The Rich Roll Podcast - Chef Iliana Regan Is A Boss: Thoughts On Sobriety, Literary Acclaim & Foraging

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

Meet Iliana Regan. A self-taught chef and author, Iliana has faced and overcome a litany of obstacles from substance abuse to sexual discrimination, ultimately prevailing to experience a special moment right now -- celebrated for both her culinary and literary accomplishments. At 15 Iliana landed her first restaurant gig washing dishes and never looked back. Leaning on the rustic experiences of her Midwestern upbringing (she was making mushroom tea long before Four Sigmatic was a thing), Iliana pioneered a unique locavore style of cooking dubbed 'new gatherer', plied daily at her Chicago restaurant Elizabeth -- notable for its homestead aesthetic, emphasis on foraged foods and deep connection to the natural surroundings. It's an approach that landed her a coveted Michelin star six years in a row. Jeff Gordinier, food and drinks editor for Esquire magazine (and former podcast guest), included Elizabeth on his recent list of the last decade’s 40 most important restaurants. Noma's René Redzepi, arguably the world's greatest chef, counts himself a fan. And David Chang dubs Iliana one of the best chefs he has ever known. This past summer Iliana published Burn The Place. A singular, powerfully expressive debut memoir, her story is raw like that first bite of wild onion, alive with startling imagery, and told with uncommon emotional power. The New York Times describes the book as, “perhaps the definitive Midwestern drunken-lesbian food memoir.” The New Yorker echoes this sentiment, calling it "brutal and luminous"; and “a thrilling, disquieting memoir of addiction and coming of age.” Oh yeah, it's also the first food book to be long-listed for the National Book Award since Julia Child in 1980. Now 10 years sober, Iliana’s passion has made an unlikely turn. Focused not in the predictable direction of building a culinary empire, her sights are instead set on a remote corner of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Deep in the Hiawatha National Forest, Iliana, alongside her wife Anna and three dogs, has converted a cabin on 150 acres into Milkweed Inn -- a bed and breakfast where she serves up her trademark 'new gatherer' cuisine to small groups of just 10 people over weekends between May and October. Today Iliana shares her story. It's a deeply personal conversation about her love of food, foraging and the great outdoors. It’s about identity and sexual politics. How a little girl who longed to be a boy navigated childhood growing up gay in an intolerant community. It’s about alcoholism and what comes with it. The usual stuff. Like running away from cops in handcuffs. Having sex in bar bathrooms. And using car keys to bump cocaine. And it's about sobriety. How Iliana ultimately transformed into a phenom of knife and pen. Celebrated for both her literary and culinary talents. And a woman who has made an indelible mark as a pioneer of ‘new gatherer’ cuisine in an industry dominated by men. Final note of gratitude to Jeff Gordinier for introducing me to Iliana. Love you my friend. The visually inclined can watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. May you be as delighted by this exchange as I am. Peace + Plants, Rich

From an early age, I had seen a lot of alcoholism in my family. As a child, even though that could all be really scary, I still was very intrigued by what alcohol could do. I was like, this thing's very bad, but I definitely want it. And so then when I started drinking, my brain was definitely not wired to be like, okay, you've had enough, now you should stop. That's not what happens to my brain or my body. It needs as much as possible. I mean, I think if I had continuously drank throughout my 20s, I probably would be dead now.

I spent a lot of my 20s not only drinking, but also sober because I was in and out of the program. And I think those moments helped me get some perspective at times. And I think it was from that that I was able to have enough of mindfulness to be able to think about where I wanted my life to go. And so I made that decision to say, okay, here's how I'm going to show people that I know how to cook and that I can do this and I can do this restaurant business thing. And I'll start by showing people what I want to do, which is grow my own things and make food from them. That is what I do. and that's what I love to do, and it's an expression of myself, and I love cooking. That's Ileana Regan, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.

