Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - The Secret Behind Tanya Holland’s Famous Cornmeal Waffles

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Michele chats with with chef, cookbook author, and TV personality Tanya Holland—best known for her beloved Oakland restaurant, Brown Sugar Kitchen. Tanya reflects on the gourmet supper club her parents hosted, her unexpected role as a U.S. Culinary Diplomat (yes, that’s a real job!), and why hospitality—not just food—is her true passion. Plus, she takes us behind the scenes of her world-famous cornmeal waffles! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast is brought to you by Alloy Health. out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bowen, Ted Danson, Tig Notara, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers and more. You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter call-in show episodes where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers and lots more. Listen to The Three Questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts. When I discovered architecture, I was like, can I be an architect? He's like, no, you won't make any money.

And I asked him at one point, I was like, can I be president? He was like, you could, but I wouldn't recommend it. And I was like, can I be a dancer? He's like, no, I'll never put a dancer through school. So I joke now I'm like, as a restaurateur, I was the president of my business. I was the architect of my environment. I played the music I wanted to listen to and I danced all day long. Hello, hello. Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen. This is the place where we explore how we are shaped as adults by the kitchens we grow up in as kids and all the things that happen there.

The food, the laughter, the way we eavesdrop on the adults. I'm Michelle Norris. And today we are joined by someone who seems to have experienced every single corner of the food world. Our guest today is the chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, TV personality, podcast host, and all around great person, Tanya Holland. Thank you for that generous introduction. Nice to be here.

Oh, you're welcome. I'm not done. Let me just spend a minute ticking through your foodie bona fides. Thank you for that generous introduction. Nice to be here. You're welcome. I'm not done. Let me just spend a minute taking through your foodie bona fides. She was the first server and she was first a server and then a line cook all over the East Coast, including at Bobby Flay's first restaurant, Mesa Grill.

Tanya went on to culinary school in France and trained under some of the most accomplished chefs. She's well-versed in the celebrity chef ecosystem. You may have seen her when she competed in the 15th season of Top Chef or when she hosted the Food Network show Melting Pot as well as her own show for Oprah's Network. It was called Tanya's Kitchen Table, appropriately named. And on top of all that, she launched and ran the wildly successful soul food restaurant in West Oakland called Brown Sugar Kitchen. She did that for 14 years.

It's a place where there was always a big, huge line out the door. Brown Sugar Kitchen had such a large impact on the city of Oakland that they gave Tanya her own day. June 5th is Tanya Hollandaid in the city of Oakland. And they did that for her significant role in creating community and establishing Oakland as a culinary center. Now, how many guests on your mama's kitchen have their own day? And your reputation as a cook precedes you. I'm just going to share some of what Jonathan Gold, the late food critic said about you the first time that he had your famous cornmeal waffles at Brown Sugar Kitchen. This is a quote he said, it was almost as if I had never tasted a waffle at all because

Brown Sugar's waffles, he said, it is if the batter had tried to lift itself from the devilishly hot waffle iron toward the firmament. He said those waffles were so light and so crisp that they are almost a different species of waffle. That is one hell of a compliment. I mean, come on. Are those cornmeal waffles a twist on the waffles you grew up having in your childhood kitchen?

You know what? I actually did not grow up having waffles unless we went out to a restaurant. But when I moved to the Bay Area, I noticed the popularity of fried chicken and waffles. And I had a couple of examples. And I never intended to open a breakfast restaurant. Why would I? But I ended up in West Oakland. It wasn't a neighborhood that was really, you know, set up for dinner. You know, people weren't going to come to that area for dinner. And I was like, well, let me fry some chicken. I was serving grits. And then I got one waffle maker and I was experimenting with yeast risen waffles. But I wanted the texture of cornmeal. So I made

this adjustment. And that just became the recipe. And before I knew it, I mean, they had a life of their own. People were just like, that's all they wanted. And I got a second waffle maker. And then I tried to get a third, but our building did not have enough electrical capacity. So it took like, I don't know how many electricians to figure it out and we finally got a third in there and that's what we could max out and without like blowing the whole like, you know panel.

If you were blowing circuits, this is not like your mama's waffle maker with this must have been like a big industrial waffle maker. Cast iron and they were about, when I first started they're about $1,200 a piece. But yet they weren't really designed for the kind of volume we were doing. We were doing a few hundred waffles a day and yeah, the design was not really great. So I went through them like used cars. Now, I'm sorry that we have taken a detour down this discussion.

Waffle land. I love waffles. I really love waffles. Well, you have to try this recipe. I mean, I haven't been to a restaurant where anyone has done anything close to this and I am complimented all the time, even now with a closed restaurant. And do you serve this with syrup or do you do something? Yeah, you know, so when I first opened, I bought maple syrup by the gallon

and the price was about almost $100 a gallon. So I'm like, this is not sustainable. So one of my grandmothers, my paternal grandmother from Virginia used to always fry apples for breakfast. It was like a side condiment. And so I had this idea. So I sauteed some apples and I added some cider and reduced it. So I was serving the waffles with this apple-y cider.

And then I noticed people weren't really finishing the apples. So I just made the cider syrup and that became our signature. Cider syrup. Okay. I'm going to have to try the waffle and the cider syrup. Yeah that became our signature. Cider syrup, okay. I'm gonna have to try the waffle and the cider syrup. Yeah, you have to. And I made a brown sugar compound butter. So, you know, it was all those components that just added up to make it pretty special. So we always wanna know about our guests' childhood kitchens.

