Media in Minutes

From Line Cook to Food & Wine Magazine with Cookbook Author Chandra Ram

• Angela Tuell • Season 6 • Episode 2

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What happens when a line cook falls in love with magazines—and refuses to choose between the stove and the story? We sit down with Chandra Ram, celebrated food writer, cookbook author and former editorial leader at Plate and Food & Wine, to chart a career built on craft, curiosity and a relentless commitment to serving readers as well as diners.

We dig into the early days that shaped her taste for pace and hospitality, the consulting and PR pivots that revealed how media really works and the unexpected phone call that led to years steering a chef-focused magazine. From there, Chandra explains how she helped a legacy brand honor icons like Julia Child while welcoming weeknight cooks who just want perfect pancakes and fewer half-used cans. You’ll hear how real-time traffic, search behavior and reader pain points inform recipe development, and why small choices—like using a full can of coconut milk—build trust.

We also confront the forces remaking food media: social platforms with shifting rails and AI that answers before a click. Chandra makes the case for direct relationships through newsletters, the enduring power of cookbooks you can smudge and dog-ear, and a smarter approach to inclusivity that goes far beyond token dishes. Expect candid insights on developing a strong writer’s voice, creating entry points that invite readers into a story, and trends worth keeping—hello, crunchy sauces packed with seeds and nuts.

If you care about where recipes come from, whose stories get told, and how to cook better tonight, this conversation is for you. Enjoy the episode, then subscribe, share with a friend who loves food media, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Mentioned in the Episode:

  • Chandra’s Substack newsletter: Another Bite
  • Chandra’s Instagram (@chandrasplate)
  • Chandra’s LinkedIn

  • Cookbooks by Chandra Ram
    – The Complete Indian Instant Pot Cookbook
    – Korean BBQ: Master Your Grill in Seven Sauces (with Bill Kim)
    – The Eiffel Tower Restaurant Cookbook (with Jean Joho)
    – Women in Food (contributor)
    – The Chicago Food Encyclopedia (contributor)

  • Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rodgers 

  • Dianne Jacob's Will Write for Food 
Angela:

Welcome to Media in Minutes. This is your host, Angela Tuell. This podcast features in-depth interviews with those who report on the world around us. They share everything from their favorite stories to what happened behind the lines and give us a glimpse into their world. From our studio part of the story to find, this is Media in Minutes. Today we're talking with Fondor Ram, a celebrated food writer, cookbook author, and former associate editorial director of food at Food and Wine Magazine. We spent decades immersed in the culinary world from working in the kitchens of acclaimed restaurants to leading award-winning editorial teams that cover fast food culture and emerging culinary trends. Fondor previously served as editor of Plate magazine, a nationally respected trade publication for Faststore, where she earned a reputation for spotting what's next in the industry and elevating underrepresented voices in food media. He's also the author of several cookbooks, including the Complete Indian Instant Pot Cookbook and is a member of the James Beard Foundation Restaurant Voting Committee. Chandra brings a rare perspective to food storytelling, deeply informed by culture, community, and creativity. Hi Chandra, how are you doing?

Speaker 3:

I'm doing well, thanks. How are you?

Angela:

I'm doing well also. I'm excited to talk with you. I'd love to start with you've had such a unique, I don't use that word a lot, path, culinary school, line cook, food writer, magazine editor. Did you always know you wanted to be in the food world, or did your interest evolve over time?

Speaker 3:

Uh, I think it evolved over time. I always knew how much I loved magazines. And so when I was growing up, I would save magazines like um my parents got Life magazine, and I was forever saving those, and even just like 17 Magazine and Mademoiselle, and all of these um magazines that uh, you know, were such a huge part of culture and were very um, I don't know, they they were just so important to me. And at the same time, as soon as I was able to work, like legally able to go out and get a job, I went for a job in restaurants. I was a restaurant hostess and loved the energy of it. I loved the fact that you could check the time and then get super busy and then check the time again and like two hours have gone by, three hours have gone by. Right. So much happening. And that it was, you know, something that was was pretty joyful. I mean, working in restaurants, you we we of course think about how hard it is because it's physically taxing, it's emotionally taxing, it's all of that. It's very difficult work. But it's also really wonderful to be with people when they are gathering together to celebrate, to um, you know, reconnect, to um, you know, to really focus on being together in person. And so that's something that I just always love about the restaurant industry. And then on the cooking side of things, I love the fact that it's you know, that's so much behind you know, the reasons why behind people hosting dinners and having family over in that. It's like you want to, you want to be together. And food is such a fantastic way to pull people together. So it um, so I got very interested in both things. I kept working in restaurants and really got into cooking and then um and did a lot of catering work, uh, which I think everyone in food should do because that will really beat you up.

