November 2, 2019 • 47 mins
We’re passionate about understanding the origins of what we eat and drink -- so we leapt at the chance to chat with Stephen Satterfield, host of the new food podcast Point of Origin, about our own origin stories, orange wine, and the politics of food.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, I'm welcome to say reproduction of I Heart Radio
and STEFF Media. I'm Annies and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and
we've got an interview for y'all today, Yes, with one
Steven Sadderfield. And as he likes to say, not that
Steven Saderfield, because there's a famous chef in Atlanta also
by the name of Steven Saderfield of Millery. He's not
(00:28):
that one. He's not that one. No, This Steven Sadderfield
is the host of a new I Heart Media podcast
called Point of Origin UM, one that our executive producer
Christopher is working on. Yeah, and it's really cool, like
the the in depth episode they did on Rice UM. Yeah. Yeah,
we think that you'll you'll dig it because some similarities there.
(00:52):
Perhaps Absolutely, it's a it's about it's about food and
travel and the point of origin and the point of
origin exactly. Yeah makes sense, uh huh. And Stephen is
just a delightful human person. He was a like Annie
and I. I I don't know if you can tell from
our podcasting style, but we're both fairly like anxious human people.
(01:16):
Our energy is usually like way up here. Uh. And
and Stephen was just so chill. It was so great
to have in the studio and uh he calls himself
a smalley in recovery, which I love. Yeah yeah, So,
um so we wanted to talk with him about this
podcast and what brought him to it and some of
(01:38):
the things that he's passionate about, uh in terms of
telling stories about food. So uh so here we go. Hi, Hi, Hello.
My name's Steven Saderfield and I am a co founder
of wet Stone Magazine, which is a magazine on food, origin, culture,
(02:01):
and anthropology. We also produce other kinds of media like
short films and a podcast on the I Heart Radio
podcast network called Point of Origin. Uh. Yeah, we were
excited when we saw the description for Point of Origin
come through. Uh. I heard is developing a bunch of
new food shows right now, but this one really caught
(02:23):
our eye because it's about traveling and and finding How
about you describe it or I mean, it sounds like
it's really trying to get to the the origin stories
of these foods that are so frequently misreported or just
unknown to the general population. Totally exactly that. Um, we
(02:45):
think that origin is really important, uh, not just for
Novelty's sake, But because it's really about helping us understand
the story of food. And we talk about this story
of food as the story of humanity, right, So, Um,
understanding origin stories around the things we eat and drink
(03:09):
helps us better understand who we are, who are neighbors are,
and hopefully built some kind of empathy through that understanding. Yeah,
those human connections. I mean, food is such an amazing
way to approach that because I mean, you know, as
irritated as I am sometimes that I have to eat
every day, it's like more than once, but no, food
(03:32):
is this beautiful thing that connects us totally. Um. And
it's just it's a really generous and generative way to
look at the world. Right So because it's the only
shared connection that we all have as human beings. It's
our only I find true common language. Um. And and
(03:57):
that we have the ability to talk about big ideas,
simple ideas, family memories, on and on. So I just
find it to be so generous as a way of
connecting with other people. Yeah, and um, and we tend
to be so disconnected from our food these days, Like
everything comes in a plastic package or in a plastic
(04:21):
package within a box or and we don't. Um, it's
really easy to not think about it. Yeah, well, I
mean very much by design to write like, it is
much easier to commoditize food than it is to perpetuate
a culture in which people are growing their own food
(04:43):
uh and preparing their own food. And you know, you
guys have probably done episodes on this around like everything
from supermarkets to refrigerators. You know, um that commodification is
no coincidence. But it wasn't so long ago when people
in our country raise their own food and prepare their
own food for each male. Yeah, was there like a
(05:08):
is there like a moment or maybe a set of
experiences where you sort of realized, Um, how problematic the
this larger commodification food industry is. Um, And like how
many stories aren't being told? Yeah, God, I don't. Um. Well,
(05:29):
let me back up. So my work, I feel, in
some way, has always uh tried to find a point
of irritation or agitation in the industry and trying to
use my work to exploit it or bring light to
it however you like. Um. So I my first real
(05:49):
vocation was as a smilier. So I went to culinary
school in Portland, Oregon and I worked in you know,
some fancy restaurants, and I became and that's really where
I learned through the notion of terroir um. That's how
I came to origin as a kind of organizing principle UM,
not just in agriculture, but a way to think about
(06:11):
the world. You know, it's it's really kind of a
profound UH lens to view the world when you think
about UM, an organizing principle of a sense of place
and all of the different environmental conditions and input that
ultimately UH will tell the story of you know whatever.
This food is UM or wine most commonly UM and
(06:36):
so UH after working in the wine industry for a while,
I started to look at the human element as part
of the ter war and started asking some difficult questions
about the South African wine industry, in particular in a
post apartheid industry and country. What does it What did
(06:57):
it mean for me as an African American some yea
uh to kind of be a part of this post
apartheid story. And was I really satisfied, um with my
role in that? And so I started a nonprofit organization
that really used wine as a catalyst for socioeconomic development
in South Africa, working with black and indigenous winemakers um
(07:22):
and started to make media really on their behalf in
that process, which is what brought me into to making media.
But um, I think also just for me, help me
understand that food or even wine, things that we look
at as esoteric or um, purely rooted and pleasure or
sustenance are actually like really uh profound, and you can
(07:44):
pursue things that are interesting to you and that you love,
but also um, you know, complicate things a bit for
the rest of the industry as well. Yeah. I feel
like about once a week at least, there's some moment
where we'll be researching something that seems relatively innocuous um,
and we go oh no, oh no humans and specifically
(08:07):
white people, Like it's usually like the white people moment,
it's just the end then white people. Yeah, well, I mean,
you know, I think with that, it's because mostly the
story of food is it's a migration story, right, And
so you're talking about the migration of of people, of plants, animals,
(08:34):
and ideas or knowledge, right, And so we can't not
talk about colonization and talk about food because it explains
why we eat what we eat and how those things
got here. Um, and when you read about colonization and
the countries that we're doing the colonizing, then, um, you know,
(08:58):
if people are not prepared air to confront those truthful histories,
it can really cause like an identity crisis for people
or some uncertainty. And it's like keep your politics out
of my food kind of thing. But um, that's just
the way. That's the way that it is. And so,
(09:18):
as I was saying earlier, you know, food, even though
I think it's it is kind of difficult to confront
stuff and like really you know, blunt terms to say
like yeah, white people did some stuff stuff in the past.
From a historical lens, it's it's sort of a continuation
(09:41):
of an older story. I do think that food is
somehow allows us to talk about the past more honestly,
um than like something uh let's say, like, well, I
won't give any other examples, I'll stick to food, but
I would you say it gives us an opportunity to
(10:01):
confront it honestly. Yeah. Yeah, and and through something I
mean like I don't know, like it's I guess it
makes it a little bit of a softer blow that
at the end of a terrible episode you get to
kind of be like, the banana bread is so delicious. Yeah, yeah, no,
I mean I think that was the you know, for
me with this wine nonprofit that I had, Uh, it
(10:24):
was really I felt a superpower that we had where
we would kind of invite people in to talk about
wine and we would do wine tastings and we'd say, oh,
everyone loves wine, and you know, it would be like
super educational, and then we would start talking about the
history of the South African wine industry and how I
was colonized by the Dutch, and then we started talking about,
(10:46):
you know, the subsequent agricultural systems that followed of disenfranchisement
and uh, indigenous people being kept on the land. And
so in the course of this wine tasting, you know,
we have gone from like this really aspirational one percent
at least a perception of it. Of course, um, that's
(11:08):
not at all true, um product, to like now a
really sobering conversation around the ways in which their decisions
as consumers um of wine, you know, still had an
impact and we're still part of this longer colonial story
and like that, I was always so impressed with people's
(11:30):
capacity to kind of stay with me, you know, along
that journey of like we're just here drinking wine, and
now we're talking about how this wine came to be.
