Consider This from NPR - BONUS: Sohla El-Waylly on Race, Food and 'Bon Appétit'

Episode Date: March 21, 2021

Sohla El-Waylly was one of the most vocal critics of her previous employer, Bon Appétit, and eventually resigned after the magazine's racial reckoning.She's now a columnist at Food52 and star of the YouTube series Off-Script with Sohla. She and Sam talk about racism in the food media industry (and everywhere else), The Cheesecake Factory, and certain kinds of mushrooms.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. Hey, it's Audie Cornish here. It's Sunday, which means we have a bonus episode for you. It's a conversation with chef, writer, and YouTube star Sola El-Weili. You may know her from the wildly popular web series from Bon Appetit called Test Kitchen. What you may not know is the story behind her exit from Bon Appetit, following that company's reckoning with racism, fair pay, and the meaning of diversity. NPR's Sam Sanders heard the inside story from Sola El-Weili in this episode of his show, It's Been a Minute. So I have so many questions to ask you about so many things, but I'm going to start out by asking if we can talk about the Cheesecake Factory? I love the Cheesecake Factory.

A few of my happiest moments in life have occurred at that place. The last birthday, I was able to celebrate in person with people. I was at the Cheesecake Factory. I understand that you used to work there when you were a college student. Briefly, I was a hostess. Oh, my goodness. This is chef and food star and internet personality, Sola El-Wehly. And being a hostess there is tough.

It is a difficult, difficult job. Please explain. Oh, it's just, it's so busy. The dining room is so big. I don't know if I've worked at a busier restaurant, honestly, than the Cheesecake Factory. So you may not know Sola from her brief career at the Cheesecake Factory, but a lot of you probably do recognize Sola

from a different kind of kitchen. And even like the design aesthetic, it is not at all pretty, but it's soothing. It's like this bloated, decaying Italian Renaissance vibe. I don't know. All of it, I just think, is this cultural study in excessive Americana. And it soothes me.

It soothes me every time. It's like our Coliseum when you walk into a cheesecake factory. You know, the decor, the gold, the fake marble. I feel like there was always, always like different shades of taupe. You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders. And my guest today is Sola El-Weili. And that kitchen that I was alluding to earlier,

I was talking about Bon Appetit's popular test kitchen video series. That is where Sola first got a lot of attention and love. Hi, I'm Sola. I'm usually back there. Today I'm here. And then Sola got a lot more attention last summer when Bon Appetit had this so-called racial reckoning. Sola openly called out Bon Appetit's diversity problems internally in company meetings

and externally on some widely shared Instagram stories. This was all the culmination of a lot of things. Unequal pay, racial discrimination, and this one photo that surfaced of then Bon Appetit editor-in-chief Adam Rappaport. In the photo, he was in brownface. So Le Quit, and this Bon Appetit drama, it really led to a lot of the food industry having some really frank conversations about food and race. Since all that, Sola has been busy. She's writing a cookbook and a food column for Food 52.

She's also hosting her own YouTube series called Stump Sola. It's time to stump Sola. So, I have to make lasagna into ice cream. But Sola is still struggling with what happened at Bon Appetit and grappling with questions over fairness and worth that keep playing out all over the media industry. At the New York Times, at Gimlet, at Slate, at NPR. Anyway, in this chat, we're going to discuss all of those things.

But first, to begin, I had to ask Sola about how last summer affected her. You know, since last summer, when George Floyd happened and the summer protests happened and all these racial reckonings happened. I have been constantly grappling with the way that race plays out in my industry and the ways in which I, as a journalist, might be complicit in some of these structures that are oppressive. And whenever I talk to people of color about their work now, across any sector, they're having these same conversations internally and with other folks as well. I am wondering,

has this last year or last few months of all of us just thinking about race really critically and publicly, has it changed the way you think about food and race yes yes okay i mean it's such a complicated thing i've been thinking about it a lot and like i'm learning a lot too i think one big thing with food uh and race that is a hot topic is cultural appropriation yeah and that's something that i've been thinking a lot about as well as representation and it's uh it's really challenging figuring out how to deal with these

things because we need both we need representation of uh different chefs as well as different foods but like i want to see more food from different parts of the world but who's the one presenting it like that's like where it gets a little confusing where it gets uh complicated i mean i personally think like what i want to see is more people of color doing everything the way that white chefs have been able to do everything this whole time. A white chef can be an expert in French food and then turn around and go to Thailand for a week and come back and be an expert in Thai cuisine, which I don't think is the right way to do it. But I hope that we ultimately get to a place where anyone can do anything. We're definitely not even close. I hear you kind of

indicating that when a chef of color does food that's quote unquote white, it's not accepted. Have you felt that? Well, I feel like there's like different waves of diversity, right? Like, so the early, early wave in food was you have white chefs introducing the world to food from people of color. And then second step was, okay, we're going world to food from people of color. And then second step was, okay, we're going to let some brown people into this world, but only if they focus on the food that looks like the color of their skin. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