Speaker 1:

A whole nother world, right?

Speaker 3:

Cater a few weddings and you will never be the same. But um, I was studying journalism in uh at school in Chicago. I went to a loyal of Chicago and I was cooking, I was working in, you know, cooking as a caterer and working in restaurants, and then I knew I wanted to go to culinary school after that. Um, I did not know I could be a food writer. Um, at the time when I went to culinary school at the CIA, um, the school didn't necessarily have a ton of information on how to go into um culinary jobs that weren't in, you know, weren't based on cooking. And there was uh a little bit of information, not much. And I um had learned in while studying journalism that that sort of traditional newspaper path of you go to whatever kind of small town market and you get a job covering whatever it is. It could be high school sports, it could be gardening, it could be whatever, and then you work your way up to larger markets and or you go to New York and try and get a job uh, you know, with a New York-based publishing industry there. Right, right. But I didn't know that the path I took was available.

Angela:

So how did you find out?

Speaker 3:

How did you get there? Honestly, a lot of it was there was a certain amount of luck, but I definitely would say that um the harder I worked and the more I tried, the luckier I got. Okay. I um, you know, I I worked for, I was really thinking in culinary school, particularly in the early parts of it, that I wanted to do get into catering and do, you know, cater events, do a lot of home meal catering, you know, kind of um meal deliveries or um uh for private cooking for families, and then also potentially have like a shop with like prepared foods and gourmet shop, that sort of thing.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 3:

And I worked for someone um in the Hudson Valley who had that exact business. And I think I maybe got enough of it where I was like, okay, I'm not 100% sure this is what I want to do. So my first job out of culinary school was working for an agency that um was uh that offered culinary consulting services to food service manufacturers and restaurant groups. And so it was like menu development, um, working with manufacturers to help them develop more recipes for using their products. So it could be Tabasco saying, hey, we really want some Mexican seafood appetizers that use a lot of our jalapeno green tobacco.

Speaker:

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

Working and developing recipes for them. So I did, you know, work with all kinds of different manufacturers with commodity boards like the California Raisin Board and helped like develop recipes for them and really helped them. It was fun, it was consulting in that um truest reality of it, in which I was traveling five days a week and it was just a lot. Yes, I you know, just working a lot, working a lot plus you know, the joys of travel and um to not necessarily like really fun destinations, but places where corporations were based and that right. And so I um when I left that job, I was thinking about my experience working in restaurants. And while I was in culinary school, I uh did my externship in Chicago at Blackbird. And it was right when Blackbird had opened, and it was right when the restaurants before Paul Kahn was a food and wine best new chef, before they got the national accolades, and they were even still getting local reviews at that time. Okay. But it was such an exciting place to be. So many, every, you know, I loved working Mondays because every chef in the city was coming in to check out this new restaurant. People were really excited about what they were doing. And at the same time, I saw that um I kind of wrote down like all like line cooks. I mean, certainly at that time, probably now everyone keeps track of everything on their phones, but we had these tiny little notebooks that we would keep in our like chef coat pocket.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And um we'd just write down like, oh, here's the here's the ratio for oil to vinegar for this vinaigrette, or here's what we're doing here, just take notes or make your prep list. And I wrote down the name of the PR firm that the restaurant was working with because I had studied journalism and public relations as part of a communication degree in undergrad. And I thought, well, maybe that's the path. And I happened to call that PR firm the day the owner of it said, I think we need another person in our restaurant division. Oh my goodness. So, like I said, stars aligned. It's luck, but it's also the fact of, okay, just call these people and like put yourself out there and ask if you can do an informational interview or if you can talk to someone. Yeah. And that's how that worked out. So I wound up doing restaurant PR for several years with that agency, and then later on my own. And that was a great way to learn so much about the media industry and you know, how journalists were, you know, worked with publicists, what kind of, you know, turnaround, what deadlines they were working on, all of that. And then after a few years of doing that, I actually um Plate magazine was being founded here in Chicago. And that's um, Chicago has long had a history of uh being a hub for B2B publications, and Plate was a B2B publication for chefs. And uh Nancy Ross Ryan, who was the first editor, called me um because she had some she had the wrong information about me. Someone had uh told her incorrectly that I was an expert in Vietnamese fish sauce. Oh, that was not true. That was not true. Okay, but she said she called me and she said, Hi, I know this is you know a little bit different from how we normally work, but I uh she was like, There's I'm working with a publishing group on a new food magazine for chefs, and I heard that you are an expert in fish sauce, and I need to talk to somebody for an article I'm uh that we're producing. And can I talk with you? And I said, Okay, sure, let's talk, you know, later this week.