Hey, everybody. How goes it? This is the digital projection, the ones and zeros audio version of me, Rich Roll, the host of this podcast you consciously chose to listen to today, for which I am eternally grateful. So today we're going to talk about food. We're going to talk about life and we're going to talk about art, food, life, and art, food as art and life as art projected through both food and the written word. Here's the thing. Some people have a gift, but it is the rare individual that has two such gifts, distinct and yet equally extraordinary. Ileana Regan just so happens to be one such life form. A self-taught chef and author, she's overcome quite the set of life obstacles, including substance abuse, to experience a special moment right now celebrated for both her culinary and literary acclaim. At 15, Ileana landed her first restaurant gig washing dishes and basically never looked back. Leaning on the rustic experiences of her Midwestern upbringing, she pioneered a unique locavore style of cooking, somewhat akin to that of Rene Redzepi of Noma, perhaps the world's most famous chef, that is deeply connected to the natural surroundings, emphasizing farm-to-table and foraged foods, and all set in this homestead aesthetic.

aesthetic. Her approach landed her a Michelin star six years in a row for her Chicago restaurant, Elizabeth, and fawning accolades from some of the world's most celebrated chefs, people like David Chang, who dubs her one of the best chefs he's ever known, and Red Zeppi himself. This past summer, Ileana published Burn the Place, a book the New York Times describes as perhaps the definitive Midwestern drunken lesbian food memoir. In a glowing profile, the New Yorker echoes this sentiment, calling it a thrilling, disquieting memoir of addiction and coming of age. And personally, I love a good addiction yarn, and this truly is one of the best. It's so widely acclaimed, in fact, the book made the 2019 National Book Awards long list for nonfiction. Now 10 years sober, Ileana's passion has made an unlikely turn. Not in the predictable direction of building a culinary empire, but rather towards a remote forest of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

remote forest of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where Ileana, along with her wife Anna and three dogs, have converted a cabin on 150 acres into Milkweed Inn, where they serve small groups of just 10 people over weekends between May and October with her new gatherer, Deep Nature Cuisine. Ileana's story is super captivating, and I've got a handful more I want to say about her before we dive in.

But first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem.

A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. Thank you. disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life and recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment

option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately,

not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide.

Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery.

To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. So, let me count the ways I adore Ileana. One thing you're going to soon realize is that Ileana speaks with a very soft, gentle tone, but that tonality belies the beast within. Because make no mistake, Ileana is incredibly strong. My friend, Jeff Gordnier, you might remember him from episode 453. He's the guy who writes about food and culture for Esquire and the New York Times. And he's also the person who originally turned me on to Ileana and her amazing book and made the introduction. Jeff calls her a wolf, and I think that is appropriate.

She is quite the force of nature. is appropriate. She is quite the force of nature. So this is a conversation about a love of food, a love of foraging and the great outdoors. It's about identity and sexual politics, about a little girl who longed to be a boy growing up gay in an intolerant community. And it's about alcoholism, how Ileana transformed from somebody who once ran away from the cops in handcuffs, would have sex in bar bathrooms, and used her car keys to bump cocaine into this sober, stable, married phenom of knife and pen, a celebrated author, and a woman who really made her mark as a pioneer of new gatherer cuisine in an industry dominated by men. Final note, there's a fantastic profile of Ileana that came out last week in the New York Times entitled,

After Culinary and Literary Acclaim, She's Moving to the Woods. It's by Kim Severson, and I highly recommend everybody check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes to that. In any event, I think you're gonna really love this one. So without further ado, here is me and Ileana Regan. Delighted to meet you. Thank you for doing this today. Yeah, nice to meet you, thanks.

Our point of contact was our mutual friend, Jeff Gordoneer, who has been singing your praises for a long time. And he's like, God, I'm meeting Ileana. She's so great. And I texted him the other. And he's like, God, immediately. She's so great. And I texted him the other day. And I was like, what should I talk to her about that? You know, I'm not going to find on Google. And he was like, well, she's, she has this, you know, very calming voice and she's very

present, but don't be mistaken. Cause she's a tiger. She's very fierce. I don't think that's true. I don't know. You've achieved a lot. I mean, first of all, you're this amazing award-winning chef with all these accolades. And then you get long-listed for a National Book Award for your book. It's like it's not fair. You're great at both of these things. You could be a great chef. You could be a great writer, but to do both, that's quite something. So congratulations.