And maybe we can start by talking about breakfast since we've been having this delicious conversation about waffles. Tell me about your mama's kitchen and what did the breakfast table look like? Well honestly, my dad was the breakfast person. And you know, we moved- Your dad Hollis? Yes, Hollis Holland, still with us.

That's a great name, Hollis Holland. It is. It's got a great signature too. Um, so they bought their first home when I was five, and I remember just being, like, fascinated by the gas burners. And, um, my mom was, like, really nervous about me playing with them. So, long story short, they bought me a miniature refrigerator stove and sink and put it in the garage, like, made out of aluminum. Do you remember those sets?

I remember. Was it a Suzy Bake Oven or was it just like a standing... No, no, no. It was not live. I did have one of those. Like a miniature kitchen. Yes, miniature kitchen. And, um, but my dad on the weekends, you know, usually during the week, if I had school, it was just cereal. But on the weekends it was home fries, uh, scrambled eggs with, uh, you know, eggs with salmon, like canned salmon. And yeah, that was his staples.

And this was in Rochester, New York. In Rochester, yes. My dad worked for Kodak, so that's how we ended up there. That was the big employer in Rochester. It was. Can you describe the kitchen for me? Absolutely. I'm imagining the gas burner, but tell me what it looked like. Close your eyes and take me into the Holland family kitchen.

Absolutely. So we lived in a split level. You walk in, you have your living room to your right, your dining room straight ahead. Downstairs is a family room and a bedroom with a bath. And then up a couple stairs are bedrooms with a bath. I mean, downstairs, I think it was a half bath. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a bath. So the kitchen is like straight ahead to the back, to the right.

I remember the range and oven was right there on the left, right by the door. Sink, little wraparound counter, refrigerator, another little counter. And then there was a table that sat for like an eat-in table. And then the garage door was attached so I could access my kitchen from that kitchen. And yeah, I remember a lot of like family would come to visit and all the greens and green bean prep would be at that kitchen table, people sitting around.

Yeah, I don't know how big it was, but it seemed like it was big enough. Probably linoleum floor, had a window over the sink so we could see the neighbor's house bright, but a lot got done in that kitchen. So it was, I was five and then when I was seven is when my parents founded the Gourmet Club, which you probably read about that really influenced their lives and mine.

Before we get to the Gourmet Club though, that kitchen that they gave you, we talked to Ina Garten early in this season of Your Mama's Kitchen and she said that she didn't have a lot of toys growing up. She had a rough childhood and someone gave her a tea set. And it wound up having sort of an influence on her in some way. I mean, it was, you know, the roots of her radical hospitality maybe began with that toy that someone gave her in childhood. Do you think that that kitchen that you used to have in the garage may have had an influence on you in some way?

Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, I just maybe felt comfortable in the space of a kitchen and I knew how meaningful it was to feed people. So I wanted to do it. I loved the, like just the tinkering, you know, and all the tools and the pots. And yeah, just the idea of it. You had little pans and little plastic food and things like that. Yes, of course. Yeah, I can picture that, those little red tomatoes

and yeah, little pieces of hammer. I probably have some photos. Yeah, exactly. So with my dad, we worked for Kodak. You may have to fish out those photos for us. Yeah, I mean, I have slides and eight millimeter films and everything because he worked for Kodak. Yeah, yeah. So I bet you have great, great pictures.

Yeah. So you mentioned the Gourmet Club. Your parents were really young when they got married, 20 and 21. So you had young, vibrant parents who were just on the other side of being kids themselves. Yep. What was the Gourmet Club about? Why did they found it? Was it, you know, with their friends?

Did they join the club? Were they the founding members of the club? And how much a part of their social life was that? Yeah, they were founding members. It was founded with six couples and they were three black and three white, which was very significant in this suburban town of Rochester called Greece in the 70s. Greece is in the...

Like the country, but it's a suburb called Greece. And like the high schools were Olympia, Athena, Arcadia. Oh, okay. All right. That's really cool. Anyway, kind of a mix of working class and white collar. Pretty good town to grow up in. And most of our neighbors, well, the kids my age, a lot of them were first generation Americans of European descent. Wasn't a super mix.

A couple of black families, maybe a Caribbean family. So anyways, my parents, my dad was at Kodak, so we had friends from Kodak. I know at least one of the couples was a Kodak colleague. A couple of the other ones, no, two, at least two of them were. And another was a friend of a friend. And they met once a month. And the host couple would select the menu theme and cook the protein and then assign the side dishes and the desserts.

So they had themes and I still have the recipe packages. Not all of them, but I have some of them. And you know, anything from obviously the usual suspects, Italian, French, Spanish, but they did a Polynesian luau, they did an Alsatian rind dinner, they did a Pennsylvania Dutch meal, they did a Jewish seder one month. I mean, they were all over the place. And so, you know, I was the only child,

I was 14 and a half, so when it was at our house, that was my dinner. And then sometimes I would even travel with them to the other people's homes, instead of them getting a babysitter, you know, the other couples had kids too, and some of them my age, so we would have our kids' room. And we became really friends.

Like, we went camping with a lot of the families. My dad is still in touch with these folks. I'm still in touch with some of the kids. Because the core six couples were together, I wanna say at least a decade, and then a couple had to switch out here and there. But yeah, it was just memorable. And then, you know, some of the dishes would stay

in my mother's repertoire. So, you know, I'd talk to my friends, what are you having for dinner? I'm like, we're having masa ball soup and chicken kachatori. You know? It's like, what? So really, it just, it informed me without me really knowing how much it would be.