Angela:

And then You didn't say I'm not an expert in that. No, no, no, no. Okay, okay. Never never admit failure.

Speaker 3:

Right. So I because I knew it was a great opportunity because I went home and did piles and piles and piles of research, read so many books, um uh really did everything I could to be able to, you know, make myself into um, you know, quickly into an expert on on the topic. And of course, as you know with um, you know, how things work with interviews, you do a long interview and you get like one or two sentences in the final printed piece. Right. And but I gave her the sentences she needed. And I think I also kind of understood what she was looking for, the type of, you know, like I understood what her questions were going to be from having studied journalism and um from that experience of working in PR. So I um chatted with her about that, gave her the information she needed. And then she said, you know, we really need a recipe that shows off some of what you're talking about with like the the flavors of fish sauce and the history of using it. And I she was like, I know you have a a cooking background. Would you be interested in developing a recipe for the magazine? And I said, Yes, absolutely, would love to. So I I developed a um a pork recipe using fish sauce uh and like really featuring uh fish sauce and um with a in a kind of larb application. And I um that issue came out and it was you know so exciting. And then she said, Hey, you know, like a couple of months later said, Hey, like would you be interested in writing this piece? Because we need someone who can write an article for us, someone who has culinary training and understands you know what chefs are looking for with a very technique-focused piece. And I said, Absolutely, I would love it. And from then on, I wound up writing um a regular feature in the you know early days of Plate, I think for the first uh probably five or six years of Plate, and it was called Great Tastes, and it was all about very technique focused. So um if you have a Hollandaise, it's like how, you know, like the different variations on Hollandaise, the science behind emulsions, and on a practical basis, like uh, you know, how to fix a broken Hollandaise. Um and some, you know, trends on like what are different fats chefs are using to uh, you know, to make Hollandaise, if they don't want to use a neutral oil, if they want to use something that's a little bit uh, you know, out of the box. Like if they at the time it was all about chefs who were um adding a certain amount of bacon fat to the oils to kind of give it that bacon-y flavor. Cause that was the vibe at that time.

Speaker:

Everyone wanted bacon. Bacon flavored.

Speaker 3:

They wanted everything to be, yeah. So, and it was all about like, oh, and now we're gonna have our bacon fat holidays, and customers would be like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. So I wrote for I wrote for a plate for a few years, and then when Nancy decided to step back from the magazine because she was very focused on work on doing more cookbooks, I um the editorial director uh Bill McDowell and the publisher Steve Mayer contacted me and said, uh, because we had met at some of the magazine's events, you should always, if you're you have a chance to meet the bosses uh in person, you should always do it.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 3:

And they said, Hey, you know, what do you think about um coming on board as the editor? And so I did that. Wow. Uh was interested, immediately interested in that.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And by that point, I was doing more freelance writing, but was kind of at a point of I can only do so much freelance writing if I'm still working as a publicist. And working as a publicist was I was working for myself at that point because I knew I wanted to transition into writing. And um, that was what was paying the bills. So being able to join plate uh as a culinary editor and then um uh as editor-in-chief really was um just a fantastic path for me.

