 Thank you for joining us at Mechanics Institute for our online program, The Writers' Lunch. The Writers' Lunch is a casual and virtual brown bag lunch activity on the third Friday of each month. Look forward to craft discussion and formal presentations on all forms of writing and excellent conversation. My name is Nico Chen and I am the program manager here at Mechanics Institute. For those of you who are new to Mechanics Institute, welcome. Mechanics Institute was founded in 1854 and is one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the hearts of the city. Mechanics Institute features a general interest library, an international chess club, ongoing author and literary programs in the Cinema Lits film series. A recent article in the San Francisco Standard describes us as the coolest library in downtown San Francisco and the remote work sanctuary. Come see this for yourself by joining us for a free tour, which happens every Wednesday at noon. This tour of Mechanics Institute will orient you to our building, include an overview of our history and mission, and outline our current services and benefits of membership. We also offer a plethora of free events for our Mechanics Institute members. So you are also welcome to join us on a special evening tour tonight, Friday, November 17th, starting at 5pm. Light refreshments will be available during the welcome reception and complimentary beverages will be shared. If you are interested in registering for this event, I will be popping the link to this event in our chat box. There we are. And that is now in there. We also offer a plethora of free events, including our first writers read happening on sites in our fourth form meeting room on Friday, December 8 from 5 to 7pm. Step into this world of literary enchantments, an intimate evening of readings featuring members from our own writers groups. We'd like to extend a special offer to writers lunch attendees today. If you're interested in joining us for inaugural writers read, you can get your ticket for free by using the promo code writers read. I will be popping the link to this events and the event code into our chat box. And here we go. So let me do that shortly, but let's continue on. We can you can learn more about a variety of other events by going to my library.org click on events in our top menu bar and begin searching and registering for the events are course of your choice. Today's theme for the writers lunch is food writing and telling heritage stories through food. This question, moderated by Cheryl J. Busey but a will include a Q&A with the audience. Please add your questions to the chat, and I will read them out loud. And you're welcome to ask questions. Once the floor opens. So I will start to read the bios of today's participants and our moderator Cheryl J. Busey but a award winning author and push cart prize nominee show J. Busey but a is an Oakland multidisciplinary writer whose autobiographical and fictional short story collections, along with her lyrical and stunning poetry are fully succeed in getting across deeper meanings about the politics of race and economics without breaking out of the narrative. An inaugural Oakland poet laureate runner poet laureate runner up. She is also a popular teacher, literary reader presenter storyteller curator and MC host for literary and poetry events. Our special guest is the Olympic Tony. She is a San Francisco based chef instructor and food writer and was born in Rome and raised in Perugia, Italy. With stories. Let me admit. With stories and knowledge from six generations. Her recipes cross the best of local agriculture with Italian artisanal foods. Italy by ingredients artisanal ingredients. Modern recipes which was published this year is her first cookbook. Viola teaches Italian modern home cooking classes virtually via milk street cooking school in Boston and in person at 18 reasons in the civic kitchen in San Francisco. In spring and fall, she leads immersive culinary tours throughout the beaten path Italy. In 2020, the president of the Italian Republic awarded her the title of Cavalieri Delordini Delastella d'Italia for her work to further the culture and business of Italian food. She lives in San Francisco's Mission District with her husband, son and tiny dog. Camper English is a San Francisco based cocktails and spirits writer and educator named one of the biggest names in the cocktail world by Vanity Fair. He he has contributed to publications including popular science server, the San Francisco Chronicle, either whiskey advocates, the Oxford companion to spirits and cocktails and many more. He is the author of doctors and distillers the remarkable medicinal history of beer wine spirits and cocktails. His most recent book, the ice book, cool cubes, clear spheres and other chill cocktail crafts has been named the ultimate guide to clear ice and reach the top 50 best selling books on Amazon. His website is algodemics.com. Last but not least, we have Henry Sue. Henry Sue is a food storyteller and passionate ambassador of foods originally from Taiwan. Henry enthusiastically explores his Taiwanese heritage through the lens of food, cooking, teaching and sharing his journey to identify what is Taiwanese. With a Gulf Coast upbringing, Midwestern education and years of living in Latin America, his Taiwan food heritage has been the cornerstone in all phases of his life, from immigration to assimilation to seeking his personal cultural identity. Henry teaches dumpling making classes around the Bay and host Taiwanese pop up dinners as Arama Sama dumplings. Henry most recently worked at dumpling club in the Mission District in San Francisco, and for the Oakland tofu maker hodo foods where he inspired many chefs across the country to put tofu on their menu. Besides dumpling making, Henry is known for his Northern California interpretation of