For one, the creating of the community, which I think is really why they started it. They didn't have family in Rochester, so they created their own family. And then creating cultural understanding. I mean, they were always very active. created their own family and then creating cultural understanding. I mean, they were always very active. I wouldn't say they were hardcore activists, but they had the values of activists and were always, you know, just trying to, um, like, create exchange and understanding.

They're very open-minded people. You know, I hope someone is listening to this and says, -"Hey, I want to do that. Yeah. I want to find five other couples in my community and get together once a month and go on culinary explorations. Yeah, me too. It'd be a great trend.

And I think, you know, if you can't get out of the country and travel to these places, it's a great way to get an understanding of culture. You know, people through their food is the best way. I think a lot of us did that. I did that during COVID, certainly. When I got locked in, I became much more adventurous and I decided to take my family traveling through food. It sounds like that's what these couples did.

You can't always, you can't go to France to have an Alsatian dinner, but you can throw one at your house. Exactly. Exactly. So when the kids were there, did they just post you up in another room with cartoons and cookbooks? Or, excuse me, with cartoons and comic books? TV trays.

Yeah. TV trays or, you know, whatever. Yeah. I mean, but a lot of times, you know, like I said, because I was the only child and most other couples, well, some of them had only children. So it wasn't like there would be a bunch of kids around. You know, it was really supposed to be for the adults. Tell me a little bit about Annette, your mom, and Hollis. Your dad was the one who cooked the big breakfast.

He was the breakfast guy and the grill guy. And the grill guy. Okay, of course he was the grill guy. Of course, yeah. What did he do for Kodak? He was an engineer and I think it was mechanical or industrial, but he got into personnel really quickly. People knew him in personnel and then he started recruiting black engineers for Kodak from all over. So HBCUs and other universities around the country.

And then also later, MBAs, Black MBAs for Eastman Kodak. So he knew all the deans. College was like, yes, you're going to college. You're going to go to engineering school and you're going to get your MBA. You're a Black woman. You're gonna go to engineering school, and you're gonna be, get your MBA, you're a black woman, you can name your price. Like that was the plan for me. Oh, he had a plan for you. Oh yeah, that was the plan. I was like, you know, when I discovered architecture, I was like, can I be an architect?

He's like, no, you won't make any money. And I asked him at one point, because, you know, at one point we had a president that was a former actor and another one that was a peanut farmer. I was like, can I be president? He was like, you could, but I wouldn't recommend it, because there's a lot of people blowing smoke up your butt. I was like, that's what he said. He just told it like it was.

Verbatim, yes. And then I was obsessed with fame, and I said... Wait, Fame the TV show with Irene Carra and Demi Lovato? Yes. And I was like, can I be a dancer? And really, like, I was, I really love the demographics of the high school. I was like, I want to go there. He's like, no, I'll never put a dancer through school.

So I joke now, I'm like, as a restaurateur, I was the president of my business. I was the architect of my environment. I played the music I wanted to listen to and I danced all day long. So I knew what I wanted to be. I knew exactly what I wanted to be. But you wrote that you learned the best skills that came in handy from your dad, the best skills that you used to build your restaurant. Yeah, he's very pragmatic, you know. And I think the engineering discipline that he, you know, made me adhere to was really good. And just like, yeah, I mean, my dad was very, very curious. My mom was definitely had more of a rural upbringing experience and was very like home nurturing, although she later worked in commercial banking, but you know, and then she was a

substitute teacher. So she was like, you know, more of that kind of personality. My dad was very outgoing, very big on networking. And, you know, when I had to give a speech at my church for graduation, like, you know, had me like memorize talking points and everything. And, you know, so that kind of training because he was in personnel. So he knew how to really develop talent and develop people. Was there something that happened in your kitchen that you can think back on? A meal, an exchange, something you witnessed from standing at the door or just hearing

down the hall from your bedroom that lives in you today that really helped shape the person that you've become? Oh, that's a great question. I mean, I can't think of anything other than, you know, I can just remember so many times, like so many bodies in our kitchen. Like, you know what I mean? Everybody ends up in the kitchen if there was. And it just was, I mean, that was the center of their social life, you know, and everybody wants to know what's Annette cooking, you know? And that would end like when the word got out that she was making gumbo,

everybody ran over. And by the way, my grandmother had to ship her filet powder from Louisiana. She was not finding that in Rochester, New York. And. You know, once a year she would do chitlins and, you know, everybody's like, oh, hers are the best because she was so fastidious with her cleaning of the chitlins. And they would smell up the house forever,

but they tasted good. People liked them. And they'd be in your hair forever also. Exactly. Like three days later, what's that shit like? Exactly. Everywhere. Um, so yeah, that's... I just remember, like, you know, the communal feeling of people just in the kitchen and then in the dining room.

That was the center of our home. Now, that was the center of your home, but your family also traveled. You spent alternating summers in the South, visiting grandmas in Virginia and Louisiana. Yeah. Tell me about that. In Shreveport, Louisiana. In Shreveport, Louisiana.

Okay, so we should say that. Very different distinction from New Orleans. We've talked to a lot of people from New Orleans on this show, but tell us about Shreveport. Oh, hot. And what do you remember about their kitchens? Hot. A lot. My grandmother, Thomas, my maternal grandmother in Shreveport, I mean, that was like, again,

that was like her roost. Like, she just sat there. There was a round table in the center of it. So, sink with a window, refrigerator. And then she had like a little... Before you went to the outside, there was like, and you've probably seen these in Southern homes, because I think they basically were in a shotgun.

I don't, you know, I didn't know back then, but it kind of seemed like it was. But there was like kind of a covered, screened in, but not like a porch, but it was almost like where a pantry, like where stuff was kept. Yeah. Like it screened in and you could keep like sacks of potatoes and things like that. Exactly. I was just going to say that.

