317: Bryan Washington

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0:32A fun thing, I think, for this particular book is that it's not auto-fiction. Like, very little of it can be correlated, like, one-to-one to, like, my own direct experience or my own life. But quite a lot of the dishes that I refer to have had some role in my life, even if it's only because, you know, it's something that I shared with a friend.

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

0:59Brian Washington is a writer from Houston, whose latest novel, Family Meal, is an intimate portrayal of friendship, queerness, and pastries. He also writes about things like Japanese curry bread and queer bars for The New Yorker. And today we're thrilled to have him on the show to talk about food as a plot device, his favorite ekonomiyaki spots in Osaka, and more.

1:26Brian Washington, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me on. It means a lot. So I have to know, what have you eaten today so far? What have I... I've eaten nothing today, actually. Oh, no. Great. You know, I feel like I probably should have had a meal at this point, but nothing yet, just coffee. Well, it is morning, and after this conversation, you might be a little hungrier, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah. I've got my fingers crossed. So I'd love to just start out by talking a little bit about how food literally fuels your writing. Do you have any favorite writing snacks or meals that you make?

2:00Well, in the midst of writing family meal, I was making a lot of quesadillas. And like, this is really just simple bare bones, like torpilla, cheese, like sometimes I might add an egg and sometimes like some hot sauce. But the finger foods, anything that's like really tactile and accessible um there used to be um a cafe um that i lived near and they would make a taiwanese fried chicken uh but like bite size you know so i would always like pick up just like a tiny little bag and maybe like um radish cake and like a coffee and that was like what got me through um writing uh quite a lot of the first quarter at least of the family meal but i wrote the book between Houston, the Bay Area, and Vancouver.

2:52And I wrote quite a lot of it in LA. So it really depended on where I was and what snackier places were in the vicinity. Yeah, that sounds like a really good rotation. It's almost like popcorn chicken, right? When you can pop it into your mouth like that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It made for a nice time. There's so many good cooking and eating scenes in the book. Do you ever, like when they're making a konamiyaki for example do you go make a konamiyaki or like you don't need to go that far i usually do and largely because since each of the characters to some degree is using the act of cooking to communicate in a way that they may not necessarily have access to as far as like language is concerned having a sense of how working through a dish from someone who is maybe a bit more proficient in the kitchen as opposed to someone who's maybe less proficient in the kitchen as opposed to someone who's maybe somewhere in the middle.

3:49Describing that on its own without feeling through it would be quite challenging for me, at least. I know that there are people who can do that, but I haven't quite cracked the code there. So having a sense of what that feels like physically, can someone work through this recipe or work through this dish whilst having a conversation, for example, or to what degree Is someone's attention going to need to be focused on a particular dish? These are things that I think are easier to elucidate on my end if I'm able to work through it a few times. So it's like method cooking and writing almost. Yeah, almost.

4:21That's more thoughtful than probably what I'm doing. Yeah, I like the idea of talking about skill in the kitchen and how that translates into how it's being written. because I think you're right that it is such a big giveaway into like a person's background or maybe like what they're trying to convey with the food. Are there any like food scenes in the book that you think especially represent that? That's really interesting. There's a moment about three quarters away through the book where TJ, one of the protagonists of the novel, has had a sleepover at a friend's place and the following morning that friend's mother makes a meal for TJ and it isn't a formal thing it isn't the sort of thing that's expected but within I suppose like the architecture of this particular home like between the moors of this particular home like you just don't send someone out into the world without having you know received some sort nourishment or having received some sort of sustenance.

5:23So I think that for me, like a challenge for the book has been trying to find different ways to show how people distribute care and how they conceive of care and how they modify that care from context to context, but without doing it in like a didactic way or in the way of like, this is my thesis on care, or like this is a thesis on care for these particular characters. Yeah, definitely. I feel like in that scene that you're talking about, there's also a language barrier, right, between TJ and the grandma or aunt? Yeah, between Noel's aunt, yeah. Yeah, so I remember it's such a nice scene because he's about to kind of slink out the door and leave, and even though there isn't an explicit language, it's pointing to the stove, like, go sit down and eat this before you go, which I think is one of the most pure forms of care that there is probably.

6:14Mm-hmm. Yeah, trying to find a way to bridge the language divide, but the act of wanting to bridge that divide, I think, is super interesting and the sort of thing that I gravitate toward in fiction. Definitely. And I feel like in family meal, food is tied to these concepts of care and also memory and nostalgia. And I'm curious if any of the foods in the book represent that for you, if there are other foods that maybe kind of trigger these feelings. okonomiyaki is definitely one of the dishes that i have just a lot of touch association with and then i have quite a lot of like i suppose you could say like memory generally um as far as associations are concerned i mean to some degree many of the dishes that are alluded to like in the bakery scenes have some sort of like general association for me i mean a fun thing i think for this particular book is that it's not auto fiction like very little of it can be i suppose like correlated like one-to-one to like my own direct experience or my own life but quite a lot of the dishes that are referred to or that are you know given uh page space like have had some role in my of life, even if it's only because, you know, it's something that I shared with a friend or something that, you know, someone cooked for me, that I cooked for them or that, you know, we dined out.

