386: Koreaworld with Francis Lam

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. You know, the cookbook is the album, right? It's like, oh, it's that one track that you loved, and now I'm going to find that artist and get into their album. We love that, and we love the creative possibilities of that, and we love the creative possibilities of what happens when someone can be with you for hours, hell, a lifetime, rather than, hey, I really love that video, and then flicked my thumb and I was watching another video.

0:54This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Korea World is here. It's a new cookbook I wrote with Dookie Hong, and we are dedicating a week of episodes to the Korean foods movement all around the globe. To kick things off, we are catching up with Francis Lam, editor-in-chief of Clarkson Potter and host of The Splendid Table. Francis is our editor, and he's my coworker, and I just love this guy. I've known him for years, and we speak about how we collaborated on the book. We also hear about Francis's journey through journalism, including working in TV, in radio, and at the legendary Gourmet Magazine.

1:33We also talk about his New York Times column. It was one of my favorite bits of writing he's ever done. And we talk about the process of bringing these stories of local New Yorkers cooking in their home kitchens to life. It's so great having Francis in the studio, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:58Francis Lam, welcome to This Is Taste. We've never done this before. I walk by you every day in the office, but yeah, I finally get entered into your lair, so thanks a lot. I know. It's kind of different to have a guest who works here, but also somebody I just have known for a long time. You are mine and Duki's editor for two cookbooks and a friend, and I respect you. Let's talk about some stuff. I mean, we're doing career world week and we're going to get to the book, but Hey man, where you been going out to eat right now? Like anything good that you've been thinking about? You know, I could have had better answer to this before I had a kid.

2:35So now it's like, Oh, uh, you know, that pizza place and the falafel shop. And it's not even that good of a falafel, but it's fast and it's soon, it gets here quick. Um, in New York, it's funny cause I've only actually eaten there once, but I've like in in my mind, eaten there 600 times, and that's Damaka. You know, it won a Beard Award a couple years ago, but it really, like, that memory of that meal, just like, every time, like, oh, let's go somewhere. My first time, I was like, can we go to Damaka? Can we go to Damaka? So Damaka is this really terrific, sort of multi-regional Indian restaurant opened by this company called Unapologetic Foods, which, you know, their name is right in the title, right?

3:16You've had them on the show. Jitan's been on the show. We'll link to the show notes. It's a great conversation about it. Yeah. Yeah. And they're just like, I love the story. The story was like, you know, they had Indian restaurants here in New York that were a little more sort of geared to like what they thought the market wanted and wasn't going that great. And one day, like, if we're going to go down, let's just go down swinging. Let's just make the food that I miss from home exactly the way that I would eat it there. And it worked. Yeah, it really worked. You couldn't get in for the longest time.

3:43Now he's got Rowdy Rooster. He's got Masala Walla in Park Slope, which is also hard to get. I mean, it's all hard to get into. And the food is terrific. So that's definitely a place I have in mind. I've been going to sort of revisiting old sort of childhood favorites and just exploring in Chinatown more. So I grew up in New Jersey. My parents worked in Chinatown like all through when I was a kid. And so I had my only relationship to New York City was really with Chinatown. Like that's all I knew of the entire city, which is sort of funny. Now that I think back on it. But, you know, I haven't spent a lot of time there as an adult.

4:22I actually also worked in Chinatown for a few years when I first moved to New York. Oh, where? I didn't know that. Yeah, I worked at a nonprofit there. Oh, right on. And that was where our office was. So what were the lunch spots when you were working nonprofit? Like, were you going in? I mean, this was literally 20-some-odd years ago. And why Noodletown was around then, right? 20 years ago. Oh, yeah, that place is old, the hills. Yeah. I didn't really go there that much. No disrespect to it. But to me, it was always like the Chinatown place for people who didn't really want to walk into Chinatown.

4:50Because it's like, it's on the Bowery. You can get to it. Oh, of course. Without really being like in the thick of Chinatown. So I was a little bit like, okay, y 'all don't really know. I love it. So I had like a little snotty attitude about it. But whatever. So I would go to different places. Lately, I've been going to this place called Noodle Village, which is like the noodles there and the wontons are very Hong Kong style. and something I've grown to be interested in New York was for me, it used to be like, oh, how close does it taste to Hong Kong? That's where my family's from. And that's where I used to visit as a kid.