And I have no doubt that if that same engagement
began with like I want to tell you about some
difficult history, it would just be like I wasn't there
has nothing to do with me, and I don't want
(11:51):
anything to do with that, like story to Sully my
wine experience. Yeah, we found that people are so generous
with us all the time, with with their stories and
with um. I think that people who are in the
industry are really looking for a way to talk about it,
for a reason to talk about it, to talk about
(12:13):
these stories, and to to get them out there. And
I think that there's a little bit of a stigma
against it, you know, like like keep keep your politics
out of my food, Like you know, don't make this,
but but it's inherently political, and especially if you're working
with that every day, if that's your mode of living,
then um, you know inherently I mean you said it right,
(12:34):
there's no way, uh, in which food cannot be politicized,
if for no other reason that we've already gotten regulations
around so it's like sorry, um. And you know when
you see the news and there's a chicken processing facility
(12:54):
and there's seven workers that are rounded up, and you
know if you read the backstory about the fights that
the workers were already engaged in with the owners of
that processing facility, Um, these politics are very much inherent. UM.
And so instead of and I think, actually I guess
(13:18):
on a slightly brighter note, in food media, I have
found that there this is an amazing kind of almost
renaissance period in terms of inclusion and a bliffman and
really just a broader intellectual curiosity around global food ways,
(13:40):
you know, from different narrators and orators. Certainly, like as
someone who publishes an independent magazine, other magazine editors who
are getting opportunities are are not at all the same
as those of even ten years ago, maybe five years ago. UM.
And a lot of the reasons that I even start
at Wetstone, you know, I really felt like there was
(14:04):
a redundancy and subject matter in food media. It was
very much about chefs and restaurants and rankings and reviews,
and most of the chefs and restaurants and rankings and
reviews were all of the similar ilk they went to
the same culinary schools. What cupcakes, they're right now exactly.
And so just like the that felt so tedious and um,
(14:26):
you know, looking at global food ways felt less possible
not that long ago. And now I think because of
the spread of information and the technology that we have
and travel of course, right, we again kind of a
an updated migration story for us because we are still moving.
We are still part of the story of food. You know,
(14:48):
we're still moving ideas and we are migrating and visiting
and sharing information. Um. And so the story of food
is changing and I think, especially here in the US, um,
becoming a more diverse and more interesting story. Absolutely. Um,
that's so, that's so interesting. I've I've never thought about
the Internet as being a form of migration, as being
(15:12):
parallel to the you know, widespread migration of ideas that
we're happening in the past due to these like like
kind of terrible money related um, interests of greed. But
but now yeah, we can we can have we can
have interplay between these cultures that there never has been before. Totally. Yeah.
(15:35):
I think you see it very often in on restaurant
menus or tasting menus. You know, you'll see one chef, uh,
let's just say for the sake of conversation in Copenhagen
Um and then all of a sudden, you know, one
style of plating which the first time you see it
(15:56):
on let's just say Instagram, you know it looks really
like otherworldly or you haven't seen it before, or what
are these ingredients, or oh, that's an interesting use of
negative space on the plate. And the next thing you know,
there's like restaurants all over Europe and all over the
(16:17):
US who are now kind of mimicking this same style
or same ingredients. And obviously there's some potential pitfalls within there,
but I think that there's enough inherent curiosity and imagination
and really again technique, Like I think the skill set
even of a lot of young chefs because of the
(16:41):
amount of information that they've been able to absorb. You know,
you used to have to go to library, Like when
even when I got into food, I was in culinary
school in Portland's you know, I was going to like
Powell's books and reading about Charlie Trotter, you know, for
front of house line service, and like when you think
about YouTube and all I mean using YouTube as its
(17:04):
own kind of search engine. Um, the amount of information
is just staggering. So um, the consumer is more sophisticated,
and uh, I think overall it'll be beneficial. Oh gosh,
I hope. So while there's so many other terrible things
about the Internet, the least it can do for us
(17:26):
make us more more sophisticated consumers. Absolutely. Yeah. The flip
side to YouTube being a rich and hive of scumm
and villainy, maybe it can teach us to cook a
little bit better. We have some more for you listeners,
but first we have a quick break for word from
our sponsor. We're back, Thank you sponsor. Let's get back
(17:57):
into the interview. So, so you've gotten to to speak
to some really inspiring people about some really really amazing stories.
Do you do you have any Do you have any
I mean, you know, without wanting to to to be
like so just you know, no one needs to go
listen to your podcast or or subscribe to the magazine
or anything like that, But do you do you have
any favorites or any like weird ones or any conflicting ones,
(18:18):
anything that stands out? Um, let me think there's some
standout stories. UM. We just did a two part series
on rice. Uh so we called it Rice and Resilience UM,
and it was really kind of about rice across cultures
(18:38):
and countries, UM, how formative it is not only as
a staple food but as a means of cultural identity.
And so one of the episodes, I think it was
our fifth, our fourth one, UM, we did with a
woman in California in the Central Valley named Robin Cooda,
(19:01):
and she has a Coda Family Farms, which her family
it's been in her family for over a hundred years
through Japanese internment. And so she talks about you know,
her her grandfather, how he came to acquire the farm, UM,
his role as innovating farmer, you know, in the beginning
(19:22):
of the twentieth century, and basically losing the land and
her family fighting to get it back. Extremely moving story.
And then we also talked to my friend B. J. Dennis,
who is a chef in caterer in South Carolina. He's
also kind of a uh he's Gala Gichi, so he
is a historian but also just a scholar of of
(19:46):
Gala Guichi foodway. So we talked to him about the
Purlu and some of those h descendants, so to speak
of the Carolina gold rice tradition. Um, so that was
really cool. We we we learned about minomn which is a
native American rice which grows on the lakes, the Great
Lakes Districts in Michigan. So it's just a really simple
(20:10):
example of how you know, these single subjects across the world. Um,
there's so many different derivative stories, but they're also so
much that is the same in those stories too. Oh yeah,
yeah right, Rice was right. Rice was a big one.
(20:32):
We we tried to do a single episode about that
just exactly. We were just like, oh no, yeah, I
mean yeah, Claborima sativa like you know, Africa, Asia, like
entire continents. But then there's offsprings and again you know,
(20:55):
the even the migration of these crops and the knowledge
of farming. Um, it's just so so endless. It's such
a big topic. That's when I learned about before physics,
which is a like BC b C. There's BP before
physics that some scientists use, and there was a paper
(21:15):
about rice that had BP, and I was like, don't
give me another confusing thing. I've got to go look
up now. I did not know about the BP. That
was my first experience with it. Wow, it's kind of
like Rice broke the brain of science too. We've got
to come up with another way to mark time. It's true. Um.
(21:42):
So I was reading some of the stuff your work online, UM,
and I loved it, especially like you made me want
like pizza and beer so big that you succeeded. If
that was your goal, you succeeded. So how did you
go from you went to culinary school? Like, what did
(22:03):
path did you think you're going to take? How did
you go from smallier to recovering small to writing and
out podcast magazine? Yeah? Um, certainly not the plan at all.
I was in culinary school in Portland and the early
two thousands, so two thousand three, which was a very
(22:23):
exciting time to be in Portland. It was kind of
when in Portland was shaping its own identity as a
culinary capital ish um, you know, outside of New York
and San Francisco. Um with you know, it was as
it was kind of the creator of the like tatted,
(22:45):
badass chef, like hipster aesthetic, like I had a front
receipt for all that, um, but also kind of a
real updating and effortless updating of like contemporary dining culture,
which is to say, better ingredients um, more care for
local ingredients UM, and also less formal dining a lot
(23:10):
of folks. I mean, this is happening in New York too,
but I really feel Portland was kind of the one
driving this, this kind of aesthetic UM. And so I
learned a lot. And of course, you know, being in Oregon,
it means I was in the Willamette Valley UM, which
is one of the world's great wine regions. It still is,
(23:30):
in my opinion, some of the best wine on Earth
comes from the Willlamt Valley. And so I had a
chance to develop a relationship to nature that I'm not
sure I could have if I I would have gone
to culinary school in Atlanta, for instance, um, where I'm from.
