Pod Insights Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso Cook Alison Roman Creates ‘Something from Nothing’ About this episode This week, cook and writer Alison Roman published her fourth cookbook, Something from Nothing https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608062/something-from-nothing-a-cookbook-by-alison-roman/—a collection of over one hundred simple, timeless recipes inspired by the items you may already have in your pantry.
On the heels of its release, we return to our conversation with the culinary force. We discuss her dessert cookbook Sweet Enough https://bookshop.org/p/books/sweet-enough-a-dessert-cookbook-alison-roman/f34558911e9a5665?ean=9781984826398&next=t& (4:55), her early years as a restaurant pastry chef (12:24), and the chaotic conditions of working in the service industry (14:50). Then, Roman describes working at the experimental bakery Milk Bar in New York City (18:09), hosting cooking videos at Bon Appétit (22:40), and eventually working as a food columnist at The New York Times (25:18).
On the back-half, we walk through the criticism she faced in 2020 (32:20), the subsequent fallout from her remarks (38:52), the personal newsletter that emerged (47:12), the connective power of cooking (55:08), the time capsule of writing (58:30), and what she hopes for in the years to come (1:01:45).
Original air date: April 23, 2023.
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Transcript 12,954 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:21 Sam Fragoso? This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.
0:38 Sam Fragoso? Today, my conversation with cook and writer Alison Roman. Over the past two decades, Roman has been a culinary force. You've probably come across one of her recipes, maybe her newsletter, or her videos on YouTube, Home Movies. This past week, she released her fourth cookbook, Something from Nothing. It's a collection of over 100 simple, timeless recipes, inspired by the items you may already have in your pantry. Like all of Alison's work, this new book was born out of her obsession with practicality and efficiency. That's also how she designed her New York corner store, First Bloom. Inside, there's a small produce table, but most of the ingredients are shelf-stable. The store, just like the book,
1:19 Sam Fragoso? resembles her own lifestyle and a belief that incredibly delicious meals can be made simply, just from the ingredients that you have. Alison is currently on book tour for Something from Nothing, which she kindly invited me to moderate her sold-out Chicago show just over the weekend, which was a real joy to do in front of, I think it was 900 people. Even my parents showed up. My sister came. It really was a great animated crowd here for Alison and her new book. Since we didn't get to record the audio of that episode, it really was a joy to do that. I wanted to replay the conversation we had back in 2023. A lot of what you see in the new book, Something from Nothing, you'll
2:03 Sam Fragoso? hear about in this episode, including the journey she had to embark on to even arrive at this new book. And so we'll be back next Sunday with a brand-new episode. Until then, I hope you enjoy my talk with Alison Roman.
2:38 Sam Fragoso? Alison Roman.
2:39 Speaker 01 Hello.
2:40 Sam Fragoso? Pleasure to meet you.
2:41 Speaker 01 Such a pleasure to be here and to meet you.
2:43 Sam Fragoso? How are you feeling?
2:44 Speaker 01 I'm actually feeling really good today.
2:46 Sam Fragoso? Why actually?
2:47 Speaker 01 Because I've been on the road for a while and I haven't been taking care of myself. There's like, not been a lot of sleeping, book tours are very intense. And today, I actually feel great.
2:57 Sam Fragoso? You woke up at a reasonable time?
2:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, had a side bowl for breakfast. Not on purpose, it was kind of an accident.
3:04 Sam Fragoso? Will you be returning to that accident?
3:06 Speaker 01 No, that was a first and last.
3:08 Sam Fragoso? A one and done?
3:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm glad I experienced it. I don't need to do it again.
3:12 Sam Fragoso? Maybe you go back to it in your 40s?
3:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, we'll revisit.
3:15 Sam Fragoso? Okay.
3:15 Speaker 01 Late 40s, 50s.
3:16 Sam Fragoso? I want to start with this new cookbook of yours. It's called Sweet Enough: Desserts for People Who Don't Dessert, which evidently definitely describes me. But you said recently, "I'm not measured or precise. My culinary style is more like jazz, whereas baking is classical." So with that, you're sort of cringing at your own quote.
3:38 Speaker 01 Well, writing is so different. And then when you hear it, you're like, oh.
3:42 Sam Fragoso? Well, to be fair, that was spoken.
3:43 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. Okay.
3:45 Sam Fragoso? Does that make you feel better or worse?
3:46 Speaker 01 Better? Question mark. But I also stand by it. I think when I said it, I probably had a bit of like a tongue-in-cheek energy, whereas you just read it very seriously.
3:56 Sam Fragoso? Mm-hmm.
3:56 Speaker 01 So, you know, out of context emotionally.
3:59 Sam Fragoso? I'll try to apply more tongue-in-cheek.
4:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, let's loosen up a bit.
4:04 Sam Fragoso? Okay.
4:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:05 Sam Fragoso? Why did you want to take this book on if jazz is your typical style?
4:10 Speaker 01 Well, if you really want to take the music analogy to its furthest possible conclusion, which you might, I don't know.
4:16 Sam Fragoso? Of course I do.
4:16 Speaker 01 But so I used to be a pastry chef, like professionally. That was my first job in food. It was my first job like as a 19-year-old person living in the world. And the only reason I took the job was because it was the only opening they had in the restaurant. And I learned how to do desserts from like a very intense, very precise, very technical place, right? It was like fine dining, tasting many restaurants, very intense. And now, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years later, I'm able to sort of take what I want from that and do what I want. And I think I've never said this out loud and somebody else is going to quote me and I'm going to cringe. But I think what makes jazz so interesting is that these musicians have all of the technical skill.
4:59 Speaker 01 They know how to do things well. They know how to read music. They know how to write music. They know how to play instruments. You take that information and you can kind of free yourself to make something out of the sort of parameters, out of structure.
5:13 Sam Fragoso? So you freed yourself?
5:14 Speaker 01 I'm jazz musician, yes. And, you know, the boring answer to that question is my editor was like, you should make a dessert book. And they wanted it to be the second book. And I said, no way. As a bargain, I'll do this a third book.
5:26 Sam Fragoso? Is that how you negotiate?
5:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, I say not now, but later. And then sometimes later becomes never. But I think this was fun because I also had maybe been a little bit fatigued of writing cookbooks because the first two are, you know, siblings are very similar. It's like a two full books of over a hundred and twenty recipes each of like savory food, what to make for dinner, how to feed yourself. And to do a third book in the same vein felt like even I needed kind of a reset. And doing a single subject book like this really felt like a good reset.
5:55 Sam Fragoso? Well, the book is pretty disarming as someone who had never baked before.
6:01 Speaker 01 Wow.
6:01 Sam Fragoso? That is me.
6:02 Speaker 01 Before, like weeks ago, and now you're...
6:05 Sam Fragoso? Before this Monday, when I started preparation for this podcast, I was, as you write in the book, "The once a year bakers, the twice a week cake makers, for those who can only manage to open a carton of heavy cream and pour it onto some fresh fruit." I was like one of the once in twenty-eight years bakers. That was me. So I decided to make one of these recipes.
6:29 Speaker 01 Which one was that?
6:30 Sam Fragoso? It is the raspberry ricotta cake.
6:32 Speaker 01 Okay.
6:33 Sam Fragoso? But in order to do that, I had to make a visit to my local Williams Sonoma.
6:38 Speaker 01 Why? Oh, for a cake pan?
6:40 Sam Fragoso? I had none of it. I had none of the things.
6:43 Speaker 01 You didn't own a whisk?
6:44 Sam Fragoso? I had one whisk, but it was kind of weak. I need...
6:47 Speaker 01 Was it plastic?
6:48 Sam Fragoso? It was kind of plasticky.
