business.

Where to find Zoe:

Her website

Instagram

Her cookbook

Check out One Star Podcast Network the first podcast network dedicated to representing voices and stories from the service industry with shows created by service industry workers.

Sponsors for this episode:

Chefstreams - Interactive Livestream Cooking Classes

We've worked out a special discount on membership to Chefstreams for Copper & Heat listeners that will save you 40% off the standard membership rate. So you can get an annual membership for $99 instead of the usual $165.

To learn more about Chefstreams and take advantage of this special offer, go to chefstreams.com, and enter the invite code COPPER when you request a membership invitation!