the national dish of Taiwan, beef noodle soup. Obsessive and using locally grown responsibly and deliciously sourced ingredients, his transcultural food recipes manifest his Taiwanese roots while proudly bridging in all things Bay area. It is such a blessing to have all of y'all joining us here today for writers lunch today. Cheryl, I'll hand it off over to you. Thank you so much, Nico. And I have to also say, I am really honored to have Henry Viola and camper here with us today. You wouldn't have known this and I don't know how it happened, but I guess it's just destiny that the three of you represent the three favorite things in my household. Good Italian food. Good cocktails. And good dumplings. So thank you all so much. Let me start by asking my first general question. I would like each of you to tell us a bit about your journey into writing about food or telling stories about food. All stories and writing about edibles and drinkable. Viola, could you start? Yes, I'm happy to. Thank you. Thank you for liking Italian food, Cheryl. So I started, I came to writing mostly via teaching. I have been a cooking instructor for about 15 years and a food Italian food professional for many more than that. But when motherhood came along 19 years ago, all of a sudden my shift, my, my focus shifted and I thought that first of all I really wanted to share knowledge and pass it on to the next generation. And also, and also I felt like I no longer wanted to work evenings and weekends and holidays. So I shifted to teaching and all of a sudden I felt like this is really what I was meant for like all this work that I have done in food and led me to the point of teaching which I to this day not withstanding having done it for close to 15 years. I gathered as you can understand a lot of material during this 15 years of teaching. And I perfected the way that I talk to people by taking, by taking the cues. So I always say that if a question is asked by one of my students more by any students more than twice that I'm doing something wrong. I have to go back to the drawing board and rewrite the way that I say things or bring in new element which will make people understand. Little by little this part of teaching that I dealt with quite a bit which was writing recipes and telling stories around them because stories really kind of make people remember became one of the main things in my teaching life and eventually it morphed into a book. See writers. This is how things happen. How about you camper. What's your journey been. Well, it's been a roundabout journey that is for sure. Writing is my third career. I first was I studied physics and undergrad and did some scientific research. And then I went to grad school for computer science and did a little bit of that for a few years. But for the past 20 or so years, I've been writing about drinks. And that really came about because it was just something I was interested in. I really like drinking a cocktail or two or three. And I was paying attention to bars and at the time nightclubs and things like that started to do some reviews for fun initially. And then eventually I was doing full time reviewing of more nightlife. However, the craft cocktail Renaissance that we're in started bubbling up at around 2006 to 2008. And I was paying close attention to it and starting to write more about that and I moved away from nightlife into just a focus on cocktails and the construction of them and learning from bartenders, what they knew. And then eventually that transformed into me becoming a bit of an expert and being able to share what I had learned and what I've read and all of those books and to start teaching a little bit about it, which is more what I do now than than just writing. So, I do a little bit of all of it, but yeah, it wasn't an unexpected journey I would never have guessed that I'd become a person who wrote for a living. But you know, camp camper, it's all science. It sure is. You never really left your roots, did you? I didn't. And as I said, alcohol is a solution. Exactly. My daughter is a neuroscientist. So that we live with that. Okay, Henry, what's been, what's your journey been into the drinkables and telling stories about them? I guess. I'll try to be quick. I shortened my version about this a little bit, but I think a big part of it is just loving to eat. And being a person who likes to eat and it has a lot of questions about why things are the way they are. I think part of it is being an immigrant, a young immigrant coming as a baby to this country in the early 70s and kind of not seeing our family's food out and about. My family is originally from Taiwan. So most of the Chinese food that we would see in Cantonese origin. So, you know, my family was very into food and into my grandfather, they migrated with us and grew vegetables in the backyard. My grandmother did all the cooking. And, but we were not in the kitchen we were studying like it was just eating and consuming. So, and my background has been relatively circuitous. I studied anthropology. I did a lot of my day in Latin American studies I worked in eventually went to architecture school I worked in public health. I was doing furniture design and I might I moved to Ecuador in 2007. I always loved to cook. But then what happened was when I was in Ecuador, similarly to my family migrating to the states in the 70s. I found myself needing to learn how to make everything I wanted to eat. But then throughout all of that it was always the question mark, what is Taiwanese food or what is that about or where does it come from and how is that. I never thought about things as regional Chinese cuisine here and there but so while I was in Ecuador working in architecture and furniture design with an NGO. I was cooking and learning how to make dumpling skins and all my own pantry items and kind of sourcing whatever