7:40So that was, that was definitely a fun portion to like have friends spend time with the book and say, oh, you know, we ate, you know, at so-and-so or we had, you know, XYZ dish. Yeah. It's like writing someone into a book without actually making a character about them, which is maybe for the best for the friendship, I would say. Yeah. It's ideal. It's a less obnoxious way of acknowledgement. And no one is like, wait, do I really talk like that? Yes. So you mentioned Okonomiyaki. I know that Japan often comes up as a theme in your writing. And I'm curious if you could maybe say a little bit about like what your own relationship with Japan is like, especially I know you spent time in Osaka.

8:17Yeah, this is funny because I just got back maybe a little over 24 hours ago. I've been out of town doing some events out there. um i for me it is uh like my gateway into literary fiction so to speak was through reading um japanese fiction in translation um i wasn't a massive reader until i started reading uh folks like benani yoshimoto or natsu okirino or yoko gawa or yoko uh towara like those were the folks who like i was taking thematic cues from and that i was taking uh pacing cues from and in the time that has passed, I've just been really fortunate to have friends and to have my own sort of community out there that have been just really kind and really thoughtful.

9:03So I'm someone who is always interested in the ways that communities function and form and dissolve or are able to find a way to congeal, particularly if they're structural stressors that make it front-facing, as if it were difficult for that to happen, regardless whether it's Houston or Los Angeles or Osaka or another city. And I've just been fortunate to get to spend a little bit of time doing that in and around Osaka. Definitely. And when you are in Osaka or maybe on this most recent trip, where do you like to eat?

9:46It's like a great food city because it's really difficult to have a bad meal. It's really challenging just to have something where you're like, that's not what I was thinking of or that's what I ordered. So I'm really at the behest of friends more often than not. And we end up at whatever izakaya or whatever udans to all or whatever mom and pop spot. And I can't think of a recent memory where I was like, oh, that was very B minus or very C plus. Even if something is not what I expected, it's always been really, really good and really, really thoughtful. So I've been fortunate in that regard. Yeah, that sounds really great.

10:30I know that Osaka has so many rich food traditions. Are there any dishes that you have to have when you're back in Osaka or feel especially tied to the area? Okonomiyaki is definitely tied to the area, but quite a lot of people just make it at home in love eating it out. So maybe I'd say takoyaki. um like uh it is like a bit of a tourist thing to do but going to dotonbori and just like hanging out at like a takoyaki stall and just like passing through um really quick it like scratches an itch even though it's something that's kind of like okay like you've done it once and you know it's time to do something else yeah yeah but like i live in new york and i eat a bagel probably once a week you know like sometimes it's just maybe right sure um so speaking of the book how do you know if somebody looks like they drink tea that's hilarious uh i think for that particular uh scene it was meant to allude to just like the wisdom of like this older person that was uh sitting next to kai more so people asked me this question uh i didn't know that it would be like such a point of like contention like you know the the aura or like the energy of like a tea drinker but i think it was just um like this you know this much older person who is uh sitting alongside Kai and just seeing him being like really contented and just being really um I suppose composed and just sort of making uh that judgment call so it was more um the intention at least was more uh tug-in-cheek than uh meant to be uh prescriptive but it has been interesting uh talking to folks about that like tiny moment it's always fascinating like which moments folks uh let's stick stick with them do a lot of people ask you that yeah I've gotten this question like five or six times like I've had readings like people will come out because you know for a little while now and you know folks will you know it's like hey like so how did how did you know he was drinking tea it's like I I was reading this passage I really thought I was going to ask you like a question you had not been asked already because that really stuck with me and I guess for listeners who haven't read Family Meal Kai is on the plane and he's sitting next to like an older Mexican man who offers to share tea with him and and he says how did you know that and he said, oh, you just look like a tea drinker.

12:40And I think to me, the reason why that resonates is it's this idea of like finding solidarity with people or recognition over like something that you both love and share. And tea also is such a rich thing to get into. Like I would not really consider myself a tea expert, but I'm always drinking tea. So to me, there's also this question of like, what does it even mean to be a tea drinker? Are you someone that knows about the third steep of oolong or are you just somebody that is cold and wants to drink something warm you know that's really interesting i i certainly slot into like the latter and that like i'm someone who's constantly cold and i know that tea is probably going to warm me up so i think i've become like an inadvertent uh tea enthusiast but not someone who could speak um at length about it at all well if you were going to order tea do you have any favorites oh god like i again like i'm so boring like Like people ask me and I just say like, just hot tea.

