Alison Roman, cool girls, and global cooking
Several people in my life have asked me in the past week about my take on the whole Alison Roman kerfuffle that took place last weekend. I have, after all, cooked many of her recipes and happily Instagrammed them, and interviewed her twice, once for a piece on the virality of her recipes like the chickpea stew and once for a piece on millennial dinner parties. It is true that I like many of her recipes! So. Here is what I have to say about All That.
The interview where she disparaged Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo was… not good. There was no reason for to attack these women, who had nothing to do with the topic they were discussing. It all felt like a mean-girl move. This great piece from Kristin Wong on The Financial Diet captured it well: Alison Roman built her brand around being a “cool girl” and it was that very same thing that became her undoing. It’s easy to say you’re too cool to “sell out” if you grow up financially privileged.
But there is another, broader conversation related to Alison Roman that many people in food media have been having for a long time: the fact that Roman’s recipes and style of cooking rely heavily on ethnic ingredients from a collection of different cultures around the world, but she never really acknowledges where they come from.
I love her global melting pot style of cooking. She cooks with ingredients like harissa, labneh, tahini, turmeric, gochujang, and kimchi — things that are delicious and that anyone can cook with, of course. The problem lies in the way she neglects to ever mention the origins of these things or the cultures they come from, and acts as though she is introducing these things to her audience.
Her chickpea stew, for instance, is great — I’ve made it many times — but it’s basically Indian chana masala: the same dish, just with fewer spices, and no acknowledgement of where the inspiration came from. When asked about this in an interview with Jezebel a few months ago, she was defensive:
“I’m like y’all, this is not a curry...I’ve never made a curry, I don’t come from a culture that knows about curry,” Roman explains, with an air of exasperation. “I come from no culture. I have no culture. I’m like, vaguely European.”
(I don’t even have time or space in this newsletter to get into how annoying it is when white people say “I have no culture,” as though white is the default and everyone else has a culture.)
And that’s sort of part of her success: she’s a cool, 35-year-old, Brooklyn-dwelling white woman taking an Indian dish and watering it down by making it less spicy and calling it a stew, which makes it seem a lot more accessible to her mostly white audiences who might not usually attempt making curry, or chana masala, which seem more foreign and more intimidating. (Here is a very good piece to read on all of this, from Roxana Hadadi at Pajiba.)
That’s not to say she can’t make recipes from other cultures. Nobody “owns” certain recipes or ingredients. What’s important is not divorcing those foods from the context they come from.
I don’t think Alison Roman is “canceled.” I think there is an easy path forward for her: she has to get better at acknowledging the sources for her recipe inspiration, the cultures and traditions they come from. (Her NYT Cooking colleague Melissa Clark is excellent at this — just look at her recipe for Vietnamese caramel salmon.) She also has to work harder to support and amplify the work of others using her big platform — especially people from marginalized or underrepresented groups — instead of tearing them down. Some maturity, self-awareness, and personal growth will go a long way towards restoring her image.
PS: Here’s my one PSA: for the love of god, it’s pronounced TUR-mer-ic, not TOO-mer-ic. The ‘r’ is not silent! Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Quarantine cooking
Last Sunday I made these Asian-inspired short ribs which lasted a couple of dinners (a tip: shred some of the leftover short ribs and make short rib tacos!) I also made these chipotle chicken tacos with cilantro lime ranch after seeing Chelsea Peretti tweet about them and they were VERY good.
What I’m reading
Cooking your way through the pandemic, The Atlantic. The headline does not make this clear, but this is actually a day in the life of Stanley Tucci during quarantine and it is DELIGHTFUL.
HEY LADIES, Quarantine edition!! Cosmopolitan.
Guy Fieri is the last unproblematic food person, Buzzfeed News.
My appetites, New York Magazine. This is a terrific essay by critic Jerry Saltz on the origins of his peculiar eating habits, coping mechanisms, dealing with personal demons, and how he has pared his life down to only the essentials. A must-read.
Check on an extrovert today, New York Times. As an extrovert myself, I loved this piece from Ann Friedman. No one is all extrovert or all introvert — it’s not that binary — but either way, isolation is hard on everyone (and maybe more than a little frustrating for your extrovert friends).
The un-heroic reality of being an “essential” restaurant worker, Eater.
The scolding is not working, Vox. Does it feel like everyone is scolding everyone lately about social distancing? It’s exhausting, and also it’s unlikely to convince people.
Sorry, I’m too busy doing nothing to text you back, Vice.
Not everyone hates being stuck at home. Some people are thriving, LA Times.
The gym as you know it is a thing of the past, Vice. Even when gyms are eventually allowed to reopen in New York, I cannot imagine going back to mine any time soon. Especially when home workouts have proved to be so satisfying.
Just because you can afford to leave the city doesn’t mean you should, New York Times.
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