464: How Cute Food Took Over the Internet with Elyse Inamine

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Working at Bon Appetit, I got to learn a lot about, like, what does it mean to, like, have a point of view when you're writing? Not just, like, write about what's happening, but then kind of, like, to assess, like, oh, what does that mean, like, for that particular cuisine? Or, like, whatever field of, like, restaurants or media or whatever kind of, like, platform this is on. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.

0:59Elise Inamine is a writer and editor based in New York. A former restaurant editor at Bon Appetit and Food & Wine, she's now writing some of our favorite freelance food stories across the internet, including here at Taste. It's so fun to have Elise on the show to talk about her recent Taste story on the rise of so-called cute food, her view on restaurant reporting, and more.

1:27Elise Inamine, this is Taze. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Eliza. I know it's so fun. We get to talk on mic together. And I'm curious if you've eaten anything good today so far. Today, I've only had yogurt. I was considering eating like a lot of kimchi before I came, but then I thought I will just eat it after this. Were you going to have just kimchi? I don't know. I found like some rice in the back of the fridge and I was like, is this good still? And like, maybe I could like fry it with a kimchi. And it's kimchi that my friends and I made like about a month ago. So it's like getting softer and we kind of like made it really salty.

1:59But now I feel like it's at a good place. But then I was just like, I just feel like yogurt. OK, I was going to ask you about your preferred kimchi brand because I feel like I have not found the perfect one for me. But if you made it, then that's a whole other ballgame. There's this one woman who does these kimchi deliveries. I forgot what her name is, but she's taking a hiatus right now. So otherwise I would recommend her. I love that you have a kimchi delivery person and I hope that she comes back from hiatus and you can send her to me. Yes, she's great. I would buy like honestly 10 pounds of kimchi at a time.

2:32Yeah, I feel like when you get to that level, it's when you kind of need a separate kimchi fridge. I should. It is really annoying. I think one time the last drop off she was doing was a holiday weekend that we happened to be out of town and I was trying to get friends to stay at our apartment to receive the kimchi. and my husband was like this is not a good use of anyone's holiday weekend like I don't think you should try to force or coerce our friends to do this for us that I didn't. Some people have cat sitters some people have kimchi delivery sitters. Yeah that's me that's how you know like you're a certain level of like adult is like you need something to like get your kimchi order.

3:06I mean it is a living organism not exactly in the same way as a cat but in a more general way so. Yeah Like you need someone to take care of it and to like make sure it like sits on the counter for a little bit and then move it into the fridge at some point. Maybe like change it into a different container. Like kimchi is an investment still. The kind that you made with your friends, what kind of vegetable did you use? We just did Napa cabbage. And then we also made Dongchimi with radish too, which is really good for like a cold noodle. But today it's kind of like warm, cool. So I don't know, maybe I'll eat that because actually I kind of forgot about that kimchi and now I'm excited about it.

3:43So yeah, I'm glad that I got to prep you for lunch emotionally. But before we talk too much about food, I want to talk about food in the context of your writing. You're one of my former co-workers at Bon Appetit and I get to edit you here on Taste. And I think more broadly, I'm just such a fan of your writing. And I'm curious if you would say there's a certain kind of story that you find yourself drawn to. Yeah, it was interesting. Interesting. That was a hard question for me because I feel like I don't even know if there's a certain brand of story that I'm interested in. I think a lot of times, and this is sort of a boring answer, is I gravitate towards what's interesting to me.

4:21And I think interesting in a couple different ways. I think one is it's interesting to me if I don't know anything about it. And so I get to dig around and kind of learn as much as I can from as many different angles as possible. The other part of interesting for me is like I already know it, but maybe there's like a new light or a different perspective. I think the latter is like mostly what I'm more interested in at this point because I feel like surprised. And I think it makes me like rethink like whatever that topic or subject is or like go at it from another angle that then is like very exciting for me to look at.

4:53Yeah, definitely. Are you the kind of person that has a notes app on your phone with just random ideas of potential stories that you kind of chase down? Yeah, I think I even had one specifically for taste. And then I would try to like test out to see, do I think this is a good story? And I would do some research or like jot down ideas. And I'm like, these are not good ideas. I will not pitch these stories to you. Oh, I mean, I'm always interested in hearing your ideas, but I think maybe for people listening who are interested in writing in general or food writing specifically, I think that question of like what makes something a good story is kind of interesting to talk about.

