274: Susan Spungen

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. You know, people always ask me, what's it like to work for Martha when she's such a perfectionist? And I say, well, we were all perfectionists. And we all had that drive within us. And that's why we were there.

0:48This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbarg.

0:59Susan Spungin is an author, food stylist, and real food media legend. She was the founding editor at Martha Stewart and has worked in television and film, including once teaching Meryl Streep how to flip an omelet. On this episode, we hear about 1980s New York and her job interview with Martha Stewart. We also talk about her great new book, Veg Forward, and why tomatoes will always be our favorite vegetable. Or is it a fruit? I hope you enjoy this conversation with Susan Spungin.

1:35Susan Spungin, welcome to This Is Taste. Thanks for having me. So cool to see you. And I feel like I met you at a Lane Ducas restaurant 15 years ago, but maybe not. I don't think so. I would remember. I'm good with faces. I appreciate it. And I knew you because I knew who you were and you are a charismatic person. And honestly, you've been an absolute leader in food editorial. And your name alone says something about food styling, says something about our direction. You know how to bring these things together. You're bold. You're polished. Those are two words I think are specific. What else are you?

2:12What else am I? Oh, gosh. Now you really are putting me on the spot. What else am I? It's always it's always so hard for me to have perspective on myself because, you know, it's such a wide ranging industry. And sometimes I don't know exactly where I fit in. But what else am I? I definitely am honest. That's one thing people always say. They're always like, wow, you really tell it like it is. And I'm not even like thinking I'm doing that. But I do. I speak my mind. Well, I mean, it's important when you're on set and we'll get into what a food stylist is a little bit and what you've done, which is not all your job, but you've become known, you've worked in television and film as a food stylist.

2:51Yeah. But let me ask you, when you were the first food editor with Martha Stewart, let's go back to that. I'd love to hear about the job interview. Yeah, that's actually a good question because that was kind of a unique experience, you know, compared to the way things go now. Things weren't vetted by, you know, dozens of people. I well I had worked in the actual food industry as a chef hater for like 10 to 12 years working my way up from making sandwiches to being the chef of a what do you call prepared food place. You know I had a lot of different jobs always avoiding the line because I especially at that time I just didn't think that was a good place for me or women in general which it wasn't at that time which was quite a long time.

3:43I cannot imagine. Where were these places? What kind of spots were you in? Well, I worked at a place called Fratelli Congiano, which is what is the restaurant Jane now on Houston Street. And it was kind of like right in between Dina De Luca and Balducci's. And it was kind of right in between Dina De Luca and Balducci's. It was a beautiful, big, shiny store. And I somehow kind of, I wouldn't say talked my way into that job because I did cook my way into it. I had to do a tryout. But, you know, in those days you looked up jobs in the New York Times classified. These are the 90s we're talking about, right?

4:1280s. Wow, you look great. I mean, honestly, I don't know your age and I didn't ask you, but I'm thinking 90s, but this is 80s on Houston Street. Late 80s. Late 80s on Houston. Yeah. And I would, you know, scour the classifieds looking for something that didn't sound like something I couldn't do. I literally was always looking for something that looked a little bit unique. And I came across this job that was a chef for this prepared food store. And I had already done a ton of catering and little things here and there and managed food restaurant on Prince Street. You managed the restaurant food?

4:48I did. I did. I was one of the managers, which meant I paid everyone in cash at the end of the night and fired people if necessary. So I wasn't like, yeah. That is the legendary restaurant. It is. Tell our listeners about food because food is a restaurant that is in the annals of history. It's true. Written about in United States of Arugula by David Camp and many others. True. Well, I worked there in the post-co-op era. era. It had was started by the artist Gordon Matt Clark. And it was literally like there was nowhere to eat in Soho. So imagine that. And all of the artists need like a canteen.

5:19So they all got together and just started cooking, which was an art form in and of itself. And and then later they sold it and someone bought it and tried to make it into a commercial enterprise, which it was for a while. And that's when I worked there. It was my very first job in New York. I was trying to get a waitress job, but I really wasn't like the actress waitress type, which is what they hired back then. And cause I just thought that would make more money. That's all I cared about was making money at that point. And, um, and I walked in there all dejected and got a bowl of soup and, uh, and there was a sign in the window saying help.

