271: C Pam Zhang

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. And then there was just this moment when the food actually came to the table, and everything just changed. The tenor of the conversation paused, and when we started eating, I could just see both of us fall out of our anxious brains, back into our bodies.

0:52This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbinell.

0:59C. Pim Zhang is the author of the acclaimed novel How Much of These Hills is Gold. Her new book, Land of Milk and Honey, is set in a near future where smog has choked out almost all agriculture, and a chef is lured to cook at a reclusive mountain institute for the global elite with the promise of produce. It's a gripping book about power, politics, and mostly a love letter to food, and I'm thrilled to have her on the show to discuss.

1:32See, Pam Zhang, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. So how are you doing today? I'm doing good. Smelling intensely of garlic, so a little self-conscious about that. But other than that, I've had a great start to the day. I feel like if anything, you're just dressing for the occasion, smelling of garlic as we're about to talk about a food book. Yes, thank you. What's the source of the garlic? I just microplaned a clove of garlic onto two fried eggs, which has become my go-to breakfast this summer. I don't know why. Interesting. So it's raw garlic that's going on top?

2:02Yeah, but you know how when you microplane it, it cooks in a second? So it's just, yeah, it's somewhere halfway between raw and cooked. I'm into that. Something that I'm sometimes scared to mention is that I'm not an egg eater. So that's not something that I'm personally going to try, but maybe on top of something else I would do that. Yeah, I know that the microplaner is often considered an overrated food. instrument, but I still love it. No, I think it's rated appropriately. It just comes in handy so well. Yeah, I agree. And I'm really happy to have you on because I have been like so obsessed with your book, Land of Milk and Honey, and it hasn't been out at the time of recording.

2:36So there's been basically no one that I can talk to about it except for Shalia, our producer. So I was so excited to talk about the book. And to start, I'm just curious if you could tell me a little bit about how the idea came to you. Have you always been interested in writing about food? No, I I actually grew up as a very picky eater and quite squeamish. It was a product of growing up in a very impoverished Chinese-American family where we just didn't eat meals out in restaurants. So, you know, my food borders were quite constrained. And I was just, for some reason, a kid who was icked out by, like, fat on meat.

3:12And it was really this period in my late teens, I think, after I'd gotten to college and there were sort of these months that I didn't have anything to do. And I started, for some reason, reading food blogs. a lot of them based in New York, actually. And it was actually through the food writing, these sort of narratives about food and sort of what kinds of worlds opened up for these people, some of them with similar backgrounds as me, that got me into the idea of eating more than the act of eating itself. I love that. I feel like as someone that works in food myself, I definitely had Jonathan Gold, for an example, as like a food writer that I read growing up that turned beyond to the possibilities.

3:49Are there any writers or blogs that you want to shout out as being informative for you in that era? Yeah, there is this wonderful blog called, I think, The Girl Who Ate Everything. I don't even know who the actual writer is because it was really this like, you know, early 2000s era of blogging, very pure, like no sort of sponsored ads, no sort of self-promoting. And I just loved her because she sort of ate, you know, the Chinese food that I was accustomed to and incredibly exquisite, like Michelin level, like Nordic food in Europe with like equal aplomb and without any self-consciousness. I love that.

4:29And that also is what drew me to Jonathan Gold's writing is specifically the way that he would champion like immigrant run strip mall restaurants in Los Angeles, but in the LA Times, like, and also maybe the next week he would be reviewing like a very fine dining restaurant. And I feel like that approach kind of comes across in this book as well in terms of the variety of food that you're talking about. So to me, that's an interesting through line. Yeah. So your first book was not really a food book in the same way. You liked eating food. You liked reading about food. What made you decide to want to write about food at such length?