I'm in shock still. Yeah. Cause that was a recent, that was pretty recently announced, right? Yeah. September 19th. How does all that stuff work? I don't know. Honestly, I, it was a shock to me because I woke up that morning and I had like 25 text messages and a lot of emails and Twitter notifications and all that stuff with people saying congratulations. And I was like, what? You didn't even know. What happened. And then, you know, I think it was actually Jeff who explained it to me. He's like, you got the National Book Award long list. And then I had to look all of that up, you know.

I mean, I knew that it was out there, but I didn't know, you know. I went to writing school a long time ago, and I remember that there's all these things that you can get awarded for books. But I was never thinking about that while writing the book. I thought if it sells, if it makes a best list or best sellers list, that would be more than I could hope for. Best list or bestsellers list, that would be more than I could hope for. And so that coming was just like, yeah, a huge surprise and something I wasn't even thinking of. So it was really awesome. What do you make of all of it?

I mean, it made me feel really good about the book because the night before I was writing my second book, which I'm working on with my publisher, which is about foraging, but still in a narrative style. And I was looking at some references for my book sales and it was doing kind of poorly. And I was sitting there thinking, I don't even know if staying up after work till two in the morning is even worth it, you know, writing this book and kind of sweating about it and, um, and it, you know, being in self-doubt. And then the next morning that the long list happened, you know, and I was like, oh, the long list happened, you know, and I was like, oh, you know, that felt really, really good. Yeah, the first food-oriented book since Julia Child in 1980. Yeah, which also, again, yeah, I was just like, but, yeah, I didn't understand how that works because there's been so many good food writers and authors and so many books that have come out in food and about food and memoirs and how mine made it and not some of the others that have been there is beyond me. And I'm assuming all publishers send their books to the National Book Award to the foundation

when they come out in whichever genre, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, et cetera. So yeah, it's pretty cool. It is very cool. I don't think it's fair to characterize it as just a food book. I mean, it's about food, of course, but it's a coming of age book. It's a coming out story. It's an addiction recovery story. I mean, you know, as somebody who, you know, myself, I've been in recovery for a long time and I love a good, you know, addiction yarn and there's plenty of them out there, but your voice is so specific. And to me, it felt very unique in that regard as somebody who's read a lot of these kinds of stories and just beautifully done. And it was interesting how your tone shifted depending upon what period of your life you were talking about. It was as if you were writing it in the voice of that person at that time, and it evolves as you progress through your life.

Yeah. I mean, there's some things that I, while I was writing the book, I was doing on a little bit on purpose. That was one of them. I was trying to inhabit me at the time. And some of the almost synesthesia of the narrative was also purposefully done. I like to read books that don't follow linear timelines. And even if I'm telling stories, which you probably already noticed since I've been here is like, I stop an idea, go back and then come back to it and, you know, continue going. Um, because I just don't think linearly, I guess. I don't know. I go all over the place. Yeah. It's very, um, it's, it's snippets of memory that are woven together in this tapestry. And I think synesthesia is a perfect adjective for it. I mean, it's very rooted in the sensory and memory and, you know, the smells kind

of come alive with the pages, especially, you know, in the food aspects of the story and telling it, you know, in the present state of what you recollect as opposed to through the rearview mirror with perspective. Yeah. And I had actually talked to my publisher quite a bit about a lot of the storytelling process and what I was doing. And, you know, he just kept encouraging me to go with it. And I said, I don't think I can tell this story if I don't just, like, drop the reader right into the moment and continue on from there. And with it jumping around, I said, if I go in a linear fashion, to me the way it just comes out is this really boring essay telling.

Right. And I just don't want to do that. At first he had a little bit of concern, but then he was like, just do whatever. Do your thing. That was the cool thing about working with somebody who is a small publisher and an indie publisher because he was just like, let's do it. I think your honesty is remarkable and it's not that common to find a writer who just spills it all out. Even some of the passages, he's like, actually, this is too much information.