Exactly. You know, she always, frying fish was like a big thing, but like they had a garden, so they had a fig tree, they had some tomatoes, they had a little vine of grapes. And yeah, it seems like I just kind of remember like that's kind of what we did. Like we waited for grandma to cook. There was not a lot going on in Shreveport, Louisiana in the summers. And we, my cousin Daphne, who lived in Detroit, we'd meet, we'd be shipped down there, you know, and meet down there. And had another little cousin who I think, yeah, he had been born, I think it was seven years younger than us and a neighbor. You know,

that was the thing. You could walk outside and it just was, you just talked to people, you know, and, and people had their eye on you. And then my grandfather, who passed away when I was eight, he had a penny candy store on the property, like in this little shed they had, yeah, with like nickel and dime candy and pickle jars and pralines. And I just remember like going in there and it was like literally a kid in a candy store, you know, like, what can I get? What can I get? And they tried to keep us from not eating too much,

but we all, you know, it was all whole food. It was all food from scratch. There was nothing processed. My grandmother was not buying TV dinners or frozen stuff, you know, she just, yeah, it was great. And the pralines were probably homemade. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. And then theyalines were probably homemade. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then they sold those like, I don't know if they were called whoopie pies,

but they were like those or moon pies. Remember those marshmallow-y things? Yeah. That you get when you squeeze it down. Yeah. And I just remember being like addicted to icee's because again, it was so hot. So we'd be like, grandma, could we go get an icee? Oh, you mean those tubes? No, it was so hot. So we'd be like, grandma, can we go get an icee? But you mean those tubes?

No, the slushies, like the frozen things that come out of the machine. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking of the tube, you know the plastic tube? Oh yeah, those. With the things you have to squeeze the... I remember those, yes. And they turn your mouth blue.

I think we like those too, exactly. Yep, those too. We need any relief we could get from the heat. Well, I think it was probably pretty hot in Virginia too. Yeah, Virginia, not so bad. I remember like a little bit more shade trees. Where in Virginia? So my grandparents moved around a bit because my grandfather was a cement contractor.

So he moved a little bit for work, but they spent a lot of time in Roanoke. I spent some summers in Roanoke with them. They were in Richmond, I think, last. And yeah, you know, I mean, definitely the Louisiana grandmother was much more food-centric. She had eight kids. My other grandmother had five still, quite a bit. A lot of cousins. Yeah, lots of cousins.

And I'm just trying to think, like, I feel like, you know, because my parents used to talk about that. My mom, you know, grew up, rice was the staple, more so in the kitchen, and my dad was a potato man. So I think that's why he loved his home fries. But like I said, my grandmother Virginia fried apples with potatoes for breakfast and eggs, you know, pretty simple eggs.

They had chickens when they were in Roanoke. So she would go get the eggs. Sometimes, you know, sacrifice a chicken. So it was pretty, it was pretty cool having access to that, you know, being kind of, you know, the suburban girl up in Rochester growing up. And a lot of your family during the Great Migration went west, which was one of the migratory patterns.

People think about people going south to Chicago and New York, but if you are in Louisiana, you usually went west and you wound up in Texas or California. Exactly. Because if you live in LA, every third person you meet has Louisiana roots. Same up here in Oakland. Yeah, all of my grandparents' siblings came west. My grandmother and my grandfather

were the only ones who stayed in Shreveport. And I think my grandmother was the oldest of her siblings. I can't remember. My grandfather, his brothers, and a couple sisters came out west. And two of the sisters landed in Portland, Oregon first. And I was at a family reunion in Portland, because one stayed and her daughter lives there and she hosted in 2019.

It wasn't until 2019 that I saw this, she had this little, you know, display of photos and a business card that Aunt Susie and Aunt Lottie had from the 40s, Susie and Lottie's place serving chicken dinners, barbecue, and chitlins. And it said, always open. I was like, always? And it said, live music and drinks or sodas or something. I was like, what? This is in my DNA.

I had no idea. Nobody ever told me that. Eventually, Aunt Susie moved to LA with everybody else. So most of them went to the LA area, but Aunt Lottie stayed in the Portland area and she has her descendants there and she's very entrepreneurial. So that was really cool to find out. And, but we visited, so the traveling, you know,

during the summers, we drove out to California to visit family a few times. So I also got to hit all the states and really get to know, again, this country and all the differences. It's just so vast. It's great to drive across country. I have to take you back to that restaurant though. Were you able to find out anything?

Did you do any forensics? Did you find anything in the old newspapers? No, I didn't even think about that. I don't know. It was in a place called Vanport. So it was a neighborhood where a lot of African Americans moved to work in the shipyards. And it was near a levee that broke and ended up flooding. Oh, oh.

Yeah. So it was, yeah, that's the story that I got about Vanport. Mm-hmm. Well, if we have any listeners... But I feel like somebody needs to investigate and do like a documentary on it, right? You know, if we have listeners in Portland, help her out. If you have any information. Yes, please.

I am keenly interested in this because I have a similar story. Oh, yeah? I only fairly recently found out that I knew my mom spent time in Spokane and I knew that my grandfather's brother lived in Spokane. What I did not know until fairly recently is that they own something called the Harlem Club in Spokane. And my mom's famous lemon meringue pie recipe came from the 350 seat restaurant that they owned in Spokane.