6:49 Speaker 01 Yeah. Did you buy like the set from Bed Bath & Beyond where it comes with like a spatula and a whisk and a thing and it's like $4.99? And you're like, this'll do. Yes.
6:58 Sam Fragoso? I can neither confirm nor deny. I am, you know, a single person living alone. I cook plenty, but I just never baked.
7:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, the baking is tough for one person. I'll give you that.
7:10 Sam Fragoso? So I'm gonna walk you through this. I went to the Williams Sonoma. I'd been putting this off for a long time because I felt like the moment I walked through the doors of that store, like, childhood is over. The adulthood's beginning.
7:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's basically a, you had a bar mitzvah.
7:25 Sam Fragoso? Yeah, I became a man.
7:28 Sam Fragoso? Because once you're walking through and you're getting excited about like zesters, like, you can't go back.
7:33 Speaker 01 No, it's like fun's over, boys.
7:35 Sam Fragoso? That's what happened to me this week.
7:36 Speaker 01 Bittersweet for you, I'm sure. You said goodbye to the boy and hello to the man.
7:41 Speaker 01 It's tough.
7:42 Sam Fragoso? It was really hard. So I go home with the new whisk, couple of mixing bowls that I just-
7:47 Speaker 01 Didn't own.
7:48 Sam Fragoso? I had some mixing, but they were just not very good. I upgraded. I got a meat thermometer.
7:54 Speaker 01 Unrelated to this cake.
7:54 Sam Fragoso? Completely unrelated, but I got excited. That's the problem with the store. It's a dangerous place.
7:59 Speaker 01 I would say that's the good thing about that place.
8:01 Sam Fragoso? You know, my bank account would say otherwise.
8:03 Speaker 01 Right, but don't let, you know, don't begrudge the enthusiasm you felt. It is so rare you can feel excitement these days, and if that's going to Williams Sonoma and buying a meat thermometer, go with it.
8:13 Sam Fragoso? I was elated. I walked out of the store on cloud nine. I go home and I make the cake that started it all, as you write, this raspberry ricotta cake. We'll get to how that turned out at the end of this episode.
8:26 Speaker 01 Oh, no. Well, that doesn't bode well.
8:28 Sam Fragoso? No, it's just, you gotta throw something for later. We gotta keep something for later. No, no, turn it off.
8:32 Speaker 01 Well, I'm curious, but, you know.
8:33 Sam Fragoso? Well, you can ask me later.
8:34 Speaker 01 Okay.
8:35 Sam Fragoso? But the simplicity of this recipe, is it emblematic of the kind of cookbook that you wanted to make? Because baking is, to many people, daunting because of the precision people believe it requires.
8:48 Speaker 01 Right, and I am just not a precise person. I am a antithetical to being a Virgo. I am sort of chaotic in the kitchen, and I'm also kind of lazy. And again, I think because I know how to do everything the right way, I ignore a lot of rules. I'm like, ah, I don't have to do it that way. And I sort of make my own rules, basically. This recipe to me is, you don't need any equipment other than a functioning whisk, which is like the bare minimum, so I don't even consider that special. Sorry. And a cake pan.
9:19 Sam Fragoso? I didn't have one of those either.
9:20 Speaker 01 Well, of course not. Yeah, you didn't even have a whisk.
9:23 Sam Fragoso? I had a whisk. I make eggs. Come on, I had a whisk.
9:26 Speaker 01 Okay.
9:26 Sam Fragoso? It just wasn't very good.
9:28 Speaker 01 That's fair. And now you have a good one. You're a man. But this cake, it's made in one bowl. You don't need to like know any technique. And I think that the ingredients in it, i.e. there's enough eggs and ricotta and fruit, that even on your worst day of mismeasuring or like miscalculating or something, it can't go so wrong. But you're looking at me like maybe it did for you. But we won't know for a while because you're making me wait, but.
9:53 Sam Fragoso? I'm, you know, I'm making everyone wait.
9:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, we are collectively all waiting together. That's true.
9:58 Sam Fragoso? The recipe takes an hour to make.
10:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, but that's the other thing about baking that people hate. It's not instant gratification.
10:05 Sam Fragoso? Right. But see, that's why at the end of this hour.
10:08 Speaker 01 Oh, I see what you're doing. You are a storyteller. There's a narrative arc here and I am with it.
10:14 Sam Fragoso? Most people do know you for your cooking. But you mentioned that 18, 19 year old self that started as a pastry chef. I want to set the context for that a little bit more. You grow up in the San Fernando Valley through the mid 90s. Your mother was a court reporter, your father, a businessman. They split up by the time you're two years old. After graduating from this private Catholic high school, you head to Santa Monica City College in an attempt to ditch what you've called Alley from the Valley. Somewhere in that time, you have a boyfriend, we're not going to talk about him, who introduces you to a restaurant called Sona in West Hollywood.
10:57 Sam Fragoso? But I want to sit with that one specific day. I think it's in 2003.
11:03 Speaker 01 Okay.
11:03 Sam Fragoso? Where you meet Ron Mendoza.
11:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:06 Sam Fragoso? What happened?
11:07 Speaker 01 I went to Santa Monica City College, then I moved to Santa Cruz and I went to college there for a year. Decided I was going to leave college and go to culinary school. So I moved back to Los Angeles. And before I was fully enrolled in culinary school, I was like, I need to like line up a job because how else am I going to afford culinary school? So I went to Sona and I knocked on the back door of the restaurant and I said, hello, my name is Alison Roman. I would like to speak with the chef. And Ron answered the door and he said, oh, well, he's not here. But I'm Ron. What can I help you with? And I said, oh, well, my name's Allison and I would love to work here. And I was so nervous. I didn't know what I was gonna say. I had no plan.
11:47 Speaker 01 And he's like, okay. And I was like, I'm gonna go to culinary school and would sort of just love to talk to you about your advice for me. And if you have any openings, I'd love to just learn and work here. And basically, his advice to me was, don't go to culinary school. We opened a bakery across the street. We may have an opening there, but we don't have anything available in the restaurant. Long story long, basically, he gave me a job at the bakery across the street. I made $7.25 an hour to like, cut marshmallows and fuck up every day. I was messing things up left and right. But I think they could tell I really liked being there. I really liked to learn. I was so willing to do anything and work for no money that they never fired me.
12:28 Sam Fragoso? Before we talk about that job, how did you know to knock on the back door? Like, what propelled you to do that? That's a very active thing to do as a 19-year-old.
12:38 Speaker 01 Honestly, I think like, bold.
12:41 Sam Fragoso? Gumption?
12:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, of just being like, I want this thing and I'm gonna ask for it, kind of. But my plan was to go to culinary school and I was sort of implying that while I'm in culinary school, I'll intern with you. Like, I'll work for free. But instead, it turned into them paying me.
12:55 Sam Fragoso? Paying you to cut marshmallows?
12:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, I didn't, they didn't trust me with anything and nor should they have. I was awful at everything. I didn't know anything. I knew less than you last Monday.
13:05 Sam Fragoso? It's good you can insult me while you're at it. Of that job, you said, I walked home crying every day, but not once did I think about quitting. I figured I'll stop crying when they stop being mean to me and they'll stop being mean to me when I stop screwing up. I wonder if that mentality, especially in 2023, may be hard for some people to process.
13:28 Speaker 01 Absolutely. Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying that that was sort of like I understood why they were mean to me. I understood why they were rude to me. I understood why they were annoyed by me. Because I made their jobs harder. I created more work for people. I took time out of their day. They had to redo things like it was pretty bad. And if I'm them, I'm annoyed with me. But I was so set on being good, not for approval from any one specific person, but just because like, I kind of was like, I'm gonna be good at this one day. All I did was read cookbooks and all I would do was like have my notebook and like, write down ideas for dishes and I would eat at restaurants.