5:28I feel like when we were up on Appetit together, we would often talk about like, is it a topic or is it a story, which I think is interesting. Like a lot of people want to write about a trend or something that they see is going on. And I think to me as an editor, I always say, well, it's not enough to point out a bunch of things that are happening. You have to talk about why it might be happening, why it's of interest to talk about why it's happening. How do you kind of assess your pitches or your story ideas to see if they're worth pursuing? Yeah, that's a good question. I remember when I first was interviewing at Bonap, I was asked, like, are you a reporter or a writer?

6:00And I thought that was like I had never gotten that question for at any publication I had worked at. And I thought it was really interesting because I didn't really know how to answer it. I don't really remember how I answered it. But there was an answer. There was like a correct answer. it was like, oh, we lean more towards writing. And I think that working at Bon Appetit, I got to learn a lot about like, what does it mean to like have a point of view when you're writing? And such as like you were saying, not just like write about what's happening, but then kind of like to assess like, oh, what does that mean?

6:30Like in terms of like for that particular cuisine or like the whatever field of like restaurants or media or whatever kind of like platform this is on and then like maybe what is like the larger takeaway from it. I think for me how I find like a story that seems like it has something more that can turn it into like something interesting for me to write or at least something that I'm interested in writing is like can I talk about it and think about it for more than like 30 minutes and like can I kind of like keep going and like finding new things like whether it's like a different direction to go or like sources to like bring into it.

7:05I think also like I don't know if I think about this it more just like started happening and then I was like oh I do like do this all the time like I'll write something and then I like to take like a sharp turn at a certain point so I feel like if a story sort of has like different directions it can go and like one direction is like an angle that I'm interested in pursuing um like I I remember for one one story that I wrote for Bunap was about um chewy food and like chewy as a texture and how it's like really beloved in different like Asian cultures and it was really fun yeah and cute food too where it was like kind of going into oh I I said QQ.

7:39Oh, QQ, yes. Q-food is awesome. We'll talk about Q-food, yeah. Yeah, and so kind of like I had a lot of fun like describing like different types of like textures of like chewy food, whether it's kind of like a beef ball that's like almost like a tennis ball or like a tendon that's like really chewy and kind of like pulls at you. It was really fun to like kind of explain like, oh, like this is like kind of the world of chewy food, but then also explain like why does it seem like Western diners are so against it and like find it to be like gross, elsewhere as this is a texture that's really beloved and sought after in a lot of Asian cuisines.

8:15And so I think it was like really fun to like also talk about like kind of this darker side of like perception with chewy food and that it's not seen as like serious food. And maybe that's why people were pushing against it so much. And so I think that's kind of a long winded way of saying like I feel like a story topic, like if it kind of pulls me in and allows me to like go in places I didn't expect, then I know it's interesting. But I feel like sometimes you don't know until like you're actually reporting it. Yeah, I think that's what I would say is maybe you have good sources and you think that there's some kind of tension there.

8:47But for me, at least, whenever I have my first interview and somebody says something that I didn't expect, that's when I feel like, OK, I can run with this a little more. So clearly, whatever question, whatever answer you gave to the reporter writer question worked out and you got the job and you were a restaurant editor at Bon Appetit. And I'm really curious how you approach that job. We obviously are based here in New York, but you're a national restaurant editor. Did you have like a whisper network of people in different cities that are on the country? Like how did you approach covering food all over?

9:18Yeah, that's a good question. Luckily, I had been able to do that like prior at my other job. I was working at Food & Wine where Jordana Rothman was the restaurant editor. And so I got to inherit a lot of processes that were there. There were tons of spreadsheets. There were all these folders and interviews and stuff. And so I think I got to see like how that publication approached Best New Chefs, which is their national chef platform. And so that allowed me to sort of see how somebody like organized this, like restaurant openings, things like that. And then when I went to Bon App, I just did it in my own way, like made it more a Google spreadsheet thing.

9:57And so I feel like a lot of it, though, is just like reading a lot. So reading a lot of local publications, looking at like different social media, definitely having like a network of people of other writers, editors, or just people I know who like worked in restaurants but have like go out to eat a lot and asking them like what they're interested in. But yeah, I don't know. Part of it, too, is just like looking at places. And even if like nothing's written about them, being like, oh, there's something like kind of interesting about this. I remember when Turkey and the Wolf first opened up, that restaurant, it had some local press, but I don't think it was super nationally known when it first had opened.