13:35And they say, do you want anything in it? And I say, no, just like just regular tea. Yeah, I wish I had a more thoughtful answer there. But I truly just trying to warm up. I get that. I'm drinking Earl Grey tea right now, actually. So I also wanted to talk to you about the way that you include the pandemic in the book, because I found it to be really interesting. Like sometimes when I read contemporary, like post-pandemic fiction, There's this question of like, did the pandemic happen in this world? I think that's maybe like a choice that you have to make. And the way that it gets introduced in family meal is through the bakery and like the bakery's success for people that are used to, you know, going to get a pastry every day.

14:13So I'm curious, like, did you ever debate including the pandemic in the book? And why did you choose to include it in the context of the bakery? That's a great question. It wasn't for me a question of whether or not I would include it. I've said this elsewhere, but I was pretty deep into a draft prior to the outset of 2020. And once things started shutting down, events started being canceled, and our sort of travel revolutions became curtailed, the draft that I was writing, I didn't feel as if the emotional weight of the moment could align or was being aligned with what was on the page. So I ended up scrapping the entirety of that draft, except for two characters, TJ and Cam.

15:07And the scene that the novel ends on, which I won't go into it at length, was originally the beginning of the narrative. and it became the end of the narrative. So the challenge, I think, for me became, was there a way to capture, like to describe the emotional enormity of this particular moment or like a specific iteration of the emotional enormity of this particular, siphon it through each of these characters in very specific ways. Because I also knew that food service or a component of food service would have like a pretty big role in family meal. It would have felt, I think, intellectually dishonest not to allude to the ways in which the food service or like this particular lane inside of food service like were impacted by the pandemic and have been impacted and continue to be impacted by the pandemic.

16:06I think trying to do that or trying to like find ways to do that without it being or feeling as if though it was a like an assignment or like something that I was like hitting the reader over the head with as like needing to be an essential component of the narrative was was definitely top of mind in the midst of drafting. Definitely. You said that you knew that you wanted food service to be a component of the book. Where did that idea come from? I knew that I wanted to write a narrative about characters that wanted to communicate their love for one another a platonic love um but love nonetheless and that was stacked atop this question of like what does you know a queer platonic love look like or what forms can it take or what forms can queer friendship take particularly when there are characters who do not have um the lexicon for expressing that care or for expressing that friendship for one another.

17:05I think that in quite a lot of ways, like cuisine or the sharing of the meal, probably more specific, can act as a shorthand for reaching questions or for entering conversations that might feel a bit structurally clunky to place in front of the reader otherwise. Because sustenance is essential for each of us, each reader, each member of the audience. although perhaps to varying degrees, but like essential nonetheless, like we all need sustenance to some degree. Having that as a sort of like foreground or a foundation to lead into or to segue into questions of, okay, now what does care look like?

17:45What does care look like for these specific folks? What if, you know, the care that we feel is necessary is not actually what someone else needs or not actually what someone else wants? or what if the care that we want, what if that changes over time? And now, you know, we're sort of like in this liminal period or this liminal space of not quite knowing what we want, but knowing that it isn't what we've been told that we should want. Each of these questions doesn't really have concrete answers, and I'm not particularly interested in ascribing or ending up with concrete answers. But furthering the question, I think, is what's most fascinating to me.

18:24And having that shorthand, again, of sussanets to fall back onto or the commerce and the food trade to fall back onto, that is so familiar to so many of us, acts as a really useful landing spot as we pass from transition point to transition point of those questions. Yeah, I definitely see that. And I think it's interesting that a bakery is the food business that the book is centered around because it's not necessarily like as essential for your sustenance as, say, like a grocery store or a place where you can get dinner. But at the same time, I think because it has that kind of extra level to it, it is like that much more of care or something like that.

19:05Yeah, I'm really glad. Like a question that was also top of mind for me was one of what pleasure looked like for each of these characters and how pleasure changes forms for person to person as like their context shifts or as their understanding of like themselves or the people around them can shift. and having a location, you know, that is in many ways front-facing is like a conduit of pleasure, like a bakery, like all sorts of warm associations and positive associations for like a literal bakery. Having that act as a sort of landing spot for these other conversations about pleasure that may not necessarily be as immediately discernible or front-facing as immediately discernible felt like it would be really useful for like me structurally.

19:54Yeah, and I think the gay bar also does a very similar thing in that way. Yeah, yeah, the gay bar does a similar thing. This question of how queer spaces serve as points of pleasure or can serve as points of pleasure. And for who specifically are these locales opening themselves up to as sources of pleasure? Are marginalized folks, folks of color, are they having access to the same amount? the same kinds of pleasure in these spaces are trans or like non-binary folks like are they privy to the same amount of pleasure or the same access points of pleasure in these spaces like to what degree are the different folks who like occupy like these spaces that are front-facing again as like sources of pleasure like sites of pleasure for everyone who spends time in them is that actually true um depending on like your level or like stratum of marginalization like inside of that actual space.

