#1: Ripe for Change
A fresh monthly newsletter featuring creatives reimagining F&B
Hello wonderful readers and thank you for subscribing to Lunch Rush! Maybe you found us through the Lunch Group website or our instagram. Perhaps you participated in our industry outreach survey for our forthcoming Covid reopening digital toolkit. Maybe you stumbled upon us by accident. Wherever you’re coming from, welcome! This year has been a tumultuous one to say the least, and the people who make possible our already unstable food and beverage industry have faced mounting hardships. In the absence of meaningful government support, countless workers have been laid off and beloved businesses have been forced to suddenly shutter. The pandemic has made it brutally clear that traditional exploitative business models are no longer sustainable. Here at Lunch Rush, we’re hoping to highlight some of the folks leading the charge to dream up new futures for F&B, with dynamic projects that support those who have been historically undervalued, overworked, and underpaid in an industry that wouldn't exist without them. We’re pumped to share ideas and stories with you and hopefully bring you a bit of sweetness amidst this otherwise salty year.
A little about us: Lunch Rush is the official newsletter of Lunch Group. Alongside our exceptional collaborators, we the editors, Ilana (hi!) & Jake (hellooooo!) endeavor to curate content and amplify voices to promote equitable reimaginations of the food and beverage industry through an abolitionist lens. We’ll focus on initiatives at the intersections of identity, accessibility, social impact, and F&B, especially those with a collaborative and creative bent. We aim to underscore the ancestral heritage and community inherent in the process of growing, cooking, and creating the many artful manifestations of the food and drink that bring us together.
Each month, we will be sharing a conversation, an artwork, a recipe, and suggestions related to our mission for you to pore over during your Lunch Break (regular or otherwise). Sometimes we’ll publish pieces in our collaborators’ primary languages to showcase the multilingual breadth of our creative community, and subvert expectations that English must be prioritized. We’re excited to introduce you to some incredible people asking tough questions and coming up with innovative solutions. So set your table, pour yourself a drink, and get ready for the three-course virtual food journey of a lifetime! On that note, if any of what we’ve cooked up sounds like something you wanna get involved in or if you have any feedback, feel free to hit us up at hello@lunch-group.com!
*Sometimes email providers will clip the end of our messages due to size; be sure to click through for the full issue!*
Apéritif
Each month we’ll feature a creator or artists whose work intersects with the food space. This month we’re featuring artist Bre Andy’s “Ripe,” aptly curated for our Lunch Rush Instagram series by Cierra Britton (she/her) founder of Cierra Britton Art Consultancy, Senior Fellow at ARTNOIRCO, & Art Advisor at The Culture LP.
Bre Andy (she/her) is an artist based in NY, originating from Baltimore. She uses charcoal & pastel mediums to create portraits depicting Black life, often Black women, as well as still life. These images are a reflection of the individuality she sees in herself, as well as the cultural characteristics of her surrounding community.
Something to Chew On
Raina Robinson & Tyler Lee Steinbrenner on Process, Pinecones, and Regenerative Practice
Raina Leora Robinson (she/her) is a chef, grower, and creator from the Bronx, NY. She is co-founder of culinary non-profit Cafe Forsaken, a worker-owner at Woke Foods, and Assistant Baker at Anti-Conquest Bread Co. – three organizations that offer community food relief. She strives to share her knowledge of fermentation, preservation, and transformation of food and agriculture with others, and is adamant that graciously digging one's hands into the soil and preparing a meal from a fresh harvest can transform lives in ways large and small.
Tyler Lee Steinbrenner (he/him) is a mission-driven fermentation specialist and founder of Anti-Conquest Bread Co. (ACQ). His approach to bread-making is holistic – uplifting local farmers and producers, hand mixing and raising live bacterial cultures, providing bread for CSA’s & food cooperatives, and collaborating with mutual aid food assistance initiatives throughout NYC. At ACQ, Tyler offers his customers and his community loaves that are literally an extension of himself and an embodiment of our local foodshed.
