ethan frisch

Join us for a conversation with Abena Foli, who is the founder and co-owner of POKS Spices. Abena was born and raised in Ghana, West Africa, where she lived until 2006 when she immigrated to the United States for her college education. Her passion for food comes from her farmer-father who taught her how to blend spices and to understand the culinary heritage of cooking authentic West African meals.

Abena’s food science background and 10 years of corporate food industry experience exposed her to the white space in the food retail environment for West African flavors and foods. Leveraging her background, she started POKS Spices in 2016, developing Spicy Seasonings based on the West African Holy Trinity of chile, ginger, and onion. The mission of POKS Spices is to introduce the American home cook to West African flavors, and they have been featured on Good Morning Texas, The Dallas Business Journal, and Cuisine Noir Magazine.

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Join us for a conversation with renowned chef and activist Reem Assil. Reem is a Palestinian-Syrian chef based in Oakland, CA, and owner of the nationally acclaimed Reem’s California in Oakland. The restaurant is  Reem’s California Mission in San Francisco, inspired by Arab street corner bakeries and the vibrant communities that surround them. Reem has garnered an array of top accolades in the culinary world, including back-to-back James Beard Semifinalist nods for Best Chef: West. She is a graduate of the competitive food business incubator program, La Cocina, business leadership program Centro Community Partners, and Oakland-based business accelerator program ICA: Fund Good Jobs. Before dedicating herself to a culinary career, Reem spent over a decade as a community and labor organizer, building leadership in workers and residents to fight for living wages, affordable housing, and a voice in their jobs and their neighborhoods. Reem sits at the intersection of her three passions: food, community, and social justice. She uses food to invoke the central virtue of her Arab culture ⁠— hospitality ⁠— to build a strong, resilient, and connected community.
 

Photo Courtesy of Lara Aburamadan.

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Join us for a conversation with Samah Dada! Samah is a New York City-based recipe developer, food photographer, and blogger behind Dada Eats. Drawing from her Indian heritage and inspired by the foodscapes of London, California, and New York, she is the host of Cooking with Samah Dada on the Today Show’s digital channel.

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Join us for a conversation with Peter Reinhart, Chef on Assignment at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, NC. In addition to his role as a chef instructor in the Baking & Pastry program, Peter teaches a course on food media, and he is also the founder and executive director of the Johnson & Wales International Symposium on Bread. (www.breadsymposium.com) 

Peter is the author of 13 books on bread, food & culture, and is on a never-ending search for the perfect pizza. His books have won four James Beard Awards, and The Bread Bakers Apprentice not only won the Book of the Year award from the International Association of Culinary Professions, but also from the James Beard Foundation. The book was also recognized by the International Gourmand Cookbook Award in 2003 as the best baking book in the world.

Peter is also the host of the video website, PizzaQuest.com, and will be hosting the new HRN series, Pizza Quest, where he will be interviewing some of the greatest pizza makers in the world, as well as artisans of all types.

Subscribe now to get the episodes as they launch! (Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS). 

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Join us for a conversation with Alex Godin, founder of Lemontree, a non-profit that helps hungry people find free food. He started his career when he was still in high school–dropping out to raise $1M in venture funding for his first startup. Since then he's organized a celebrity telethon with stars like Herbie Hancock and Judd Apatow, an adult summer camp, and the internet's premier destination for hand-painted oil paintings of emojis.

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Join us for a conversation with Andre Springer, Founder of Shaquanda Will Feed You. Andre was born in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, and is of Barbadian descent. Andre began performing in the streets and bars of NYC at the age of 20, with much of his art being the creation of his drag alter ego, Shaquanda Coca Mulatta. The body of Andre's work has been in performance, sculpture, and film. While manifesting his creative side he also spent 18 years in the restaurant industry as a waiter, bartender, manager, and maitre d'. Shaquanda’s Hot Pepper Sauce was created at Bushwig in 2014, a drag festival that happens every year in NYC. Shaquanda’s Hot Pepper Sauce can be found in specialty shops across the United States and most recently in whole foods at all the North East region locations. The brand was featured in popular food publications like Bon Appetite, Edible, Serious Eats, Delish, Buzz Feed, NY Times Gift Guide, and was a favorite in season 9 and 13 of the popular hit youtube series “Hot Ones”.