That's massive. Isn't it amazing, they just don't pass stuff on? I mean, I would think that that would, that you would leave with that, right? They didn't want us to work that hard. I think they thought like we were going to have different options, you know, and not have to, because when I first said I'm getting the restaurant business, I mean, everybody looked at me like I was crazy. Because they knew I had options to not do it. Well, and your dad had a full dossier on what you were planning to do.

Exactly. It wasn't part of that plan. Yeah, but as you say, it's in your DNA. Yeah. I think the hospitality is really in my DNA. Like, I really saw my parents always take care of people. And that's my passion. Like, I tell people, yes, I'm a good cook, yes, I really saw my parents always take care of people. And that's my passion. Like, I tell people, yes, I'm a good cook, yes, I can cook, but my passion is hospitality.

Like, all the details that go into setting the, you know, the table, um, creating the ambiance, bringing the right, you know, people together, the music, um, decorating, and yeah, and then designing the menu. That's my favorite. Hey there, it's Michelle Norris. I'm sure you've heard of that term aging gracefully.

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or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday. So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Can we just spend a minute talking about your cookbook? Oh, sure. Which one are you looking at? I'm looking at California Soul. I have Brown Sugar Kitchen, it's just beyond my reach. So I can't, they're both beautiful.

They're both just beautiful. But California Soul in particular, I mean, kudos to the design team, the sumptuous colors, the photos are beautiful. When I say California Soul, I almost want to shout out Marlena Shaw because I want to hear that music coming in now. And this book is just gorgeous. It's not only recipes, it's stories.

It's historical detours where you tell us all about California's migration story, about how the foods of Africa made their way into the American palette. We meet Biddy Mason and literally Farmer McDonald. But as I read this book, and I look forward to really digging in because I love the way you have the seasons. Thank you. Yes. So, you know, I'll be working my way through this book.

I am reminded that our kitchens are an important part of our migration stories. Yes. You know, our migration, you know, wherever you come from, whether you come from someplace else to America, whether you move from the south to the north, the south to the west, or the west to the east, whatever it is, your kitchen is the place where that story is told. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's very important. It's how you share yourself too with others.

I mean, it's a great way to share yourself. Yeah, yeah. In your migration story, soul food is at the heart of what you do, but it's elevated, it's adjacent to soul food sometimes, it has a different spin on it. You introduce like, I don't know if your mom made gumbo with coconut milk. She did not.

Okay. I didn't think so. I didn't think so, but the recipe in here calls for coconut milk. So you're doing some interesting things. When you hear the word soul food, what, because it means different things to different people, what does it mean to you? I mean, for me, it's the food of the African American diaspora, you know, and I tell people soul food in Chicago might be very different from soul food in Spokane, like you said,

or soul food in Oakland. Because we did bring a lot with us, but we also utilized and improvised what we had with us. I mean, my mom would say that all the time. Like, I remember her in the kitchen, like, I don't have any of this, I don't have any of that, I'm just going to improvise. Like, that was a statement that I heard. And then also, like, going to give it a lick and a prayer, and you know, a little this, a don't have any of that, I'm just going to improvise." Like that was a statement that I heard. And then also like going to give it a lick and a prayer and you know, little this, little

that. Like it was all that. I mean, people ask me like, are these family recipes? I'm like, family recipe? Like my mom did not, she had a couple of cookbooks and then she, you know, it was like memorized. It was what she saw her mother doing. And then, you know, trusting her palleting, experimenting. But she didn't really have recipes.

You know, my grandmother sent me like a cake recipe here and there. But yeah, things... Did she have one of those church book recipes? Oh, God, those are the best. Aren't they? I still have those. I love those. I scour. When I like them out in the world, I will try to go to thrift stores and find them.

Yep. But you know, we've talked about this before on this podcast, you know that Sister Arlene left one ingredient out of her pound cake. Exactly. You know that she wasn't gonna give you the full recipe because you could not show up with something that was just as good as hers. No, no, no. That's competitive. Because we used to have, after church, I go pretty to Baptist church, and after church, you know, sometimes they'd have, after church, I grew up in a Baptist church, and after church,

you know, sometimes they'd have the bake sales, you know, raise money for the choir, the ushers, and oh my God, oh, Miss Sowa Sowa made her pineapple upside down cake, you know? I mean, that was like big news. You had to rush out there. But yeah, my mom did make pecan pie and, you know, she baked a little bit. She wasn't a big baker. But you know, I think that's why I'm a savory cook because you have a little bit more leeway with savory cooking, you know.

You can't improvise. I noticed that, that you also take some of your baked goods in a savory direction. Like your zucchini waffles. Yeah. Oh, there's one I can't… I love sweet and savory. That's one of my favorites. There's one thing in here that knocked me out though.

The cupcakes with the… The molasses cupcakes? Oh, with the frosting. Yeah, the ginger. I mean, it's sort of like, you know… I almost dove into the cookbook and started looking at the pages. I mean, that looks so good. It's like an update on, you know, gingerbread and I love those flavors.

And, you know, also being out in California, there's a lot of Asian influence in the cooking and ingredients, you know. So I bring some of that to the table. I bring some of that to the table. I bring some of that to the table. I bring some of that to the table. I bring some of that to the table. I bring some of that to the table.

I bring some of that to the table. I bring some of that to the table. I bring some of that to the table. I bring some of that to the table. I bring some of that to the table. I bring some out in California, there's a lot of Asian influence in the cooking and ingredients, you know. So I bring some of that into my cooking just because it's here. And I like, you know, using tamari and soy and coconut milk and, you know, as alternatives. And you just evolve over time. You know, you mentioned I work for Bobby.