So no no shade on Atlanta. UM. But you know,
(23:52):
I didn't really know what I didn't know how much
I didn't know UM until the first time I went
into a vineyard and had a really um intense epiphany
around wine as agriculture, you know, as an agrarian thing. UM.
And then I started to think about everything in terms
of agriculture. UM. And honestly, I haven't really stopped thinking
(24:16):
about that UM since And I was nineteen years old
at the time, and so I thought probably I would
maybe own a restaurant. UH one day. I wanted to
be a chef for a while. I did a lot
of cooking on the side to UM. But it was
so hard, you know. I mean I knew enough to
know that like if given the choice of drinking or
(24:39):
like you know, cooking food for hours at a time,
the amount of money like sorry, guys, I'll cook from
my friends and family at home. UM. So yeah, I
pretty quickly moved into like front of house restaurant operation
stuff and wine stuff. And you know you heard a
(24:59):
little a bit about the detour in South Africa and UM,
I think you know media right now, as I alluded to,
you know, there's the industry is so different. UM. I
could have never produced or even had a vision of
kind of publishing my own magazine or having my own
(25:20):
media company or certainly not podcasting. UM. And also the
way that people regarded food and I guess that was
like fifteen years ago, was so different. You know, it
was like still kind of an esoteric field. Was scarcely
looked at as a career, a viable career choice. Um,
(25:42):
And that's really been one of the most amazing things
to me over the last decade is to see how
people have really centered food and culinary arts as part
of like broader popular culture. Yeah, it was still really
like inapproachable for like we were in this kind of
like dark age between like the Julia Childs of the
(26:04):
world and um and the modern food TV personalities. Could
you could you talk a little bit about what you
ate growing up and why you decided to go into
the culinary field. Yeah, well, I, um, you know, my
eating growing up was really good. I think on the
(26:25):
whole my dad cooked for us, so I did grow
up with the image of a man in the kitchen,
which I think matters. And I you know, we made
southern food, like so I'm fifth generation, as I said,
so macaroni and cheese and collards and rice. But you know,
(26:49):
my parents are also middle class working people, so there
is a lot of like hybrid dinners with stuff from
cans and cardboard boxes to um. But I do remember
like on the weekends, my dad would always make us
a breakfast from scratch of pancakes, and eggs and bacon.
(27:10):
So my dad I love cooking. He's really good at
smoking meats and barbecuing, and so for all family functions,
our house was always kind of the hq um for
holiday functions. So I think there probably was something in there,
you know, around being convivial and entertaining as much as
(27:35):
you know cooking. He also and very classic fashion of
the South, he would cook at church as well, so
like I have memories of my dad frying fish and
chicken for like hundreds of people. Um, and so yeah,
I think and that those are my That is kind
of what brought me to food ultimately, is being able
(27:58):
to think about it as a thing to share you
with other people. M Yeah, I was thinking about that
the other day too, because my mom always she does
the big church meals. And when it comes to thinking
about people coming together and like you did with the wine,
having these kind of more political conversations, like having that
(28:20):
thing to come together and share, I think in seeing
people with different political views kind of discuss and see all,
this is a person too, and I don't have to
just kind of paint them as I don't know them,
are they're different than me? Yeah, it's quite true. I
Mean one of my biggest annoyances in life is because
(28:42):
I've been living in California, you know, for the last
ten years, and Californians who have been to every corner
of the earth, to freaking Fiji, any corner, and you know,
they talk about the South in these terms of like
(29:02):
like gas you know, like, oh, you're from You're from Georgia.
What is it like? I'm like, you, guys, you ought
to be ashamed, you know, like the way that you're
just telling on yourself. Because the truth of the matter is,
having lived in allegedly the most progressive places in the country, Portland,
(29:24):
San Francisco, UM, Southerners have a lot more figured out
in the way of how to deal with each other
on a human level. And I'm talking about in black
and white terms, UM, than people in California or or
Portland's ever have. And the reason for that is because
(29:48):
in the South we have even post segregation, and and
even you know, leading up to segregation, we have always
had black people and white people in the South living
next door to each other. And even though at different
points in that history a lot of those white folks
would have preferred for that not to be the case.
(30:10):
It was still the case, and you know, I really
think that, um, whatever my own beliefs are or nonbeliefs
about the church or certainly my politics are very divergent,
you know, from the whole of the state of Georgia
and our governor. But when I'm here, I see a
(30:33):
kind of civility and decency in the way that black
people and white people. Obviously there's more than that, but
that's what we're talking about, and that's kind of what
the insinuation is on. People in California or Portlands are
asking me like for you, you know, and so the
implication is that the South is just a bunch of
(30:55):
toothless white people who vote for Donald Trump. And I'm like,
first of while, you're erasing an entire history, like the
reason that I'm saying that I've fifth generation Atlanta, because
I'm saying that my family has been here for two
hundred years almost like my I'm I am a patriot,
you know, I'm an American more so than many of
(31:18):
the people who would be looking at me as anything
other than that, right, and so I really feel strongly
in not like defending the South in any way, but
any time people from allegedly liberal parts of the country. UM,
have really fast and flippant opinions about the South. I
(31:38):
always like to ask them, when's the last time you
were there? And it's shocking how few times that they've
actually been able to say, oh, I've I've been there,
not to mention recently, but ever been there at all? Um.
So I feel, yeah, I you know, the South has
its own complications, but I'm really really glad um that
(32:01):
I'm from here, and I would as much as I've
traveled and the as much as I love the places
that I have lived in, those are wonderful cities. I
would not trade the experience of really facing that kind
of black and white dichotomy because it really informed who
I am. It informed this work with the nonprofit that
(32:21):
I was doing, and it really helps me. You know,
when I am critical about my neighbors right like I,
I feel like I have some authority on that. And
it's so easy for people in other places to say
how they would respond because their politics or their ideas
about who they are really are not being challenged. In practice. Yeah,
(32:43):
we have to deal with it here, um, And I
feel I feel really lucky I've been here. For about
fourteen or fifteen years now. But I'm originally from northern
Ohio and the New Jersey part of South Florida, and
so like, coming here with such a revelation, I was like, oh, okay,
cool um and but but it opened my eyes to
(33:05):
so many different modes of so many different food ways,
and so many different modes of communication amongst those food waves. Um,
I don't know, it's Atlanta is a beautiful city. I'm like, oh,
I guess I live here now. Yeah. I I was
like the only liberal person in a very small town
in Georgia, and I didn't realize how much I internalized
(33:27):
this kind of like the South is a terrible place
because I tried to get rid of my accent. I
was ashamed to tell people I was from the South.
And it was just because I had that kind of
like knee jerk reaction that people have from outside of
the United States. And I'm glad that I've gotten over that,
and I have. I've traveled a lot, and I've been
to a lot of other places now and I still
(33:50):
feel like, oh, this is a really I was lucky
to be around in this. Once I got to Atlanta,
and I was like, oh wow, there's so much good
food and there's so much, so much diversity in a
way that I don't frequently experience. Yeah, I agree. So
we we love you Atlanta as complicated. Yes, yes, it
(34:11):
would be real nice if we could work our elections out.