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Join us for a conversation with Paige Lipari, local hero and owner/cook of Archestratus Books + Foods in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Lipari is a Sicilian-American poet, music maker, cartoonist, and cook. Her collection of poems, music, and illustrations, Family of Many Enzos, was published by Augury Books in 2012. She was previously an editor at A Public Space. She worked in many of NYC’s finest bookstores (McNally Jackson, Idlewild, and Housing Works Bookstore to name a few) before opening her own. Lipari is the owner/cook of Archestratus Books + Foods, a food-interest bookshop, Sicilian cafe/grocery, community space, and collaborative durational art project in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She currently lives a few blocks from the shop with her cat Olafi Lorenzo and zooms regularly with her 99 year old Nonna, Oliva.

Photo Courtesy of Paige Lipari.

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Join us for a conversation with Anjali Bhargava, founder and CEO of Drink Resilience turmeric elixirs. A former portrait photographer, Anjali decided to launch her own turmeric power, sourcing fresh turmeric and dehydrating it with other fresh ingredients, and Resilience was born in 2015.

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Join Vallery and Ethan for a conversation with John deBary, co-founder and board president of the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation, a nonprofit focused on improving the quality of life of hospitality employees. He got his start in the hospitality industry bartending in 2008 at PDT, the world-famous and James Beard Award-winning New York speakeasy. He joined the acclaimed Momofuku restaurant group a year later, where he was the group’s bar director until 2018. John is now the CEO and founder of Proteau, a non-alcoholic botanical drinks company. He lives in New York City with his husband and cat.

Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support Why Food? by becoming a member!

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Join us for a conversation with Kristen Miglore, Founding Editor of the website Food52. Kristen abandoned a career in economics in 2007 to work in food media, tackling a master's degree in food studies from New York University and a culinary degree from the Institute of Culinary Education along the way. She is the author of the award winning cookbooks Genius Recipes and Genius Desserts.

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Join us for a conversation with Sylvie Charles and Liselle Pires, founders of Just Date Syrup. Sylvie is a medical doctor who, after experimenting with low-sugar achaars and chutneys, turned the dates into a syrup, and realized she had struck on something powerful and decide to build a company around it. Liselle started her career in tech, and while at Microsoft, realized that she wanted to make a bigger impact on health - to shift how the masses thought about and consumed food every day.

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Join us for a conversation with Kim and Vanessa Pham, sisters and co-founders of Omsom, a new brand of Asian pantry staples. As first-generation Vietnamese-Americans and the daughters of refugees, Vanessa and Kim are reclaiming the cultural integrity of Asian cuisines too often diluted on grocery shelves in the ‘ethnic’ aisles and increasingly inaccessible in everyday life. The New York-based Pham sisters have tapped the talents of estimable, iconic chefs to exclusively collaborate on each starters’ formulations and recipes; beginning with a Southeast Asian line of three dishes from Vietnam, Thailand, and The Philippines. 

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Join co-hosts Vallery and Ethan for a very special conversation with Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. Born and raised in Brownsville, Borough President Adams was drawn to a career in public service from an early age and had a 22-year career in the NYPD, rising to the rank of Captain. While in the NYPD, Adams was a leader of his fellow Black police officers and an outspoken critic of police violence. In 2016, while serving his first term as Brooklyn Borough President, Adams was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, having lost vision in one eye and experienced significant nerve damage. Against the advice of his doctors, he decided to use a plant-based diet to treat his diabetes and was able to reverse the diagnosis in just a few months. Since then, Adams has been a vocal advocate of plant-based eating and food-as-medicine, and has implemented healthy eating programs across the borough.

In March, HRN began producing all of our 35 weekly shows from our homes all around the country. It was hard work stepping away from our little recording studio, but we know that you rely on HRN to share resources and important stories from the world of food each week. It’s been a tough year for all of us, but right now HRN is asking for your help. Every dollar that listeners give to HRN provides essential support to keep our mics on. We've got some fresh new thank you gifts available, like our limited edition bandanas.

Keep Why Food? on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate. 

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Join Vallery & Ethan for a conversation with Auzerais Bellamy, pastry chef and founder of Blondery. Auzerais is classically trained pastry chef, the former pastry sous-chef at Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery. She trained at Per Se and Daniel in New York and The French Laundry in Napa Valley before launching Blondery, her seasonal blondie collection. Blondery is a nod to her experience in fine-dining and her modest beginnings as a home baker.