Angela:

Yes, that is amazing. And then you went from plate to food and wine.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I was at Plate for like 15 years, all said, um, from freelancing to um being uh the years being editor. And I left in 2021, just wanted to was no, I had already writ uh written a couple of cookbooks by that point, and I was interested in writing more and just wanted to do something new and was freelancing and working on book proposals and things, and then I got a call from a headhunter about food and wine, and I thought, well, this is this is a huge opportunity, particularly because food and wine was owned by Meredith Publications at the time. Right. And it was, we, you know, it had already been reported that um Barry Diller's company, IEC, um, the publishing division called uh Dot Dash was going to acquire Meredith. And Meredith Publications was not very web friendly or web forward, and dot dash was entirely digital. So I thought that was a really interesting opportunity to get in with a legacy brand, but right when things were changing.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And so I was there for I was there from uh 2021 to 2000 uh 2025. Sorry, I just had that classic January moment of what year is it? What year is it?

Angela:

No, definitely. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. And so then you um what made you leave Food and Wine and what are you doing now?

Speaker 3:

I um at Food and Wine, um, you know, because of the nature of the publication being purchased by a larger company and things shifting, we did a lot of work. It was a really fun, fantastic opportunity and position. We did a lot of balancing between the legacy of Food and Wine, which is um, you know, ballpark 45 years. Um, it started in the 70s as an outsert with um Playboy magazine, if you can believe it. Wow. And um so a lot of the work was how to get uh how to get food and wine, how to celebrate the legacy of having had people like Jacques Papin and Julia Child write for the publication, contribute recipes for the publication, all of the like food and wine best new chefs, that legacy of you know, people like Tom Calicchio and Thomas Keller, and um, you know, people like my you know, former chef at Blackbird, Paul Kahn, and um Stephanie Izard, and all of these incredible chefs, having them contribute to the publication as well. So we're balancing that with trying to get people to think of food and wine recipes for more than just special occasions. And really, this was such a great education in terms of how to measure um changing consumer food trends, um, really looking at traffic on a on an hourly basis, if not day to day, and seeing like what's resonating. And also just really trying to open the brand up and welcome people earlier in their food path, is what Sean Flynn, the editorial director, and I always joked about. Like to get people, you know, I think there were a lot of people who felt like, oh, I really need to feel like an expert as a cook to be able to use a food and wine recipe. And then we were like, no way. Like, so I developed a ton of recipes that were very kind of welcoming and kind of gateway entry level, but like, hey, here's how to make this, you know, here's how to make um, I think we didn't have a basic buttermilk pancake recipe, for example. And so um I was like, okay, well, we're gonna do this, and here's how we're gonna make it. And having had the experience of writing, at that point I had written three cookbooks. Um having written cookbooks and knowing what so many of the pain points were for consumers with cookbooks, I tried to take all of that in and really help food and wine. You know, it's a it's a big brand. There's a lot of people working on it, but I um was eventually the associate editorial director for food. So essentially the food director leading all of the food editors, whether they were focused on print or digital recipe development or you know, writing food articles and commissioning food articles. Okay. What do people need to know about this? What is something that drives? Them nuts. Like for me personally, I cannot stand a recipe that calls for three-quarters of a can of coconut milk or pumpkin or something like that. Because I'm like, what am I doing with a you know, a third of a cup of coconut milk? Are you serious? So like things like that. Um, so it felt really good. And that having had all of this experience, like kind of coming up through the restaurant world and then leading a food magazine that was geared towards chefs. Um, we had a ton of home cooks who followed us as well. All of those, I call them the high-functioning foodies, the people with the Viking six burner stoves at home and you know, go to that one store in Paris to buy all their copper cookware and all of that. Like those people loved it because they, you know, they didn't want consumer recipes. They wanted to go to a restaurant, be wowed by this like trendy restaurant menu in the chef, and then go home and cook that meal.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 3:

Um, and then interesting, like to go to food and wine and say, okay, we have so much of this. We actually need to open it up and like teach people how to make gnocchi and not the gnocchi that you make if you have three days to pull the whole thing together, but the gnocchi you make when you want dinner tonight.