And we have a little bit more of this interview left,
but first we've got one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor,
(34:36):
and back to the interview. So, um, you've written on
several things that we've done episodes on, like food, desserts, um,
and we recently did one on food waste. How do
you how do you choose your topics? How do you
well these days, I'm I'm writing less than ever because
(34:57):
podcasting is hard. Yeah everybody, Yeah, that's I think that's
been the big reveal for me. And you know is that, um,
podcasting is just tons of writing. Um. So, but I think,
you know, I really have just always thought about food
(35:18):
really broadly. You know, it makes sense in my brain
to talk about food access in the same way it
makes sense to talk about food waste, because if you
pay attention to food, then you know these are really
like enormous issues that are facing the country in the
(35:40):
world right now, and so I don't I've never felt
like I had the luxury to just pick and choose
the parts of food or alcohol as it were, that
I wanted to pay attention to. And so if you
want to write really smart criticism about chefs and restaurant trends,
(36:01):
then you ought to also be able to write with
the same authority and insight on the you know, food politics,
um and and the matters of food politics that will
affect you your community in the world around you and um.
You know, for writers that aren't able to do that,
(36:24):
I think like there's there's some missing context, um and
how far they can really take us, um in our
education around food. Yeah, I saw on your Twitter you've
been talking about orange wine. Oh yeah, there's there's a
little dust up and um in the wine world. It's
(36:49):
just so silly. I don't fully understand it, but it's
it's totally a thing. Um. So there was a New
Yorker are article that came out a couple of weeks ago.
The gentleman who wrote the article basically had a bad
experience with orange wine, and he used his platform at
(37:12):
The New Yorker too tell the world. I had a
bad experience with orange wine, which I felt was kind
of beneath the New Yorker as a subscriber, um and
a big fan of most let me just say that, UM,
it just seemed really weird because obviously the reason it
(37:35):
was being written about is because it's topical thing. It
is part of the natural wine conversation. Perhaps natural wine
is even derivative of the orange wine trend. And so
you know, of course I'm looking with great interest when
(37:56):
The New Yorker decides to write about anything that I'm
interested in. Up this particular article was about absolutely nothing.
And it's the wrong topic to kind of treat flippantly,
because for whatever reason, people are so passionate about natural
wine and about orange wine, and so when you say
(38:18):
you don't like orange wine, it is like a personal
affront two legions of people who drink the wine or
who are in the industry. And so my voice was
one of many that day or the couple of days
after that article that was just saying, like, what the hell, dude,
what was that article? But yeah, and it's also it's
(38:42):
so silly to be dismissive about an entire category of
product based on like you're like, oh, man, I hate
pizza because I had to to Tinos and it was shite,
Like what I know, it made no sense um, And
I also felt like, you know, it was a missed opportunity.
The reason that I feel so earlier or I guess
that was last last year we released a short film
(39:06):
from the Republic of Georgia UM called Wild Grapes Whetstone
did and Um, I went to the Republic of Georgia.
I've been twice. Can't recommend it enough, which is as
far as we know, where the origins of viticulture begin.
Because I am a self proclaimed origin forager, I care
a lot about wine, so it really felt important to
(39:28):
me to go see like the oldest vineyards in the
world and where it all came from. And so we
made a film, UM, really beautiful film with this grower
who named Georgie, and he is in this village um,
which we think is where the oldest vineyards in the
world are. And these a lot of the indigenous one
(39:48):
of hundreds of indigenous grape varieties to Georgia or destroyed
during the Ottoman occupation and many centuries later during the
Soviet occupation, and so it's kind of a dark part
of the history is when people occupy Georgia, one of
the things that they do is attack their vineyards because
it's such a important part of their cultural history and identity.
(40:12):
So it's a really demeaning thing that happens. And so
this guy Georgie, who's probably in his mid thirties, for
the last eight years or so, has been going around
the village and climbing trees and mountains and finding these
old grape vines and vines that were thought to have
been extinct and then bringing them back as um, you know,
(40:32):
they were hundreds of years ago. So we made a
film about this guy, and in the process you learn
that this white wine grape cuts a telly is this
ubiquitous white wine grape in Georgia, and literally everyone makes
it in their backyard and essentially it's a skin contact
white wine that's just what an orange wine is. And
(40:56):
so you you have it for every meal, and it's
oh common that it's like it would be no different
than someone offering you a glass of water, you know,
when you when you go to their home. And so
I really felt like this article missed an awesome opportunity
to get to connect this, you know, eight thousand year
(41:16):
history and something that they're framing as a trend story
is actually how wine has been made without interruption in
this place for eight thousand years. And instead, what he
really ended up doing was talking about a gentrification story,
if anything, that he's in some hipster restaurant and he's
(41:40):
ordered some wine that he didn't like and in the conclusion,
orange wine is for dummies. He didn't say that, but
still that's how it felt. Creative license. Um so yeah,
that was um. Then I was out there tweeting about it.
I enjoyed. I didn't know this was a thing, so
(42:00):
I learned a lot. People really care. Yeah, yeah, oh
gay for people caring on Twitter. It's one of those
other things. It's a double edged sword. Yeah. I only
try to speak up on the really important matters like
orange wine. I stay out of the weeds on everything.
(42:23):
I'm willing to show up for that. Yeah, is there
what do you have on the horizon other than like this,
podcasting trips planned or anything good questions? Right now, we're
working on a couple of projects that are about the
(42:44):
the migration story of African people. Um So, this year
marks the four year anniversary, if we think we can
call it that, of the arrival of the very first
slave person UM in this country. And so some of
the work that we're starting to do is looking more
(43:07):
closely at the story of the food of the African
diaspora over the four hundred year period, because you know,
when you get into the Caribbeans, West Indies, Brazil, Texas,
Southeast UM, those stories are so different and those traditions
(43:28):
are so distinctive for all those places, but it is
all derivative of the continent. So we're working on some
film projects that are looking at that, uh. And then
we have our fifth volume of Whetstone and there will
be plenty to see and talk about in that next one. Awesome, awesome, Yeah.
(43:51):
Is there anything that we haven't asked you about that
you are that's just burning on your mind that you
really want to say into a microphone now? Just that
UM Savor podcast is awesome and that I'm so honored
to be on the show. I love how rigorous you
guys are about learning about where food comes from. You know,
(44:12):
ultimately it's uh, it's the same work that inspires me.
So I love your show and thanks for having me on.
We're so thrilled. I think in the email, I was like,
what like, come on, absolutely, um, where where can people
find you? You can find me on the Instagram at
(44:33):
wet Stone Magazine. So, um, wet Stone is w h
E T S T O n E which it's a
sharpening stone that could be episode for you guys, wet Stone.
There's so much there wet Stone Magazine. And then I'm
at I saw Steven um which is s T E
p h g N And both wet Stone Magazine and
(44:56):
I saw Stephen are all over the internet. Yes, and
also can check out the podcast oh of course from
the I Heart Studios. Yes, and um, I'm the house
of the Point of Origin podcasts, which you can listen
to every Thursday everywhere that fine podcasts are found. That's right,
(45:17):
Thanks for filling that crucial party. We're awesome, Thank you
so much, thank you. Yeah, delight, we've arrived at the
end of this our interview with Steven Satterfield. We hope
that you found it as soothing and informative and just
(45:39):
wonderful as we did. Yes, oh absolutely, um yeah, and
if you want to check out the Point of Origin podcast,
um it is as savor is on all those places
that we say at the end of every show, absolutely
same places. I yeah, I think you should check it
out because, um, they're doing great work up there. Stephen
(46:01):
was so so nice and I appreciated that he he
spoke highly of our show too. Oh I know, it's
like I'm going to melt into this chick. It was like,
you've listened to us. Why would anyone ever tell that?