I could find in the Andes that would be similar to the food that I wanted. And then I decided to move back to the states and transition to food professionally. And then I thought and then I started doing pop ups on the side my own little things and teaching dumpling classes and that's where I started realizing. I needed to do research and find stories and understand where things came from my family didn't really talk about food so it was kind of all self discovery. And in the last 15 years of kind of learning dishes, writing them down going to Taiwan, working with my aunts who do cook and kind of learning how to tell stories. I don't have a book I've not published much I've written a few small things kind of explaining basics about Taiwanese stuff but I'm just happy to say, in the last 15 years I've started seeing a generation of Taiwanese food writers that are starting to and for the most part grapple with the same issues about. Why is this food here and where is it from and why do we not know about it and why are we all seeking out the same thing. Wow, these American and any food writers and they've literally all been published in the last besides to 2015 and 18. For the most part they've all been published in the last two years and they all have similar stories so it's interesting to kind of see how our generation have started to kind of try to tease that all out so it's the beginning of storytelling it's the beginning of explaining what this regional cuisine is and why it exists. Well you know Henry your your mission around food is very very clear and absolutely wonderful and needed. I want to stay with you for a minute I want to follow a follow up question with you. Some people say that writing about food and telling food stories goes way beyond the recipe. And I think you've kind of touched on that, but what are your main ingredients for your stories. I tend to I'm not entirely academic I've done research on certain cultural things that have that are a part of Taiwanese identity and that's if people follow Taiwan. It's a little bit complicated because some of its cultural some of its political and some of its. But the ingredients for my storytelling are pretty personal and I'll start with the personal and then I'll talk about that I'll delve into history that I can find. And any that's an English that's available to me because I don't read and write in Chinese and then talk to people about how things have come to be. And then when I share those stories whether I'm teaching a class or an Instagram post where I used to grapple with like writing these long things describe edition anywhere else. I, I tried to tailor it towards. Now there's more people that are not of Taiwanese descent who are curious about it because they're hearing about it more in this country, and then otherwise for Taiwanese American folks or immigrants like me who are discovering everyone talks about how there's a taste first that they've had since childhood but they can't find anywhere because they're not it's not readily available. And so that's a really emotional thing and then that'll propel me into talking about where that comes from and why and you know we're in California or I was an Ecuador before what kind of substitutes are there and you treat that and talk about identity or authentic so called authenticity or tradition, or so. Those are all interesting things to me related to food, but taste is the key. Yeah, kind of draw people in, I suppose. How about you camper. What are your main ingredients for story about spirits. For me, I'm really concerned with the, the why of things, how things work at the end. If one distillery has one type of still and another has another type of still, how will that translate into a different tasting product at the end. So I like taking things apart. It's a curiosity on how things work. If I could never write cocktail recipes again that would be fine with me because I figure you can go look it up. What I want to know maybe how a spirit came about given its history and its use and specifically in medicine and from the doctors and distillers book, or in the case of the ice book it was figuring out how water freezes. How we could take advantage of that. Yeah. So, yeah, so really comes a point of curiosity about taking things apart and figuring out how they work and then putting them back together to explain for other people that's that's really what brings me joy. Wow. How about you Viola. I come to it from two sides. So one is the side where I want to teach people so that is quite important to me. I want people to come away with it with a real skill both in my classes and from reading my book. Another one is kind of another side of the coin that Henry is describing so finding refinding and reclaiming your heritage. So I don't need to refine my heritage because my family is all in Italy. And because we talk about food all the time. It is probably about 80% of what we talk about. But what I do feel sometimes is that I need to reclaim it because I think that Italian food is probably the most claimed in the States in terms of how people cook daily. There are so many elements of Italian food that are often distorted. Even in those people who kind of pride themselves on making quote unquote authentic or really Italian food. There is an element of Italy that is brought in that it is not the Italy that I grew up in and the Italy that I know. I find that often we want to not we but people like to have a very poeticized view of Italy and we everybody wants to think of like this is heaven and this Shangri-La where you have this sweet life where you do nothing in reality and just be happy and you know have cocktails and wine and eats. In reality Italy is a bustling country is a country where life can be very hard and where traditions of culture are both very layered and established but also