And now I think we're entering this third place where it's like, hey, maybe people of color can make other stuff too. You know what I mean? Maybe. Like that's like something that's frustrated me when people see me, they think, oh, you must be an expert in Bangladeshi food. And like, no, I'm actually not. That's actually the food I know the least about. And I've always been kind of upset by that assumption, you know? Yeah, I get it. People used to get mad at me when I would tell

them in high school and college that I did not play basketball. They'd get mad. What? They'd be like, well, but look at you. And I'm like, I know. Sorry, dude. Sorry. Yeah. I don't know. It'd be great if we talk about that a racism within the number of South Asian staff in an Indian restaurant to try to figure out if it was really authentic or not. And I would do the same kind of thing at all kinds of restaurants with international cuisine.

And I thought I was being savvy, making sure they're real. But I never did that at a French restaurant. And I realized I was being casually racist in my food consumption. Yeah, yeah. And it's like the next step is how do food consumers start to see that and act accordingly and fix that? Yeah. Well, and also things like what we perceive to be worth spending money on.

Like people are pretty okay with spending 25 on a fancy pasta dish but if you go to chinatown you want your dumplings to be you know four dollars for a full basket and yeah why they're both very difficult things to make and why is one worth it's basically it comes down to one person's labor is worth more than another's, and that person happens to be white. Yeah, I mean, we've got a long way to go. I'm glad we're talking about it, but it is too complicated of a conversation, unfortunately, for Instagram and Twitter. We need to start having these conversations off of the internet and with each other,

because that's why we just start fighting with each other, because I think a lot of people want the same thing. i see a lot of these fights over the cultural appropriation like if a i i got i got yelled at because i made a persian dish it was like an old recipe of mine that got reposted and they're like why didn't you find a persian person to make this dish but if they linked into the article you could see see like I hit all the sources, all the research was there, but all they did was look at the Instagram post. So, you know, I think we need more people from everywhere producing content 100%. But that doesn't mean just Persian chefs make Persian food. That's boring. Food is for sharing, you know?

Stay with us. We talk more about Bon Appetit and a very interesting way that Sola has found to open up her mind. Here's a hint. You can eat it and it's illegal. On NPR's Consider This podcast, we help you make sense of one big story in the news every day, like how to combat disinformation and conspiracy theories, which pose a real threat to democracy, and what life looks like after you're vaccinated, the next phase of do's and don'ts. All that in 15 minutes every weekday. Listen now to Consider This from NPR. You know, it's interesting hearing you say that so many of these conversations around food and race and culture need to happen offline.

When one of the more pivotal moments of your career came in posting about food and race and culture on Instagram. Whoops, you caught me. I mean, it's not a whoops. it was a moment heard around the food world um I'm not gonna make you rehash that story we all know it by now but what's been your biggest takeaway looking back on all that now with that moment in your rear view talking about the Bon Appetit moment. Yeah. You know, I was really surprised. Because I've been talking about this stuff my whole life. And I've always been ignored.

So I'm just pretty used to being ignored and just screaming into the wind. So I can't believe people actually listened to me. I think that was just luck and timing. But my goal is to keep this momentum going however I can. Okay. You know, this is just a start. We have a lot of work to do. Hearing Solas say this is just a start is making a lot of white

editors quake i know just because you hired one black food stylist doesn't mean everything's okay now guys come on yeah um yeah i mean it's not just a problem with ba it's not just a problem with food media it's every industry everywhere and like we really need to do something about it and it's not just white people against everybody else we're all racist brown people are racist you know black people are there's a lot of inter-community like too that yeah you know it's a lot you're all fish swimming in racist water the water itself is racist and we're all wet wow that's exactly right yeah yeah i just want to figure out how to like keep this momentum going and keep moving forward and like i want to try and you know i i feel like i got really lucky that i've people are listening to me and i want to

try and use this to get some other people a platform to be heard you know what i mean we just need more of us out here talking. What do you think it was that made people listen when they did in that moment when they hadn't before? To you. I don't know. I feel like maybe a lot of things, like the BA Test Kitchen was kind of like doing very well,