But keep listening? List but please uh yeah, And you
(46:23):
can also email us on top of listening to the show. Yes,
our email is Hello at savor pod dot com. Or
reach out to us on social media. We are on Instagram, Twitter,
and Facebook, all three places at savor Pod. We do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeart
Radio and Stuff Media. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
you can visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(46:45):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always
to our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks
to you for listening, and we hope that lots more
good things are coming your way. E
Hello, I'm welcome to say reproduction of I Heart Radio
and STEFF Media. I'm Annies and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and
we've got an interview for y'all today, Yes, with one
Steven Sadderfield. And as he likes to say, not that
Steven Saderfield, because there's a famous chef in Atlanta also
by the name of Steven Saderfield of Millery. He's not
(00:28):
that one. He's not that one. No, This Steven Sadderfield
is the host of a new I Heart Media podcast
called Point of Origin UM, one that our executive producer
Christopher is working on. Yeah, and it's really cool, like
the the in depth episode they did on Rice UM. Yeah. Yeah,
we think that you'll you'll dig it because some similarities there.
(00:52):
Perhaps Absolutely, it's a it's about it's about food and
travel and the point of origin and the point of
origin exactly. Yeah makes sense, uh huh. And Stephen is
just a delightful human person. He was a like Annie
and I. I I don't know if you can tell from
our podcasting style, but we're both fairly like anxious human people.
(01:16):
Our energy is usually like way up here. Uh. And
and Stephen was just so chill. It was so great
to have in the studio and uh he calls himself
a smalley in recovery, which I love. Yeah yeah, So,
um so we wanted to talk with him about this
podcast and what brought him to it and some of
(01:38):
the things that he's passionate about, uh in terms of
telling stories about food. So uh so here we go. Hi, Hi, Hello.
My name's Steven Saderfield and I am a co founder
of wet Stone Magazine, which is a magazine on food, origin, culture,
(02:01):
and anthropology. We also produce other kinds of media like
short films and a podcast on the I Heart Radio
podcast network called Point of Origin. Uh. Yeah, we were
excited when we saw the description for Point of Origin
come through. Uh. I heard is developing a bunch of
new food shows right now, but this one really caught
(02:23):
our eye because it's about traveling and and finding How
about you describe it or I mean, it sounds like
it's really trying to get to the the origin stories
of these foods that are so frequently misreported or just
unknown to the general population. Totally exactly that. Um, we
(02:45):
think that origin is really important, uh, not just for
Novelty's sake, But because it's really about helping us understand
the story of food. And we talk about this story
of food as the story of humanity, right, So, Um,
understanding origin stories around the things we eat and drink
(03:09):
helps us better understand who we are, who are neighbors are,
and hopefully built some kind of empathy through that understanding. Yeah,
those human connections. I mean, food is such an amazing
way to approach that because I mean, you know, as
irritated as I am sometimes that I have to eat
every day, it's like more than once, but no, food
(03:32):
is this beautiful thing that connects us totally. Um. And
it's just it's a really generous and generative way to
look at the world. Right So because it's the only
shared connection that we all have as human beings. It's
our only I find true common language. Um. And and
(03:57):
that we have the ability to talk about big ideas,
simple ideas, family memories, on and on. So I just
find it to be so generous as a way of
connecting with other people. Yeah, and um, and we tend
to be so disconnected from our food these days, Like
everything comes in a plastic package or in a plastic
(04:21):
package within a box or and we don't. Um, it's
really easy to not think about it. Yeah, well, I
mean very much by design to write like, it is
much easier to commoditize food than it is to perpetuate
a culture in which people are growing their own food
(04:43):
uh and preparing their own food. And you know, you
guys have probably done episodes on this around like everything
from supermarkets to refrigerators. You know, um that commodification is
no coincidence. But it wasn't so long ago when people
in our country raise their own food and prepare their
own food for each male. Yeah, was there like a
(05:08):
is there like a moment or maybe a set of
experiences where you sort of realized, Um, how problematic the
this larger commodification food industry is. Um, And like how
many stories aren't being told? Yeah, God, I don't. Um. Well,
(05:29):
let me back up. So my work, I feel, in
some way, has always uh tried to find a point
of irritation or agitation in the industry and trying to
use my work to exploit it or bring light to
it however you like. Um. So I my first real
(05:49):
vocation was as a smilier. So I went to culinary
school in Portland, Oregon and I worked in you know,
some fancy restaurants, and I became and that's really where
I learned through the notion of terroir um. That's how
I came to origin as a kind of organizing principle UM,
not just in agriculture, but a way to think about
(06:11):
the world. You know, it's it's really kind of a
profound UH lens to view the world when you think
about UM, an organizing principle of a sense of place
and all of the different environmental conditions and input that
ultimately UH will tell the story of you know whatever.
This food is UM or wine most commonly UM and
(06:36):
so UH after working in the wine industry for a while,
I started to look at the human element as part
of the ter war and started asking some difficult questions
about the South African wine industry, in particular in a
post apartheid industry and country. What does it What did
(06:57):
it mean for me as an African American some yea
uh to kind of be a part of this post
apartheid story. And was I really satisfied, um with my
role in that? And so I started a nonprofit organization
that really used wine as a catalyst for socioeconomic development
in South Africa, working with black and indigenous winemakers um
(07:22):
and started to make media really on their behalf in
that process, which is what brought me into to making media.
But um, I think also just for me, help me
understand that food or even wine, things that we look
at as esoteric or um, purely rooted and pleasure or
sustenance are actually like really uh profound, and you can
(07:44):
pursue things that are interesting to you and that you love,
but also um, you know, complicate things a bit for
the rest of the industry as well. Yeah. I feel
like about once a week at least, there's some moment
where we'll be researching something that seems relatively innocuous um,
and we go oh no, oh no humans and specifically
(08:07):
white people, Like it's usually like the white people moment,
it's just the end then white people. Yeah, well, I mean,
you know, I think with that, it's because mostly the
story of food is it's a migration story, right, And
so you're talking about the migration of of people, of plants, animals,
(08:34):
and ideas or knowledge, right, And so we can't not
talk about colonization and talk about food because it explains
why we eat what we eat and how those things
got here. Um, and when you read about colonization and
the countries that we're doing the colonizing, then, um, you know,
(08:58):
if people are not prepared air to confront those truthful histories,
it can really cause like an identity crisis for people
or some uncertainty. And it's like keep your politics out
of my food kind of thing. But um, that's just
the way. That's the way that it is. And so,
(09:18):
as I was saying earlier, you know, food, even though
I think it's it is kind of difficult to confront
stuff and like really you know, blunt terms to say
like yeah, white people did some stuff stuff in the past.
From a historical lens, it's it's sort of a continuation
(09:41):
of an older story. I do think that food is
somehow allows us to talk about the past more honestly,
um than like something uh let's say, like, well, I
won't give any other examples, I'll stick to food, but
I would you say it gives us an opportunity to
(10:01):
confront it honestly. Yeah. Yeah, and and through something I
mean like I don't know, like it's I guess it
makes it a little bit of a softer blow that
at the end of a terrible episode you get to
kind of be like, the banana bread is so delicious. Yeah, yeah, no,
I mean I think that was the you know, for
me with this wine nonprofit that I had, Uh, it
(10:24):
was really I felt a superpower that we had where
we would kind of invite people in to talk about
wine and we would do wine tastings and we'd say, oh,
everyone loves wine, and you know, it would be like
super educational, and then we would start talking about the
history of the South African wine industry and how I
was colonized by the Dutch, and then we started talking about,
(10:46):
you know, the subsequent agricultural systems that followed of disenfranchisement
and uh, indigenous people being kept on the land. And
so in the course of this wine tasting, you know,
we have gone from like this really aspirational one percent
at least a perception of it. Of course, um, that's
(11:08):
not at all true, um product, to like now a
really sobering conversation around the ways in which their decisions
as consumers um of wine, you know, still had an
impact and we're still part of this longer colonial story
and like that, I was always so impressed with people's
(11:30):
capacity to kind of stay with me, you know, along
that journey of like we're just here drinking wine, and
now we're talking about how this wine came to be.