very fraught and difficult and also very influence on what is happening in the world today. And very often it seems that there is a part of the of the press and the writing world that does not want to recognize that because it doesn't it doesn't look good. It doesn't sell. So I think that I can reclaim all that and still make it a very appealing place because Italy is very appealing exactly because of its of its conflict and of its contradictions and that to me is the most interesting part of my heritage and the one that I try to try to tell in my stories. The other part of the understanding of the teaching is is the sensorial part. So when I think of of cooking. Of course, yes I think of of grams and measures and cups and timing but I also think of what happens to my body when I cook. And that is a much more common language for people than anything else or so you can tell people you can cook it two minutes or you can tell someone. You should be cooking it about two minutes but mostly this is what you are looking for listening for touching for and smelling for and that is a much more common language that anyone can understand because we all have a body and we all have sensations. And so that is one of the ways to which through which I come to in my storytelling around food. You just really slid right into my next question so beautifully. Thank you. What are some of the writing and storytelling techniques that you use for getting the reader to taste and smell what you're cooking. Well, so I always introduce my recipe with a little head note that harks back to a personal story. So, I always very many years ago when I was at New York University, I had a teacher who said the first, the first sentence needs to draw the reader in right away. So I always have a first sentence or first paragraph that is want wants to make the reader go on and say oh wait hold on a second there's obviously an answer then question that needs answering here let me see what it is. The other technique that I use is to take the sensorial out of the food world so I will give you a small example. One of the things that I also always recommend people do with their ingredients is that they smell them, especially when you talk about staples like cereals right, we all think oh you know serious or pulses they can say on our on our on our shelves forever. That's really not the case. And let's take rice for example once you open rice and take it out of its vacuum. It's got about a three months shelf life it's not going to last forever. And so I always tell people to smell it first to the point that in I save a cup of rice that has gone off in my class so that people can smell that first and then the fresh rice. And so what I tell them is that fresh rice smells like barely gathered dust and kind of like a spring morning where you kind of see the flex of dust and a rice that has past its prime is going to smell like dirt that has accumulated like cobwebs, and like, you know, dust mites. And so this is not something that you think about when you're cooking, but it is a smell that you can be familiar with and you can understand no matter you know no matter whether you're a cook or not. So that is another one of the techniques that I like to use immersive wonder. Thank you. How about you camper. Well, I think I'm far less sensory than Viola in my writing. I want you to be curious as to the complexity of the situation because I think complexity makes things taste better. That's could be just me and have a huge audience. I, you know, like, okay, it's a gin and tonic. It tastes good. We drink it, but the gin and tonic is made of malaria cure, a scurry cure, and a plague cure. And then pull those apart and look at the history of each one and find out why this drink is special and actually magical and a whole bunch of different circumstances happen in order to have these things available that are now combined in the glass and just having it on a summer day. But like, but if you think about it, it's it's get tastes even better and richer and full of history and science and medicine and magic. So that's, that's what gets me the teases of Oh, there's so much more and it gets so much more interesting. Right, it just didn't come here this way. There's a legacy, there's a history. Wonderful. How about you, Henry. For me, and at least in the recipe writing or taught our teaching or talking about Taiwanese food in general. One of the things we often think of taste, but then the sensorial aspect, you know, and obviously we all talked about taste and smell being connected. And, but the other thing that we talked about a lot in Taiwanese food or maybe Chinese food in general is texture. So, and I saw, you know, looking at recipes and teaching myself through recipes that are available to me in English, again, because I don't read and write in Chinese. I never found certain things that I learned later when I went to Taiwan, or, and now I'm starting to see people talk about and more is the textural aspects of what you want to achieve when you're cooking. And often in our culture, we may say people may ask you, not how did that taste or was it good. The first thing they'll say is, was it some kind of texture, like the most famous one in Taiwan is qq, if you people have heard about that qq is like the term that refers to the chewiness or akin to Italian pasta being al dente cooked al dente. So, I feel like half the recipe should be written on how you achieve a certain texture by technique, which I think is a loss in a lot of recipes these days are food but so I think that's just an interesting addition to talking about how to share food recipes and how to achieve making something. Wonderful. Nico, do we have any audience questions. Currently we actually don't. So I highly recommend for our audience to sort of think about what their inquiry is and pop in