Angela:

How did you see, you know, through through all of your career so far, what has been the biggest shift in food media specifically?

Speaker 3:

You know, I've been doing this long enough that, you know, obviously social media has been has had a tremendous impact on the food industry and um certainly how that has evolved. And I'm really curious to see what happens with that because of I feel like TikTok has changed a little bit in that um since that kind of 48, I think it was like a 48-hour period when it was offline in the US and uh before it was brought back. I feel like that changed how a lot of people felt about it. Or it certainly was a reminder that um any of these channels can go away at any point. And also their algorithms are going to change all the time.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 3:

And um, but the other thing is AI. I mean, it's like social media and AI have transformed journalism to a point in which it's what we used to do is such a small, small aspect of that.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And with AI, I think we're all just everyone is still figuring out what's um what it's uh, you know, what kind of impact it's going to have. Um, it's certainly changed um the Google algorithm because you used to be able to see that okay, people are searching for Mexican shrimp appetizers on on Google. And now, since Google is trying to provide so much of the information before anyone gets to a publisher's a publication website, um, it's it's changed things a lot.

Angela:

Yes, we're learning something new every day about it, I feel like.

Speaker 3:

We are. I don't know if I always want something new about it, but you know that is true, but whether we like it or not, right?

Angela:

Right.

Speaker 3:

Evolve or die, friends.

Angela:

So what are you doing currently? Where's your focus now?

Speaker 3:

My focus right now is I I really wanted to get back into writing. And I it was hard to keep that up at Food and Wine because so much of my job was um managerial. And I just missed that. And I felt that with so many things changing, it was, you know, it was a good time for me to have learned just a massive amount while um in those years at Food and Wine, but to kind of get back to what I really wanted to do, which is write and get back into recipe development myself. And so I wanted to get back into writing and specifically cookbooks, because you know, one thing with cookbooks is that they have survived the, you know, the cookbook industry is not that it hasn't been impacted by any stretch of the imagination. Right. But cookbooks have survived the biggest challenge for the book industry, which was um digital readers like Kindle or Amazon Fire or anything like that. Um, cookbooks was one of the big categories that didn't go away because you don't really want to read a cookbook on your Kindle. You want it, you know, like you want to sit and read it, and you want that tactile experience of turning the pages and and seeing the images. And certainly there's the internet, but there's something that just it's it's funny. Like we journalism evolved so much to make print publications a specialty thing instead of the everyday. I mean, remember when we used to just I used to get stacks of magazines, I used to get weekly magazines and tons of monthly magazines, and now most publications aren't even monthly, let alone, and I think you know, most of the weeklies have gone. There's still a couple. And um now we've gone to a point where it's like I'm really fascinated by all the small zines that are out there. I love um home cooked, um so many other specialty publications that are, you know, that are out there. So I've been, you know, working with a few of those, but I'm back in writing cookbooks. So I'm I'm working with a with a chef with Stephanie Iizard on her next book, which will come out in 2027. And I am talking with publishers about other ideas, talking with another chef just about um some projects he wants to do, a few chefs actually. So um that's been really fun because it's an opportunity to really, instead of having to kind of keep up with everything happening, like I said, like on an hour-hour basis uh in terms of traffic and that, to kind of close out every tab except for a Google Doc and just focus on writing. It's um, you know, it feels good.

Angela:

A little more peaceful. It's a little more peaceful. Right.

Speaker 3:

Oh, and it just to say what, you know, which you've been asking so many smart questions about the direction journalism is going. And I think that some of that is uh it's to say, like, I'm really excited about this burgeoning newsletter industry. And so I launched a Substack uh newsletter, and that's just for anyone, a friend of mine this weekend was like, but I don't understand what Substack is. And I was like, it is just a platform for sending out newsletters, and so it is, you know, you can subscribe to anyone's newsletter, whether they're on Substack or something else, like you can just go track down the information, put it, you know, sign up. I'm really fascinated by it because I felt like we saw this shift years ago where chefs said, okay, instead of just pitching media, I'm gonna put my recipes, my photos, my information out on social media. Right. And now we're seeing so many people doing that with newsletters. Yeah. And it's a lot. It's a lot to publish a newsletter. You have to really want to do it. I certainly, when people ask me about it, I'm like, I encourage them to not set a determined, uh like determine a schedule until they really do it for a month or two. Yeah, that's good.