14:10 Speaker 01 But I mean, I was so broke at the time and I had no free time because I was working constantly. So I wasn't like going out to nice restaurants. I had very limited sort of vantage of what else was out there. This is also pre-internet. So like I would read Jonathan Gold and like go to a restaurant in San Gabriel Valley or try a, you know, a restaurant that was on like the 50 best LA restaurants list in the LA Times. Like information traveled much slower at that time. And so books were like a real portal into what else existed in the world.
14:39 Sam Fragoso? But also, what was happening in your world sounds like pretty chaotic.
14:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:45 Sam Fragoso? And aggressive and combative.
14:47 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
14:48 Sam Fragoso? Was some part of you attracted to that?
14:50 Speaker 01 Absolutely. I think that any person that enters into the restaurant industry, especially at a young age, like there is an element to you where you feel at home in chaos. You somehow feel at home with toxicity.
15:03 Sam Fragoso? Why do you think that was?
15:04 Speaker 01 You know, I didn't have what I would call a peaceful childhood. And I'm not saying the two are directly correlated, but they're probably not not correlated. And if you polled 10 people who work in restaurants, like eight of them would say the same exact thing. And it was also just like, I felt like a very creative person my whole life, but never really knew what my avenue was until I found cooking. Like, I tried painting. I wasn't very good at it. I've always been a writer, but like not a good one. It's just like a medium that I enjoyed. I wasn't especially musical. I wasn't especially physical. Like I played sports, but wasn't very good at them. Like I tried a lot of things and nothing really stuck with me until I started cooking. And that was when I felt fulfilled and gratified, stimulated,
15:48 Speaker 01 excited by something on all levels, like intellectually, physically, artistically, creatively, emotionally. Like it filled every cup for me at a really young age.
15:57 Sam Fragoso? Most people listening have probably not had that experience of working in a kitchen
16:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:03 Sam Fragoso? like that. And it's fascinating to hear how the excitement and joy that you found in cooking was also wrapped up in this toxic environment. Like, it's all, it's all like, they're sort of inextricably linked.
16:17 Speaker 01 But it wasn't so bad. And I, I feel the need to like, not that I'm defensive of it or that time, but there are a lot of people who've had really awful experiences in restaurants, and I'm not one of them.
16:26 Sam Fragoso? You're not?
16:27 Speaker 01 I think that, no, I think the restaurant, I'm an emotional person. I'm a crier. So to be like, yeah, I cried every day. It's like, okay, well, I'm a crier. I am sensitive to other people's energies and what they say to me, and I get my feelings hurt and this, that and the other. So it does develop, you do develop like a really tough skin in a restaurant, but also maybe a person who's not as sensitive of me as me wouldn't have that experience. But nothing was so egregious, or so violent, or so toxic that I felt scarred, or I look back being like, I can't believe I endured that. It was just intense and not typical of a work environment.
16:59 Sam Fragoso? In recent years, there have been so many articles-
17:01 Speaker 01 You're like, The Bear. It's The Bear. No, I'm just kidding.
17:03 Sam Fragoso? Sure, The Bear, podcasts, articles, shows, movies, that have aimed to unpack and expose the toxicity of this place. You said, when those pieces of art came out, as they continue to come out, I'm not shocked, I'm not surprised, I'm not horrified, nothing about it was shocking, and people don't even know the half of it. What do people not know that they ought to know?
17:31 Speaker 01 Because most of the time when a person is brought down in a media capacity, and there's like one story that leaks, there's a thousand of them behind it. I think that's more what I mean by, you don't know the half of it. And it's sort of like, when these stories come out about restaurant work environments, and you're mostly focused on like, say, a sexual aspect. There's a harassment situation, there's an inappropriate boss or leader, and that's something that people can really point to and say, like, this is objectively not okay. And what lurks behind that is just like the everyday indignations of like, the way people speak to each other that is aggressive. Passive aggressive, rude, cutting. And the flip side of this is restaurants can also be glorious and family oriented and
18:16 Speaker 01 very like supportive and special. And they can be a lot of different things. And again, my experiences have just been like not ever that bad. I was always one of the youngest people in the kitchen and almost always the only woman. It was like me and like one or two other women, but I was the youngest person by like anywhere from five to 15 years all the time.
18:35 Sam Fragoso? Well, let's talk about one of those experiences because you're 24 years old. You moved to New York City. You land this job at a place called Milk Bar. It's there that you're working with founder and chef named Christina Tosi. What did she teach you about work ethic?
18:53 Speaker 01 She taught me a lot about work ethic. She is probably one of the hardest working people that I had ever worked with and had like a very intense drive to succeed and to make the thing that she wanted come to life.
19:06 Sam Fragoso? What did that look like?
19:07 Speaker 01 Intense. It was really intense. It was not always fun and sometimes it was the most fun I've ever had. I met amazing people there. I met, it was like almost all women. From the time that I started there, it was like eight of us. By the time I had left, you know, it had scaled so rapidly in such a short period of time that it became, you know, something very different. But that was her plan. She wanted to dominate. She wanted to be everywhere. She wanted to be in the stores. She wanted to have multiple bakeries in multiple cities. She was so clear on that. And she also instilled in us like a very like, don't ever ask anyone for help kind of energy where it was like, do it yourself. Answer your own questions, solve your own problems, do it yourself.
19:49 Sam Fragoso? Was that approach atypical?
19:51 Speaker 01 I think with a woman, probably. But another thing that happens in restaurants that it becomes for better or worse, very family oriented where these are your family members and it's not just coworkers and there's very few boundaries. And so you tend to work more than you want to. You don't get paid as much as you should. You do things that you wouldn't otherwise do in a regular work environment because much like a family, you have like the pros and the cons of being like, but we're family.
20:15 Sam Fragoso? But you're not.
20:16 Speaker 01 But we're not, no, no.
20:18 Sam Fragoso? So I think that line, and I think we've seen it more and more as people have gone back to work. Where companies say, we're family.
20:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:27 Sam Fragoso? And it's like, well.
20:28 Speaker 01 You're like, well, actually, this is my job. It's interesting that restaurants became uncovered as like a sort of hive of that mentality, because I know to be true that it happens all over the place, like in financial companies and other sort of businesses, and that's their model, and that's how they retain, like, you know, employee retention. And sometimes people really enjoy that, and sometimes people are scared of that.
20:50 Sam Fragoso? Well, when it came to Christina, you saw that she had these very clear aims and goals to innovate.
20:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:58 Sam Fragoso? As you leave that job, did that kind of 20,000-foot view inspire you to move forward? Did that inform how you would leave and then go into Bon Appétit, or the New York Times, or whatever you'd end up doing?
21:12 Speaker 01 So I got that job because I was gonna be in New York for a short period of time. I was like, okay, I'm moving back to San Francisco after New York. I'll take a job at this bakery, like, part-time, it'll be whatever. And then, but within three months, it became clear that I was very much in love with New York, and she had offered me a job as like a sous chef manager person with salary and a health insurance plan. I was like, oh, well, maybe this is my sign that I should stay here. But it was not my intention to continue working in restaurants. I sort of moved to New York to then move back to San Francisco as like a way to get out of restaurants. After being there for about a year and a half, I sort of had to have like a moment with myself of like, what am I doing? I'm again working in a restaurant, basically. I'm again working for someone else. And I think at that time, it really solidified the fact that I never wanted to open my own bakery.
21:57 Speaker 01 I never wanted to open my own restaurant, and I really didn't want to work for anyone else in that capacity.
22:02 Sam Fragoso? And so you leave and work for someone else in a different capacity? You do the pies and thighs?
22:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, yeah, because I needed, I needed to make money. I never had any support. I never had a savings account. I didn't have secret money from my parents. I didn't have anything to rely on. So I was constantly having to work just to make rent, basically.
22:23 Sam Fragoso? The secret money part, I think, is really key to understand.
22:26 Speaker 01 We don't talk about that enough, I don't think.
22:28 Sam Fragoso? We're putting it on here.
22:29 Speaker 01 I'm very proud of that. There's nothing I'm more proud of, to be honest.
22:32 Sam Fragoso? See, because, especially in New York and Los Angeles.
22:36 Speaker 01 Yes.
22:36 Sam Fragoso? Is filled with people that seem to just be endlessly floating with cash that cannot be accounted for.
22:46 Speaker 01 No, but it also sets up unrealistic expectations for people in a creative field specifically.
22:50 Sam Fragoso? What do you mean by that? Explain that for people.
22:52 Speaker 01 I think then if people are like, oh, I'm an artist, I'm a successful artist, I quit my job and now I write books. Or I quit my job and now I opened an art gallery. I quit my job and now I decided to like, start a company that like makes a blah, blah, blah. And you're like, wow, that's like the dream, right? Like, we all want to quit our job and follow our pursuits and like be creatively fulfilled. And how do you do that? It's tough when the how do you do that is answered by, well, I have a stream of money that I can rely on. So that I can't afford to quit my job, that I can't afford to sink money into a company and start it, or a space or a home and buy it. And it's not to shame anyone that has that advantage. I think that's good for them. But I do think it's always very impressive when people don't have that and they had to just like figure it out.
23:37 Sam Fragoso? Well, so then through the 2010s, when you take these jobs at Bon appetit, BuzzFeed, and then the New York Times, did they feel like jobs or did they feel like a career?
23:50 Speaker 01 It felt more like a career. I felt like a tradesperson.
23:53 Sam Fragoso? Right.
23:53 Speaker 01 I was like, I can bake biscuits for you for money. And they always felt like a, I was always making a move that I felt like it was going upward. It was like an upward mobility thing. I have to work here in order to work here. Now I'm going to work here and then I'm going to do that. And it felt like I was going somewhere. And I think that's why when I was at Milk Bar, I was like, I've reached the end of, like, there's no more lily pads here for me. I'm not going to another bakery or restaurant. And when I got the job at Bon Appetit, I, it was the first like job, job that I had that wasn't in a kitchen or a restaurant. But almost immediately I was like, this is for me. I felt like this was the beginning of my like new career.
24:32 Sam Fragoso? What about it?
24:33 Speaker 01 There were a lot of things, mainly that I didn't graduate college and I was now working in an office building where people were writers and editors and I felt really validated. I felt like I had worked my way up through something, through the very back door. Like, I'm like, I work at the same, like, publishing company that makes The New Yorker. How did I end up here? Like, it wasn't even imposter syndrome. It's like, whatever is below that. Like, I was just like, holy shit, what am I doing here? But it was really validating because when I first started working in restaurants and I was 19, I was in LA and my best friends went to UCLA and UCSB and I would visit them and all their friends would always be like, what school do you go to? And I go, oh, I don't go to school, I work. And they're like, what do you do? And I'm like, I'm a pastry chef. They're like, oh.
25:18 Speaker 01 And some people were like, that's cool. And some people I could tell were like, you didn't get into college or you weren't smart enough to stay in college or you got kicked out of college or something as if that was like a second choice for me. But it wasn't, it was my first choice. I believed in it as like an academic style career choice. I was like, no, this is like a high level creative pursuit that I'm beginning right now. And so to end up working at a magazine felt like, wow, I did it. I did the thing. I knew that I was gonna get here one day, but when I started working in restaurants, I never aspired to work in a magazine.
25:51 Sam Fragoso? When you're at the magazine, do you remember the first time you thought, I'm actually, I'm pretty good at this? Like, this feels right? Was there a specific recipe?
26:00 Speaker 01 No, I mean, the first recipe I made there was for biscuits. They had a photo of biscuits that didn't match the recipe and they're like, these don't match and we need them to before we publish it, can you do it? It was like a test, but it was a test that they actually needed help with. And I did it. I was like, oh, this is obviously a cream biscuit and this is a recipe for a drop biscuit and-
26:18 Sam Fragoso? I don't know the difference.
26:19 Speaker 01 Exactly. But I did. And so I was able to like detective this biscuit. I'm a biscuit detective.
26:25 Sam Fragoso? A culinary Columbo.
26:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, thank you. That alliteration is so much better than biscuit detective. I don't remember the specific time, but I just remember over the course of me being there for about a year, like, I had the same sort of injection of energy and excitement and enthusiasm as I did when I first started working in restaurants, which I had definitely lost over those seven years working in restaurants.
26:46 Sam Fragoso? You have this quote about that decade where you said, "None of the moves I made were financially incentivized. They only made me more broke. I didn't have any help from my parents. There was no secret pot of money. It was just pure belief, belief bordering on delusion, that everything I was doing would one day pay off."
27:06 Speaker 01 Wow, I'm just saying right now that if I ever write a memoir, you will be reading the audiobook version.
27:13 Sam Fragoso? So having gone through all this without a support system, when 2019 rolls around and The New Yorker calls you "a phenomenon on par with high-waisted pants and Sally Rooney novels", what did you make of that?
27:31 Speaker 01 I don't, I don't know. I've been very bad at absorbing the steps of my career with like each accomplishment or phase. And like honestly-
27:39 Sam Fragoso? That's what I'm here for.
27:40 Speaker 01 No, thank you. Well, now that I'm like talking about it now, like it's honestly very emotional. I may cry at some point today, but it feels incredible. Like I'm just, it was never really the plan. Like that wasn't my goal. I didn't, I wasn't working towards that. I found myself there. It feels really validating to like, deep down, kind of know that, oh, I'm good at this and I like doing it and I care so deeply about it. And those three things combined, to care about it, to be good at it and to work really hard at it, to have that actually result in something that resembles success, it's very difficult to really absorb.
28:15 Sam Fragoso? Why does that make you emotional?
28:17 Speaker 01 Because I'm proud of myself, I think.
28:20 Sam Fragoso? And that feels heavy?
28:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:23 Speaker 01 Stop making me cry.
28:26 Speaker 01 I'm not crying, you're crying. Um, yeah, it does feel heavy. I think that it feels validating to be like, oh, I did it. You meet so many people along the way and there are so many people that I've seen in the last week or two that I've been on this book tour in different cities and people that I worked with at that first restaurant, people that I've texted with, people that have called me, like out of the woodwork. It's been a real like Alison Roman, this is your life type time for me. And every single person is like, I always knew that you would do it. Or like, you've always been this way and I'm so proud of you. Like, it feels really good to have like, wow, I've worked really hard at something. I've pivoted so many times. I've made choices that I didn't know that were right at the time. But like with a sort of blind faith attitude, was like, this is going to work out. And it did.
29:16 Sam Fragoso? After the break, more from Alison Robyn.
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32:34 Sam Fragoso? When 2020 comes, you have this very bifurcated year because
32:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:40 Sam Fragoso? the world shuts down.
32:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:42 Sam Fragoso? Many people, including myself, like turn to you and your recipes
32:47 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
32:48 Sam Fragoso? for refuge. Your caramelized shallot pasta, single-handedly tempered my depression
32:54 Speaker 01 [laughing]
32:55 Sam Fragoso? and expanded my waistline. I thank you for both.
32:58 Speaker 01 Oh, you're so welcome. You're better for it.
33:00 Sam Fragoso? I'm still working it off. And I was not alone in thinking this or feeling this way. You went on Colbert, you drank spritzes with Katie Couric, and people around the world are posting about making your recipes in this really fucking depressing, hard, somber moment.
33:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. And it made people so happy and like buoyed their spirits in such a way that like it was as good for me as it was good for them. And it was like- The most beautiful symbiotic relationship that I could possibly have ever wished for anybody to experience.
33:31 Sam Fragoso? So that's like three months of 2020.
33:34 Speaker 01 That's like the first, that's like the first four months of 2020. And also, my second book had come out in 2019 at the end, so I was like riding the wave of that. Like, things were really good.
33:44 Sam Fragoso? Yes.
33:45 Speaker 01 Things were so good.
33:47 Sam Fragoso? And then?
33:48 Speaker 01 And then they were bad.
33:51 Sam Fragoso? While everyone's experiencing like a terribly tough time.
33:54 Speaker 01 Yes.
33:54 Sam Fragoso? You experience a different kind of tough time after you do an interview with the new consumer.
34:01 Speaker 01 Everybody's favorite newsletter. I'm joking, no one's heard of it.
34:04 Sam Fragoso? I've never heard of it.
34:05 Speaker 01 No.
34:06 Sam Fragoso? I had not heard of it until doing preparation for this interview. Anyway, I'm not going to recount exactly what you said line by line, but essentially you were critical of how Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen capitalized on their brands. And essentially, in your words, sold out by having product lines at stores like Target. Of course, you then issue this apology. But now that we're nearly three years from all of that, how do you make sense of your sentiments in that interview? Like, how do they read to you?
34:41 Speaker 01 Um, they read very careless, frankly. They read like dumb and like flippant. It's like I was having mimosa brunch with the girls. Like, you know, it wasn't like, if you read the interview.
34:52 Sam Fragoso? Instead, it was with the new consumer.
34:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, instead, the whole world read it because of twitter.com. If you read the article yourself, which if you're curious, you should, there's no specific quote that's particularly bad in the context of, I said a sentence and then I said some more things and then I mentioned another person and another context.
35:10 Sam Fragoso? It's a couple paragraphs.
35:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, and then they were lumped together as if I, you know, two people. And I'm like, oh, they're both women of color. They're both in the lifestyle space. Why did you single out two women of color? Why didn't you bring in X, Y, and Z to this conversation?
35:23 Sam Fragoso? Plenty of white people to bring in.
35:25 Speaker 01 Oh, tons. Where do I start? But yeah, of course. And any person who's like an aware individual is going to look at that and be like, oh, that's not good. Like, that's not a good look.
35:35 Sam Fragoso? Are you saying you weren't aware?
35:36 Speaker 01 No, because I was like, oh, and this person and this person. I, I literally had a copy of Forbes magazine on my table because I was in the issue. And Marie Kondo was on the cover and I had just read this article from Amanda Moll. And she was talking about how Marie Kondo launched this, a line of products to keep your things inside of. And this was all came about because the interviewer asked me, what's next for you? Do you ever envision yourself with like a line of home goods? Or a D to C something and blah, blah, blah. And I said, no. You know, basically because my whole angle for what I teach is that like, you don't need fancy equipment. You don't need special equipment, just a whisk. In order to make great food, you can have like a cutting board and a sheet pan and you can make dinner.
36:19 Speaker 01 So if I were to turn around and all of a sudden start selling you cookware, that would feel antithetical to my teachings. It would feel hypocritical. And I made a really big mistake by mentioning people who were doing that in their space. And I mean, lesson one, don't name other people. A, it's not nice. B, it's not smart. C, it's not necessary. And D, especially when you're speaking about like, how that's going to come across. Like, I just wasn't thinking. I was like, I was literally cleaning out my pantry. I had no press. I had no PR team. I had no support. I was saying yes to every interview. I was like, sure, yeah, I'll talk to you for 20 minutes. And like, didn't think anything of it. I was just like gabbing and it was super careless and just had no idea.
37:01 Speaker 01 How careless. I just had no idea what was going to happen from that interview.
37:05 Sam Fragoso? But the context of the interview, wasn't it a business?
37:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was basically, how do you run your business? What's next for you? Do you want to scale up? How do you scale? How does somebody go from writing cookbooks to like actually making real money or becoming a business?
37:17 Sam Fragoso? It's a pretty capitalistic newsletter.
37:19 Speaker 01 Yes, and I think my sentiments were anti-capitalist. And I think that that was what was lost on a lot of people because basically what I was trying to convey is that in my line of work as a cookbook author, the way into actual like capital M money, if that's something you aspire to, is through licensing deals. So somebody is going to make your line of pots and pans or put your name on a bottle of something or whatever. Like, you have to sell things that are marketed and made elsewhere.
37:49 Sam Fragoso? Which you don't want to do.
37:50 Speaker 01 And I don't want to do that. And I never have.
37:52 Sam Fragoso? You have not made any? There's not anything?
37:54 Speaker 01 No, and the irony being more People were like, oh, she's being a hypocrite because I had.
37:57 Sam Fragoso? A vintage spoon or something.
37:59 Speaker 01 Well, it was, it was a, it was a woman of color owned small cookware company. Who wanted to do a capsule collection with me. And they said, would you design like your favorite? And I wasn't, I had like a small percentage of equity.
38:12 Sam Fragoso? Okay.
38:13 Speaker 01 But it wasn't, I wasn't like profiting off of that in a necessarily meaningful way.
38:17 Sam Fragoso? Cause that was the line people used. They said, why would she say this if she is selling this?
38:22 Speaker 01 Right. Because it was, it was divorced of context. Yeah. A lot of the interview was.
38:26 Sam Fragoso? Well, this is the point of the show is to do that.
38:28 Speaker 01 But yeah, I was like, oh, I'm going to do this small business that I really believe in. Because they were making high quality cookware at a really affordable price point, which I really believed in.
38:37 Sam Fragoso? I see.
38:38 Speaker 01 And.
38:38 Sam Fragoso? And who's that? Do you want to?
38:39 Speaker 01 Material, Material Kitchen. Yeah. And they're great. I still, I think their cookware is wonderful. I recommend it to anybody, especially who's like starting out and wanting something on the more affordable price point. Their things are very beautifully made and they care a lot about how they're made. But it felt like in the moment, it was not the time or place for me to justify my words. Because people were hurting on a lot of different levels and it didn't really feel like anyone gave a shit.
39:04 Sam Fragoso? Well, let me ask you this. In the New Yorker profile that you had, you said, I still have not seen a successful story of a woman getting dragged to hell in the way that I was. And then coming back publicly and being able to talk. Looking back, why do you think you were dragged to hell?
39:21 Speaker 01 Because I, there's a lot of reasons. I think that the velocity of which I achieved success in a lot of people's eyes was very fast. And I think that that is what we do to people in that position, be it a celebrity, a singer, an actor. Whatever you want to call them, if they are all of a sudden in the spotlight in a positive way for an extended period of time. It's, there's like a, an arc where the public seems to be very happy with that. Then the narrative becomes like, are they that good? Are they that, that like? I heard that, that like, it becomes like you enjoy this bit of like schadenfreude takedown. And I remember saying to somebody in like March, the conversation was like on my end,
40:04 Speaker 01 things are going too well and it makes me nervous because I'm, I see how it happens to other people. I'm not really a celebrity, but I'm sort of being like talked about like one and it's feeling very weird to me. Something's gonna happen. The shoe's gonna drop. This can't last forever. People are gonna get tired of me. They're gonna get annoyed by me because I'm everywhere. No one likes to see somebody everywhere, really. Something's gonna happen. And I sort of said it as a joke, but it happened. And I think that it happened because A, people were in a pandemic. They had nothing else to do but sit in their home and look at the internet. So everybody was watching the same channel at the same time. It was, there was no diffusion
40:44 Speaker 01 of information. So it was our entertainment. It was like the first big scandal of the pandemic. It was, gave something people to talk about. One of the people involved is a huge internet personality. People really feel feelings about them and
40:58 Sam Fragoso? You're talking about Chrissy Teigen?