those questions into the texts. I actually have a show do you have another question that you might be able to ask during the oh sure you know I always have questions. Let me just say, I have a story that involves a conversation between a mother and her daughter and it's quite a heavy duty conversation I mean they're trying to work out some things. And inside of that story, the mother is standing at the stove making gumbo. So, as the discussion goes on, the gumbos being made and certain techniques and recipes and you know ingredients are being shared until we get to the end of both the conversation and the making of the gumbo. And the question for the panel is, do you wrap your stories in the food. Or do you wrap your food in the stories. And, or do you do both how do you engage the words that you want to say and write with what you're conveying and what you're making. Camper. I would say for me specifically I'm really an explainer and I'm trying to, I gather information and collated and bring different points together and then try to be very clear and succinct and really just tell you something. I don't, I don't know that I would consider myself a storyteller rather than, I don't know how to writer or something like that at least that's how it feels in my head, because I feel like I, the words I'm going to use are going to be simple, and then allow you to ruminate on the words behind them and and that what makes it special to you and maybe it's just because I'm not terribly good at that using more evocative sensory words to describe the actual flavor of things but to explain what's special in order for that to make you feel special and make that beverage feel special to you or just look better in the case of nice ice cubes. I like the nice ice, my daughter would really appreciate that. I have to find that one. Viola. So I would say that I do a little bit of both, but I always come to it from the idea of teaching people how to cook. So the story comes into the food and it's in my teaching career is started coming into the food more and more strongly, because I saw that people come to it with a better sense of memory so that if I told the story about, you know how my, how my brother would make a certain type of risotto, because that was a good way to win the heart of a girl that he was in love with. People remember more. They, you know, they find that a very attached, it's almost like a tune right when you have you have a tune that goes a jingle that goes with a advertisement. It's a story that goes with the recipe because that brings in that really fixes it in your head. And so that is, I would say that I definitely wrap the story into the food for the most part. Also stories to me are, because we're talking about heritage stories to me are a way to always recognize the giants on the shoulder I stand on like my mother and some other friends and grandmothers, and even even my dad and my family that has been in food for the last six generations. So it's a good way of making sure that people understand that I'm fully aware of the good luck and privilege I've had of having this this tradition and this heritage in my life that has brought me here. Wonderful. How about you, Henry? I have a lot of storytelling. And I need to learn how to. Yeah, tone it down. And, but that's kind of my interest and impetus in discovering a dish or trying to figure out how to dish works. So I kind of tend to wrap a lot of storytelling around the dish. But when I'm teaching, it can, depending on the students, it can be a good thing or a bad thing. I need to learn how to like do more technical for some classes and then more storytelling for others. But I'm kind of in between there a little bit and trying to figure out how to do that better and be more succinct. Oh, you're very sorry. It's been great. Do we have any questions, Nico? We sure do. So Ty Swackhammer was curious about how videos and, you know, text recipes might differ from each other. So, her question is, do you do both videos and texts, and what are the pros and cons of each of those mediums? Henry? For me, I think video is really good. And I think the pandemic was helpful kind of to train us all to be able to set up our remote talking and cooking stations and teaching stations. It's, it's, and it's interactive in a different way, obviously, than what Ty's is asking about, you know, just reading something and having potentially a lot of questions, but video often allows you to put in a lot of nuance and obviously you're exploring techniques and doing things. So, yes, I think in this day and age, both are interesting. Important to be kind of in the, yeah. To be in the mix. Yeah. Yeah, how about you, camper? Well, a lot of my decision making around those has to do with finances and what pays. 99 point whatever percent of all video is free content that you're giving away. And what my hope is anyway is that I'm driving views and traffic back to the things that people pay for which might be classes or book sales or just increasing awareness for my, you know, personal brand so that people hire me for more of those things as well as for me. So for me, video is almost an advertisement for what I really like to do and what pays me better because I don't have my own sort of sold video platform where I do content that people pay for on that. So that's how my decision, I would like, I would love to not do video, but it is the future. Absolutely. Like you have to do video if you're, if you want to be a writer, you're going to be a talk or two. Right. Exactly. What about you, Viola? I love video. I really do. I love speaking in public. It's a great way to connect to people. But for me, they are two things that need to coexist. Just think of the idea of a movie in a book, right? So you read a book and then you see the movie and you probably get something from both. But what