10:39And I remember that was my old coworker at Tasting Table's brother's restaurant. And he was telling me my brother is opening a restaurant in New Orleans. And I was like, oh, OK, cool. So I remember when Jordana was going to New Orleans, I like put that on like her research list of like my friend's brother's rest. Like this is his restaurant. And then it ended up being that year, at least for food and wine, like on our restaurants of the year list. I know it was also on Bon App's list, too. And so that was really funny to see that where it's like, oh, I just kind of have like a funny feeling about like this restaurant.

11:11Like it seems really it was like so like unusual for the time and how it was like really fun and like not serious and like all about sandwiches and but these like beautifully constructed sandwiches. And so I feel like just kind of looking at random things like that or like kind of listening to like the people that I trust is always like allowed me to like find restaurants and places that I wouldn't normally expect or maybe aren't like, you know, have like, you know, huge PR companies backing them or anything. That's so wild for me to think about because I do think Turkey and the Wolf and their other restaurant, Molly's Rise and Shine as well, are kind of media darlings in some kind of way.

11:47Yeah, now they are. Yeah, they're so Instagram friendly. I mean, the food is delicious and it's a certain style of restaurant that I think people are really into. And it's really interesting to think about how that kind of attention can start in that kind of way. And it makes me think about like, I'm curious what you think the role of national food media is these days. I feel like obviously it can bring a lot of exposure, but then there's like chef culture, all kinds of other elements. I feel like national awards are so great because I think they allow someone or a team of people who are well-versed in restaurants and restaurant culture to look at sort of the lay of the land every year and celebrate the places that are doing it really well.

12:29I think there's also something that's really tough about it when there's so many local publications that are dying out or like not don't have like the funding that they need. And they are also very important to like understanding like the local landscape of restaurants and like the community and the places that are actually like feeding the people who live there. So I don't know. I feel like sometimes I have like I feel a tension between the two because I think local publications are really important to like national publications, too. Like as somebody who like worked on like more national restaurant award platforms, it's like I was always looking at local publications.

13:04So I think it's important, but I feel like if not at the expense of like local reporting and restaurant criticism. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I did an episode with Priya Krishna recently and she was telling me about how she also is reading all of the local papers when she's looking to be kind of talking about food trends in a more broad way in the country, obviously in places that you don't necessarily live in. I wanted to talk to you about like home cooking kind of coverage as well. You did this package at Bon Appetit that was a hot pot entertaining story with Eric Zee, who does the Taiwanese restaurants 886 and Wen Wen here in New York.

13:39And hot pot is so collaborative and intricate because you're essentially cooking everything as you go. And I'm curious about you and Eric kind of found a way to present that style of eating, which doesn't really fit into a traditional like Western recipe writing format. Right. I think that's like why hot pot is so awesome is like instead of one person cooking, everyone's cooking. Maybe someone is like taking charge a little more than others. Yeah, that's true. I feel like my father in law is the one who's always like kind of keeping an eye on everything to be like, oh, you put in like this root vegetable a while ago.

14:12We should fish that out. Or if there's like meat that's kind of like looking like it's going to start to overcook, my husband will also start taking them out and putting them on people's plates. I had actually pitched a version of this story like a couple times at Bon Appetit, which I don't know if I would recommend to people because that might have been annoying. But it allowed me to then figure out what is a better way to present this story. I think because it's like this type way of eating that I really love, but it's not super familiar or intuitive to many people, especially I think many people who are looking to a food magazine for recipes.

14:42And so I feel like by kind of constantly rethinking, like, what is the best way to, like, show people how to cook in this way that I love allowed me then to, like, figure out, OK, this is a helpful way to do it. So the way Eric and I thought about it was what if we did a really in-depth guide that's very visual that walks through people through the start to finish of hot pot from, like, before you're even cooking to actually the process of it. and I think with hot pot what's interesting is like cooking is like a part of it and that's probably the best part it's the I think the thing that you think about and visualize or remember the most but the bulk of the work is way ahead of time like it's the tools that you need to buy like a standalone butane burner or electric burner like wooden chopsticks like different sets of chopsticks for like raw meat and like the ones the chopsticks that you need when you're actually eating to like figure out like what are the raw ingredients that you're going to buy and like having a good mix and having like the right amount of food and then you know broths and things like that so that was the sauces yeah and all the sauces so I think that was important we felt like oh it's helpful to kind of like build up to like let us show you kind of the things that you need to like either buy ahead of time or like think about when you shop and like creating like a like almost like a primer in a sense of like here is like everything you need to know before you even get to the cooking part.