And I have no doubt that if that same engagement
began with like I want to tell you about some
difficult history, it would just be like I wasn't there
has nothing to do with me, and I don't want
(11:51):
anything to do with that, like story to Sully my
wine experience. Yeah, we found that people are so generous
with us all the time, with with their stories and
with um. I think that people who are in the
industry are really looking for a way to talk about it,
for a reason to talk about it, to talk about
(12:13):
these stories, and to to get them out there. And
I think that there's a little bit of a stigma
against it, you know, like like keep keep your politics
out of my food, Like you know, don't make this,
but but it's inherently political, and especially if you're working
with that every day, if that's your mode of living,
then um, you know inherently I mean you said it right,
(12:34):
there's no way, uh, in which food cannot be politicized,
if for no other reason that we've already gotten regulations
around so it's like sorry, um. And you know when
you see the news and there's a chicken processing facility
(12:54):
and there's seven workers that are rounded up, and you
know if you read the backstory about the fights that
the workers were already engaged in with the owners of
that processing facility, Um, these politics are very much inherent. UM.
And so instead of and I think, actually I guess
(13:18):
on a slightly brighter note, in food media, I have
found that there this is an amazing kind of almost
renaissance period in terms of inclusion and a bliffman and
really just a broader intellectual curiosity around global food ways,
(13:40):
you know, from different narrators and orators. Certainly, like as
someone who publishes an independent magazine, other magazine editors who
are getting opportunities are are not at all the same
as those of even ten years ago, maybe five years ago. UM.
And a lot of the reasons that I even start
at Wetstone, you know, I really felt like there was
(14:04):
a redundancy and subject matter in food media. It was
very much about chefs and restaurants and rankings and reviews,
and most of the chefs and restaurants and rankings and
reviews were all of the similar ilk they went to
the same culinary schools. What cupcakes, they're right now exactly.
And so just like the that felt so tedious and um,
(14:26):
you know, looking at global food ways felt less possible
not that long ago. And now I think because of
the spread of information and the technology that we have
and travel of course, right, we again kind of a
an updated migration story for us because we are still moving.
We are still part of the story of food. You know,
(14:48):
we're still moving ideas and we are migrating and visiting
and sharing information. Um. And so the story of food
is changing and I think, especially here in the US, um,
becoming a more diverse and more interesting story. Absolutely. Um,
that's so, that's so interesting. I've I've never thought about
the Internet as being a form of migration, as being
(15:12):
parallel to the you know, widespread migration of ideas that
we're happening in the past due to these like like
kind of terrible money related um, interests of greed. But
but now yeah, we can we can have we can
have interplay between these cultures that there never has been before. Totally. Yeah.
(15:35):
I think you see it very often in on restaurant
menus or tasting menus. You know, you'll see one chef, uh,
let's just say for the sake of conversation in Copenhagen
Um and then all of a sudden, you know, one
style of plating which the first time you see it
(15:56):
on let's just say Instagram, you know it looks really
like otherworldly or you haven't seen it before, or what
are these ingredients, or oh, that's an interesting use of
negative space on the plate. And the next thing you know,
there's like restaurants all over Europe and all over the
(16:17):
US who are now kind of mimicking this same style
or same ingredients. And obviously there's some potential pitfalls within there,
but I think that there's enough inherent curiosity and imagination
and really again technique, Like I think the skill set
even of a lot of young chefs because of the
(16:41):
amount of information that they've been able to absorb. You know,
you used to have to go to library, Like when
even when I got into food, I was in culinary
school in Portland's you know, I was going to like
Powell's books and reading about Charlie Trotter, you know, for
front of house line service, and like when you think
about YouTube and all I mean using YouTube as its
(17:04):
own kind of search engine. Um, the amount of information
is just staggering. So um, the consumer is more sophisticated,
and uh, I think overall it'll be beneficial. Oh gosh,
I hope. So while there's so many other terrible things
about the Internet, the least it can do for us
(17:26):
make us more more sophisticated consumers. Absolutely. Yeah. The flip
side to YouTube being a rich and hive of scumm
and villainy, maybe it can teach us to cook a
little bit better. We have some more for you listeners,
but first we have a quick break for word from
our sponsor. We're back, Thank you sponsor. Let's get back
(17:57):
into the interview. So, so you've gotten to to speak
to some really inspiring people about some really really amazing stories.
Do you do you have any Do you have any
I mean, you know, without wanting to to to be
like so just you know, no one needs to go
listen to your podcast or or subscribe to the magazine
or anything like that, But do you do you have
any favorites or any like weird ones or any conflicting ones,
(18:18):
anything that stands out? Um, let me think there's some
standout stories. UM. We just did a two part series
on rice. Uh so we called it Rice and Resilience UM,
and it was really kind of about rice across cultures
(18:38):
and countries, UM, how formative it is not only as
a staple food but as a means of cultural identity.
And so one of the episodes, I think it was
our fifth, our fourth one, UM, we did with a
woman in California in the Central Valley named Robin Cooda,
(19:01):
and she has a Coda Family Farms, which her family
it's been in her family for over a hundred years
through Japanese internment. And so she talks about you know,
her her grandfather, how he came to acquire the farm, UM,
his role as innovating farmer, you know, in the beginning
(19:22):
of the twentieth century, and basically losing the land and
her family fighting to get it back. Extremely moving story.
And then we also talked to my friend B. J. Dennis,
who is a chef in caterer in South Carolina. He's
also kind of a uh he's Gala Gichi, so he
is a historian but also just a scholar of of
(19:46):
Gala Guichi foodway. So we talked to him about the
Purlu and some of those h descendants, so to speak
of the Carolina gold rice tradition. Um, so that was
really cool. We we we learned about minomn which is a
native American rice which grows on the lakes, the Great
Lakes Districts in Michigan. So it's just a really simple
(20:10):
example of how you know, these single subjects across the world. Um,
there's so many different derivative stories, but they're also so
much that is the same in those stories too. Oh yeah,
yeah right, Rice was right. Rice was a big one.
(20:32):
We we tried to do a single episode about that
just exactly. We were just like, oh no, yeah, I
mean yeah, Claborima sativa like you know, Africa, Asia, like
entire continents. But then there's offsprings and again you know,
(20:55):
the even the migration of these crops and the knowledge
of farming. Um, it's just so so endless. It's such
a big topic. That's when I learned about before physics,
which is a like BC b C. There's BP before
physics that some scientists use, and there was a paper
(21:15):
about rice that had BP, and I was like, don't
give me another confusing thing. I've got to go look
up now. I did not know about the BP. That
was my first experience with it. Wow, it's kind of
like Rice broke the brain of science too. We've got
to come up with another way to mark time. It's true. Um.
(21:42):
So I was reading some of the stuff your work online, UM,
and I loved it, especially like you made me want
like pizza and beer so big that you succeeded. If
that was your goal, you succeeded. So how did you
go from you went to culinary school? Like, what did
(22:03):
path did you think you're going to take? How did
you go from smallier to recovering small to writing and
out podcast magazine? Yeah? Um, certainly not the plan at all.
I was in culinary school in Portland and the early
two thousands, so two thousand three, which was a very
(22:23):
exciting time to be in Portland. It was kind of
when in Portland was shaping its own identity as a
culinary capital ish um, you know, outside of New York
and San Francisco. Um with you know, it was as
it was kind of the creator of the like tatted,
(22:45):
badass chef, like hipster aesthetic, like I had a front
receipt for all that, um, but also kind of a
real updating and effortless updating of like contemporary dining culture,
which is to say, better ingredients um, more care for
local ingredients UM, and also less formal dining a lot
(23:10):
of folks. I mean, this is happening in New York too,
but I really feel Portland was kind of the one
driving this, this kind of aesthetic UM. And so I
learned a lot. And of course, you know, being in Oregon,
it means I was in the Willamette Valley UM, which
is one of the world's great wine regions. It still is,
(23:30):
in my opinion, some of the best wine on Earth
comes from the Willlamt Valley. And so I had a
chance to develop a relationship to nature that I'm not
sure I could have if I I would have gone
to culinary school in Atlanta, for instance, um, where I'm from.