40:59 Speaker 01 Yeah. She's like a main character on, on the internet. So to be put in the same conversation with this person, I was then thrust into that level. But I think people in like the food industry were really unhappy with things that happened in, in their own personal life, at their career trajectory, at the magazines. Like, are things fair? Are things equitable? Like, why do white women always get the blah, blah, blah? Here I was, a white woman getting a lot of attention. It was just like a perfect storm for people to be upset and angry. And I think I gave, by saying something stupid and careless, I gave a lot of people permission to publicly hate me.
41:32 Sam Fragoso? Do you think it was stupid?
41:34 Speaker 01 I think it's stupid in the way where you're like, oh, I shouldn't have said that. That was dumb. I, I think, I think, no, I think I should have rephrased it. I stand by the sentiments, frankly. It was not mindful or intelligent or to name names at all. I could have made the exact same point without calling anyone out.
41:50 Sam Fragoso? Now that we have some distance from it, what is the point now that you still stand by?
41:54 Speaker 01 The point is that I believe in something and I don't wanna use the popularity that I've achieved and discrediting it by contradicting those beliefs.
42:03 Sam Fragoso? You described this one as anti-capitalist in my own weird fucked up way.
42:08 Speaker 01 Yeah. I was like, I don't want you to buy more things.
42:11 Sam Fragoso? Right.
42:12 Speaker 01 But if I wanted to start a line of cookware, I could because people trust me. And I assume that I have some level of notoriety where people would buy it. But if I did that, I feel like I'm lying.
42:25 Sam Fragoso? Contributing part of, yeah.
42:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I'm, I don't believe we should own that many things, frankly. And I don't believe that the only way to become successful financially or otherwise is to like, create more physical items in the world. What I was frustrated with was the idea that a person like me, unless I was willing to go down that path, could never really become successful. Because it's always the next path for anyone in the lifestyle category to be like, well, you've written books, you've done the thing, and now you have to make sheets at Walmart.
42:53 Sam Fragoso? What do you mean by successful? Like, you understand that's very complicated because you're saying that, and yet before that moment,
43:01 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
43:02 Sam Fragoso? you're like zooming with Colbert.
43:04 Speaker 01 I mean, not as a friend.
43:06 Sam Fragoso? And you're, yeah, but you've sold books. Like, I think to most people, you had achieved a certain level of success. You're saying that there was a next step.
43:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's the, there's like a tier of person. I more was using the like Martha Stewart style, whatever, where it's like.
43:22 Sam Fragoso? You want to go to jail?
43:23 Speaker 01 I did go to social jail. I went to emotional jail. It was terrible. When you think about, have I reached the ceiling by making books? If I choose to not go down that path?
43:33 Sam Fragoso? Right.
43:33 Speaker 01 What else is out there? How else do you build a business? Because the newsletter was focused on business. Like, how do you, as a creative person, get above a book?
43:42 Sam Fragoso? To own a home upstate.
43:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. Which I did do. It was like $200,000.
43:50 Sam Fragoso? Okay.
43:51 Speaker 01 I just mean, I still can't afford to buy in New York.
43:53 Sam Fragoso? I'm not fact checking you. My last question on this, because I want to, we have other things to talk about. But I think it's important to understand this, because I think you don't make this in the newsletter and home movies without this moment.
44:07 Speaker 01 No, I don't think so either.
44:08 Sam Fragoso? I think I want, because I want to talk about all that. What's most damning, or maybe is most unusual about your case, is that usually when someone is quote unquote canceled, it's because something has been discovered about them.
44:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:26 Sam Fragoso? That was previously a secret.
44:28 Speaker 01 Yes, there's a skeleton in the closet.
44:30 Sam Fragoso? But in your case, there was not an untoward revelation. It was just you being you. And I wondered. In the three years since that happened, did it force you to look more closely at how you move through the world? Especially like in these racially charged times?
44:52 Speaker 01 Yes and no, but I think that everybody in the summer of 2020 experienced something. Every single person, if you are a cognizant, emotionally aware individual of our time, everybody sort of was like, oh shit, and took a look at a lot of things in their life. How they act, how they behave, how they speak, who they know, what they support, how they move through the world. And whether or not that was like just for the summer and then they forgot all about it, or if it was like a lasting change deep within a person is up to the individual. But I think what happened to me was just that times a bajillion. But I'm the same exact person as I was before. And that was always my sort of personal outrage where I was like, I was just being myself the whole time. And all of a sudden someone was listening and I said something and it was taken in a way.
45:37 Speaker 01 And you know what I mean? But I think that undeniably, most people I know are slightly different after that summer, after the pandemic, after everything that happened. I also think that every single person that knew me before and knows me now and knows that I'm the same person.
45:53 Sam Fragoso? I guess I wonder then, you don't sound like someone that would say what they said anymore. In that way, you seem changed. It does seem like you.
46:02 Speaker 01 Oh, I mean, I just don't name names.
46:04 Sam Fragoso? So you would, yeah, okay.
46:06 Speaker 01 I don't feel differently about what I said. I don't feel differently about capitalism, about making things in the world, about being antithetical to a brand that you built, to celebrity culture, X, Y, and Z.
46:16 Sam Fragoso? Right.
46:16 Speaker 01 But those are just beliefs that I've had forever.
46:18 Sam Fragoso? So how did you move forward in that moment when it all came tumbling down? Like as a human being, how the hell did you?
46:26 Speaker 01 It was so fucking rough. I mean, I was also in a pandemic like everyone else. I lived alone. I didn't have a significant other. I was just like in my apartment every day by myself crying. It was terrible. Because so many people already felt alone. But then to also feel like everybody hates you is so much worse.
46:46 Sam Fragoso? How do you hold something like that?
46:47 Speaker 01 I don't know. I had a lot of really amazing, wonderful people in my corner. And I think that that's also the thing that gets me through, just generally speaking, is knowing that like the people that love me. I think are just like some of the most intelligent, emotionally evolved, sensitive, incredible people. They're funny, they're informed, they're caring. And like, they all loved me through the whole thing. And they loved me before, they loved me during, they loved me after. And to know that those people are my community, and like, these are the people that remind me that I'm not the worst person in the world. They really kept me afloat, even though it was like a very difficult task.
47:27 Sam Fragoso? I think to provide context for people, you know, in the aftermath of this,
47:32 Sam Fragoso? you lose the external work you had at the Times, potential cooking shows, which forces you to create from within.
47:42 Speaker 01 And, and for myself.
47:43 Sam Fragoso? And for yourself, which you do, starting on June 17th.
47:47 Speaker 01 Oh, God.
47:47 Sam Fragoso? 2020.
47:48 Speaker 01 Are you gonna read from that one?
47:49 Sam Fragoso? I am.
47:50 Speaker 01 Oh, my God. I, I feel like already embarrassed.
47:53 Sam Fragoso? Okay, well, you can be embarrassed, but I thought it was kind of moving, so I'm gonna read from it.
47:58 Speaker 01 Thank you, please do.
47:59 Sam Fragoso? This is the first newsletter you send out. It includes a tuna salad salad recipe. That sounds normal. I want to read from one passage.
48:07 Speaker 01 Okay.
48:08 Sam Fragoso? You write, "Where I usually cope with stress, anxiety, et cetera, with food, the shopping for, cooking and eating of, the last few weeks have been a struggle to find the joy in any of those activities. A true first in my 15 years of cooking professionally." So, no, I wasn't cooking. I wasn't developing recipes. I wasn't working. Usually, the recipes I write are pretty unfussed with reflection of what I'm genuinely excited to cook and eat. But pickles eaten directly from the jar and two Cadbury cream eggs are not recipes.