You can't say this. We got to cut this thing out. You know, so I think that he knew that that was going to be really good for readers and really be able to help, you know, people be able to relate to the book and really become engaged. Yeah, I mean, it seems like you almost go out of your way to not overly romanticize any of it. Like you're making a clear point of the fact that, you know, there is a lens on which you could look at your story and say, oh, look where she came from and look at all she's accomplished and isn't this amazing and sort of make it more glamorous than it actually was in your experience.

And you're just sort of very plainly showing the truth of it without sugarcoating it in any way. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, maybe that's just me being a little bit different as a chef, because I feel like that is what I do. And that's what I love to do. And it's expression of myself. And I love cooking. And, you know, but it's really more than that, because I love the storytelling of the cooking, like gathering our ingredients and growing things. And that's a big part of where we're going with our property in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan is to make it just feel a little bit more holistic. Because if this is going to be my career, like I can't continue to do it how I do it at the restaurant you know and I'm talking like three four or five years down the line and I just want to feel I guess better about it and I think that a lot of people look at like chefs and and my industry as being kind of glamorous but it doesn't feel like that at least not for me, not on a daily basis.

So it was one of the things I struggled with, actually, in the last part of the book, talking about my career, because I didn't want to sound ungrateful, because I am and I've accomplished a lot, but there's very little glamour to it on a daily basis. You know, like I feel more so like, uh, I wake up to beat my head against the wall every morning, right before I go to work, you know? So, um, that glamor, I think, you know, is people always, when I meet them, they're like, Oh, what do you do? You know, if they say, what do you do? I just say, I'm a cook

at a restaurant. Like, cause I don't want to talk about it know, if they say, what do you do? I just say, I'm a cook at a restaurant. Like, because I don't want to talk about it. You just don't want to get into it? Because if you say you're a chef, what? Then it's going to open up some cataracts. Yeah, a lot of people will be like, oh, you're a chef. And are you on your own restaurant? That must be amazing.

And I'm just thinking about, like, all the nights, you know, the dishwasher called in because they're in jail. Or my staff was like, fuck you, I'm leaving or somebody stole checks or, you know, just like all those, all those like things that happen at work on a daily basis that are so unglamorous and quite terrible when you, when it comes to managing others that, you know, yeah, that's what like is the first thing that, that comes to mind. And then I have to remind myself when I'm talking to them, like, I just need to talk about how I love cooking, you know, because. But, yeah, if I can avoid the situation altogether.

Like, when I first met my wife's family, a lot of them knew I had a restaurant, and I just was, like, having such a hard time because everybody wanted to talk about how cool it was. And, you know, I was like just struggling to be like, yeah, it's so cool. Well, you strike me as somebody who is kind of an insular, you know, perhaps somewhat introverted person, contemplative. And it's this interesting trajectory because the roots of your passion are found in the woods by yourself foraging for these foods and, you know, a very kind of solo affair and this love of, you know, combining flavors to create interesting recipes, et cetera. But then that means that you open a restaurant and you're managing all these people

and you're looking at spreadsheets and you're dealing with human resources and payroll and all the like that has nothing to do with what got you into it in the first place. Yeah, and I think I was just really naive when I was going into it, not realizing that with a small business like, you know, and the business model set up to be really small that that I think most chefs go into it thinking like, I'm just going to cook this beautiful food and not really thinking about. Everything else takes care of itself yeah and that was so not the case because i am the the human resources and you know the payroll person and all those other things um i do have somebody helping me now but sometimes in, if, you know, people often say, like, oh, if you could go back and talk to your younger self, what would you say? And I would say, like, don't open a restaurant. And but then I then the other part of that is my younger self that I would be talking to would still do it.

Like that's where I was at that time. There was nobody, even my future self, would have been able to tell me to not do it. And I would have listened. I wouldn't have listened. I was listening to your conversation with David Chang on his podcast. I was listening to your conversation with David Chang on his podcast, and that was something that you guys explored, like the mental health aspects of what it means on a daily basis to actually do what you guys do and the toll that it takes. And he kind of closes the whole thing by saying, like, you know, this industry is the worst. Like, I love it. It's the best.