5:21Um, and so, oh, the closer something tasted to like what I would get in Hong Kong, like the better it was in my mind. And now I, you know, I see it in a little bit of a different lens, which is, um, it's not about how close to Hong Kong does it taste, but how much does it to me feel like Chinatown? Like, does it feel like this place? Are you reflecting on these restaurants of your youth kind of in the preparation or in the writing of your memoir? I know you're working on something. I'm working on a book. It's not exactly a memoir. Okay, good. But yeah, it is about my relationship to Chinatown.

5:52That's exciting, man. And, you know, it came to be because, like I said, I have a child. I have a daughter. And, like, I speak Cantonese. I speak it okay. I used to speak it very well. Like, to the point where, you know, I would talk to people and they would think I was from Hong Kong. and that language has kind of like faded from me a little bit you throw me back in Hong Kong give me a couple weeks and it'll most of it will come back but but anyway like that's that's my culture like that's what I grew up in that's one of my native languages you know that in English and one day I was like looking at my kid and being like well she doesn't speak it and I don't know how to teach it to her you know what I mean like and for me like because I was never taught Cantonese I learned to speak because it was what we spoke in the house.

6:38So I was never taught. So I never learned as a student. So I don't know how to teach it. Right. And it just got me thinking about like, wow, what does it mean that A, I'm far enough removed from what I think of as my culture that I can't actually impart it to my child? Like, I don't know how to impart my culture to my child. And my wife is Portuguese. Her parents are from Portugal, Portuguese immigrants. She's the daughter of immigrants. And she speaks Portuguese. and we don't really know how to teach our daughters. It's like the same, it's the same story for your wife. Yeah. Yeah. So it's this idea of like, how, what does it mean to be of a culture, to care a lot about it, to love it, to feel like it's part of you, but not feel like you're in it enough to like give it to your kid.

7:21So it just got me thinking about what my relationship with Chinatown is like. And so it's, it's not a memoir like, oh, I was born on this day and whatever, whatever. But it's sort of an exploration of like, what does it mean to be from a culture, but kind of feel like you're a little bit outside. It's a fascinating approach. And I feel like the traditional memoir, the linear memoir is not what we need in writing. And we're going to segue to your remit at Clarkson Potter, where you run the show as editor in chief. But back to the memoir again, like when you're thinking about these old restaurants, how are you revisiting them?

7:51I know like memory is a big part of this book, I'm sure, remembering what used to be there. But are you going to current places and drawing up memories of your time there? Yeah. So part of it is like about memory. But part of it is like, oh, how do you kind of like re-ingratiate yourself to a neighborhood, a community, like actual people? Like if I walk down the street, I don't know people. I can't wave to people. I kind of want to be that person. I want to be that person. I can walk around this neighborhood and wave to people. I'm like, oh, hey, how's it going? And then sort of the bigger picture of like, what does it mean to then like re-ingratiate yourself to a culture when you feel like it's maybe sort of like slipping out of your fingers a little bit.

8:28Do you bring people along the ride? Do you bring like, do you invite guests out like from your life? Like people? Yeah. I mean, like for me, it's like they're not research trips. It's just like I just want to like be there. Yeah. You know what I mean? My editor will be horrified to learn that I have not actually done the research in any concerted way. but I kind of feel like part of it is just like living there and being there more often and just kind of feeling it, you know? Yeah. Well, you're writing your story. So, I mean, you're going to obviously do zoom outs and do what editorial tactics are needed to tell the story, but obviously it's, I'd love just to hear your story.

9:00We're going to get your writing, uh, focus a little bit on, uh, the New York times magazine, you call him, you wrote for years, which I was a big fan of, but let's go to Clarkson Potter. And I would like to know, you know, what you and all your colleagues, your wonderful colleagues who are also my colleagues and we share an office, What are you looking to acquire? I think this is like a big question, the million dollar question or less, if agents are listening. Or more, if agents are listening. What do you like look? I mean, again, I love what Clarkson Potter does. I've published two books with you.

9:32It's just terrific. And so what do you look for in a book? You know, it's funny to say, what do you look for? Because I don't have a thing I look for. For us, it's really a matter of like, what's the story this author is trying to tell? And it's funny because we publish a lot of different kinds of books at Potter. But for the person's conversation, we'll mostly talk cookbooks. And certain cookbooks are a huge, huge part of what we do. But it's funny because the way I talk about what we look for in cookbooks sounds really not that different than any other editor in this building would talk about.

10:01It's like, what's the story? That's the first thing I care about. What's the story? Who is the author trying to tell this story? Why are they the person to tell this story? These are all sort of cliches you've heard before. But it's really true for us. And by that, I mean, literally sometimes I mean, cookbooks have a story. And for, I mean, I guess listeners of this podcast will certainly understand that because, you know, you're nerdy enough to listen to this podcast, like food nerdy enough to listen to this. But, you know, for a lot of the general public, they still think cookbooks are just, oh, it's like, you know, pages of recipes stapled together.

