Author John Birdsall chats with David and Renee about James Beard and how being gay helped, hindered, and shaped his career as the "Dean of American Cookery."

To be a star, he couldn’t be himself… Before the James Beard Awards and the James Beard Foundation, there was the man himself. Beard was the first celebrity chef of the TV era, preaching home cooking and fresh, local food even as frozen TV dinners gained popularity. But he also had to navigate the complexities of being a closeted gay man in a time when the kitchen was considered a place for women. Food writer John Birdsall talks with Dan about his new biography, The Man Who Ate Too Much, which traces Beard’s life from his start at queer cocktail parties in 1930s New York, to his winks to the queer audience as he became more famous, to the eventual need to change his public persona into a professorial bachelor, too obsessed with food to have time for a wife. As we hear, even today, James Beard remains one of the most misunderstood people in the food world. //

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Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

Andrew Zimmern is regarded as one of the most knowledgeable personalities in the food world. In February 2020, Andrew returned to television with What's Eating America, which premiered on MSNBC, and in 2021, he will premiere Family Dinner, on Chip & Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network. As the creator, Executive Producer and Host of Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods franchise, Andrew Zimmern’s Driven by Food and the Emmy Award-winning The Zimmern List, Andrew has devoted his life to exploring and promoting cultural acceptance, tolerance and understanding through food.

The acclaimed Israeli-born chef talks about his newest Philadelphia restaurant, Laser Wolf, and the intense, exciting, and sometimes painful path he followed to get where he is today.

Restaurant workers have never been more cordoned off from their professional kitchens and dining rooms, or each other. As the COVID-19 crisis continues to paralyze the industry, increasing anxiety over when restaurants will reopen and what the profession will look like mounts.  Katherine Miller, Vice President of Impact for the James Beard Foundation, joins Andrew today to discuss how restaurant workers can advocate for and take care of themselves, and shares some information about the herculean efforts taking place behind the scenes to help support the industry and prepare it for the best possible comeback.

Our great thanks to S.Pellegrino for making these special reports possible.

LINKS

Andrew Talks to Chefs official site

James Beard Foundation 

Industry Support Webinars

Independent Restaurant Coalition

Independent Restaurant Coalition petition to the US Congress

For more than 30 years, The James Beard Foundation’s mission has been to celebrate America's food culture making it more delicious, diverse, and sustainable for everyone. Today, the Foundation has launched a fund to provide micro-grants to independent food and beverage businesses in need, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On this episode of Tech Bites, host Jennifer Leuzzi talks with Mitchell Davis, the Foundation’s Chief Strategy Officer, about their Food and Beverage Industry Relief Fund, and the efforts to keep the $1 trillion dollar culinary industry afloat until the pandemic passes. Visit JamesBeard.org/relief for more information on how to apply for relief, or make a contribution.

Photo Courtesy of James Beard Foundation

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You can call him Chef, author, a forager, an early farm to table advocate or simply a philosopher and you’d be right on all counts. As a son of a lower income Italian family in New Jersey, Lenny was surrounded by food from an early age, and it stuck.

Can you have ‘good food for good?’ James Beard Foundation CEO Clare Reichenbach joins Billy Shore to discuss the role the culinary community plays in driving positive change through food. “Whether it’s celebrity or agency, [chefs] are trusted in a way that is unparalleled, and they literally can help shape public taste and opinion,” says Reichenbach. “I am so impressed by this community. There are so many calls on their time, but the generosity of spirit I see day in and day out is phenomenal,” she continues.

Reichenbach discusses in more depth some of the important issues facing the restaurant industry and the James Beard Foundation, including the #MeToo movement and gender equality. “There’s been a day of reckoning and I don’t see us going back from that… Culturally there’s been a good shift, but actually seeing that shift translate into systemic, structural change remains to be seen,” she cautions.   

Listen in as two leaders of influential food organizations talk about using the powerful currency of food culture to drive social change.