So no no shade on Atlanta. UM. But you know,
(23:52):
I didn't really know what I didn't know how much
I didn't know UM until the first time I went
into a vineyard and had a really um intense epiphany
around wine as agriculture, you know, as an agrarian thing. UM.
And then I started to think about everything in terms
of agriculture. UM. And honestly, I haven't really stopped thinking
(24:16):
about that UM since And I was nineteen years old
at the time, and so I thought probably I would
maybe own a restaurant. UH one day. I wanted to
be a chef for a while. I did a lot
of cooking on the side to UM. But it was
so hard, you know. I mean I knew enough to
know that like if given the choice of drinking or
(24:39):
like you know, cooking food for hours at a time,
the amount of money like sorry, guys, I'll cook from
my friends and family at home. UM. So yeah, I
pretty quickly moved into like front of house restaurant operation
stuff and wine stuff. And you know you heard a
(24:59):
little a bit about the detour in South Africa and UM,
I think you know media right now, as I alluded to,
you know, there's the industry is so different. UM. I
could have never produced or even had a vision of
kind of publishing my own magazine or having my own
(25:20):
media company or certainly not podcasting. UM. And also the
way that people regarded food and I guess that was
like fifteen years ago, was so different. You know, it
was like still kind of an esoteric field. Was scarcely
looked at as a career, a viable career choice. Um,
(25:42):
And that's really been one of the most amazing things
to me over the last decade is to see how
people have really centered food and culinary arts as part
of like broader popular culture. Yeah, it was still really
like inapproachable for like we were in this kind of
like dark age between like the Julia Childs of the
(26:04):
world and um and the modern food TV personalities. Could
you could you talk a little bit about what you
ate growing up and why you decided to go into
the culinary field. Yeah, well, I, um, you know, my
eating growing up was really good. I think on the
(26:25):
whole my dad cooked for us, so I did grow
up with the image of a man in the kitchen,
which I think matters. And I you know, we made
southern food, like so I'm fifth generation, as I said,
so macaroni and cheese and collards and rice. But you know,
(26:49):
my parents are also middle class working people, so there
is a lot of like hybrid dinners with stuff from
cans and cardboard boxes to um. But I do remember
like on the weekends, my dad would always make us
a breakfast from scratch of pancakes, and eggs and bacon.
(27:10):
So my dad I love cooking. He's really good at
smoking meats and barbecuing, and so for all family functions,
our house was always kind of the hq um for
holiday functions. So I think there probably was something in there,
you know, around being convivial and entertaining as much as
(27:35):
you know cooking. He also and very classic fashion of
the South, he would cook at church as well, so
like I have memories of my dad frying fish and
chicken for like hundreds of people. Um, and so yeah,
I think and that those are my That is kind
of what brought me to food ultimately, is being able
(27:58):
to think about it as a thing to share you
with other people. M Yeah, I was thinking about that
the other day too, because my mom always she does
the big church meals. And when it comes to thinking
about people coming together and like you did with the wine,
having these kind of more political conversations, like having that
(28:20):
thing to come together and share, I think in seeing
people with different political views kind of discuss and see all,
this is a person too, and I don't have to
just kind of paint them as I don't know them,
are they're different than me? Yeah, it's quite true. I
Mean one of my biggest annoyances in life is because
(28:42):
I've been living in California, you know, for the last
ten years, and Californians who have been to every corner
of the earth, to freaking Fiji, any corner, and you know,
they talk about the South in these terms of like
(29:02):
like gas you know, like, oh, you're from You're from Georgia.
What is it like? I'm like, you, guys, you ought
to be ashamed, you know, like the way that you're
just telling on yourself. Because the truth of the matter is,
having lived in allegedly the most progressive places in the country, Portland,
(29:24):
San Francisco, UM, Southerners have a lot more figured out
in the way of how to deal with each other
on a human level. And I'm talking about in black
and white terms, UM, than people in California or or
Portland's ever have. And the reason for that is because
(29:48):
in the South we have even post segregation, and and
even you know, leading up to segregation, we have always
had black people and white people in the South living
next door to each other. And even though at different
points in that history a lot of those white folks
would have preferred for that not to be the case.
(30:10):
It was still the case, and you know, I really
think that, um, whatever my own beliefs are or nonbeliefs
about the church or certainly my politics are very divergent,
you know, from the whole of the state of Georgia
and our governor. But when I'm here, I see a
(30:33):
kind of civility and decency in the way that black
people and white people. Obviously there's more than that, but
that's what we're talking about, and that's kind of what
the insinuation is on. People in California or Portlands are
asking me like for you, you know, and so the
implication is that the South is just a bunch of
(30:55):
toothless white people who vote for Donald Trump. And I'm like,
first of while, you're erasing an entire history, like the
reason that I'm saying that I've fifth generation Atlanta, because
I'm saying that my family has been here for two
hundred years almost like my I'm I am a patriot,
you know, I'm an American more so than many of
(31:18):
the people who would be looking at me as anything
other than that, right, and so I really feel strongly
in not like defending the South in any way, but
any time people from allegedly liberal parts of the country. UM,
have really fast and flippant opinions about the South. I
(31:38):
always like to ask them, when's the last time you
were there? And it's shocking how few times that they've
actually been able to say, oh, I've I've been there,
not to mention recently, but ever been there at all? Um.
So I feel, yeah, I you know, the South has
its own complications, but I'm really really glad um that
(32:01):
I'm from here, and I would as much as I've
traveled and the as much as I love the places
that I have lived in, those are wonderful cities. I
would not trade the experience of really facing that kind
of black and white dichotomy because it really informed who
I am. It informed this work with the nonprofit that
(32:21):
I was doing, and it really helps me. You know,
when I am critical about my neighbors right like I,
I feel like I have some authority on that. And
it's so easy for people in other places to say
how they would respond because their politics or their ideas
about who they are really are not being challenged. In practice. Yeah,
(32:43):
we have to deal with it here, um, And I
feel I feel really lucky I've been here. For about
fourteen or fifteen years now. But I'm originally from northern
Ohio and the New Jersey part of South Florida, and
so like, coming here with such a revelation, I was like, oh, okay,
cool um and but but it opened my eyes to
(33:05):
so many different modes of so many different food ways,
and so many different modes of communication amongst those food waves. Um,
I don't know, it's Atlanta is a beautiful city. I'm like, oh,
I guess I live here now. Yeah. I I was
like the only liberal person in a very small town
in Georgia, and I didn't realize how much I internalized
(33:27):
this kind of like the South is a terrible place
because I tried to get rid of my accent. I
was ashamed to tell people I was from the South.
And it was just because I had that kind of
like knee jerk reaction that people have from outside of
the United States. And I'm glad that I've gotten over that,
and I have. I've traveled a lot, and I've been
to a lot of other places now and I still
(33:50):
feel like, oh, this is a really I was lucky
to be around in this. Once I got to Atlanta,
and I was like, oh wow, there's so much good
food and there's so much, so much diversity in a
way that I don't frequently experience. Yeah, I agree. So
we we love you Atlanta as complicated. Yes, yes, it
(34:11):
would be real nice if we could work our elections out.