5:56Do you remember the type of soup? I don't remember the soup, which is unusual because I remember a lot of the people I ladled soup for over the years. Like Warhol? Actually not Warhol, but probably Basquiat, although I don't think I even knew who he was then, but definitely Meryl Streep, Tom Brokaw, lots of other people and people I recognized from the cafe I had been working at in Aspen. I know, I'm really like complicating things. No, it's your history is cool. It was weird. It was like the same crossroads. Like I had the same customers at this cafe I worked in Aspen. Well, it was a very unconnected culture.

6:31I mean, we weren't online at all, so it was like you had to remember faces and names. And Gordon Mata-Clark, I mean, there was a retrospective, I think, at PS1 about his work and what food represented. Did you have interaction with Gordon? Oh, no, no. I think he had died before I even worked there. And I don't really think I, even though I had been an art student, which is what was my original goal, I didn't really know who he was until later. and um but you know it still had that it still had this very community vibe and it was all artists dancers writers yeah who worked there so it's really a fun place to work it must have been great and then so let's fast forward to this Martha question because I love the the history of Susan your professional career but you're sitting across the table from Martha Stewart not a table we were sitting in her yard actually oh I was still catering in Bedford was she no no Oh, no, no, no, in the Hamptons.

7:25She lived in Westport then, but she had just bought a house in East Hampton. I was out there catering for the summer with a small catering company, and I had, like, employee housing. So I was like, I'm not kidding. And I would stay out there during the week so I could, like, you know, use the van to go out to restaurants and go to the beach. I was like, oh, great, free summer in the Hamptons, and I just get to work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which I did. And I had met Susan Magrino, her still publicist, a year before. She used to work at Potter right here. Well, Crown back then. And I had met her socially a year before.

8:04I gave her my phone number. She gave me her card, which I still have somewhere. And a year later, she just called me up and said, Martha is starting a magazine. Do you want to meet her? That's what I remember her saying. And I was like, well, yeah, sure. So we set up a time. She said, well, here's Martha's number. Call her. And I was like, I was really nervous. And this is early 2000s, right? No, this was 1989. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm like a decade off. I'm sorry. No, no, no. That's okay. We're still in the 80s here. Okay, wow. Or maybe 90. Okay. Because what happened was we met. She kind of just like was checking me out.

8:48And then she said, well, we're doing a shoot here next week. come by and I come with my knives and my apron and I ended up ironing a duvet cover all day long it was a little shoot like in her daughter Alexis's cottage which they had just built and it was nothing about food at all and I think she that's how she was she was just like just come by no it's the best I mean and she's throwing you into it had you been on a set had you been at photo shoots Only one time when one of the caterers I worked for, we were doing this thing with the store Henry Bendel, which never doesn't exist anymore. But I had created all these crazy things like, well, I'm really jumping around, but Bendel brownies.

9:29So they were like brown and white striped brownies. So I did like a shoot with a photographer. So you had a little bit of food styling. Not much. But you're thrown into the world of Martha Stewart in the late 80s, really rising to power at that point, Martha Stewart. Oh, yeah. I mean, not even. And so I did that shoot. And then she said, well, come to in a few weeks, we're going to do a cookie shoot. Or, you know, I don't know, it was a month later, two months later, we're going to do cookies. And I thought, oh, OK, that's something I can do. Yeah. And they're like, just you come send me the recipes.

9:59I'm like, OK. Oh, my gosh. I just agreed to everything. Her to her sister, her late sister, Laura, was helping her. And she was like, can you just like send me 10 recipes? And I was like, there was no kitchen. These were the test issues. So this was like the test issues and trying to figure out what Martha Stewart Living, the magazine, looked like. And Susan, you would rise to become the first food editor there, but they're like testing you out. Give us 10 cookie recipes. Well, something like that. And then I had to fax them. And I had to go to a police and pay to fax them. And I was like, you'll reimburse me for the faxes, right?