I met Tyler at the beginning of lockdown while volunteering at Honey’s in Bushwick. While my friends and I whipped up yellow curried cauliflower, green tahini sauces, and purple beet salads, Tyler was baking. Lacquered shokupan loaves and chocolatey sourdough boules laid the foundations for many of the meals we provided. Minimalist in the philosophy of their creation but far from humble in their flavor, these loaves have nurtured communities of first responders, protesters, and families. That same spirit of mutual aid was fundamental for his most recent project, Anti-Conquest Bread Co. (Photograph of Tyler by Alex Lau.)
*This interview has been edited slightly for brevity & clarity.*
R: How would you describe your background, childhood, where you've grown up, and where you’ve been? How does that show up in your approach to food?
T: I’ve never really processed it in any critical way. My mom was a landscape architect, gardener, and florist. My brother was a notable plant geneticist and a certified arborist. Empathy with growing things was always important growing up. Not to get heavy or anything, but my mom’s passing helped me reconcile with the importance and impermanence of nature. There were beautiful gardens surrounding our house when she was alive. A lot of the plants lived beyond her, but it doesn't feel the same. I think a lot about cycles that extend beyond our lifetime. The subjectivity of our individual lifetimes is kind of unimportant.
There are many cycles that happen simultaneously at the bakery that require micro attention in terms of time, but it all contributes to a larger spectrum beyond the subjectivity of an individual lifespan. Conversations with my brother often revolve around a sort of empathy – an attempt to form an understanding around how to live among plants and agriculture.
R: Do you think that your bread could exist as it is anywhere else? On your website, you mention harvesting live cultures from baby pinecones gifted to you from Japan. Could you tell me about them?
T: This bread can’t exist anywhere else, but bread of equal consequence can. The baby pinecones were a fermentation revelation. They were offered as a gift to the fermentation program at Aska, my last job. They were intended to be used for their immediate aromatics. While the aromatics informed me that they were alive, I wondered how to extend the life of these things… I did a few experiments. I made meade by incorporating them into a honey/water mixture. I thought about extracting their essential oils. Their smell had such an incredible personality that I wasn't familiar with.
Eventually I used them to create a yeast starter. The logic was to extend the life of this thing that nature had offered. I didn't want it to be a passing or passive relationship. I became indefinitely involved with the bacteria of the thing. The idea was derived from watching a Mexican cook I worked with in Thailand make tepache. He later used that tepache as the liquid for a starter with really clean wild yeast cultures. The pinecones worked because they are sticky! Certain fruits and plants attract airborne yeast.
***
R: I’ve been thinking about this quote from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It’s a collection of essays and stories of Indigenous plant wisdom: “One half of the truth is that the earth endows us with great gifts, the other half is that the gift is not enough. The responsibility does not lie with the maples alone. The other half belongs to us; we participate in its transformation. It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness.”
This quote definitely articulated my own developing approach. I began cooking because I worked on a farm and was in awe of nature’s bounty. The processes through which what we see on our plates – what once was a tree, spore, or muscle – becomes food fascinated me.
T: I agree that the further we remove ourselves from enjoying processes, the less satisfying our lives are. The more we seek end points of satisfaction rather than savoring journeys of technical craft and curiosity, and the more we seek success and grander, loftier things, the more unsatisfied we become.
R: Damn.
T: In the technological age, how do we convince people to enjoy the practice of distilling maple syrup, for example? How do you convince people that it's fun to wait for the syrup rather than to just go buy it? Particularly in an urban setting, how do we do less processing? How do we just enjoy nature? I just wanna lick some resin off of a tree. I don't wanna distill it.
R: Can you live off of that though? I want to lick resin off trees too, but cooking and this transformation through air or fire was necessary for us to exist as we do today. Nature gives to us, but in a lot of cases, we just can’t eat things as they are.
T: You can look at it like nature giving humanity a ball to play with, an infinite amount of toys with which we get to creatively practice – A game we call gastronomy.
R: With syrup, waiting to distill it yourself is more deeply nourishing for the body and soul. This waiting also applies to breadmaking. Fermentation takes time. There’s a lot of time when we’re not actually baking. Time is money, capital. When you’re not touching the bread, things are still happening. Flavors are developing. How do you see and engage with time at the bakery?