So when I worked there, I got to know all the nuances of all the different chilies, whether they're dried or fresh. So I, you know, I'm very intentional with what chili I put in a recipe because I know the difference. And that's got incorporated. So my food, you know, the soul is the base. And something I want to tell you, so, you know, Rochester is a couple hours drive to Toronto. And I don't know how my parents found it, but they found a restaurant there in the 70s called the Underground Railroad. We used to drive to, that was a soul food restaurant, it was upscale. In Toronto?

Yes. I would love to find, now that's some research I need to go to. And I remember going in... Okay, can I come along? That sounds... Right? I mean, it probably doesn't exist anymore, but it was ahead of its time. And they sought it out and I think,

I remember having greens and it was traditional, but it was in a really upscale space. It was pretty cool. Wow. I know. Okay, all right, we're gonna do some research and find- Yeah, so that was part of my inspiration. I, you know, after culinary school, when I heard about Dooky Chase and I had the opportunity to...

Leah Chase's restaurant in New Orleans. Yes. We were going to see my grandmother in Louisiana. I was like, you're gonna take me to New Orleans. So I went to New Orleans for the first time after cooking school, went to Dooky Chase, got to meet Miss Leah. She was just so gracious. Such a wonderful woman.

Said, oh, I'm so proud of you. Let me have your resume. And I said, can I come cook for you? She's like, no, you already know this. And that was just like one of the highlights of my career, honestly. Tanya, I heard that you used to host dinner parties when you were in college and they were fairly elaborate.

While other people were cooking boxed mac and cheese, you were throwing down. I mean, why didn't I have a roommate like this when I was in college? I was popular. Yeah, I bet you were. Wait, wait, so did you have access to a kitchen? Yeah, I mean, my second year, we moved off campus to an apartment. And so that was the first year that I started hosting dinner parties, because it's what I knew, what I saw.

And then I was like, why are you guys buying all this boxed food? And I didn't have the language of it's processed food back then, but... Your family just never ate that. Yeah. Like, well, occasionally, but it wasn't all the time. But I was like, we can boil water and make pasta, and I can make tomato sauce, and I can bake brownies, and... But more so, again, it was about the hospitality and sitting down at the table together and enjoying food

instead of eating on the run, you know what I mean? Or eating alone. It was more like, let's sit down and eat together and talk while we eat. And then my repertoire started growing. One of my grandmothers, my grandmother in Virginia, I was kind of a vegetarian, like kind of pseudo vegetarian in college. And she sent me the Vegetarian Epicure Cookbook,

and I cooked that front to back. Then another friend who was in Ithaca gave me the Mousse Food Cookbook. I cooked that front to back. Then another friend who was in Ithaca gave me the moose foot cookbook. I cook that front to back. Classic. Yeah, and then I just started developing. Then of course when I went to France, there was no more vegetarianism.

But yeah. So when you say you were popular, were you turning people away? Oh, no, no, no. Because I can just imagine, ding dong, I'm going to be cooking tonight. no. Because I can just imagine, ding-dong, I'm cooking tonight. No, once I started cooking, though, yeah, my roommates were quite appreciative of it. And then they were kind of like blown away, like because as the years went on,

like I remember having two that I live with second year, we didn't live together fourth year. But I made pizza from scratch and they were just like, what did you, I was like, I mean, it's the recipe, I followed the recipe. But I, you know, it was great. It was fun. So for a lot of chefs, cooking has always been their passion. It sounds like it's always been somewhere inside you, but you took a detour also. Yeah, I studied.

I mean, my degree is in Russian language and literature. And just because it required the least amount of credits and no thesis, if I'm being honest. And where did you go to school, remind us? University of Virginia. Yeah. And the engineering, like I started in engineering classes, I didn't do well. I didn't enjoy them. I loved humanities.

I took as electives. I was taking art history, but then, you know, that career trajectory didn't seem like something that I was interested in. So I was thinking of languages. I wanted to do something international. Like, I'm like, I want to, you know, do something. So I took French, which I had taken in high school. to do something. So I took French, which I had taken in high school. And I liked it. My Russian department was very small, so I got to interact with my professors really intimately and they were very encouraging and I got straight A's. So I'm like, well, I'll major in this. No idea what I was going to do with it. The options back then was really teaching. I didn't want to do that. And I was, during college, I worked

for sort of a PR advertising firm for the downtown area of Charlottesville. So I was thinking about PR for a while and advertising. So I worked in advertising in New York, an administrative assistant for a couple of years. And on the weekend, because the salary was so low, I had to have another job and I started working in restaurants. And I started in college waiting tables, but in New York was where I fell in love with the restaurant industry because it was just so dynamic and the variety was so great. And I just saw the coolest people and I learned about all the different roles you could have.

I'm like, this industry is so cool. So I started taking cooking classes after work with a friend and I took wine classes. We washed dishes in exchange for our credits. So we didn't pay any money, but we washed dishes after some of the classes and then we got to come and take our classes. And a lot of the instructors had gone to this school in France called L'Avarene. So I was like, I've always wanted to live and work in France. How do I get there?

And I met someone who was there and she said, well, I'm going back next week. I can take your resume because there was no internet. And that's how it happened. I got accepted. And again, I think my parents were kind of like, we don't know what she's doing. I was thinking, what did Hollis and Annette think of this?

Oh, they got lots, they had lots of stories. Yeah. But, you know, they got, they became very proud with what I did with it, but they let me do it. You know, I mean, I was like, I'm going. And it was, it was scary, you was scary to go to a foreign country. I didn't know anyone. I don't even know how I did it.