10:31And they're like, um, no. At least they were frank. At least you asked the question. I mean, it's a great story that you're thrown into the mix. And it really is how a lot of jobs happen. I mean, to this day. Yeah, but it still didn't happen yet. So then I went to, a job did not materialize. I was hoping a job would materialize somehow, but I just was going with the flow. And like I said, my interview with Martha was in her yard in East Hampton where she had just built a house. And it was just like a meet and greet, really. And then I went, so when nothing materialized, a job came up at Coco Pazzo, which was a big restaurant opening at the time.

11:11Pino Longo, who was a huge restauranter at the time. Well, Mark Straussman actually was the chef, and he hired me as the pastry chef. Someone recommended him to me, someone I knew who was selling bread for Eli Zabar. And, you know, that's how things were done then. Definitely. Like the vendors were really big at like connecting chefs and restaurants. And, you know, there were a lot of like the guy from DeBrog and Spittler is famous for connecting chefs with their jobs. Still a bit today, I would say. I mean, we can drop into DMs and get people's info now. It's much easier. But definitely it still is feels like a bit of a cottage industry.

11:50The food media world trying to get people setting up. Still like on the freelance tip. Right. Yeah. This person, that person. But connections are still really important. Yeah. Always. Anyways, so they offered me this job, and I thought, well, it seems like a really cool restaurant. So I took it, and we pretty quickly got three stars. Brian Miller, who was the reviewer of New York Times, was on vacation or on leave. So it was Marion Burroughs, and she loved the restaurant and gave it three stars, which was like Brian Miller never gave Italian restaurant three stars. And Dessert's got a really special— And you got a name check in the Times?

12:29Oh, yeah. Oh, good. I think she said at Cocoa Pazzo, desserts are important. Oh, that's good. And I was like, you can still look up the review, but it was something like that. And I was just like, I was kind of on cloud nine because I was like, wow, the New York Times, that was so cool. Totally. But I only lasted nine months because after that, after the review, I said, well, I want to go to five days a week from six for the summer, okay? And they were like, no. And I was like, well, then I quit. because I just, I was like, I'm not going to work six days a week. I had already taken a share in a house and I was like, how am I going to do that with one day off?

13:09So, and around the same time, I mean, I'm kind of conflating things. Things were moving with the Martha job. People were calling me. I had already met everyone. Martha would come in for dessert, for dinner at Cocoa Pazzo. I'd bring her a nice warm apple tart and go out to her table wearing my chef's coat, right? This is stuff people don't know about me, maybe, that I actually wore whites, right? No, I mean, you have a real professional background, and I want to continue talking about the job. But, like, what is Martha really like? What is working with her really like? So many people ask me, what is she really like?

13:44No, for real. I think Martha is exactly what you think. Wow, Susan, way to throw it back at me. Okay. She is a little bit of everything, you know what I mean? Yeah. Sometimes she's so nice and wonderful and sometimes she was challenging to work with for sure. But I learned so much from being there. It was obviously a hugely important time in my life. The seminal job that I had, you know, somebody who is just working their way up like cooking like anybody else. I had a really fantastic opportunity to have like make a career. Oh, my gosh. I mean, you go from working and making an hourly to like actually having a media executive job.

14:27And at a time when media actually paid some bills. Oh, yeah. And then we went public, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, hey, you got some equity? Maybe. OK, great. Good for you. But I was a founder. That's what I was called. Of course. And we're joking, but like, of course you deserve equity because you were the founding food editor of the magazine. And, you know, and that is super, super. I mean, look, a lot of people are, you know, making big bucks now through influencing and bestselling books and stuff like that. But, you know, I had some nice opportunities early on and things that I never thought I would, you know, get beyond punching a clock.

15:06And I did. So let's fast forward. How long were you at the magazine? And just like give us a sense. You know, this is early 90s we're talking about. And like this is definitely, are you pasting up still? Are you, I mean, you're using computers, you're using Apple. Well, yeah, we were using computers, but I don't even think we had email. Wait, I'm trying to, we had like inner office email. Right. But I don't, I had a Rolodex. Right. I don't think we, I mean, I remember when Gail Towie, our creative director, said that we were starting a website, which must have been like 94 or something. I'm sure you were on America Online.