and I was putting out a lot of content myself too, between Bon Appetit and my personal account. So there was just like a lot of eyes watching already. And I think the bigger thing was, I think the thing that hit the viewers and fans was what hit me too, like this sense of like betrayal, you know, because I saw the BA Test Kitchen as a viewer before i was in it so when i got in there i felt betrayed too like whoa this is all a lie you know what i mean so i think that really um stuck with people as well um people don't like to be lied to i get it you don't have to name names but like what was the most informative and maybe mind shifting conversation you've had in the last few months about all of this stuff about race and food, where you left

the conversation and said, huh, I see this a different way. I learned something new about this stuff. Was there a moment in the last year or so? Actually, yes. Can I tell you something? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So I decided to try mushrooms for the first time. Can we talk about this? Okay, not like Campbell's cream of mushroom. Is this a family-friendly show? I mean, we'll see. Go ahead. Tell me. You can't stop now. You know, I decided to go for it. Give it a shot. Okay.

You know, I've heard so many good things, and it really did. It really did open up my mind. I felt like this overwhelming sense of gratitude. To who? Like the world. You know? You really, I think I need to do it like every two months. I thought of, I feel like it was the first time I really started to think about things from like,

I think I'm one of these people that I sit around and I think about other people's feelings a lot, just in general. It's just kind of my personality. But I don't know. I guess I really started to think about every black person I actually knew. Wait, what? Really? Okay, go on. Yeah.

It's weird. Everyone should do shrooms. It really opens up your mind. And I was, I was thinking about like my, like my friend from fourth grade who, who we started out in the same place and we ended up in really different places because we got different opportunities, not because we had different abilities. And I just really started thinking about these things, you know, and the way things are, it's just really unfair and we have to figure out how to fix this that's all i don't know yeah you you do know you do know what was the biggest change in sola's day today after that shroom experience oh man i've been waking up feeling like joy and gratitude okay in a way that i never have i it really did change my whole headspace. I feel like we went off a weird...

No, listen, let me tell you. I'm into this. How much did you take? So it's like a chocolate bar and kind of shaped like a Hershey's bar. And one square is a microdose. And then three to four squares is like a chill kind of hang. And then 12 squares is like if you really want to go for it.

So like we ate the whole bar. Okay. I was just looking into my dog's eyes and I was like, we are one. You know what I mean? We're all alive. Yeah. We're all on this planet together. We have to take care of each other.

Everyone should do it. I think that we would achieve world peace, like, immediately. Coming up, why everything's changed and nothing has. Hearing loss is a fact of life for many humans, but not for fish, reptiles, or birds. People noticed in chickens that they could take them to, say, heavy metal concert, blast the ears really to oblivion. And then within days, new hair cells would begin to sprout. The science of sound.

That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. When I think about what this last year has meant for you, it was making a very public stance in a very public way and seeing things change after that. And there will be people hearing this chat, thinking about what you've gone through and your experiences and what you've talked about and seeing the casual racism and sexism and classism in their workplaces. And a lot of folks hearing this will relate and they'll fume and they'll seethe,

but they might not be able to make the Instagram post where they call it out. They might not be able to tweet about it or, you know, speak truth to power in the Zoom all staff. They might not be able to quit their job for whatever reasons, probably financial. They won't be able to do what you did. What advice do you have for them, the folks that feel stuck in their own personal bon appetites and maybe can't as easily get out? Well, I mean, I think first of all, I think I didn't make any change. Like, I don't think any change happened. I think we just maybe are talking about stuff. But even within Bon Appetit, I don't think any real change is happening.

Maybe to start, maybe we should just acknowledge that it's like like we have a long way to go, everybody. So it doesn't need to be like a big, like I had a big statement and I had a big moment, but it didn't make a big change, to be totally honest. So don't put a lot of pressure on yourself to try and change something that's been a problem for hundreds of years. You know what I mean? I think that everyone should just do whatever they can and that might just mean reaching out to like one co-worker who you think is struggling or working dealing like trying to fight for one story at a

time like if you work in food media pushing for one project one story like i don't think it's gonna happen in one big thing like the only thing that i accomplished was people started to talk about it but genuinely nothing has changed they just got a couple of they get a couple of freelancers in once in a while to make it look a little colorful but on the inside it's still the same um so we all just have to keep doing these little things every day yeah do you feel any pressure now to be like the race and food ambassador for the industry? Yeah, I really do. Okay. I didn't want this to happen. I just, I do though. I don't know if I'm saying the right

things, but I'm just saying what's honest to me. So I guess that can't be wrong. Yeah. How do you cope with the pressure you feel? I have panic attacks multiple times a week. Oh, Sola. And, you know, I look forward to my quarterly mushrooms. I'm going to need you to, okay, Sola so hear me out I'm gonna need you to make a recipe book Of shroom recipes

Oh my god, I cannot As soon as this stuff's legal We're cooking with weed We're cooking with shrooms That's book two It's happening Oh, you are my culinary hero You know In thinking about these issues Oh, you are my culinary hero.