T: I’ve orchestrated it so that I’m operating the bakery while these processes are happening. A lot of the bulk fermentation happens during retail hours. It wasn't intentional. A lot of the way I engage with time has to do with nourishing the bread’s 36-hour life cycle.
R: Does what you're doing now feel like work?
T: I just feel like I’m protecting something. I’m trying to educate myself on wheat to protect this craft and the lessons one can take from it. It’s certainly not work. I don't really have good words for this whole process. Generating a local-centric regionalized wheat-supporting bakery or whatever… It’s very organic. Every time I have to defend the bakery – getting the lease finalized, asking for a bit of time on a bill – it doesn't feel like a money exchange. It feels like trying to take care of my family. It’s like, oh man, I’m in this position where I'm the primary caretaker, and this is what I have to do to keep this thing alive. Simultaneously, I have to take care of myself, to generate so much energy daily. It’s a difficult balance.
R: Let’s talk about self care. I’m not gonna say this is thankless work, but we’re transforming systems and norms. It’s not easy. What are things you do to take care of yourself?
T: A radical change for how I approach kitchen work was allowing myself to sit down. When you have a lot of microtasks that require different movements and brain spaces to navigate successfully, it requires considerable physical and psychological agility. Before jumping in, I need to reset. I’ll either sit down for a bit or literally lie down on a metal surface, under the table in the office.
R: That’s self care? (lol)
T: (Chuckles) Yeah, compared to my regular cooking experiences. I find that offering energy to the practice of making bread for neighbors is holistically regenerative. That energy keeps it all going. It's not extractive like Michelin cooking. I want to build out space to integrate more self care for the people who do this work that continues to nourish others. Meditation room maybe?
R: Backyard yoga?
T: Something like that. Turning the yard into a greenhouse would be sick, with a meditation mat. Plus, I could sprout stuff for bread. It’d be extremely practical for maintaining sustainable energy at the bakery.
R: I’m wondering how you reconcile your identity as a fermentation specialist with the “fresh is best” approach. You ferment foods…
T: I think about it from a nutrient science perspective. Fermented food is still alive in a sense. Fresh milling is also important to prevent oxidation of the wheat, and I use a variety of wheats and the best organic milk to ensure different nutrient compounds are integrated into the bread. These are all forms of freshness that offer nutrient diversity. That’s something I want to dabble in more: more nutrient rich loaves. I’m revamping our rye with a nut mix to make a 100% fresh milled bread, the most nutrient dense one I’ll offer.
That said, what does ‘freshness’ mean when it takes 40 years to actually get a nut tree to bear fruit? There are so many different timelines integrated into the process, each with individual metrics of what ‘fresh’ can mean.
***
R: It’s the last month of 2020. What are you looking forward to?
T: I'm hoping to get to a point of sustainability and self care soon. It's like reaching a plateau while climbing a mountain. I want to take a breath and look at what surrounds me. Rather than feel like I must keep climbing aggressively, I want to mentally reset and process the past 5-6 months. I want to recalibrate the direction in which I can take the bakery and continue to grow bonds with the regular customers I have here. It's the light at the end of the tunnel that I hope to achieve soon. Not like an end game – just a breather.
A deep reverence for the Earth is the truth from which Tyler’s loaves are born. Regenerative exchange is the means through which he expresses care for others and for himself. In times of uncertainty and political turmoil, a holistic approach to making and sharing good food – and good bread – can be a remedy that orchestrates positive change in our community.
What’s Cooking?
Dana Heyward’s Sweet (or Savory!) Coconut Polenta Porridge
A baker with a penchant for food operations, Dana Heyward (she/her) is currently helping build out the kitchen program at Daughter, a café concept coming to Crown Heights this winter that will focus on sustainability and community.
“With Daughter, comfort and familiarity are definitely the main things that come to mind. We want the menu to be thoughtful but also approachable and feel like there’s a mutual understanding of the offerings. ‘Warming’ dishes are something I think (dream?) about a lot, and a grain porridge is definitely something that fits that bill. I think what I love the most about almost any grain porridge is that it can be made sweet or savory. The recipe below is intended to work as a breakfast treat, but you can easily make the base porridge recipe sans sugar or vanilla and turn it into a quick savory dinner with mushrooms, ginger, scallions, or whatever you’d like!” – Dana Heyward
Stephanie Spector (she/her) is a baker, cook, and assistant food stylist living and eating in Brooklyn. After a stint at She Wolf Bakery, slinging flour and shaping over 400 loaves of bread a day, Stephanie left the bakery life to pursue a career as a food stylist.