5:00Yeah, this book was interestingly a product of the pandemic, though it's not exactly what I would call a pandemic book. It came out of my experiences living through this really bleak time in which I felt deeply disconnected from my body. You remember sort of early 2021, it was a time of so much chaos, important chaos in the world. You know, George Floyd's murders and political upheaval and COVID. And I was spending a lot of my time trying to do my best to help with these causes. And I became quite impatient, I suppose, with the fact of having a body. I actually felt a lot of shame for having a body that, despite having food and shelter and my health, still wanted frivolous things like going out for a drink with a friend or eating a nice meal or traveling.

5:50and so there was this really transformative moment in that year when soon after we got vaccinated I went out for my first meal out and I was meeting this old friend of mine who was a doctor in Seattle at the time so you can only imagine what he had seen in those years and you know we sat down at this Filipino restaurant called Musang and the first part of the conversation was about how difficult things had been, what he was seeing on the floor at the hospital, all those things. And then there was just this moment when the food actually came to the table and everything just changed. The tenor of the conversation paused.

6:29And when we started eating, I could just see both of us fall out of our anxious brains, back into our bodies. And it was just like, oh, this is what it's for. This is what all the work, like the important work that we're doing is for. It's to be able to see the people you care about experience joy. It's to be able to share at this table. It's to be able to experience this gift of food prepared for you by somebody else that thinks to put things like peanut butter and shrimp paste together in a sauce and like opens the world a little bit for you and reminds you that there's more than illness and grief.

7:10I love that. And I think that's an experience that I relate to. I'm sure a lot of people listening to this remember their first meal or to me, I think it's the first dance floor that I was able to go back onto of that similar moment of being in your body and of having pleasure that makes you feel connected to other people. And this book really is like to me, a book about pleasure more than anything else. I'm curious, this meal that was so transformative for you, do you remember specific dishes or is it more just the overall experience? This cara cara braised short rib, I've had it so many times since and I think about it all the time.

7:42Does it hit in the same way? Absolutely. I'm glad. I was worried you were going to say I could never measure up, but I think that's a sign of a great restaurant. Every time I go to Thai Diner and I get their cow soy, I think this would be my last meal on earth. And I said that to a stranger sitting next to me last time and then they didn't order it and I was offended, honestly. They were probably scared of hurting you in case they didn't. Like, You know how sometimes when a waiter gives a really, really enthusiastic recommendation, I'm scared to order it because I'm like, what if I don't love it and I hurt you and your soul?

8:11Yeah, that is a very empathetic approach. I'll say that to myself. Something that really struck me reading this book is just the way you write about food. I think your food writing is so good. It's kind of like reading Gabrielle Hamilton, where I feel jealous that I have not written that in that way. And I wanted to just read a quote from the beginning of the book and talk about the idea behind it with you, if you don't mind me reading it. Go ahead. Would you rather read it? No, I'm actually delighted to hear it in somebody else's voice for once. Okay, no pressure. Chef had lost its meaning. Like lucky.

8:44Like fresh. Like soon. No saffron. No buffalo meat. No polished short grain rice. Dishes winked out from menus like extinguished stars as conservative nativist attitudes seized the few restaurants that remained open thanks to government subsidies. As they shut borders to refugees, so countries shut their palates to all but those cuisines deemed essential. In England, the shrinking supply of frozen fish was reserved for kippers, or gray renditions of cod and chips. And of course, a few atrociously expensive French preparations with which a diner might buy, along with sour wine, the illusion that she still lived in luxury.

9:21Back to stodgy safety, back to national dishes unchanged for hundreds of years. The loss of pesto should have come as no surprise in a world with no favas, no milkfish, no curry lane in London or Thai town in L.A., no fusion, no specials of the day, no truffles turned out like sheepish lovers from under the blankets of sod. We were lucky, those around me said. We survived. So I read that and it felt like too true, like that that could actually be a possibility. And I was curious about how you developed this idea of nativism returning to menus in an era where produce and food in general is just not accessible to people.