You know, in thinking about these issues of race and food and the weird nebulous ways that you can be made to feel undervalued in a white space and how hard that is. I notice that there is, besides the unfairness of it that you feel sometimes, there's almost a crazy making that comes with it. Because so many questions about how race plays out in a workplace, they might not ever have definitive answers. So you end up sometimes with this stuff, not knowing what's up and down, not knowing if you're being undervalued just because you're a person of color or if you're being tokenized and fetishized and prioritized and given more just because you're a person of color. And there's this crazy making way in which over time, if you think about it too much, you can't tell whether the color of your skin is responsible for everything bad or everything good in your career or some combination of the two, if that makes sense.

How do you deal with the nebulous nature of race and work? Because there are very few clear-cut definitive whole number answers on this stuff yeah i mean when you're talking about you know how do you know if you're getting something good or something bad because of your race that's something i literally ask myself this question about everything that happens to me like every opportunity i get or I don't get, I get in like a little headspin. And I'm like, it happened a lot at BA because I moved up very quickly. Yeah. And I just kept thinking, is it because they're just happy they got a brown one?

Is it because I'm the darkest person here? Like I couldn't help but ask myself those questions. I think the only thing that keeps me grounded is like honestly just talking to my husband because he's like yeah the one you know he's like my foundation like he'll be the one that tells me like no you did do a good job and you did deserve this and I need like or or or the. He'll totally tell me the opposite. The opposite is true. So I guess having a voice outside my own head really helps. Within the workplace itself, I think, I know that I'm pretty direct with my supervisors.

I've never been like scared or intimidated by my bosses. But I struggle with that literally every day, every project, everything I've ever done in my entire life. I fight with that in my head. Yeah. Well, there's this like, I think for a lot of people of color or folks from marginalized backgrounds, there's always a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. And the angel is saying, look at you.

You empowered, beautiful being doing great work that's changing the world. And the devil is on the other shoulder saying, you don't deserve any of this. And it's like, who wins the fight today? Wait, do white people not have that? Maybe they do, but it feels like it's organized around something other than race. Ah, yes, yes.

Everyone's got their demons, but they're different. Yeah. You know, because I think for the world, race is so much top of mind when anyone sees a person who is not white. Race becomes the lens through which people of color often have to judge and quantify their success.

And that's frustrating. Because it feels like sometimes we don't have the freedom to just be people doing jobs that we love. Yes. There is an added weight and a significance of everything that we do because it's racialized. Uh-huh. Yeah. And our bodies mean more because of how they look and everything has a weighted meaning. Do you feel that?

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Man, you're hitting deep notes here, Sam. Sorry. Yeah. I don't know. I'm struggling with a lot of things in my own head about these things, figuring out your worth, and I don't know. These are deep questions.

These are real deep questions. I love it. I'm going to end by asking you a less deep question. What is the first meal you make for a big dinner party once we can all do that kind of thing again? Oh, I think probably, so the last meal I made before all this happened was a big fried chicken picnic. Okay. Yeah. So probably that again. It's like the best thing to make for a bunch of people because it's good at room temperature. And I've never met anyone who's not happy with fried chicken.

Or fried tofu for my vegetarian friends. Yeah, yeah. I love it. I mean, when I think of my first big dinner party in the aftertimes, it's just going to be taking a grip of my people to the Cheesecake Factory. It's going to be great. Of course. Sola, I look forward to meeting you at a Cheesecake Factory near you

in the after times. I thank you for this conversation and for the good work that you do. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Next time, next interview at the Cheesecake Factory. Thanks again to Sola L. Whaley. You can catch her Stump Sola series on YouTube. Enter column Off Script with Sola on Food 52. All right, listeners, don't forget this Friday, we are back with another episode per usual. And for that one, we want to hear the best things that have happened to you all week. Record yourself on your phone and then just email that file to me. The email address is samsanders at npr.org.

samsanders at npr.org. All right, till Friday. Thank you for listening. Try to eat some good food. I'm Sam Sanders. We'll talk soon.