16:08Yeah, I really loved the final product of this package, which was kind of surprising in a way. I mean, I knew it was going to be great because I was in all of these pitch meetings every time I was like rooting for you. But I feel like going to eat hot pot in a restaurant just makes it so easy. And so to think about going to the effort of doing it at home was something that I was initially skeptical of. But then when you see it all laid out in that kind of way and you can picture like having a bunch of friends over and like plucking mushrooms like off of the table and dunking it in the broth together.

16:37Like it does feel like such a beautiful way to gather people at home. And I feel like that is one of the great things that food publications do is just kind of expand the possibilities of what a dinner party or a weeknight dinner like might mean for someone. Right. And I think what was really fun about that shoot too is, so Jesse Yuchen was the recipe editor for that and also really hands-on on the visual process. So they would send me like the PDF and stuff when things came out and I was able to look at it or sometimes go to the test kitchen at that point when I wasn't working up on Appetite.

17:09And I was a freelancer, but I live really close to the office. So I sneak in every so often. But I was able to watch like, oh, Eric develop the broths and then kind of like see like behind the scenes of like how things are going with the shoot. And so I felt like another thing that like contributed to this story looking so great too was like me, Eric and Jesse all of Hot Pot. We all like do it for fun. And I think there was even a time either like before this story came out or after like all three of us had hot pot together. So I feel like for us, it was like a very natural way to like entertain.

17:41But we wanted to like kind of help people understand like, oh, a lot of this is just mise en place. That's pretty much all you need to do. But I think it's really overwhelming to look at the table. It's so like bountiful. It has so many ingredients and you're kind of figuring out, OK, what are all these things? When do they all go in? Like how long should they go in for? And like then what do I do after it's cooked? and that was our goal of hot pot is to show people like oh this is how you make it happen like it's not just this beautiful spread of food but you're invited to partake in it too yeah i really want to go eat hot pot with all of you now because i've been slowly tweaking the like sauce that i make like the dipping sauce that goes into everything what do you put in yours well i feel like adding like sacha sauce has been the big addition because that's just like you know it's like a chinese barbecue sauce essentially so it has that kind of like smoky umami sweet factor and then like a lot of scallions and things like that that is also my go-to i just realized i had hot pot on friday so like a few days it's barely been cold yet that's i know i was like i just need this um but for me yeah satcha is like essential the second that i learned about that and tried that condiment it's the basis for my dipping sauce i'm glad we're aligned i wanted to talk to you about the first story that you wrote after going freelance which ended up on the cover of the New York Times, which I feel like must be any freelancer's dream, certainly mine, which is about Korean chefs who are adopted and how they're engaging with their cultural identity through their restaurants.

19:04I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what that reporting process was like and if there were any like approaches or reactions to these chefs that you found helpful when you were kind of bringing the story together. So this is my first story in general writing for the New York Times. And I didn't know what they wanted and I was very of intimidated by the process. So I thought I need to report this a little bit before I even send the pitch. So I had done a little bit of research of certain chefs who all ended up being in the story and just kind of candidly asked them a little bit about their background, how they got into cooking, what led them to cook Korean food, and then came up with a pitch that I think is almost as long as the story that included like, like quotes and like kind of a why me, why now, and here's like a potential list of sources.

19:54And I sent it to Patrick at the New York Times, like someone I didn't know, but luckily got an intro through a friend who works at the New York Times. He said it was good. He's like, don't use the intro like story. And like, here's like your word count. And so I felt really excited to work on it. I was like, I don't really know what I'm getting myself into either. And just like kind of dove into researching. Like I interviewed a lot of chefs who are all over the country who are cooking Korean food, who are all adoptees. And some of them I had been to the restaurant, some of them I hadn't. I also talked to like professors who were either like Korean adoptees themselves and like studying that particular population in the U.S.