20:53These can be, again, clunky questions like to proffer to like a reader to an audience is sort of like cold. So having a sort of like visage through which to, you know, begin or serve as a foundation has been useful for me. Yeah, I really liked all of those sections. And like, as somebody who's queer myself, I really love the dialogue that the queer characters have. Like it sounds so natural. Do you just like walk around eavesdropping on people? Like how do you write dialogue in that way? No, no, no. I have friends who are much funnier and much more thoughtful and much smarter than me. So it's not a matter of eavesdropping or even taking what other folks have said so much as just trying to be as mindful as possible about how the ear picks up dialogue and what specifically is sticking with an ear.

21:51It's kind of a tricky thing in that if we were to transcribe everything that we said over the course of a day, 99 % of it would just be just horrible dialogue. It would just be absolutely asinine to sit there and read. but having I suppose like a clear clear sense of like who the characters are and like what they're actually wanting in lieu of like what they may be saying or what they're presenting as wanting in lieu of like what they actually uh want and trying to write into um that crease or trying to write around like those particular creases I think is something that has always been really important to me and has become more important to me as I continue to spend time with characters that are talking at each other and also just trying to keep in mind that these characters may be new to the reader they may be new to an audience but they're not new to the world necessarily and they may not necessarily be new so to speak to the person that they're speaking to so there's a shorthand that already exists between these characters even though these are ideas that might be introduced as the new ideas or new facts or new details to like a reader to an audience who does not spend time with these characters.

23:06They know each other or they knew each other and they're forming new opinions on top of like that foundation or that pre-existing foundation. So trying to treat characters as if they're actually people who were full of like contradiction and complication. Like this is a character that Brian is writing to show, you know, XYZ theme, I think is always a challenge, but it's something that's really important to me. Yeah, I think the intimacy that comes out of that is really beautiful. And to close, I want to ask you, Well, I want to play a game. But first, I want to ask you about one of my favorite food moments in the book, which is the experience of eating a chocolate chip cookie stoned for the first time.

23:43Is that coming from personal experience? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I should say no. But yeah. Warm, big treat when you have like a nice, like mild high is I think that that's, you know, that's it. Like that's, you know, can't do much better. Yeah. And I love how in the book, it's like the dad who's caught them smoking, right? And then who sits them down, feeds them the cookie and watches. I think that made me realize that if I'm a parent, that's exactly what I'm going to have to do to my kids. Yes. Yes. You know that I think that that is like a step in the right direction.

24:17So, okay. I want to play like this little rapid fire taste check with you. So I'll give you a category and you can just tell me what comes into your head. Cool. Okay. Favorite cookbook. um oh i can give three um okay same fast sorry um all about eggs which is the anthology by rachel kong uh japanese soul cooking by tadashi ono and harris a lot and uh the cook as you are by ruby tanda okay favorite non-cookbook food book however you want to interpret that kitchen by banana yoshimoto favorite bookstore loneliness books which is a queer bookshop in tokyo Cool. Favorite bar? Ripcord, which is a queer bar in Houston.

24:59Favorite Houston restaurant? Houston Bane. Favorite restaurant in Osaka? Dontaku Doyama, which is a nice okonomi yaki spot. And they also have other kinds of like itakai food. Nice. Go-to bakery item in like your dream bakery that has every item? A good choro. And I would say La Guadalupana, which is a bakery in Houston. Or alternatively, there's a place called Alem's Coffee in the East Bay, and they just have the most delicious bread and coffee. Cool. A restaurant that you wish could be your neighborhood restaurant. There is a restaurant called Los Tacos Azules in Tokyo, in the neighborhood Sanjunga.

25:40They have just phenomenal tacos. They're so good. Or alternatively, Pizzeria Se, which is like a pizza spot in Los Angeles. And it just has some of the best pizza I've ever had in my life. Yeah, I'm from L.A., so hearing that you love the tacos in Japan makes me really excited. They're great. I mean, this place, those tacos, they're phenomenal. Yeah, they're great. I trust you. And to close, a fictional food scene that you wish you could eat. Yeah. So the very end of Chang-Rui Li's novel, My Year Abroad, a young man that the protagonist has been living with turns out to be like this Thai chef prodigy.

26:21And they're all sharing, you know, the wares that, you know, this person is cooked. So getting to sit in that room and like take part like in the meal that he's crafted, that would be pretty cool. Yeah, that sounds great. And Brian, this was so much fun. And thank you for writing such a great book and talking about it with me. Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness. Thank you so much for having me on.

26:46This is Taste is hosted by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things happening.