What is Really New About the New Food Media?

I’m back in New York where today it is raining/sleeting as it will apparently do all week, quite the come-down from even the rainiest day I experienced in Napa. With the return to my inbox, I’m also back on my news perusal, and as such, this issue is different from what you’ve seen the last few weeks—from time to time I’ll be incorporating my read on news from other sources, for your pleasure and potential/ongoing edificatiooooon.

Some housekeeping before we get into it, paywalls will be phased into coming issues, to coincide with the introduction of monthly memberships and the non-discounted annual rate. There’s more good stuff on the way: a personal refresh on the antiquated chef profile with Kabawa’s Paul Carmichael, an exploration into chef brand collaborations and how they might not always align with one’s public persona, a series reflecting on the inner lives of persons of note, and more.

Consider upgrading your subscription! And a reminder to the folks in hospitality spaces, please do reply if you’d like to subscribe with the industry discounted rate for as long as you’re a member.

The lead* was split on how we’re imagining the future of our collective genius. Most of you said you’re refining your work for better alignment with the person you’re becoming, while almost as many said that you are observing and listening. In the space of our actions being the evidence for how we show up in the world we’re building, the next step after acquiring info is to put something at stake. Gotta have risk to have a future! I’m interested in how we are collectively placing ourselves on the line.

*Polls are for paid members with results in the following issue.

Social media influencers are recording restaurant meals with no camera in sight. A TEXTURE founding member and veteran NYC hospitality publicist shared this New York Times article with me about diners using Meta Ray-Ban glasses to record restaurant staff and fellow patrons (not always with the subject’s consent). A Manhattan restaurateur had no clue he was being recorded until customers began asking him for selfies.

The first issue of this newsletter focused on involuntary surveillance of strangers in our vicinity, whose behavior we find absurd, funny, or notable in some way. I’ve pointed out before that many hospitality workers are vulnerable not only because of the precarious nature of their financial stability in an industry where businesses go out of business overnight, but because so many back-of-house employees are immigrants in this era of automatic suspicion.

Rob Martinez posted about Bau Nguyen, the proprietor of bánh mì haven Singleton’s Deli in New Orleans. Nguyen, who was a refugee from the war in Vietnam, shared that he and his staff were recently carrying their passports on their person. Chances are, the people influencers and casual social media users are posting on their platforms for atmosphere, may actually be doing all they can to avoid the spotlight of any scope. I scanned the TikTok page of the influencer cited in the NYT piece, a young woman who goes by Elizabeth Eats NYC. Interestingly (offensively), the identity she obscures the most is her own.

Artist Chase Hall shared on his IG yesterday that he gifted his collection of 238 Black Panther newspapers to the Met. The first time I read a copy of one of those papers, I was an undergrad at UCLA in an Afro American Studies course where a former Panther visited our class. Chase made the donation (he’s been working on the archive since he was a teen) as advocacy for the “vital history” of the Panthers, and to further the efforts of Met curators Akili Tommasino and Allie Rudnick in celebrating Emory Douglas, the Panthers’ minister of culture. (I had the pleasure of interviewing Douglas while working on the Black Power Kitchen cookbook, in the chapter on rebellion.)

I’m fortunate that Chase and I have crossed paths, including one memorable car ride during which I had the esteemed pleasure of introducing him to the ‘90s R&B trio, Brownstone. Artists must have range y'all! It’s inspiring to see his practice converge in such a material way. In his IG caption he wrote, “The possibility of a more equitable world is all around us and we must never lose sight of the ones who laid the bricks we stand on and better yet take time to analyze how they are laid to cultivate a more sturdy footing moving forward.”

Click through to see a photograph of the papers in his personal archives.

Food media is diverging, and I would like to think that’s a good thing, but alas, I remain unconvinced. In recent weeks we’ve seen the launch of Coyote Media in the Bay Area inspired by the rogue spirit of the alt weekly, the digital magazine Gourmet (so named due to Condé Nast’s apparent lapse in trademark registration for the elder print version) highlighting long takes and recipes, and Caper Media, where the intersection of NYC-focused food, gossip, and restaurant news appears to converge under the tutelage of former Vanity Fair deputy editor, Dana Brown.

Eh. Some of this strikes me as independently reductive and less systemically transformational. Legacy media institutionalized elitism and nepotism in New York publishing, then codified it in mastheads and corporate hierarchies (still happening!). Coyote and Gourmet appear to eschew this model by doing away with traditional titles, adopting a labor-conscious framework by calling staff “worker-owners.”