10:34Like, okay, cool. Like I could Google the recipes. I could spend money buying the cookbook. Sort of either way, it doesn't really matter. but people who actually care and want to buy a cookbook or want to like be immersed in the world of a cookbook which is really what i think about there has to be a story and maybe that story is narrative like a literal story with characters um we just published a book called praise song for the kitchen ghosts that is it's a little bit genre bending honestly um but it has 40 recipes it's you know beautifully shot like gorgeous photos but it's written by the literal poet laureate of Kentucky, who's written award-winning novels and poetry.

11:10And it's like this blend of memoir, family history, going back five generations of black Appalachia. And to some degree, fiction, she imagines conversations her great, great, great, great grandmother had, which obviously - I mean, she's a novelist too, and she writes incredible fiction as well, which is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's amazing. Crystal Wilkinson - Yeah. And Crystal has been on the show, and I'll link to that in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah, she's incredible. So like that's a book that we publish. So very literally a story. Or, you know, Korea World or Koreatown, its predecessor.

11:41Like the story I felt you guys were telling in Koreatown, for instance, was, yes, it's a Korean cookbook, but it's not just a collection of greatest hits of Korean cuisine, right? It's specific to what is the Korean cuisine that you find in Korean American communities or the cuisine that was inspired by that experience of Korean culture, right? not necessarily of Korea itself, but it's the folks who came largely in the 70s and 80s, who established these neighborhoods. Again, you know, the biggest one in LA, but there's one in New York and all around the country, you know, and how the food there is distinct in its own story.

12:17Like, that's what I mean by the story of a cookbook. And, you know, obviously we'll talk about Korea world in a minute too, but sort of applying that lens to, okay, what's, what's actually being cooked and eaten in Korea today? And how does that inspiration sort of flow around the world. So that's what I look for. I look for the story of a book, like what's exciting and what's the, what's the point? Because if it is just a collection of recipes between two covers and you know, honestly, you probably don't need it. Yeah, you probably could just, it's not essential unless there's like some kind of, yeah, Google's going to help you out or Epicurious is going to help you out.

12:47Um, I've asked Matt Sartwell, this Concepcion, uh, now serving and, and, and Kitchen Arts and Letters respectively. I've asked Raquel Pelzel, our colleague, and your colleague Clarkson Potter. I'd like to know, Francis, is there like a wish list of cuisines or cultures or even like, it could be like a technique or a style of cooking that you're just looking for right now? You know, it's funny because I think that that used to be much more the key skill maybe that you'd say an editor would have. Obviously you want to be able to work with your author. You want to be able to like help them structure a story, all that stuff.

13:20But you know, what really set editors apart maybe in the past or in the classic sort of understanding of what an editor does is exactly that. I have an idea and I'm going to go out and find the person who's going to write that idea out. You know, that's where we think of like discovery, right? And not to say that's not important still. That's still very important. For us, it's a blend of that though. And I guess what I'm getting to is like, that goes back to like sort of the gatekeeping idea of the editor too. I love that you used that word. I mean, it was certainly the culture of publishing not that long ago, this idea of the gatekeeping.

13:54Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure. And it's still there. I mean, it's still part of the DNA, right? Like, you know, the people in this building are the people who like make the books that you're going to read and talk about. Completely agree. Et cetera. So like they think of themselves as being like sort of the origin of culture. But there was this attitude slightly that like we've done enough of this category and it is the law, this like idea that the editor was like this like kind of on the mountain screaming, you know, preaching down to all the people making proposals. And I think from the work you've done, the work that's been done, it tends to be pressed and many others.

14:26It's like you're more flexible with acquisition. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of it is like at some point just a sense of humility. It's like, that's it. The fact is we have to be as reactive as we are, you know, proactive, right? To some ears that sounds like, well, that's not cool. Like you're not doing your job. No, our job is also to see what people are doing out there and what people are excited about. So yeah, like, I'm not going to lie. like a lot of our authors that we're really excited about that we love and we're super proud to publish are like, you know, got their start on social media, you know, and they started, you know, cooking their food and telling their stories and people love what they do.