10:00Yeah, it was perhaps my reaction to this modern idea that I think is sometimes dispensed of food as soft power or that culinary diplomacy as possible, right? Kind of this fantasy that if we can set a beautiful multicultural table, we can create a beautiful multicultural society that sits around and like shares their troubles and all is good, right? I find this image sort of as disingenuous and facile as somebody saying, like, I can't be racist because I have black friends. For example, if you look at the ubiquity of Chinese American food in even the smallest towns in America, that did not save the Chinese American population from anti-Asian hate during the pandemic, right?

10:48I think that, unfortunately, in these moments of crisis, it does sometimes cause the surge in nationalism, the surge in, again, the question of what is essential. And oftentimes things like diversity are considered non-essential goods, right? Right. So I was interested in kind of turning over the stone of this idea of multiculturalism and thinking, well, if disaster did come and the culinary world were to show its true colors, what if this illusion of our fuzzy multicultural table was one of the first ones to be shattered? Yeah, I think that it resonates because it is possible to imagine that.

11:26And what you're saying reminds me of a phrase that I saw. I don't know who originated this, but I definitely saw a lot of people that are like Asian American in the food world saying, we wish you loved us as much as you love our food when there was a big wave of anti-Asian hate. And I think it's interesting because on one level I can imagine, you know, white America revolting at the idea of there not being any more like spicy tuna rolls, you know, or something that is like a non like white American food because these foods are so widely embraced. And also because America doesn't have the same kind of longstanding food tradition as France, for example.

12:01But then at the same time, you think about the way that nativism approaches in other parts of culture, especially in a disaster situation like this. Maybe it isn't so far afield. I mean, think about Freedom Fries, right? Yeah. I mean, for anyone that doesn't know about this, like the renaming of French fries to be Freedom Fries, it's one step beyond that. It's a little more extreme. Right. But then you read it and you can picture that happening. And specifically when you talk about Los Angeles, L.A. plays such a big role in this book. And I grew up in L.A., so that resonates with me. Have you spent time in that city?

12:33It seems like you must have. Only really as a tourist. I feel like it's a city I don't know really well because I don't drive. So as a walker or someone dependent on either Uber or public transportation, I don't think you can understand the soul of the city. Right. Not like New York where you can walk everywhere. But you must have had some good food meals in L.A. to choose to focus on it in this kind of way. Yeah. I mean, I think L.A. is just like this fascinating place because it is this site of American culture. It's, you know, the center of Hollywood. It's this like lavishness and this glitz and glamour.

13:10But also right outside L.A. is this like an agricultural basket, right, where there are migrant laborers and the climate is so vastly different. Actually, the climate isn't that different because the climate is often awful in L.A. It's just that we have these like shiny air conditioned places to hide. Right. And I'm really interested in that contrast. I think it makes a lot of sense. And also, if you spend time in L.A., especially if you're driving in and out of it, you're kind of aware of climate politics and how they relate to food in a different way. I think it's pretty common to see signs at maybe like almond farms that say they're against like water regulations and the way that like certain foods have already been politicized in this current climate, like literal climate in terms of climate change.

13:55I think that's kind of on display in California in a way that maybe isn't in other parts of the country that aren't growing so much food and also aren't affected by drought in a similar way. Yeah, no, that's a great point. I have spent a lot of time in a car driving between San Francisco and L.A. and have definitely seen those signs. So maybe they were there in the back of my head as well. Right. And you weren't the one doing the driving, so you had time to linger on them a little more. So really, this is all kind of talking about food as a mechanism of power, which I think is maybe you talk about a little bit in this, not you, but one would talk about today in terms of truffles or these kind of expensive, hard to find foods.

14:30But in this situation, it's really almost all food that becomes expensive or hard to find. I'm curious, like in this scenario, like what are the foods that you would find yourself missing the most? Oh, that's easy to answer because I already miss them living in New York now. It's just really good, fresh produce. Like there are a couple months of the year and right now, you know, it's August. So we're sort of still in that sweet spot where we can get really great local produce on the East Coast. But during the winters here, I miss produce so much. There is just nothing like West Coast produce. Is there a specific item that if you could have it in endless good supply, you would want?