You know, it's that tension you know and i see that that kind there you know there is this duality that infuses your book and your work and your ethos and and even you know how you parse your tattoos on your arms this this you know dichotomy of light and dark that kind of you leverage to you know be the creator that you are yeah and and I think that some of that is like, when you're talking about mental health and people in the industry particularly, well, I think there's a lot of creative industries which this is a common theme,

but it's like the chicken or the egg, like does the work make us crazy or are we already crazy? For me, it's definitely that I was already a little bit of a nut job. So that works that, you know, it makes sense that I'm doing what I do, you know, and it's almost like, you know, talking about addiction is like, I'm addicted to those actual highs and lows, you know, and maybe when I get somewhere else a little bit more older and wiser, I can look back and be like, well, that's what was happening. I'm beating my head against the wall, but I was addicted to that throbbing pain from beating my head against the wall.

So I'm just addicted to those highs and lows probably still. You and me both. Yeah. Well, there's no shortage of addicts and alcoholics and people in recovery in your business. It definitely magnetizes people that are attracted to those polarities. So I'm sure you, yeah, like you said, like the dishwasher's in jail. Yeah. Or maybe I'm in jail. I could say that because it's happened to us about three different times where the dishwasher's

roommate or sister or cousin or somebody has called and said, they can't come in, or we've called them looking for them. And they said said oh they're they're in jail you know but in a couple days they'll be out and you know they can come back and it's like they never usually we're desperate enough to be like all right we'll see them in a couple days and then they still don't show up so but um right now at elizabeth well for the past like six years probably aside from you know the other jobs they, like teaching the staff and creating the menus and all that, while I'm at work during service, my primary job has been doing the dishes. That doesn't seem right. No.

No. But see, that's another thing, too, that I could go on and on about at work. But when other people do them, it kind of drives me crazy because I'm like, no, it should be cleaner and more organized. And you're going too slow. Let me just do it. Yeah, but this is the control freak alcoholic in you. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah, it is. Even when I am doing the dishes and somebody comes over to help me, one of my staff members, I'm like, hey, like, I'm in the zone, you know, like, back off. Yeah. This is my station. You can't scale that, Elena. That's not going to work. Yeah. But this is the trip, right? So how do you think about the relationship creatively between cooking and writing?

Like, they're both, you know, equally creative and you excel in both. Like, do those feed off each other or do you think of them as different disciplines or are they all one in the same? It's definitely the same for me because when I decided to, and I might have talked about this in the book, but when I was 28 years old, I thought, all right, like I'm either going to go back to school for writing and get my MFA and maybe try to teach and take that route, or I'm just going to open a restaurant, which is something else that I always wanted to do.

And so I decided to open a restaurant. And so I had to figure out how to do that by creating a name and doing it a little bit unconventionally because I hadn't gone to cooking school and I hadn't worked my way up through the restaurants like some of the other chefs had with working for Charlie Trotter or this person or that person. But I was thinking about these two options and I was talking to a lot of friends about it who knew that I had gone to school for writing and that I was actually really active with it. Even while I was still working in restaurants, I was always working on a book or working on a collection of poetry or whatever it was. And I spent a lot of time doing that and so they would ask like well what about your writing

you know you're going to do this restaurant thing how are you going to do writing and after I was already pretty immersed in it maybe like a year in and really focusing on getting myself up to date with kitchen work I felt like creating menus was equally as, it fed that creative energy just as equally as writing did. Like I could get lost in the creation of a menu and thinking about it in different presentations and how I want it to look or how I want it to, I don't know, just taste and what that means or where I could find it and how it could be a representation of, you know, time and place or, you know, a memory. And so that, yeah, that was equally there. And so then now, like actually doing both is really fulfilling. And somehow I, fulfilling. And somehow I, you know, was able to divide my time to be able to, you know, not only work in the restaurant and do all that stuff, but then also write,