15:42I was never on, I was never on AOL. Or the publication had a keyword on America Online. Yeah, I don't remember. But Gail said, she said, we're starting a website. And I said, what's a website? Yeah, definitely. If that gives you any insight into where we were with technology. And I really, I had heard the word, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. And since we were doing it, I needed to understand, well, what is it? What are we doing? So tell me about what's the doing of like the photo shoot. Say you're doing, for example, like a 16-page package about barbecuing or grilling. What's it like in the early 90s to do this shoot?

16:20Because you don't have Dropbox. You don't have G Drive. You don't have, you know, it must have been much more labor intensive to do these shoots. Well, no, the shoot itself. Well, I mean, I guess going digital helped definitely streamline things on shoots because it just took more time. you were, well, first of all, they were always eight to 10 pages. We never did 16 pages, but it was either eight or 10, maybe 12. And the actual shoot, you know, you did Polaroids, you sent film out to the lab if you were in the city in the middle of the shoot. You know, it was definitely a different process. So there were a little bit, I'd say there were more surprises and you ended up with less slickness than you have now because, you know, now people retouch food or put effects on it.

17:09It was very real. And that was the style that we kind of developed at Martha was food looking really real, looking like itself. But if you compare the photography then with the photography now, it's like it's really real because, you know, we just we didn't have the advantage of everyone staring at the screen and like finessing everything. You're shooting into a black box and you had to go to the chem lab. And a lot of people shot four by five, which you had to understand looking upside down and backwards. if you were looking through the camera. And then there'd be like a kind of fuzzy Polaroid that maybe you'd have to use a loop to see it in closely and then you'd wait for the film to come back.

17:44I mean, I worked in a newspaper in college. It was loops and paste up. So it was a very, very different process. But there's something great about that way. Oh, my gosh. Well, having done both is really unique. Yeah, that's true. Now you're making books into 2023 and it's a much different experience. One more question about the Martha era. You know, you got, you were, it was like the height of power for a magazine in the 90s. I mean, it was like the most lucrative time for publishing. But also, you know, Martha's rising, you know, her profile on television. She's starting her company, went public, as you mentioned.

18:24Yeah. I mean, did you feel like you were really at the top as the food editor of Martha Stewart? Well, I don't think I really thought about it that way. Because for one thing, we were just so busy. We were just working our asses off all the time. And, you know, so I think we all were just really driven by, you know, people always ask me, what's it like to work for Martha when she's such a perfectionist? And I say, well, we were all perfectionists. And we all had that drive, like, within us. Yeah. And that's why we were there. So there was this amazing, like, kind of communal energy. Oh, absolutely.

19:00I know exactly what you're saying. Would you rip up pages at the last minute because you weren't satisfied with art? Any of that stuff? No, I mean, things like reshoots, because of this not digital world, analog world, it would be more maybe Martha didn't like it or someone else who wasn't on the shoot didn't like it. So there would be sometimes reshoots, which were extremely expensive. I mean, it seemed like we had unlimited budget. So I went through the whole economic downturn from going from unlimited resources, which we seem to have in the beginning. And then when we went public, we had to really start to tighten the reins.

19:39And then the economic downturn, which I think happened after I had left working for other magazines and, you know, everybody was just trying to squeeze blood from a stone. It's like a very different experience. But, no, sometimes things got reshot. But usually if you were on the shoot, you felt good about it. So this is the early 2000s we're getting into and before social media and viral recipes. Give me a sense, Susan. Is there a recipe that you developed at the time that was basically a viral recipe before viral recipes that you got like letters and letters and letters or Martha maybe went on Today Show and talked about it and it went big?

20:14Wow. This would have been something I would have thought more about. I don't feel like there was one because you couldn't really be viral then, right? It's not – without social media, there's no real virality in there. Well, yes and no. I disagree a little bit because I think at the time, you know, people wrote in. True. Right? Yes. And like it's maybe a different form. But like if you get like eight letters or 800 letters – But those were usually the haters, right? Of course. The people who write in the haters. True enough. People who say, oh, you shouldn't put sourdough in stuffing. I remember someone writing that to me.