In March, HRN began producing all of our 35 weekly shows from our homes all around the country. It was hard work stepping away from our little recording studio, but we know that you rely on HRN to share resources and important stories from the world of food each week. It’s been a tough year for all of us, but right now HRN is asking for your help. Every dollar that listeners give to HRN provides essential support to keep our mics on. We've got some fresh new thank you gifts available, like our limited edition bandanas.

Keep Why Food? on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate. 

Why Food is powered by Simplecast.

Join cohosts Ethan & Vallery for a conversation with Gaïana Joseph and Allegra Massaro, co-founders of Fuel the People, an organization in NYC and DC guided by the belief that food is the fuel for the revolution. They work to provide nourishment to protestors on the front lines, support local Black and POC-owned restaurants and businesses, and donate to local organizations who work tirelessly to support Black liberation. Allegra is a Philadelphia native currently living in Washington, DC. She’s a Bryn Mawr College alumna with a degree in Urban Planning & Development. A recovering financier, she now works in business ethics and conflicts management at an international law firm and is in the midst of the JD/MBA application process. Her quote to live by is, “Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.'" She is passionate about building community and ensuring that in the fight for justice and liberation, we never forget that joy is also a form of resistance. Gaïana Joseph is a New York native with her roots (and heart) in Haïti. She’s a Smith College alumna with a degree in Africana and French Studies. Somehow, that has brought her two very different careers in Business Process at Penguin Random House and now Project Management at a financial tech company. 
 

In March, HRN began producing all of our 35 weekly shows from our homes all around the country. It was hard work stepping away from our little recording studio, but we know that you rely on HRN to share resources and important stories from the world of food each week. It’s been a tough year for all of us, but right now HRN is asking for your help. Every dollar that listeners give to HRN provides essential support to keep our mics on. We've got some fresh new thank you gifts available, like our limited edition bandanas.

Keep Why Food? on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate. 

Why Food? is powered by Simplecast.

 

Join cohosts Vallery and Ethan for a conversation with Rochelle Oliver, founder and editor of IslandAndSpice.com, an online magazine about food, culture and the Caribbean.

HRN will be donating 10% of our membership drive proceeds from now until June 15 to the Philando Castile Relief Foundation. Visit heritageradionetwork.org/donate to make your gift.

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Join Vallery and Ethan for a conversation with Stephen Satterfield, cofounder of Whetstone Magazine. A self-proclaimed "origin forager, Stephen is a food writer, multimedia producer, podcast host (Point of Origin on iHeartRadio), and a sommelier in recovery.

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Join cohost Ethan for a conversation with Chef Woldy Reyes, founder of catering company Woldy Kusina. Woldy came to New York City for a career in fashion, starting in the editorial departments of Nylon and Elle and later working for designer Phillip Lim. Join us for a conversation about his career path through fashion to food, and how he expresses identity through his food.

The holiday season is all about food and community. There’s no better time to show your support for food radio by becoming a member! Lend your voice and help HRN continue to spreading the message of equitable, sustainable, and delicious food – together, we can change minds and build a better food system. Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate  today to become a crucial part of the HRN community.

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Join cohosts Vallery and Ethan for a conversation with Chef Hannah Wong of Van Da, a modern Vietnamese restaurant in NYC's East Village. Before beginning her culinary career, Hannah was a Fulbright scholar and editorial assistant at Harvard University Press. After switching gears and returning to school to pursue a culinary degree at Johnson & Wales, she worked at Daniel Boulud’s dB bistro Moderne and Gramercy Tavern before being tapped to help run the kitchen at Battersby. She has also appeared on Food Network’s Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay. Since 2017 she has been the Executive Chef of Real Food Catering. In March, she and owner Yen Ngo opened Van Đa, a modern Vietnamese restaurant in the East Village. It received one star from Pete Wells in the NYT and was recognized as a Bib Gourmand by the Michelin Guide.

The holiday season is all about food and community. There’s no better time to show your support for food radio by becoming a member! Lend your voice and help HRN continue to spreading the message of equitable, sustainable, and delicious food – together, we can change minds and build a better food system. Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate  today to become a crucial part of the HRN community.

Why Food? is powered by Simplecast.

Join cohosts Vallery & Ethan for a conversation with Denise Woodard, founder of Partake Foods. Denise had a career with huge corporate food companies but when her young daughter developed serious food allergies, she decided to launch her own allergen-free line of cookies. Tune in to hear Denise's story, and how she wound up with Jay Z as an investor in her company!

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