but it was still coming from the same creative energy. Right. Well, you had a unique path in your kind of ascension as a chef. Like, yes, had a a unique path in your kind of ascension as a chef like yes you didn't go to culinary school you didn't you know sort of uh apprentice under these well-known chefs but you put your time in a ton of restaurants and this goes back all the way to you being you know the youngest child like foraging with your family and so let's let's start at the beginning a little bit and talk a little bit about that. And I think what comes across so beautifully in the book is, again, back to this duality or this tension, like this sense from a very early age, like this isn't really my home and I need to get away from here in order to find myself and connect with my identity, but also a real reverence and respect and appreciation and love for the way in which you were brought up that

taught you this way of living that infuses your food. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I got really, really lucky to have had the family that I did and grow up where I did. I mean, even my family members who are extended family members feel the same way about the farmhouse that I grew up in and have such cherished memories from that time. One of my cousins is pretty close in age to me, and she basically grew up there with me. And, you know, she just is like, in love with it, too, you know, so I was really lucky to have that, and that was part of what I was trying to express in the book, because most of my memories of that place are somewhat centered around food.

And that's how my family operated. My dad loved food and loved cooking, and my had her own like relationship with food that was on a lot of different levels um and so they um kind of provided that atmosphere which was just kind of um really magical and special and so every single thing we did as a family was always centered around some kind of meal. And it was always really good too, you know, and sometimes it was something that was just simple from the garden, or sometimes it was, you know, really complex, like roasting whole animals and, you know, whatever it was. But I was, through the book, trying to, you know, show that, like, my ascension into the career that I had was definitely, I pretty much, you know,

without cooking school, didn't really need it because, like, I got all the training I needed throughout my life you know which started really early like I don't know a lot of four-year-olds who sit and hold the intestines as you know the their dad is stuffing the sausage or whatever you know so so that was um you know I think just like extremely uh special especially, you know, when I look back at it, because as a kid, I might not have always felt like that. You know, maybe when I was eight or nine or 10, like I was really jealous of my friends who lived in neighborhoods and could ride their bikes on the street and do all those sorts of things. on the street and do all those sorts of things. But, you know, there was plenty of what I had that was also just incomparable. Like, you know, no one else had that. Right. So basically, this sort of Gothic pastoral, you know, landscape in rural Indiana, a couple hours outside of Chicago. Farmland,

there's this pull, this allure of the forest, and you kind of invert the fairy tale, you know, kind of aspects of what it means to be a child wandering around in the forest. And I think the passage that really encapsulates the whole book and your story. And what spoke to me, you know, very powerfully was the story of you. I think you're five at the time. And you're going out into the forest with your dad to forage for chanterelles. And he teaches you how to shoot a gun. And there's a sketchy uncle that's involved. And a tornado that threatens

your life. And it all culminates with you basically cooking what you foraged with your family. And it kind of ends nicely, but it has, I mean, that in and of itself is almost like a fable. And you kind of close that by saying, I escaped fate and discovered that I was a chef or something along those lines. But I think you could easily also say, like, you didn't escape fate. Like, this is you connecting with you. Like, this is a fated thing. Like, this is bred into you from as early as you can remember that this was going to be your path. Right.

be your path. Right. Actually, that's a lot of what I'm exploring in my new book, which is going to be about forging and very much in a similar narrative style. And where I'm kind of going with that is, you know, with kind of playing along the lines of inherited trauma, and I'm still trying to Kind of playing along the lines of inherited trauma. And I'm still trying to research a bit of it and learn more. But how our ancestors' experience get burned into our DNA and that a lot of the trauma perhaps does. But also I'm thinking about what about the other things that are perhaps just predetermined in that kind of way. Because my dad's grandmother, so my great-grandmother, actually in Poland, she had an inn, and she was a chef. And then she came here.