20:46Really? I thought, well, this is a good idea. Let's do sourdough stuffing. and because nobody was doing that then and and they were like you can't use sourdough and stuff and I was like why not yeah it's funny yeah like the reply guy back in the day tell me though just we've been void of food a little food talk here so let's get into some of the recipes that you were working on I mean in general was there something that that you that you really feel proud of that you that you did recipe wise sure you know I think actually it was more like the way you felt about it, not so much individual recipes as stories because people, and that's what we called them then now, they call them packages, but you would work on a story that you were really pleased with both the recipes and the visuals.

21:28Like there was a gelato story and we did this, you know, thing, we were trying to emulate Italy. So we put them in these little cups, which were actually like probably either water cups from a doctor's office or something like that, because we couldn't get the kind of cups they had in Italy. And I remember like immediately afterwards New York Magazine like copied the actual shot like and I thought oh wow you know I was like really happy there are certain photos that we did there was a lot of it's like visual that that still stand up today a lot of the stuff I did with Maria Robledo and um all these photographers um Chris Baker um there was a dumpling story I remember that I did with Chris Baker that I love that had you know I mean it was international yeah you know now it's a little harder to do that, right?

22:16I mean, there's, oh, well, the story that we did in Abiquiu, I mean, a lot of times, for me, it was also rolled into an experience. Like, we went to Abiquiu. That's cool. So you were at Georgia O 'Keeffe's Kitchen? Well, not Georgia O 'Keeffe's, but something very similar nearby, a dirt floor kitchen I was cooking with David Tannis. Oh, really? Out in the New Mexico. He was in his Santa Fe stage. He was working in a restaurant there, and he knew this woman, Elizabeth Berry, who at the time grew heirloom beans, and And we went up to her place in Abiquiu and did the story. And it was just like, honestly, like one of the best experiences of my life.

22:50Stuff like that is really fun. Yeah. I mean, when you get to go on location. And you don't do, people can't, don't do that anymore. We went on location all the time. We went camping in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. And Martha was there. Martha was on a lot of these shoots. Yeah. She came along. I mean, why would she? She's pretty much exacting with the art direction of a magazine. Well, she was there for the fun, honestly. Oh, she was. Let's go there. Like she, oh yeah, like on that shoot, while I was working, she was like taking these rides with people. And like, I don't know, it was like a hayride or something.

23:21They were just like having fun. Yeah, I guess if your name's in the magazine, you could do it too long. Yeah, exactly. She would come along and just, you know, pose for photos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And have fun like while we were doing some of the hard work. Oh my God. Well, I want to move on because there's a lot to talk about. We're going to talk about VegForward, your book. But let's take a little detour to Julie and Julia, the film. You worked as a food stylist or the food stylist on that film and other films. And did you really teach Meryl Streep to flip an omelet? I did. I did, but she's a very quick study, as you can imagine.

23:59Yeah, she seems like she's probably. I didn't spend much time with her on that. It was literally right before we shot that scene. It's a great scene. Very memorable. She came into the, I even have a photo I can show you afterwards. were of the three, me and Nora and Meryl standing there getting ready to do that scene. We had a makeshift kitchen, you know, offset in a big sound stage. And she, when it was time to do it, because, I mean, Meryl knows her way around the kitchen. She knows how to cook. So not like the first time she ever held an omelet pan. And so just got everything ready for her.

24:39She was in her wardrobe. She stayed in character a lot. But she just came back, and I just gave her a couple of quick lessons, and then she did it. She's stuck at the landing right in the first try. Oh, yeah. Yeah. She's Meryl. Let's talk about that set. What were some of the memorable moments that you were working? I'm sure you had to work in advance every day they were shooting, and you're thinking about the next day. What was that like? Well, it's when you're the food person, let's say, on a film. I mean, basically, it's so complex. The AD is the person who has to basically schedule everything.