20:38or like were devoted to the history and like context of Korean adoptees in the U.S. And so it was really interesting to like report and understand like not just from like a culinary perspective, restaurant perspective, but also I think from like a social like demographic perspective as well and like a history of Korean adoptees in the U.S. So I learned a lot about like how Korean adoptees were like kind of the beginning of like international adoption like that hadn't really existed before and how they were such a huge group of adoptees. And now like actually Chinese adoptees will soon like surpass them in terms of numbers.

21:15So one professor I was talking to was like, you could probably write the same story about Chinese adoptees in 10 years. And I was like, that is fascinating. I did not know that. But it was really interesting to report this story, I think, because I feel like there are a lot of chefs cook similar these days in that it is a reflection of like their heritage slash ethnicity and then where they grew up or their community or kind of their region. and most people don't question it for for these chefs they were being questioned all the times particularly on the korean front and especially from people who are also korean and i think that was like pretty shocking to hear like some of the responses that they got to their food or just questions about their food um that was like just heartbreaking to hear like i remember peter serpico um who is a chef based in philly and who had a cookbook that had just come up come out, I think, like maybe a month or two or sometime earlier that year when the story came out.

22:16And he was telling me about how he had a Korean pop-up during COVID. And I remember because I ate at it in Philly when I happened to like just be there for vacation. And I think it was really rainy. So my husband and I just wanted to eat in. So then we ordered from his pop-up and we really liked it but he was telling me like there was one time where like a Korean woman I'm not sure if she's a customer she had called and questioned the food and was like kind of like it's not like authentic quote-unquote because Peter is an adoptee and I remember just being like floored to hear that story because it was just so awful and like one of the things that Peter said was like it felt like I had to have like a Korean off with her like he had to like proved to her how Korean he was.

23:05And like, I think that's like really devastating. I don't know. I feel like it's just really hard to do that through food when it's like really personal, but also really public in a restaurant format. I think it was really sad to hear that, but it was also really encouraging and inspiring to hear these chefs who were like, this is the way that I am learning how to be Korean. And it is through like cooking in this way that like many other people are like kind of pulling from these different inspirations, like where it's like, this is how I cook now, or like this is how I grew up or like this is what I'm learning.

23:33And I think that was really cool to see and to like also try through the recipes that some of them had contributed to it. But it was like a really interesting, like hard story to report. But I felt like I learned so much in the process. And then I think it was really cool. Like the response to that story was crazy. Like I wasn't expecting it. Like I remember when it was considered for the front page, like I didn't really know like if it would get to be on the front page because like breaking news happens all the time so like anything could get pushed um so i remember specifically being told like if somebody really famous dies that day like you might get pushed and so then i think a really famous basketball player had died that day and i was like okay it's definitely gonna get pushed but it didn't and i was like oh wow like that's cool and like not that's cool that someone died but like that the story still got to run on the front page.

24:24But then I got like I started getting like emails and like no one checks my website to like ever email me anything except for my mom. So I was getting like emails from people. I was getting all these DMs like I was getting also messages from people that were like oh I'm like Korean but I'm not an adoptee but like I feel the same way in terms of like I don't feel like Korean enough to like cook Korean food or like feel like I have comfort in like doing that for like other people. And I also I didn't read any of the comments for the story because I'm always too scared to do that. So I usually make my dad read the comments.

24:59But he was saying that somebody was like, oh, I'm Mexican-American. I feel the same way. And so I think it was like really cool to hear like people relating with this story of like kind of feeling like like imposter syndrome. That was much more universal than I thought. And I think the editors at the Times like definitely saw that in a way that I didn't because I think that's why they considered the story for the front page. It was a really like cool like windy crazy story to report but it was like really fun for me and I think it was cool to see people connect with it. Yeah and I think you're right.

25:32I think that one of the things that for better for worse probably for worse people talk about a lot with food in the United States and immigrant food and I think especially Asian food is this idea of authenticity and like something being authentic is like the best thing that a food from a different country could possibly be considered to be. And I think what was so great about that story is that like there's this trap of authenticity that I think everyone find themselves falling into if you're a part of a community from a diaspora, like in this case, if you are not empty from that community. And so it kind of is on one extreme version of that, but then it ties into like so many other experiences that people have.