15:03So we want to be able to work with them and like make a book, give them a different way, a different form, a different sort of way of working to like expand what they do beyond your phone and give their fans like a different way to interact with them so now they go into the world of you know carolina gellan for instance or the world of justine duran just to like pick up you know two that we you know i was talking about recently as opposed to having justine carolina show up once a day on your phone while you're scrolling through now you can walk into their world for you know 200 some odd pages 300 pages or whatever and it's a totally different experience and we're thrilled to be able to people people do that.

15:46But like, we didn't invent Justine Carolina, like we, we, we found them on our phones, and you're giving the reader, I've said, I've said this many times in the show, and I'm so bullish on the industry of cookbooks in this time when food media is in great, you know, change, in that the experience of having Carolina or Molly Baz or Alison Roman or many of the authors you publish, you know, having them in 325 pages in a book is very different from the heavily ad loaded once a day TikTok or even the website with all the slow loading times. You get something very unique. And I feel like that experience of reading through their story, cooking through their recipes cannot be matched in a cookbook.

16:31I believe you agree with me. Yeah, for sure. And you know what it's a little bit like it's like if your social media feed is a constant mixtape that was not created by humans lovingly for you it was just like thrown together by the algorithm you know the cookbook is the album right it's like oh it's that one track that you loved and like now i'm gonna find that artist and get into their album you know like and and so we we love that and we love the creative possibilities of that and we love the creative possibilities of what happens when someone can be with you for hours hell a lifetime you know um rather than hey I really love that video and then like flicked my thumb and I was watching another video like literally one second later yeah and it's for$17 on Amazon or$22 it's like such a beautiful of course$35 if you're going to any of the wonderful bookstores I agree I'm just being pragmatic with our listener and I think it's an affordable luxury and I love like to quote Drake it's like album mode I believe that the authors are coming here for album mode France, I'm using that.

17:30I love that. Let's talk about New York Times, your column that you wrote many years at the New York Times Magazine. What I enjoyed so much about it, not just the recipe development, which is always really good, is I think the word intimacy always comes to mind. You got really close to your subjects in a way that's very difficult for a writer, that zoom in, that like really getting a sense of them as a person. You obviously spent time with them as a reporter. And I think this obviously translates to your work at Splendid table, which your interviews are very intimate. And I want to ask you, you know, getting close to these subjects, either on audio or via reporting, do you feel that that is like a little bit of your tactic when reporting?

18:13And just for context for the listener, this is a column I wrote for New York Times Magazine as part of their Eat page, which appears every week in the magazine, but they would rotate through. So basically, I would be there once a month. And it was a column where the assignment for me was to go out into New York city and find a different, normally a home cook, but didn't have to be a home cook, just from a different immigrant community in the city and get a recipe out of them and put it in the magazine. And what I wanted to do with the 800 words that came before the recipe was pretty much entirely up to me.

18:45And for me, it was almost always an opportunity for me to tell a little bit of the story of that person, how they learned this recipe, how they came to this country, why they came to this country, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, and et cetera. et cetera. So for me, when I would start talking to these folks, there's always like some moment and, you know, I might spend a whole day with them. I might spend multiple days with them. I might spend, you know, three hours with them. It really just depended. But there was usually a moment where I felt like, okay, you just unlocked something. You just unlocked the box.

19:19You took something precious out and you put it right in my hand. What I did to earn that trust from you, I don't know, but now I have that trust from you. And now it's my job to preserve that trust. It's my job to take that story and put it out in the world in as pure a way as possible, because it was shared with me, you know, and that's, you know, what do we have in this life, right? You have, you have your memories and you have your stories, you know, your things are fleeting, your clothes go out of style, your money disappears, you know, like you have your relationships, you have your story and you have your memories.

19:52And if someone has shared one of those things with me. Like they shared their story with me. Like it's my job. Yeah. And the beautiful thing about the New York times is like the archives hopefully aren't going away. Like, you know, it's a well-funded publication. So I'm going to link to the archive of your work on eat. And, um, I feel like you, do you think about this column now that you don't even written it for years, but when you're like in the world, do you think about, Oh man, that would be a great column, man. Like, Oh, I'd love to. No, I don't. I, I, and you know, one of the things about being a writer is you can never stop working.