15:09I think cherries. I think cherries are like that girl of all the summer fruits. They are such the perfect size to snack on. And they're just so audaciously good when they're good. And they're like really sexy. There's something about the fact that they stain everything that they touch. Yeah. And also if you are like pitting them yourself, you're just kind of ripping into them and the juice is dripping. I've never used a cherry pitter. No, I don't think that's your MO. I feel like it's so much more like sensual based on what I've read in this book to be ripping into them instead. Yeah. So I want to get your thoughts on another thing that happens in the book.

15:42And I've been trying to avoid spoilers, so I don't think this is a big one. But there's a moment when this protagonist is faced with a test when she arrives at the research institute. That's going to be her new job. And you write that it's not a perfect French omelet, which she expects. Instead, it's flour, vanilla, eggs. And then something that you describe is as warm as skin, as yielding as a woman's inner thigh, strawberries, which I love that description. And I'm curious, like what made you decide on that being the test? Well, as a Top Chef super fan, I think I can safely say that pastry challenges are often the most difficult one for chefs who aren't trained specifically in that area of expertise.

16:24I think that for someone who's not an expert in pastry, it's really hard to be creative and to innovate in that space, which maybe speaks a little bit to the situation that the chef finds herself in at this research community. I like that answer. And I also feel like being able to spotlight produce instead of like just eggs and butter, that would be in an omelet feels like a really special choice because produce is something that people have so much of an attachment to that is fleeting. It's not around for as much time. Maybe it would have been gone sooner than eggs. Yeah. Something else that I like about the book is that it's about the end of the world, but it has so much pleasure and life and beauty in it, even that strawberry description.

17:06How much did you think about wanting to have that duality? And how did you kind of focus on having both of those in one book? I think that every book that I write changes me to some degree. I never know exactly what I'm writing about when I begin. And the course of working on this novel made me realize that we really need to take pleasure seriously if we intend to survive, right? Right. Thinking back to sort of the watershed that was the pandemic where we were focused on what is essential. I think we all realize that, though, things like food, water, health are essential to live on a day to day, week by week, year to year basis in order to survive the entire scope of a life.

17:48You need other things. You need beauty. You need art. You need pleasure. Right. It's sort of what is the point of living with only the essentials? And as someone who suffers from depression, it's not a rhetorical question, right? It is really a crucial beating question. And so it became really important for me in this book to take pleasure very seriously and to hold it as sacred, perhaps. I like that idea. Do you feel like there are any moments in the book that that kind of especially rings true for you? Yeah. A little bit after that moment that you mentioned where the chef is working with strawberries and she puts one in her mouth for the first time after several years of not having any fruit.

18:36And it's just this sensual explosion where it is about the taste of that fruit, but it's also about this sort of collapse of time and memory and all the people that she's loved and eaten strawberries with all the experiences that she's had. It's like a whole world in a bite. And I think that kind of says everything that I want to say about the importance and the possibility of pleasure. I like that moment a lot too. I think as someone who is dramatic every summer when I have like my first tomato of the year, thinking about it being years before I have the first good tomato, it's a very like sombering realization.

19:15I feel like I had to shut the book for a little bit after that and then like go eat a stone fruit or something as soon as I could. Do you like dry farm tomatoes? I don't know if I know what that is, like greenhouse tomatoes. Now you're making me realize I don't know the exact definition, but you can get them sometimes in California in the farmer's markets at certain times of year. But it's a tomato that I think is grown with less water. So I think it makes it the flavor more concentrated because there's less juice in the tomato itself. It's like smaller, but like packed with flavor. Whoa. I've never had those before, but it reminds me of the TriStar strawberries that you can get on the East Coast that are maybe like half the size of the California strawberries I grew up with, but they're so sweet because that flavor is just concentrated and they're less watery.