Angela:

Yes. And it's such a great way to have that direct, like you said, that direct line to who wants to hear from you and learn from you. And it's yeah, it's a great, great way to communicate. We've noticed, you know, in the in the PR space too. The only challenge I see is wanting to follow every substack from all of the journalists that we work with and the amount of content you have, you know.

Speaker 1:

Um, but it is, it's it's fantastic.

Angela:

I was going to ask, can you tell us a little bit more about your cookbooks? How many have you written or been part of? And what was it like becoming a cookbook author?

Speaker 3:

I have written um, I've written three cookbooks, and I've and I've contributed to several others, um, like the compilation Women in Food, um, and the Chicago Food Encyclopedia. I've contributed recipes to other um kind of like group projects. But I so I've co-authored two cookbooks, um, the Eiffel Tower Restaurant cookbook um with Jean Joho. That's the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Las Vegas. Okay. So I um I love that book because it has a red velvet cover, which is um very like uh evocative of the restaurant because it's this gorgeous kind of luxury restaurant. But it's also that um I it makes me laugh because I know so many people buy it as a a souvenir of their experience in Las Vegas and um and all of that. I think uh because the restaurant is halfway up the Eiffel Tower in Vegas, it's like you know, people go there for people that people get engaged there and that. So I'm like, I know that it's such a great like souvenir. And then uh then I wrote uh Bill Kim's cookbook, Korean Barbecue, with 10 Speed Press. And that was really fun. Um, Bill and his wife and I uh are dear friends, and we had been on a work trip together. We were actually in Australia together when I was at Plate, um, because he was part of a group of chefs um that were going to Australia to learn about um Australian lamb and beef and um and like the go visit some of the farms and like the ranches and learn how it's you know how the animals are raised and all of that. So it was a it was a thing we were doing at Plate with um one of our advertisers, the Australian like Meat and Livestock Australia. And while and Yvonne came with and we were on a bus on a very long bus ride through Australia, as happens. And we we realized that the three of us have the same birthday. And I don't know how this evening came up. It was just that thing of like you're eating, like you know, you're in another country and you're just like randomly eating the like the fancy potato chips, like the balsamic roast chicken flavored potato chips and things like that. And we were just talking about things, and we realized that we had the same birthday, and we just said, you know what, like let's put that, like let's do a book together. Let's do this. And we kind of chatted about like casually about it a few times after we got back, and and then um an editor uh from 10 Speed Press reached out to us and said, reached out to Bill and said, Hey, are you interested in doing a cookbook? And Bill called me and said, Okay, it's on, it's happening, like our intentions. So we had a fantastic time doing that, um doing that book, and just really, really loved it. And then as it happened, I got an opportunity to write an Indian cookbook just as we had finished Korean barbecue. And so it was before Korean Barbecue was even published, I got the opportunity, but it was at that point where uh the manuscript was completed and all the editing was done, and uh we had finished photography and they were just kind of tweaking layouts and getting it ready to print. I got the opportunity to um write on my own an Indian cookbook um for people using the Instant Pot.

Speaker:

Okay. So that is fantastic.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, because so much Indian cooking traditional recipes is based on stovetop pressure cookers.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And um, I'm half Indian and I grew up seeing those, you know, when I was in India visiting my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. Um, but my mother is not Indian, she's Irish. And so she didn't she didn't use a pressure cooker, stovetop pressure cooker at home because she was like kind of scared of them. And I had seen one explode uh when I was a kid.

Speaker 1:

So I was like, I feel that way a little bit too. We have one, but I am always a little scared.

Speaker 3:

Right. And it's it's so funny to me. Like it's funny and kind of I love the fact if you look at a lot of traditional Indian recipes, it will say like wait sort of like three pips with a pressure cooker. And that's three times that the pressure cooker like kind of shrieks or whistles at you um as the pressure is adjusting. And that's when you know your food is cooked. And I was like, okay, if there's if I could do this with an instant pot, like I would kind of prefer to do that. So um, so yeah, so I did that book as well, and um which was I was shocked at how different it felt because I was the person who needed to not just come up with the recipes, but really feel good about my point of view and hone in on my focus with that. Um, but it was a fantastic experience.