you do get from a book and from words is depth, which you do not get from a video because a video by definition cannot be too long because with a video we are gathering to a changing audience. We always have to think of the length of it. So that if I wanted to tell other things I tell in my book, they will probably like 90 minutes long videos. No one's going to look at a 90 minute long video, right? So in order to shorten that, then I think you lose a lot of the depth and the beauty and the imaginative way in which you can talk about food and the stories that connect to it. So for me, I see them as both necessary and as Camper was saying, also a little bit of an advertising, telling people, okay, this is what I need to offer for like a very quick meal today if you want to know more, come and read my book. And so that's how I tend to think of video, but I do love it. It is a mean that I absolutely adore. I just, you know, I love putting on a show. So it works for me. Good. Great. Any other questions, Nico? We sure do. Alyssa is asking, what are your suggestions for writing about food or drinks and the way that translates for a reader since, you know, in the text there's no taste, smell, touch, nada, right? So what is the process to create all that in a reader's imagination? Camper. Hmm, because I don't taste that. How do I taste that gin and tonic? Right. Well, that is up to you. My style of writing is more like to get you to go taste it for yourself, I suppose. But I'm my reader. I find something that's interesting and I want to talk to other people who might find that interesting as well. So as far as translating it, like, if I can explain it in a way that makes sense to me, then it will make sense to my sort of ideal reader who is a fellow nerd. I'm not trying to teach someone who doesn't know what a gin and tonic tastes like. What a gin and tonic tastes like. It's so interesting. You're going to want to try it for yourself is kind of how I approach it. So I feel like rather than trying to wring a lot of readers in, I'm actually trying to filter them out and get only people who are interested in my sort of extreme level nerdetry of what I find interesting. Right. Henry. Again, I'm kind of wrapped up in the stories behind a dish. So that will be what my writing is about. And then I really love photography. So I love a good photography of a dish, whether or not you know exactly what it's going to taste like can evoke a lot of anticipation. So I think that's, if it's something in print. And if you know there are good books without any photography but it's nice to have said. Great. So the visuals along with the words. Yeah. Viola. Well, I spend a lot of time shutting off one sense and privileging the other so that I can really deeply understand what the sensations that I get are and how to bet describe best describe them. So that's that's my technique so I you know I often cook with my eyes closed or I will like something on my nose so that I cannot smell I'll put something on my ear so that I cannot hear, and then really kind of focus on one sense and really call out the words that best describe it. And then put them on the page. Interesting. Wonderful. Nico. Another question. Yes, we have another question from, I hope I'm pronouncing your name like Chiara Andreas. She said, speaking of a conflictual Italian image, immigration is a prevalent political issue as in the rest of Europe is immigrants influence making its way into Italian cuisine. Ah, question for you, Viola. Yeah, I love the question. Thank you Chiara. It is easy. It is a second or what I was speaking about earlier kind of like, you know, claiming heritage that everyone is wanting to own. Yes, the answer the brief answer is yes. And immigration definitely making its way into the into the Italian cooking, both when it comes to ingredient as well as to techniques and preparation and also in terms of enlarging the the visuals, they just kind of the curiosity of people in Italy because Italians really like good food. And what we look at more is not where it comes from but how it was made along the way right so it's really about the respect of production. And then it is saying oh it comes from another country that that's that's interesting but also what is interesting is what what is the sustainability of it how good at the ingredients and how they're put together. So, and food, the other part is that it food has become a very very political issue in Italy, hugely political because as people may know in this in this chat. Italy has unfortunately a rising right, right wing government, and the right wing government has appropriated this sort of this idea of food sovereignty, and instead of making it inclusive it made it exclusive to say, you know it's sovereignty needs our food and is where it comes from, and it should come from very close to us and be and be close to our, to our heritage and to our traditions. The left wing says, No, you know we should welcome everybody was here they have their own tradition. We have a country where we can produce anything and so we should come, we should accommodate that. I find that younger generations are more and more open to that. In fact, I will tell you that the most popular food among kids right now is sushi. So my nephews and nieces in Italy, they go out and they say, See, we're going out I'm like oh great what are you going to eat and I'm thinking I say oh pizza or whatever they said no, we're going for sushi. That's what they all want. And they're very curious younger people are very curious about it and I think it is a very important way of opening. Opening the mind mind to the reality of others and and also counteracting the sense of just closeness and exclusion that unfortunately is pervading some of the some of some parts of Italy. Great. Thank you. What a what a rich legacy and a lot of