20:02It's very special. Yeah, absolutely. I have a friend in California who every time it's dry farm tomato season, she will literally go out and buy like five or 10 pounds of it. Okay. I'm going to California soon. I'm going to have to see if it's still happening. And if I will, I'll report back to you. Yeah, I wish you all the best. So I'm curious, like after writing so much about food, what do you think is the secret to good food writing? Eroticism and constraint. I think when I set out to write a good food scene, I'm not trying to be exhaustive in my descriptions, which was, I think, my initial impulse.

20:33I'm trying to be evocative, right? The goal is actually not to describe perfectly a precise meal that a character has had. It's to put enough on the page that the reader is then thinking of all the great meals they've had that are similar of a meal they want to eat that's like that is like that meal. Right. It's putting this like wanting in their mouths. Yeah, I get that as a reader. I was very hungry reading this book. Great. And you've mentioned that you're a Top Chef super fan. How did you get the knowledge to be writing these like fine dining scenes, especially these very like chefy kitchen scenes?

21:08Yeah, so I've watched every single of Top Chef, many of them more than once. Wow. What's the appeal for you? You know, it's so funny. I think I got turned on to them when I was first in college. And so this was soon after my whole like reading food blogs. And I kind of just like wanted more of that stuff. And I still couldn't afford to eat nice meals out. So I would like rush home to my dorm after like a hard day in the trenches of academia and like eat my terrible like dining hall takeout food while watching Top Chef. And it just made the food I was eating taste better to imagine that possibility.

21:44So a lot of Top Chef was watched. I also read quite a few chef memoirs, including Gabrielle Hamilton's, which I really, really adore and is in the acknowledgments of this book. I love MFK Fisher. I think she is like one of the great American food writers. And I have had quite a few fine dining experiences myself. My first job out of college was working as a copywriter in San Francisco Tech during sort of the golden bubble of the tech boom. And so it was the kind of atmosphere where for a team dinner, we would go out to Atelier Crenn. Wow. Yeah, I know. And I was incredibly lucky to have these experiences.

22:28and at the same time it was sort of eye-opening because sometimes you would go out to like Atelier Crenn or Banu and you would see at the next table these like tech bros in their in their hoodies and in their sandals and not that you can't wear those to a fine dining establishment but what I'm trying to say is you could see that they just didn't actually care about the food at all to them it was just another sort of status symbol and so that got the wheels turning as well. I find that very interesting. What about like wearing sandals and a hoodie meant that they didn't care about the food? It was that, for example, there would be certain establishments where that was not the dress code, right?

23:08So they would have made the waitstaff uncomfortable because they have to come in and say something. They have to kind of like offer these people appropriate attire and they have to do that like awkward dance of power where it's like you are the paying customer. You have the power. I have to tell you you're not abiding by the rules, but how do I do it in a way that doesn't piss you off, right? It was this like carelessness of the attitude. And you could just see it in everything from the clothing to the way they like didn't finish their food or didn't listen to sort of like the full description of what was being placed on the table.

23:40Yeah, I think that makes sense. And it's kind of something that I see reflected in this book in the way that this chef is, she's in a very unusual position in terms of how she's serving these guests and the way that she views them or like watches them eat. Like you are very aware of this dynamic between not only someone that's serving this beautiful, beautifully made food, but also it's with ingredients that are the only of its kind on earth maybe, or maybe that even haven't even been on earth before. And so all of those dynamics are even more heightened in terms to like, do these people appreciate it?

24:11Do they deserve it in the first place? Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I just want to say that I'm not one for being fussy about fine dining. I actually like my favorite like Michelin starred restaurants are the ones where I've like licked the plate and I can see the waitstaff like grinning in the back. So it's truly not about like the dress code. It's just everything that it symbolizes sometimes. Right. Did you talk to any like chefs or cooks as well? I feel like the way you write about chefs liking to smoke cigarettes to me, that felt like a very insider observation. I had a couple of chef friends who looked over the manuscript for me after it was done, But in the creation phase of any book, I tried to keep it sort of private.