Angela:

Yes. And something I want to ask that's very important is you've long been an advocate for telling more inclusive and representative food stories. How do you think the industry is doing on that front and what still needs to change?

Speaker 3:

I think the industry has in a very in speaking in very broad terms, I think the industry has done a uh has made a good start. And I would say only start, because prior to that, there was it was very difficult to find even Indian recipes that when I feel like Indian food has become a lot more mainstream, at least different ingredients and preparations and that. If you if you look at that movement that really was kicking off more in like 2018, 2019, 2020, um I think that there's been a good start where a lot of publications said, okay, you know, book publishers and um, you know, journalism, journalistic organizations said, okay, we need to get a, you know, we need to get some Indian recipes, we need to get some African recipes, we need to get some more, we need to expand our coverage of regional Mexican cuisine, we need to get into South American. So there was a certain amount of that, but let's face it, we still see like I think in too many places there's still the feeling of, oh, but we we have our Indian recipes because we have 10. And you're like, okay, but you had 300 Italian recipes. And it's not to say that there should be fewer Italian recipes, but if you can do, if you feel good about publishing 20 different variations on each traditional Roman style of pasta, then you also, you know, why not take that approach to, you know, an Indian, you know, a braid like braised vegetable, like a subsea in Indian cooking or chanama sala or something. And then you realize, okay, but you haven't gotten into all the different variations, all the different kinds of traditional variations, let alone made room for modern cooking. And so it's and it's a tough, you know, balancing act, I think, because all of these publishers are also trying to deliver what consumers want. And I think as well, they need to make room for more modern cooking. You know, um I ran into a lot of people really saying, Oh, okay, like my my way of cooking Indian food, there are certainly some recipes that I do pretty traditionally, but a lot of them are, you know, it's my point of view. And that's as someone who is Indian but also grew up in the American South. And there are tons of commonalities between American Southern cooking and South Asian cooking. And so it's drawing those lines and you know, making it my own. And people, I think, want to say, like, oh, but if it's authentic, it's, you know, it's, you know, like I I really love debating the the notion of authenticity in cooking because it's um, I think some people really want it to be the food to be inexpensive. They want like a tiny brown lady to be stirring a massive pot. They have this idea of it. And India as a country, as a and its culture have changed so much tremendously in the last few decades. If you think about the of how much of the tech industry is in India, um the evolution of a middle class, which previously didn't exist 50 years ago. Um India has changed massively. And so is its food. So I hope more publishers uh make room for that. But it's a process. It's you know, it's a process I would like to see move faster than it has, but I'm very appreciative for how far it's gotten.

Angela:

Good. And hopefully we'll take many more steps quickly, many more quicker steps. Right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, more delicious food for everyone.

Speaker 1:

Right, exactly. That's all that's all that we have.

Angela:

I do need to ask what um if there's a dish, a person or a place that's you know, one story or experience that's stuck with you. I'm sure there's thousands, but if there's one that's been, you know, very special.

Speaker 3:

Gosh, it is very, very hard to um think of one. Something that came to mind, um just popped in my head is um, you know, years ago I got to interview Judy Rogers of Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. And I I think that that conversation and the work she did in this for the Zuni Cafe cookbook will stick with me forever. Um she sadly um died several years ago. And uh but going back and reading the introduction to her book is is to get an experience, an education from an immeasurably talented chef, thoughtful human being, utterly kind person. And I think that um that's something that just sticks with me, is you know, her excitement about learning new recipes, learning new techniques, but then also her dedication to nailing those down, I think is um fantastic. And several chefs I've spoken to over the years, um, you know, as I've interviewed them for different articles, uh, have said that the introduction to the Zuni Cafe cookbook should be mandatory reading for every line cook. So I'm gonna go with that.

Angela:

Okay, I like that one. What about a food trend that you're personally loving right now, or one that you're ready to say goodbye to?