I had one of those like dead body bag, duffel bags. Remember those? Yeah, big black bags. Exactly. And a bicycle. I took my bicycle and I made it. I made it there and it was great. Culinary schools, whether they're in upstate New York or, you know, in the French countryside,

sometimes they can deepen people's passion for cooking, but sometimes they can intimidate people. I mean, there's a flame out rate, you know. Sure. Yeah. Were you immediately... Did you immediately find your legs there, or was there a period where you felt like you were experiencing almost a little bit of vertigo? I was inspired and mostly because, I mean, the landscape was so beautiful and the average person was so knowledgeable about food and wine and we had a garden.

And even though my grandparents had gardens, it was like, you know, this was like maybe half an acre. And we literally like, you know, we just cooked so much from there. And, um, yeah, it just, I just felt like I'm at the source, you know? This was like, this is the foundation of so much cooking, classical French cooking. And, um, even though some of the chefs were not the most patient people, it was, you know, it was just a nice environment to be in. Was there a lesson in that too?

Yeah, I mean, definitely. I mean, again, like, you just, very disciplined environment. So I definitely brought that back home to, you know, the way I worked and ran my kitchens. You know, mise en place is a real thing. Everything in the right place, you know. And just how proud people are. And it's just, it is a respected line of work there.

And people have been doing it for generations. And yeah, I like how it's revered over there, cooking and food. Did you feel like you almost, when you cook now, have two different, I don't know, spirits on your shoulder, the mise en place, which you know, everything has to be precise. Right. And then your grandma in Shreveport, who's just, you know, doing everything by improvisation and just kind of going with whatever, wherever the spirit takes her. Absolutely. And actually, there was a writer,

I don't know if you remember Brian Miller, he used to be the critic for the New York Times, but he, after he left the Times, he was writing for some smaller New York magazine and he reviewed this restaurant I was running in Brooklyn. He said, you know, it's like your grandmother's food if grandma went to cooking school in France. So I mean, it's all in me for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of travel and traveling around the world, you were appointed as a culinary diplomat for the United States Foreign Service Department. Can you just say a little bit about that? I mean, that seems like a dream job. I was just going to say that was the dream come true because actually when I was in college, I wanted to be a diplomat, but I was so like, I was intimidated by the Foreign Service exam.

I heard it was really, really hard. And I later met diplomats, they're like, you would have been fine. But I was told like, well, you know, if you wanna become an ambassador, it's a long road, it's a long career. It's like 20, 25 years before you become an ambassador. Or if you're friends with a president, maybe like they can appoint you. And I was like, I'm gonna go that route.

I'm pretty sure one of my friends, pretty sure one of my friends will be president one day. So anywho, but I put out my mind as I went to culinary school and everything. And then I heard about this program, but I, you know, I wasn't invited. And then in 2015, I received a letter over email from the State Department saying it's been requested for you to come to Kazakhstan. And it was, you know, unofficial letterhead, but I was like, what? And I shared with a friend of mine, she goes, that seems like send money to Nigeria to me. And I was like, no.

So I haven't been to DC. She thought it was a scam. Yeah. And I went to DC and I met with them because I was there for something else and it was real. So there was a Foreign Service officer from Kentucky who wanted to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation of Slaves in 2015 for Juneteenth. And he wanted to get an African-American chef who was media trained. So he was Googling, he found me,

and then he scrolled down and saw that I studied Russian. And it was like, I mean, I was like... How did Kazakhstan get in here though? Well, that's, they had, they wanted to do the program. He was, that's where he was based. Okay. So I, I called dad. I was like, the degree is finally paying off. So yeah, they brought me over.

Um, and it was, yeah, life changing. I got to travel all around Kazakhstan and teach them about, you know, soul food, but also learn about some of their cuisine. Their national dish is called bishpamak, which is horse meat and noodles. So everybody's like, did you try bishpamak? Did you try bishpamak? You know, in Russian or whatever. And I was like, yeah, I tried it.

That's it. I tried it. And that's it. I don And I was like, yeah, I tried it. That's it. I tried it. And that's it. I don't need to eat it again. I tried it. And when they tried your fried chicken or some of your dishes, can you tell us about how they reacted? Oh, yeah. Because so food, you know, the TikTok is full of videos of people from all over the world trying soul food for the first time and their eyes go on the back of

their head. So I'm wondering if they had that experience. Yeah, there was a lot of that. There was a lot in the barbecue. We had a big barbecue when I first got there with a lot of the, you know, other Foreign Service officers and officials and it was, yeah, I know it was memorable for them. There was probably some tears when I left. That sounds wonderful. Yeah, it was really, I mean, these exchanges are so important. And I did Mexico and Oaxaca a few years later.

And then I was supposed to go to Uganda a couple of weeks ago. But, you know, with everything upended. Things are changing. Yeah, that trip has been, we're going to say postponed, hopefully. Not canceled. But it's really important work, these cultural exchanges. Yeah, that trip has been, we're gonna say postponed, hopefully, not canceled. But it's really important work, these cultural exchanges. And it's, I mean, if I could do that full time, I would. Now, we talked about your time at Bobby Flay's restaurant Mesa Grill.

That was quite a scene in the 1990s. That was impossible to get a reservation. You know, it was a different kind of Mexican cooking. What was that experience like? Well, first of all, I opened the restaurant as a server before cooking school. Because I was like, I was managing restaurants and then I like, couldn't find the position I wanted. So I'm like, okay, I'm just just gonna go wait tables at this new hot restaurant.

And that was really exciting. We were introducing people to, again, a lot of these chilies that you see on the menu. Yeah, you said hot restaurant, it was hot in more than one way. Exactly. But I remember going up to this table and they just looked so intimidated by the menu.