SWEET COCONUT POLENTA PORRIDGE
Makes 2 servings
POLENTA PORRIDGE
9 ounces coconut milk (canned)
16 ounces water
½ cup yellow polenta
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ cup light brown sugar
TOPPINGS (optional)
Honey or maple syrup
Toasted almonds (or other nuts)
Fruit jam
Figs or any fresh fruit
INSTRUCTIONS
In a heavy pot, bring coconut milk and water to a boil. Whisk in the polenta and stir continuously to prevent lumps.
Stir in vanilla, nutmeg and brown sugar. Continue stirring the polenta mixture on a low heat until thickened, about 15 minutes.
Transfer porridge evenly into two bowls and top with your choice of toppings of either jam, fresh fruit, honey or maple syrup.
Lunch Break
Each month, we will boost suggestions from our friends and collaborators. We’ll kick it off with a few personal bids from your narrators.
Ilana Herzig (Writer & Lunch Rush Editor-in-Chief): I really want to see Gather, attend Crafted’s dinner series, and visit The Fringe Coffee House. I recommend checking out this petition from Acres of Ancestry and Clarity Care Network’s mutual aid pop-up at Public Assistants. Definitely read Evan Nicole Brown’s Bushwick Daily piece on a Brooklyn outdoor Aquaponics Farm and The Cut’s article on friends behind NY community fridges! Be sure to keep an eye out for upcoming food justice initiatives from Fifty Fifty, an BIPOC artist & community space in LA founded by Aja Wiley!
Jake Stavis (Writer, Lunch Rush Editor, whatevs): I’ve found myself deep in foraging Instagram these days; a couple favorites include @66squarefeet and @blackforager. This short Eater doc on Chef Jack Tsoi (which Clarence Kwan notes is among the first Cantonese language stories produced by a major western food media outlet) is a must watch for anyone who’s savored traditional Chinese roast pork. His cleaver work is my personal brand of ASMR. I also can’t tear myself away from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which gives me another cultural reference point for Utah besides this unforgettable 2015 New York Times article about “dirty sodas” I will bring up at pretty much every opportunity.
Ashley Sabino (Doula Trainee, Local Bronx Bedford Park Community Fridge Host): Check out the Fridge Girls and support the initiatives behind New York community fridges (they recently did a free turkey giveaway, for example)!
Dana Heyward (Kitchen Lead at Daughter & Lunch Group Collaborator): With Gloria’s closing in Crown Heights, this GoFundMe is one way to support! Another thing I’m listening to is Maintenance Phase. They talk about different food and health fads/debunk them. There's a really good/funny episode about Moon Juice and the founder. I'm also very into the Li Ziqi videos on YouTube for a little escapism despite the propaganda suspicions (Tejal Rao wrote about it).
Dani Dillon (Founder of Lunch Group): I’m eyeing this tote from Ya Habibi Market (all proceeds go to Impact Lebanon), all the merch from True to Us, and this Rice paddle from Omsom! I've been eating all of my weekly Local Roots’ The Works Bundle with nice big ol' glugs of Pineapple Collaborative's olive oil (the blue and green tins are my favorites!)
Astrid Montaño (Encargada de contenidos y con 4 años de experiencia en cocinas en NY, desde lavada platos, hacer pie 🥧 y Line Cook): The Latest Food, es un podcast en español sobre gastronomía mexicana y todo lo que saber sobre ella. Natalia de la Rosa es una periodista y editora, que en los últimos años ha trabajado en temas relacionados con la alimentación. Para empezar, te recomiendo los episodios: “14, que habla de maíz nativo y la tortilla de maíz nixtamalizado” y “19. Plataformas de empoderamiento femenino en la gastronomía.” También les recomendamos conocer el proyecto Ectagono, fundado por Erica Valencia, que busca a través de acciones positivas lograr estrategias exitosas para un desarrollo sostenible. En este espacio puedes encontrar un esfuerzo increíble por cuidar el medio ambiente (desde conservación de las abejas 🐝, de reforestación🌲🌳, ríos limpios 💧, difusión de productos conscientes con el medio ambiente etc).