48:44 Speaker 01 No, they're not. Oh, my God, I was so depressed. Oh, my goodness. What a, that's a recipe for depression. Pickles out of the jar and two Cadbury cream eggs. My God. I want to give her a hug so bad.
48:57 Sam Fragoso? That one line struck me. The last few weeks have been a struggle to find joy in any of those activities. A true first in my 15 years of cooking professionally. In the sentence, you ended that line with an exclamation point.
49:11 Speaker 01 That was to let people know that I wasn't like so depressed.
49:14 Sam Fragoso? Yes, but I thought I thought it was a little bit of subterfuge. I read it as a period and I just want to know like, was creating this newsletter your way of rediscovering that joy?
49:29 Speaker 01 It was a way for me to keep working. I didn't have a job. No one was going to hire me. It was so bad. It was unbelievably bad. And I felt so lucky to already have like an established base of individuals who had followed my work, most of whom like stuck by me through everything. And I didn't go to zero. I still had like a collective group of individuals who were like, I believe in you. I still love you. I still turn to you for X, Y, and Z. But it was the first time where I was truly and really on my own without working for other people or a brand or a company. And I did it because I knew that I had to keep working because if I didn't just start, and I knew that it wasn't going to be easy.
50:12 Speaker 01 The first few months were pretty rocky and the reception wasn't like 100% warm. So I was like, you know what? Newsletter is long form. People are going to either subscribe or they're not. And I was so moved by how many people did, but I really didn't, I wasn't cooking. Because in the aftermath of whatever happened, it became conversations about a lot of different things and it made me feel like I felt so much shame and embarrassment of just like existing, that the idea that I was going to put myself out there in any public way felt absolutely insurmountable.
50:43 Sam Fragoso? But not just put yourself out there, but the reason I bring that passage up is because it reads really differently than any of the work that you did at the New York Times or Bon Appétit.
50:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. It reads closer to the books, I think, especially this last one, but. I think when you sort of quote, "lose everything," which I didn't lose everything. You know, I had my book deal still, like I was still on contract to make a third book. It wasn't like truly starting from nothing, but it was like a building that had caught fire. And you're like, I don't know if we're gonna like raise the building or if we're gonna try and salvage what's left.
51:21 Sam Fragoso? So you salvaged what was left?
51:23 Speaker 01 And I just rebuilt it in entirely different style, like for myself. But yeah, when you lose everything, you become less afraid of losing anything. And so I thought, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it for myself. Because also, nothing is a sure thing. Your job could go away tomorrow, the deal could fall through tomorrow. Nothing is sure. No one's gonna work as hard for you as you, no one's gonna have your back like you. This was like a me on a raft in the middle of the ocean, truly alone.
51:50 Sam Fragoso? You said, "Before that moment, I wasn't a human person. I was just seen as the cooking lady."
51:58 Speaker 01 Oof, dark. But well, you know, it's funny. So when I started writing the newsletter, the response was so positive and people were like, wow, I had no idea you could write. And I was like, I've been writing like five to 700 words in the New York Times every other week for two years. But people just Googled a recipe and the writing isn't necessarily accompanied by that.
52:17 Sam Fragoso? People are hungry reading your work.
52:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:19 Sam Fragoso? We're trying to get to the meal.
52:20 Speaker 01 People are trying to put food on the table.
52:21 Sam Fragoso? Myself included.
52:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I started a blog.
52:24 Sam Fragoso? What's it like to be a human being working in a public space?
52:30 Speaker 01 It's tough and it's wonderful and it's hard and sometimes feels impossible. And sometimes I just can't imagine doing it another way. And I think that the greatest compliment that I could receive, that I do often, is that I'm the same person that people think I am by watching my videos, reading my books. It's the same person all the time, for better or for worse. And I think that the closer I get to sort of embracing imperfection, humanity, fallibility, mistakes, growth, ebbs and flows, and the more I can talk about that publicly, the more I feel secure in being myself in public.
53:06 Sam Fragoso? What's unbelievable to me, this thing that you are doing now, the kind of work you're making in home movies. And sweet enough. It's something you knew you wanted to do back when you gave that controversial interview in 2020. Because what people never quote back when they quote that interview are the first couple of sentences, which I'd like to read.
53:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, please.
53:30 Sam Fragoso? You said, "I'd rather stay small and always be myself. I'm interested in expanding myself as a writer. But at the same time, I do need to figure out how to turn this into money because you're making something and then it goes away."
53:45 Speaker 01 I made something and it did go away and then it came back again.
53:48 Sam Fragoso? It's like you knew it. I don't know if you wanted to get there the way
53:52 Speaker 01 No.
53:52 Sam Fragoso? you got there.
53:53 Speaker 01 I didn't. People always say, like, do you regret it? Like, do you wish you could go back in time? And like, I think that there are a lot of personality fortifying things that come along with being publicly humiliated on like a massive scale.
54:06 Sam Fragoso? Like what?
54:07 Speaker 01 Net positive, you're just a kinder individual. At least I feel like I am. I think that if there's a possibility, like if somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey, by the way, like you did this interview with somebody two years ago and you said this thing and it like really hurt me or like it really hurt my brother because he suffers from da, da, da and what you said was actually really insensitive." You're going to be like, oh, my God, I had no idea and I'm so sorry. And you're going to maybe become more aware of that because you're just out here living your life. You're speaking how you speak. You're a good person. You believe in good things. I think that once you know that all these people feel this way about you at once, at one time, the net progress from that is like always just kind of be above and beyond kind and nice and generous.
54:49 Speaker 01 And that is probably the biggest and most obvious shift that can come from being like decimated publicly.
54:57 Sam Fragoso? You took definitely the long way home.
55:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, I could have done that. I mean, not that I wasn't nice before. I think that I'm a nice, I don't know, some people might still think I'm not nice. I don't know. But like, oh, yeah, no, everything I've done has taken the long way. I've been doing this for so long now. Everything has been the long, hard way. But I don't know, I think that makes you more interesting.
55:23 Sam Fragoso? All right, after one last break, the end of my conversation with writer and cook, Alison Roman.
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57:07 Sam Fragoso? Well, we started with pastries and dessert, and I thought we'd end here. To think about that past self and now the present self. You had this quote in the book. "As a member of the pastry department," you're talking about yourself at 19, 20, "we were the least respected and the most dismissed, but still we made everyone bread pudding. Imagine being treated like shit every day, but still showing up with a full hotel pan of warm custardy dessert." Maybe we just wanted to be liked, and everyone knows a great way to be liked is to show up with something delicious. Is this why I got into cooking? Lots to unpack.
57:47 Sam Fragoso? Well.
57:47 Speaker 01 That reads like a diary entry. I can't believe we just published that in the book. They're like, no notes, everything's.
57:52 Sam Fragoso? I think you got paid some good money for it too. Yeah.
57:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:55 Sam Fragoso? Okay, so as we leave, is it why you got into cooking? And, and also now, what's your reason for still doing this work?
58:04 Speaker 01 Hmm. I do think that there is a level of anybody who cooks professionally, be it cookbook author in a restaurant, a caterer, any sort of form of hospitality. There's a desire to care for people. There's a desire to people please. There is a desire to nurture. And if that is because you didn't have nurturement or care growing up, or if that's just because you had an abundance of it and you enjoy it, there's a lot of ways to get there. It's not always rooted in trauma. But I do think that that is like a common thread for people that do that because it's such hard work. And it's like a very ephemeral, you know, especially in restaurants where you just like feed people and then you go home.