good information. I see we have another question Nico. Yes, we have Kimberly tan who was asking, What are some food stories are stories about drinks that you hope to see more of in general, and specifically from future generations of food writers and storytellers. Ah, great question. Hey, let's start with the cocktails camper. Okay. Well, I got great news because a lot of the books that I want to see are hitting the market now and in next year. The world of alcohol production and cocktails and all of that is very much male writers, all of the cocktail books until recently that were written by white men for the most part. But now as of, I think literally this week there's a new book about the black contribution to cocktails, particularly in America. And then there are at least two women, historical cocktail analyses coming out next year. And it's great that we're bringing in the first is and the research that takes to find those voices is super super interesting so I love deeply researched topics like this and and and they're coming and I'm going to be more happy about it. Wonderful. How about you, Henry. I have a lot of cookbooks probably not as many as camper Viola here, but I really like reading stories and memoirs. So sometimes I'll go through I don't have you know I haven't gone through all of the recipes and all the books that I own but I tend to kind of look for storytelling. I really enjoy books that are kind of more memoir focused and related to food. How people discover things and why they've highlighted certain things and kind of brought them to life so. I have a future dumb up who's just here in the Bay Area and launch has a new book out invitation to a banquet. But one of her original food books is a shark spin and sharks and something pepper corn anyway it was a memoir about how she came to love Chinese food and I find it to be one of the most compelling. Now I'm, you know, after reading that several years ago is kind of pulled me into that world through food. So now when I eat it over the years, it's kind of brings me back to things that you know she felt like she discovered at a time when maybe China was not that open for example, so travel memoir writing related. Inspiration all around us. How about you, Viola. I am really loving watching books a little bit from people a little bit like me who are very recent immigrants and who are still grappling with what it means to be very much from a culture but also very much into the other. I find that they bring that they bring the view of the world which is, which is interesting, you know, those of us who they call us expats they call us recent immigrants that they have lots of lots of words for us but there are many right not just from Europe like from all over the world, people who have like their whole family is still in country of origin but they live here and they've lived there for many years. And so to a way to an extent they have, they have absorbed this culture and they live in it and maybe their children live in it like my kid was born and raised in San Francisco. And so they have, they have had to claim their food in a way that makes them feel that they, they are in in both in both places in the right way. So that is very, it's very interesting to me because it is something that I struggle with all the time, you know, I spend lots, lots of time in Italy and lots of time here, all my siblings are there but my kid is American but is also Italian. So there is that the kind of like the constant longing and the constant having to just bring these two things together and so to me it watching how other people deal with it is quite interesting. Good stuff Viola. Thank you. I see we have a question maybe for camper. We do but I want to go to SK's question first because it relates to everybody and we'll end with campers question but SK's question is, are there any special food related fictional films that you all like. And she specifically says not documentaries. Wonderful question. Let me start with camper. I guess it would be up to me to find a drink one for that answer to that question. And I'm sure there are, but I can't come up with it right now. So I'll deflect my mind is what it was the movie called cocktail. Oh, oh sure that started that launched so many career bartenders who are still around today they saw the movie cocktail to be cool and flip bottles around. Yeah, great stuff. How about you Henry, any movies. The two that just kind of pop up in my head or eat drink man woman by only. And then another one, which is even more visceral to me was Tom Popo. The Japanese film about ramen opening a ramen shop. Right. Viola. Well, I find that French film are especially good at defining the way that food intertwines into everyday living, both in a, in a, you know, very good traditional way but also sometimes in a very absurd way so I'm going all the way back, thinking of Luis Buñuel in the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie where everybody's sitting around the table, and no one can ever leave. And there is all this food that comes out. Yeah, so they're very, they're really very interesting at bringing food in both as a joy but also as a kind of like as a track that you need to navigate all the time so yeah it's still that contrast right in between what is what is and what should be what shouldn't be that that I really speaks to me. Great. I guess I would like to answer that question too because my favorite right now is the bear, the that mixture of the love of food and people trying to be true to the recipe. The mixture of business and all of that. What all of that entails. So yeah, I really like that. And let's not forget eating Raul if you want to go where. Okay. And we'll get to a question for camper for camp. Mm hmm. So camper we have a question from Savannah. And she asks, which cocktail do you think has the