And we have a little bit more of this interview left,
but first we've got one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor,
(34:36):
and back to the interview. So, um, you've written on
several things that we've done episodes on, like food, desserts, um,
and we recently did one on food waste. How do
you how do you choose your topics? How do you
well these days, I'm I'm writing less than ever because
(34:57):
podcasting is hard. Yeah everybody, Yeah, that's I think that's
been the big reveal for me. And you know is that, um,
podcasting is just tons of writing. Um. So, but I think,
you know, I really have just always thought about food
(35:18):
really broadly. You know, it makes sense in my brain
to talk about food access in the same way it
makes sense to talk about food waste, because if you
pay attention to food, then you know these are really
like enormous issues that are facing the country in the
(35:40):
world right now, and so I don't I've never felt
like I had the luxury to just pick and choose
the parts of food or alcohol as it were, that
I wanted to pay attention to. And so if you
want to write really smart criticism about chefs and restaurant trends,
(36:01):
then you ought to also be able to write with
the same authority and insight on the you know, food politics,
um and and the matters of food politics that will
affect you your community in the world around you and um.
You know, for writers that aren't able to do that,
(36:24):
I think like there's there's some missing context, um and
how far they can really take us, um in our
education around food. Yeah, I saw on your Twitter you've
been talking about orange wine. Oh yeah, there's there's a
little dust up and um in the wine world. It's
(36:49):
just so silly. I don't fully understand it, but it's
it's totally a thing. Um. So there was a New
Yorker are article that came out a couple of weeks ago.
The gentleman who wrote the article basically had a bad
experience with orange wine, and he used his platform at
(37:12):
The New Yorker too tell the world. I had a
bad experience with orange wine, which I felt was kind
of beneath the New Yorker as a subscriber, um and
a big fan of most let me just say that, UM,
it just seemed really weird because obviously the reason it
(37:35):
was being written about is because it's topical thing. It
is part of the natural wine conversation. Perhaps natural wine
is even derivative of the orange wine trend. And so
you know, of course I'm looking with great interest when
(37:56):
The New Yorker decides to write about anything that I'm
interested in. Up this particular article was about absolutely nothing.
And it's the wrong topic to kind of treat flippantly,
because for whatever reason, people are so passionate about natural
wine and about orange wine, and so when you say
(38:18):
you don't like orange wine, it is like a personal
affront two legions of people who drink the wine or
who are in the industry. And so my voice was
one of many that day or the couple of days
after that article that was just saying, like, what the hell, dude,
what was that article? But yeah, and it's also it's
(38:42):
so silly to be dismissive about an entire category of
product based on like you're like, oh, man, I hate
pizza because I had to to Tinos and it was shite,
Like what I know, it made no sense um, And
I also felt like, you know, it was a missed opportunity.
The reason that I feel so earlier or I guess
that was last last year we released a short film
(39:06):
from the Republic of Georgia UM called Wild Grapes Whetstone
did and Um, I went to the Republic of Georgia.
I've been twice. Can't recommend it enough, which is as
far as we know, where the origins of viticulture begin.
Because I am a self proclaimed origin forager, I care
a lot about wine, so it really felt important to
(39:28):
me to go see like the oldest vineyards in the
world and where it all came from. And so we
made a film, UM, really beautiful film with this grower
who named Georgie, and he is in this village um,
which we think is where the oldest vineyards in the
world are. And these a lot of the indigenous one
(39:48):
of hundreds of indigenous grape varieties to Georgia or destroyed
during the Ottoman occupation and many centuries later during the
Soviet occupation, and so it's kind of a dark part
of the history is when people occupy Georgia, one of
the things that they do is attack their vineyards because
it's such a important part of their cultural history and identity.
(40:12):
So it's a really demeaning thing that happens. And so
this guy Georgie, who's probably in his mid thirties, for
the last eight years or so, has been going around
the village and climbing trees and mountains and finding these
old grape vines and vines that were thought to have
been extinct and then bringing them back as um, you know,
(40:32):
they were hundreds of years ago. So we made a
film about this guy, and in the process you learn
that this white wine grape cuts a telly is this
ubiquitous white wine grape in Georgia, and literally everyone makes
it in their backyard and essentially it's a skin contact
white wine that's just what an orange wine is. And
(40:56):
so you you have it for every meal, and it's
oh common that it's like it would be no different
than someone offering you a glass of water, you know,
when you when you go to their home. And so
I really felt like this article missed an awesome opportunity
to get to connect this, you know, eight thousand year
(41:16):
history and something that they're framing as a trend story
is actually how wine has been made without interruption in
this place for eight thousand years. And instead, what he
really ended up doing was talking about a gentrification story,
if anything, that he's in some hipster restaurant and he's
(41:40):
ordered some wine that he didn't like and in the conclusion,
orange wine is for dummies. He didn't say that, but
still that's how it felt. Creative license. Um so yeah,
that was um. Then I was out there tweeting about it.
I enjoyed. I didn't know this was a thing, so
(42:00):
I learned a lot. People really care. Yeah, yeah, oh
gay for people caring on Twitter. It's one of those
other things. It's a double edged sword. Yeah. I only
try to speak up on the really important matters like
orange wine. I stay out of the weeds on everything.
(42:23):
I'm willing to show up for that. Yeah, is there
what do you have on the horizon other than like this,
podcasting trips planned or anything good questions? Right now, we're
working on a couple of projects that are about the
(42:44):
the migration story of African people. Um So, this year
marks the four year anniversary, if we think we can
call it that, of the arrival of the very first
slave person UM in this country. And so some of
the work that we're starting to do is looking more
(43:07):
closely at the story of the food of the African
diaspora over the four hundred year period, because you know,
when you get into the Caribbeans, West Indies, Brazil, Texas,
Southeast UM, those stories are so different and those traditions
(43:28):
are so distinctive for all those places, but it is
all derivative of the continent. So we're working on some
film projects that are looking at that, uh. And then
we have our fifth volume of Whetstone and there will
be plenty to see and talk about in that next one. Awesome, awesome, Yeah.
(43:51):
Is there anything that we haven't asked you about that
you are that's just burning on your mind that you
really want to say into a microphone now? Just that
UM Savor podcast is awesome and that I'm so honored
to be on the show. I love how rigorous you
guys are about learning about where food comes from. You know,
(44:12):
ultimately it's uh, it's the same work that inspires me.
So I love your show and thanks for having me on.
We're so thrilled. I think in the email, I was like,
what like, come on, absolutely, um, where where can people
find you? You can find me on the Instagram at
(44:33):
wet Stone Magazine. So, um, wet Stone is w h
E T S T O n E which it's a
sharpening stone that could be episode for you guys, wet Stone.
There's so much there wet Stone Magazine. And then I'm
at I saw Steven um which is s T E
p h g N And both wet Stone Magazine and
(44:56):
I saw Stephen are all over the internet. Yes, and
also can check out the podcast oh of course from
the I Heart Studios. Yes, and um, I'm the house
of the Point of Origin podcasts, which you can listen
to every Thursday everywhere that fine podcasts are found. That's right,
(45:17):
Thanks for filling that crucial party. We're awesome, Thank you
so much, thank you. Yeah, delight, we've arrived at the
end of this our interview with Steven Satterfield. We hope
that you found it as soothing and informative and just
(45:39):
wonderful as we did. Yes, oh absolutely, um yeah, and
if you want to check out the Point of Origin podcast,
um it is as savor is on all those places
that we say at the end of every show, absolutely
same places. I yeah, I think you should check it
out because, um, they're doing great work up there. Stephen
(46:01):
was so so nice and I appreciated that he he
spoke highly of our show too. Oh I know, it's
like I'm going to melt into this chick. It was like,
you've listened to us. Why would anyone ever tell that?
But keep listening? List but please uh yeah, And you
(46:23):
can also email us on top of listening to the show. Yes,
our email is Hello at savor pod dot com. Or
reach out to us on social media. We are on Instagram, Twitter,
and Facebook, all three places at savor Pod. We do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeart
Radio and Stuff Media. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
you can visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(46:45):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always
to our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks
to you for listening, and we hope that lots more
good things are coming your way. E
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