Stephanie Spector (Baker, Cook, and Assistant Food Stylist): For the perfect holiday gift, look no further than Diaspora Co. This QWOC-owned business aims to decolonize the spice trade by putting power, money, and equity back in the hands of those who have the most at stake in the industry: the farmers. Their spices are single-origin, direct trade, and the best you can get your hands on. For the fans of the newly resurgent newsletter (JS & IH: 😉) trend: Alicia Kennedy writes on “issues in food, from politics and climate change to culture and labor.” Her writing is succinct, thought-provoking, and a delight to read!
Lastly, please join me and my friends Maya Carter (She Wolf Bakery) and Carla Finley (apt2bread) at our Ditch Mitch (illustration by Caroline Reedy @dootdoodles) virtual bake sale to benefit The New Georgia Project! 100% of proceeds will go towards combating voter suppression ahead of the January senate runoffs. Online orders close 12/11 at 9pm. Covid safe pickup on 12/12 in Clinton Hill.
Shaquell Davis (Founder of Eat with A Davis & Lunch Group Collaborator): I watch a lot of YouTube videos for cooking purposes. I’m doing a ton of catering projects, and teach myself by watching a couple different people. ‘That Nurse Can Cook!’ is more Caribbean food; ‘Smokin’ & Grillin’ wit AB’ is more southern food; and ‘Kyuramen.Official,’ if you’re into ramen.
Liz Dean (Lunch Group Collaborator): Buunni Coffee up here in my neck of the woods (Washington Heights). During quarantine they started selling AMAZING family-style platters of Ethiopian food for pick-up or delivery. The people who run it are also just wonderful and care so much about being good neighbors and members of the community which is something I deeply appreciate. Also big shout out to both Farm to People and Our Harvest for making lots of wonderful local produce & other goods easy to get while I can't visit restaurants the way that I used to.
Lindsay Gulics (Brand Development Manager at Barrell Craft Spirits, Sommelier/Beverage Consultant, & Lunch Group Collaborator): I read this Tamar Adler piece about the future of sustainable spirits. She chats with Leslie Merinoff-Kwasnieski, behind Matchbook Distilling & Lin Beach House, an awesome drinking escape out in Greenport close to wine country. They feature her spirits at Oxalis, a neighborhood bistro just steps from the Brooklyn Museum (she made distillates specifically for them). Since the pandemic started, they’ve pivoted from a small tasting menu to outdoor à la carte service, and they’re doing a great pantry share program as well!
Gabi Zegarra-Ballon (Lunch Group Collaborator): Definitely recommend Daughter (the cafe Dana is working with!), this Pumpkin Bread with Brown Butter and Bourbon recipe from NYT, and the podcast Home Cooking, especially Episode 10: Fronds with Benefits (with Jason Mantzoukas). Also eating breakfast tacos for dinner!
Veronica Zapata (Lunch Group Collaborator): Any food recommendation I can give to anyone is to try Peruvian food! I’m really a fan of Jora in Long Island City and Mission Ceviche in the UES. Two different styles but both make me feel at home :).
Aja Wiley (Creative & Founder of Fifty Fifty LA – hit the GoFundMe here!): Yarrow Slaps, a painter, foodie, rapper, & owner of SWIM gallery in SF has been working on a forthcoming avant-garde cookbook called Ramen Forever: An Artist’s Guide to Ramen. The “illustrated love letter to Ramen” is filled with recipes and illustrations from over 85 ramen-loving artists. The team over at @lacommunityfridge also just started a really cool initiative where you can scan a QR to update the status of a fridge. Click here to get involved & here to find a fridge.
Thanks for lunching with us! Let’s KIT: give us a follow on Instagram & feel free to forward us to friends and foodies alike. See you in 2021 🤯
Lunch Rush illustrations by Mahya Soltani (Graphic Designer, Co-founder of event-series Before We Were Banned, Co-Founder of Unpaid Partnerships, & Lunch Group Collaborator).