58:45 Speaker 01 That's also part of why I still, why I pivoted, I think, to books and writing because it felt more lasting. It felt more meaningful. I'm passing off knowledge like now you're doing it at home. Like it becomes part of your life. It has like a longer lifespan. It's always nice to know that you can like fill your home if you're like, I'm making dinner. It's a small gesture to be like, oh, I brought you cookies or something like, oh, like who's going to be mad at that? That's just like a simple, nice, sweet thing. Or to invite someone into your home feels very intimate. It's like a fast track to intimacy in a way that like nothing really else is. It's so important, I think, in like the fiber of every single culture in the world. It feels like the through line and people's memories and their families and traditions. Like almost everything's rooted in food and it's still my favorite thing in the world.
59:28 Speaker 01 I've never found anything that makes me happier.
59:32 Sam Fragoso? You know, you're describing why you do what you do. And I guess my last question for you. When you're not moving, when you're not cooking, when you're not prepping, when you're not shopping and you're left with you now in this moment on the heels of all that happened, how do you feel about yourself?
59:54 Speaker 01 I feel really proud. I don't feel sorry for myself. I never did. I made my bed. I laid in it. But like, I felt like, fuck, I have to get out of this. And then I did. Like, I kind of felt proud before, but I maybe felt more entitled to my success because I had like been working at it for so long. And now I just feel like proud and grateful and excited. I feel free. I feel like I can kind of do anything that I want. I'm excited to like do things that I don't know how to do yet. I'm excited to like, challenge myself. And what I love about this book tour and my media and press that I've done so far,
1:00:35 Speaker 01 especially this podcast, for the first time in my whole life, my whole career, I'm able to talk about like, why I love cooking, or why I got into it, or the like, really deep rooted emotional and intellectual parts of like, what make this a career. And it is so much more gratifying to me than like, what makes a recipe go viral? I'm like, I don't know, and I don't really care. But like, this I care about. The connective tissue of being a human person and caring about something passionately, making it your career pursuit, and like, spending the rest of your life trying to get better at it. I like, I hope this is the best cookbook I ever make until the next cookbook. And I hope each book is better than the next. And I hope that a person who can read all of them looks at them and says, wow, what an evolution. I think that books are time capsules, and
1:01:19 Speaker 01 I feel lucky to be able to write them, because it really is like charting the evolution and growth of a person if you put your enough of yourself into it.
1:01:28 Sam Fragoso? This book really is like uncharted territory.
1:01:31 Speaker 01 I feel like it is. I didn't expect that. But it makes a lot of sense, because it was my first job here. It's been like wildly emotional talking about, because I'm like thinking about that 19 year old person and how much I believed in this and had no idea that this is where I'd end up, ever. It was not the plan, but I didn't have one. And sometimes when you enter a situation and you're like, I'm so jazzed by this, like, I'm so satisfied and stimulated and excited, I have no idea where this is going to take me. Like, how freeing is that? And that's kind of how I feel right now, today. I'm just like, I have no idea what's going to happen in the next year or two. But I feel like it's going to be really good, because I feel really happy and proud of the work that I'm making.
1:02:12 Sam Fragoso? Well, and it's in that work that I too charted some uncharted territory. With that raspberry ricotta cake.
1:02:20 Speaker 01 And baby's first whisk.
1:02:22 Sam Fragoso? First, it was not my first whisk.
1:02:25 Speaker 01 It's your first whisk with a capital W.
1:02:27 Sam Fragoso? It was the first with a capital W.
1:02:30 Speaker 01 Okay, so how was the cake?
1:02:31 Sam Fragoso? Really good.
1:02:34 Speaker 01 Were you surprised that it was really good?
1:02:37 Sam Fragoso? I was shocked because I did it. I was unsurprised because I was following your recipe.
1:02:43 Speaker 01 Oh, thank you. That's very sweet. Why did you pick that recipe? Out of curiosity.
1:02:48 Sam Fragoso? It just looked appealing and it looked simple.
1:02:50 Speaker 01 Yeah. It makes sense. If you were to say, what's the first one I should start with? That would be like one of the two or three recipes I'd recommend for sure.
1:02:58 Sam Fragoso? You know, much like the inflection points we've been talking about. I chose the ricotta cake because it just seemed right. I was following some instinct.
1:03:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, instinct is really underplayed, I think, when we talk about career.
1:03:13 Sam Fragoso? It seems to be your through line.
1:03:15 Speaker 01 It is, yeah.
1:03:16 Sam Fragoso? How did you think my cake was gonna turn out?
1:03:19 Speaker 01 I don't think you would have brought it up if it was a failure.
1:03:22 Sam Fragoso? Because of my personality type?
1:03:23 Speaker 01 Because you're not trying to set me up for failure. You're considerate, I think. You're a very caring individual. I think you care a lot about people. But I also think that I know that cake recipe really well. And I know that it works. So barring any sort of like, you know, and my oven turned off in the middle of it. Or I used, I added four eggs instead of two, like, you know, I, I thought I was ready for like a twist.
1:03:46 Sam Fragoso? No.
1:03:47 Speaker 01 Or praise.
1:03:48 Sam Fragoso? It's fantastic.
1:03:49 Speaker 01 Okay. I'm so, so glad to hear that.
1:03:51 Sam Fragoso? Last thing, you said, I can't wait for these next two years. If we were to like, listen back on this, what do you hope for?
1:03:59 Speaker 01 What do I hope for? I hope to have another book to talk about. I hope to have my family get started. I'm like looking to, I'm looking to start a family.
1:04:10 Sam Fragoso? Is that why you came on the show?
1:04:13 Speaker 01 What are you doing in the next, you know?
1:04:14 Sam Fragoso? It's an advertisement?
1:04:15 Speaker 01 We're having a family. No, no, no. I have, the position has been filled.
1:04:21 Speaker 01 This book feels very chapter ending and also chapter beginning at the same time. And so I feel like in two years, I hope to be continually surprised in a good way. I hope to do new types of work. I hope to continue to be. Lucky enough to like make a living off of effectively just being myself and teaching people how to cook.
1:04:44 Sam Fragoso? Well, I so look forward to that next chapter and I thank you for going through all the previous ones with me.
1:04:52 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
1:04:53 Sam Fragoso? On this show.
1:04:54 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:04:55 Sam Fragoso? Alison Roman, a pleasure.
1:04:56 Speaker 01 Oh, thank you.
1:05:26 Sam Fragoso? And that's our show. If you enjoyed that conversation with Alison Roman, be sure to share the program on social media. You can tag us at Talk Easy Pod. If you'd like to check out Alison's latest cookbook, Something from Nothing, you can do so wherever you do your reading. To learn more about her and her work, visit our show notes at Talk Easy Pod dot com. For more conversations with writers and cooks, I'd recommend our talks with Samin Nosrat and Padma Lakshmi. To hear those and more Lemonada podcasts, listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. You can also subscribe to Lemonada Premium for exclusive bonus content and ad-free listening. Just hit the subscribe button
1:06:08 Sam Fragoso? on Apple or head to lemonadapremium.com. Talk Easy is produced by Carol Ann Reebok. Our executive producer is Janik Sabra. Today's talk was edited by Clarice Guevara, Caitlin Dryden, and Finn Nowlin. It was mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Shandaway. Photographs today come from Julius Chu. This episode was made in partnership with Pushkin Industries and Lemonada Media. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here on Sunday with a brand new episode featuring writer-director Noah Baumbach. Until then, stay safe and solo.
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1:08:20 Speaker 03 I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.
1:08:28 Speaker 04 We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.
1:08:32 Speaker 03 I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?
1:08:34 Speaker 04 There were 32,000 pounds of them.
1:08:37 Speaker 03 32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.
1:08:41 Speaker 04 That's it.
1:08:43 Speaker 03 Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.
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