I was like, let me tell you a bit more about the chilies. So I was inspired by Bobby. He was this young kid, the food was beautiful, let me tell you a bit more about the chilies. And so I was inspired by Bobby. He was this, you know, young kid, you know, the food was beautiful, flavorful. And I said, I think I want to go to cooking school because I want to be, you know, a chef restaurateur. And he was encouraging. So then I came back, worked on Martha's Vineyard,

worked in Boston, and then I came back and cooked at Mesa Grill after that. And it was still hot, like, you know, every day or every evening there were celebrities. And there was such a fast pace. And we also, we did so many covers. So covers is how many guests you're doing a night. I think there was maybe 120 seats.

And so we would turn that about three times a night. So that's like a big pace. Wow, how could you? That's a fast turnaround. Yeah. I think the average, you know, seating was like an hour and change. And yeah, it was all about turning those covers, you know, and just... It was a dance. Like really, when you're cooking on the line, you have to be like... It's a very physical, you know, line of work.

So what we see in a show like The Bear is not an exaggeration. Yeah, that's a very physical, you know, line of work. So what we see in a show like The Bear is not an exaggeration. Yeah, that's pretty accurate. But you know what, I tell people, my favorite depiction, fictional depiction of restaurants is Treme. Oh, really? Yeah. I feel like they nailed it. Yeah. And that's a good cookbook also. We talked to Wendell Pierce and we had to, like, go to that cookbook

to find his mama's recipe good cookbook also. We got to Wendell Pierce and we had to like go to that cookbook to find his mama's recipe for some okra. And I realized that that is a fantastic cookbook also. Did that prepare you working at Bobby Flay's restaurant and the pace and the intensity and also this, you know, just having the world's eyes on you at a celebrity restaurant? Did that prepare you for the work that you did on air as you became a celebrity chef yourself? I think to a certain extent. I mean, they did put us through media training.

But yeah, just knowing seeing how he conducted himself through the world. And then, you know, I was in France, I had the good fortune of meeting Julia Child. And you know, a couple other celebrities had come through restaurants that I worked in and they were James Beard Award winners. And so I always just took notes on how people were with their guests, how chefs were with their guests and watched them in the early days. There wasn't a lot of chefs on television. I never dreamed that it was going to happen for me so early in my career because it just didn't seem like a possible thing. But yeah, definitely I think that helped. Nicole Sade Before we let you go, Tanya, you know we always give our listeners

a recipe. And you chose, in this case, a recipe that you wanted to share that was based on the chicken livers that you had growing up. It's in your cookbook, California Soul. But in this case, it seems like it might be an elevated version of that because it's with shallots and cherries. And tell us a little bit about this dish. Yeah, I mean, that was a favorite snack of my mother's, was frying chicken livers, you know. And I think she just put a little salt and pepper and flour

and just kind of chopped them up and ate them. So it always reminds me of her. When I opened my first restaurant, I bought whole chickens and we had a lot of livers and I tried to serve them. Nobody wanted to eat them. I was like, guess this is not, I don't know, fancy enough for you all. But I still like, I love them.

In France, you know, they use, they eat every part of whatever animal. And I love them with cherries, sort of like the sweet and the salty. And I wanted to pay homage to my mom, but also homage to my French training with this recipe. And then the seasonality of cherries in the spring. So do you have it with a little bit of cracker or brioche? What is the best way to serve this? Toasted brioche is my favorite or you know, like a toasted like a baguette or something like that.

When I think of chicken livers, I think of, you know, my family putting them on saltines, frankly, and you wouldn't want to do that with these. You'd want something a little... I mean, we're trying to take it up a little bit. Yeah, yeah. We're lifting it up a little bit here. Yeah, yeah. Well, I wrote Test All The Recipes, so I will be trying these.

All right. I hope you are able to enter the diplomatic corps again, because it sounds like you really represented us well wherever you went. And you represented well for Halis and Nett in this conversation also. Thank you. Thank you. I hope that they have a chance to listen. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. It's been great talking to you. It's been great talking to you. I was looking forward to this and it was even better than I hoped it would be. Thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. I love talking to Tanya about soul food and migration cuisine,

that soul food is just, the idea that soul food is just Southern food. It can mean so much more, and it can be interpreted in so many ways, in very personal ways. She is doing such exciting work using food as a portal to understand people and culture, whether that's through cookbooks like California Soul or through her role as a culinary diplomat.

And one of the things that I really loved about this conversation is how community is at the center of everything Tanya does. And that's kind of what we try to do here at the podcast is to create a community of people who come together to listen, maybe decide to cook together when they dive into some of these recipes, and maybe decide that they want to linger and listen and learn about another culture or another way of being. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I enjoyed talking to Tanya. And before we let you go, just a reminder that our inbox is always open for you to record yourself in either audio or video to share your story with us.

Some of your mama's story, some memories from your kitchen growing up. Maybe you have some thoughts on some of the previous episodes, maybe on this episode. Maybe you've tried one of the recipes. Make sure to send us a voice memo or a video recording. You can shoot them to ymk at highergroundproductions.com for a chance for your voice to be featured on a future episode or your video to be featured when we start sharing these episodes on YouTube.

And if you want to try making Tanya's seared chicken livers with shallots and cherries, make sure to check out the recipe on yourmamaskitchen.com. You will find all the recipes from all the previous episodes. Thanks again for listening. Make sure to come back next week because you know we are always serving up

something special here at Your Mama's Kitchen. Until then, be bountiful. you