coolest story or history. Yes, and of course I can't just give a simple answer but I will try to make it quick. I think if you want to go ingredient by ingredient to come together in a cocktail, the corpse survivor number two has a lot of fascinating parts going on, each with their own history and absent as one of those ingredients, you know that gets kind of cookie. Yeah, as far as the drink that inspires the most thought that's the martini for sure. People love to ruminate on the meaning of that drink more than any other cocktail that's ever been created. And then as far as a cocktail that makes a point in history that creates a line. And that's the old fashioned, which is actually when the cocktail was defined. It is the old fashioned as we know it today. And the reason it's name changed is a long story and all of that but it's sort of a specific point in history from which we can draw the line to everything before and afterwards. Wow. Yeah. It reminds me of the history of Rome. Have you ever gotten into that one capper. Oh for sure. The wonderful book and bottle of rum that's about that that history specifically that's that's very good rum rum always has an amazing and important and significant and terrible history. The history of the world is the history of Rome right. Um, and I have another question that I'd like to ask. What would each of you give as advice to aspiring food or drinkable writers. How would you advise them to get started on this particular topic camp right have you on the screen so let me start with you. Um, if you if you want to get paid for it. I think the easiest way to do that is to identify a trend and then pitch a story on a trend. So, right now, non alcoholic cocktails are are big and commanding a lot of attention. If you find a more specific trend like three bars, have a non alcoholic negroni on the menu, and you go to any of the journalism sites and pitch that story. I think the fastest way in is identifying a trend. And all you have to do is explain it. You don't even have a writer. That's my secret. Well, but what research to right. Yeah, when the research is great fun. Yeah, it is and the testing of the research right. You Henry, what advice would you give to the aspiring storyteller writer. I think coming at it from your own perspective, like whether you're nerdy and into the science of it or into the technique or into the storytelling I, you know, those are just being authentic to why you're doing it. I think you can tell when you, I have certain cookbooks that that are, you know, come from those different angles and you can hear and trust what they're saying and then you find other ones that are kind of flat and dry and kind of trying to just cover everything so I think just coming at it from your own personal perspective which I think makes it a more interesting endeavor to pursue. So I think that will come out. Great. Final product so by Olaf. Well, I would say, and this is also directly to Henry that just do it like you need to sit down and start writing. Yeah, and for me it was the, it was of course the writing of the recipes that really kind of got me there. But whatever it is, whichever whether you approach it from campers standpoint, which is like a great way to approach it, or just, you know, coming in from saying, Oh, I really have so many stories to tell. You just have to sit down and you have to start writing them and you have to start telling them. So the best way to to write is actually doing it like Saturday and hour every day and just do it. And just do it. Yeah, love it. Any other interesting thoughts or things you'd like to share. I'll start with you. Well, I was honored to be there and I just, if I, if I may, I'd like to show people my book. Please hold that book. Here it is. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And it's divided in 12 chapters, each of them highlighting either one ingredient or more ingredient and contextualization both in my experience as well as in their geographical historical way, and then suggestions about to shop for them and use them in the kitchen with recipes. So are you do we have in the chat information on how people can get the book. Anywhere books are sold locally there is omnivore books and most most bookstores around have them and if you want to get them online. I always suggest that people go to bookshop.org. Okay, great camper any closing thoughts. You can also find my books at omnivore books on food. As well as bookshop.org. And thanks for attending everyone. Henry. Um, I, all I can say is if you're curious and want to carry on the conversation. You can find me at Arama summer dumplings on Instagram. That's the most active place I am and very right in terms of nothing. Unless you're in a class of mine. And, and I can also share with you. If you're more if you're curious about Taiwanese regional food. It's just again that they all needs American books came out in the last few years. So, after, you know, anyway. So, thank you. I want to add my thanks to all of you for being here with us today. This has been just such a rich experience. It has made me very very hungry and very very thirsty. And I have to say, I wish I had some of each of what you all put together right now. Thank you so much. It has been an honor and a pleasure. And thank you Mechanics Institute, Nico, and Alyssa. Of course, and I also want to just remind us to mark your calendars for our next writers lunch on Friday, December 15 on the topic of the value of writing retreats with Matthew Felix, Joey Garcia and Janice Cook Newman. This event will of course be moderated by Cheryl once again, and the link is in the chat. I wanted to just give a warm round of applause to our wonderful guest speakers today. And we are just so blessed that you are here today speaking with us about this wonderful topic. Thank you. Alright, bye y'all.