Speaker 3:

Um, let me see here of something I'm loving right now. I don't know if it is um, I'm I'm really loving just crunch adding the notion of adding crunch to sauces. Okay. And so it's it's something that I think is trending in a lot of Western cooking now, but it's been around for a long time. But I absolutely love adding um, I love chili crisp that has loads of seeds and nuts in it. Um, I love salsa matcha so much. And so that kind of notion of like, oh, just you know, fry up some, you know, saute some vegetables and then fry an egg in there and um use. Some of the oil, even from the salsa matcha, the chili crisp, to fry everything up and then spoon some of that on top. I don't think I'll ever get tired of that. I think that's just, yeah, I think that it's fantastic.

Angela:

Are there any you wish or you're done with in each recent trends?

Speaker 3:

I will say the whole thing of um chopping everything up into like a mush um of kind of it's it's like I think it's something that was bigger probably like a year, year and a half ago, of this sort of like chopping up the bagel and all the toppings of the bagel and just kind of smearing everything together. Like that to me just did not look super appetizing. And I think there's something to be said for um, I don't know, try it, do it, and then if it's not if you're not into it, move on. But I also really um I really think it's funny that in the last six months, I actually noticed it um last late last August. I was in Paris and there were Dubai chocolate bars everywhere. And because so many of the um, you know, uh candy companies had finally gotten around to making their own version of the chocolate bar that had been trending a year, you know, a year ago now, so um had been really big six, seven months before they were finally able to, you know, create a recipe, test it, manufacture it, deliver it, all of that. And I just thought it was so interesting that there were signs for Dubai chocolate bars in retail and in pastry shops all over Paris. But in America, particularly in journalism, everyone was like, oh God, no, that's totally done. That's totally passe. And I just think, well, there's something to the texture. There's something, you know, like, and then I wound up having some uh over the holidays, and I was like, okay, well, I know that this is lame and passe and not cool anymore or whatever, but I'm like, it is still good. So I hate that notion of um, oh, we can't do that anymore because it's not cool. So yeah, that's great.

Angela:

Great thoughts, advice, completely agree. What do you think makes a great food story? So are there certain qualities or angles that instantly capture your attention?

Speaker 3:

I think um voice is the strongest, uh, strongest thing for me. Um and that's what we see. That's where writers, journalists, and anyone creating content has an opportunity now because people are so afraid of AI, but AI distinctively does not have a voice. And in food writing, I um in this book I'm working on, I was reading over some copy and I was like, ah, it feels too cookbooky. It needs to sound like human beings are doing it. And so I think I think if you develop a strong voice, and um, you know, Diane Jacobs uh in her book Will Write for Food had a great exercise where you take the same concept and you think, how would this publication write like what would their one sentence be about it? And how would Food and Wine's voice for this differ from bon appetites, differ from serious eats, differ from New York Times cooking? And I think that exercises like that help writers and creators develop their voice. So for me, that is um that's so important with telling a story. And I think it's so important to step back from it, you know, to take, if you can, take a day away. I try and never publish anything unless I've had a night to get away from it and then return to it and see where I can strengthen it, where I can create more entry points for readers so that they're feeling part of the story all along the way.

Angela:

That is great advice. And that's why your work is so wonderful. Thank you. You're so kind. Yes. And um finally, I must ask how our listeners can connect with you online. I know you mentioned the newsletter, it's another bite.

Speaker 3:

Another bite, uh, and that's on Substack, but you can just Google it and it will take you straight to uh to subscribe to that. There are also links to subscribe to it um on social media, on my social media. So with Instagram, um, that's Chandra's Plate and um on LinkedIn as well.

Angela:

And you can buy your cookbooks, Amazon, anywhere?

Speaker 3:

Amazon, or you can support your local bookstore. Um you can do that. And, you know, fingers crossed, there'll be several more to come soon.

Angela:

Great. We will be watching, and I'll include those uh links in our show notes.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much.

Angela:

That's all for this episode of Media and Minutes, a podcast by Communications Redefined. Take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe to our show. We'd love to hear what you think. You can find more at Communications Redefined.com slash podcast. I'm your host, Angela Tuell. Talk to you next time.