20:24You know, your brain's always on. You're always like, what's the next story? So like the fact that I have not written for magazines or papers in a few years now, I mean, occasionally I'll write a story, but it's not really been a part of like my personality. It's actually nice to have it be turned off a little bit. A little bit like I, you know, I'm friends with a number of restaurant critics. Actually, I'm like texting Ruth Reichel to go out to dinner with her next week hopefully but um you know one of the things that of course everyone who's into food would like die to be a restaurant critic and uh you know not to take anything away from but like on some level it's like imagine going to restaurants every night amazing but you're working yes every night you know you can't just like hang out and be like oh that was great no you have to sit there and like you have to describe every dish in your head as you're eating it you have to describe the room in your head the whole time you're eating maybe you can have a conversation with the person across from you maybe they're there you're lucky i mean as a mouth you know it's like it's just like uh the deadline is especially for the daily paper critic i mean like rafael brion is on the on the food and wine hunt now and he's traveling and his deadline's a little different but like these guys like bill addison in los angeles i mean it's it's ruthless that deadline yeah it's the deadline and also like the just like the mindset you have to have to do the work like you gotta do the work you know if you're looking for a story everywhere that means you're writing a story everywhere you go.

21:49So you're always writing in your head. And I'm a little glad to not have that anymore. Yeah. So it sounds like you had like a little bit of a hard break from writing, which is a beautiful cleansing process. I'm sure from that, like, you know, always being on anxiety of always having that assignment. Now you've got like you're running. I mean, to be fair, I loved it. I totally loved it. I'm not I'm not like, oh, burn me out. You're an editorial guy. It's like, you know, you just do a different thing. Well, now you've got like 50 plus books on your docket. You're like running multiple employees.

22:14And I'm just I think we all talk about you as a as here at the building and all the other work you do with Splendid Table and some of the television work. It's remarkable. But you obviously you love it, Francis. Like this is you're not doing this because it's like some kind of like persona. It's like in your body. And it probably goes back to when you started working for Gourmet and writing for them. Yeah. Well, I bring it back to this idea of storytelling. Yeah. And like storytelling is always about story finding and story listening. um so for me like as an editor it's really not that different from being a writer in this in the sense that i'm not writing the words thankfully but i'm helping someone tell their story which again like what i was saying before the column like i don't think of that as my column that i wrote you know sui generis genius godhead you know it was like i went and made you know stuffed calamari with this lady in yeah she said bay and and that's her story all i did was help her tell her story to the world yeah it's it's journalism you were yeah absolutely good segue to korea town and korea world let's let's talk about it um you know you write in the edits when you're writing when you're editing our manuscript some of those bubbles got a little bit big buddy i love it though i mean there's many different ways to edit a manuscript sometimes it's light sometimes it's heavy sometimes it's phone calls sometimes it's on them and and really i think you blended all of it but really your your editing is um is really a legendary you know moment for anyone in books if you get a francis lamb edit to speak about you in the third person apologize let's go back to july 12th 2013 i'm sitting in literally koreatown it's weird it was just serendipitous i was i was having a coffee i was working in the in the neighborhood at the time and um happened to be there it was the morning and my agent Angela Miller writes me a very short email she's a very short emailer and she wrote me as you know I'm sure um but she wrote me that she had heard through the grapevine it wasn't from you that you were interested in acquiring Koreatown and changed my life forever so thank you and just want to recognize the moment and I want to ask you about thinking and I don't want to get us too much into talking about us as our editorial work.

24:30I want to talk about more of the larger project of Koreatown and Koreaworld and what it stands for. But a little behind the scenes, you know, this book, when we took it out in 2013, I don't think I've ever told you this. It was rejected by most. I think we had two offers, you and another major house. But you were the only one when we took the meeting with Doris Cooper and Dookie and I and Angela. you were the only one who had meticulous notes throughout the manuscript. Little stickies were sticking out from the pages. And I was like, this is a good sign. And then the meeting itself just went through and you were clearly engaged with the content.

25:09But I want to ask you, what drew you to the project at the time when everyone literally was saying Korean food is a niche, Korean food is a trend, Korean food is going away? These are all like literal quotes that happened and, and, and, and disappointingly we were, we received from our inbox. Um, I didn't know that. That's a, I don't think I've told you that it's, it sucks. It wasn't a bid on book, buddy. And I've had other books that have been, it was not like we were like sweating it out a little bit, I would say. And look, look at us, look at us now. No, buddy. And I don't want it to be about New York times bestseller.

25:46Look at us. Look at us. Well, that was when the New York times was different. Oh yeah. Hey. It's earned out. It hit the list. It hit the list and it's earned out. It hit the bestseller list. I feel very proud of that. And it actually commercially has sold a lot of copies. But, and again, let's just, I want to know what you saw in Korean food in 2013. Very different. It's funny. I saw it a really different way than how you're describing it. In the sense that to me, what really stood out about it wasn't that it was a Korean cookbook. To me, what stood out about it was that it was an American cookbook.