She married a wrestler from the circus, which is wild. Wow. a wrestler from the circus, which is wild. Wow. And then they came to the United States. And then in Gary, Indiana, where they ended up living, they had a hamburger shop. And she had a really popular hamburger shop. a really popular hamburger shop. And then eventually my, my, my dad, her daughter took over, you know, Jenny's Cafe, which my mom was the chef at and, and things like that. So, I mean, that's a, that's a long line of, you know, people in the food industry, you know, and people

connected to food. And I thought that was just, I, I didn't know that about my great grandmother until I was asking my dad a lot of questions because he's got a lot of stories about our family history. And he just recently told me about that because I had known that she had a burger shop in Gary, Indiana, but I hadn't known about her life before that. And then I was asking him and he said that, yeah, she had an in and I was really shocked and, you know, I was like, well, isn't that, you know, apropos considering like we've just opened an in as well, you know? Yeah. Well, you drop these hints in the book. I mean, there's sort of the detritus of the restaurant, you know, packed away in the house, and you tell the story

of your mom quitting and, you know, working there. So yeah, this is part of the fabric of who you are on dating way back, which is super interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, maybe that all has been fate. I just, in the book, was describing sliding it as perhaps I was destined to be a transgender truck-driving carny because from such an early age, I was in love with the fair and, I mean, obsessed with it. And maybe that was the whole grandfather being a wrestler in the circus. I don't know. But I was also very obsessed with becoming a boy. And then from an early age, too, I was fascinated with semi-trucks and wanted to, like, every time I was on my bike, I was pretending I was, and driving around the neighbor's driveway, which was paved because ours was gravel, I was pretending I was in my semi. So I still love road trips but yeah but yeah so

i i don't know maybe that's a future job you just needed that wrestler yeah so well let's talk about that i mean the the the coming age, the coming out aspect of the story, I mean, infused throughout this is this, you know, sense of displacement, this idea like, you know, I'm a boy. You're sort of being affirmed as a boy by your dad. And this grappling that you do with identity that dates back also, as far as you can remember. Yeah. I mean, it dates back before I think I could even talk because, and again, I don't know if I put this in the book, I can't remember, but one of my clearest, earliest memories is of sitting on the floor with my cousin, who I said had grown up with me. And we were not even walking age. And she was on my left.

And somebody, whoever was taking the picture, gave us Minnie and Mickey dolls to hold. And they gave me the Minnie and her the Mickey. And I took the Mickey and threw her the Minnie because for some reason my kid head was like, I'm the boy without even, I don't even think I had the words for it. It was just like, I want that doll, not the one with the pink bow. like i want that doll not the one with the pink bow um and um so yeah i mean that that was definitely predating being able to like verbalize any of that so you know i don't know if that goes to being born gay or born in a different um you know gender just like the the affirmation of gender fluidity, you know, and people saying it's not as binary as, you know, it has to be.

And, you know, there's not a part of me today that is like, oh, I'm a boy, although I do very much feel like, you know, and this is a little bit stereotyping, but how women are like sometimes conditioned or just feel naturally competitive with other women. I don't feel that at all, but I feel competitive with men. And I don't know what that is. Maybe because I have a little bit of that masculinity or testosterone that's like, no, that's my competition and I got to be better than them. Or maybe it was always in my life, people saying, but you're not a boy, but you're not a boy. And then I was like, but I'm going to do boy things. I'm going to show you I can be better than them or whatever it was.

I don't know. There's a lot to explore there. lot to explore there, but, um, yeah, so that my dad did always, um, say that like, he'd be like, yeah, you're a little boy. And I don't know if like, that was just him teasing or him actually thinking that I was going to be gay someday and like allowing that process to already form. Actually, he probably didn't think that, but he would, cause he was quite like sexist. He is quite sexist and homophobic, not now, but like he would say derogatory things, um, when I was younger about, you know, gay people or whatever. And so none of that stopped me from feeling the way that I did or feeling afraid of becoming gay.

But I don't know what that was necessarily or what his standpoint was. But my mom said that when I was pretty young, her and my dad had talked about the fact that I might turn out gay someday or somehow different because of my adamancy about like, I want to wear boy things and I want to look like a boy and all this stuff. And she said that they reconciled with that really early on and just kind of let me be me. Right. And how are they now with everything? They're fine. I mean, my dad still worries that, you know,

Ana and I don't have a man around to take care of things, you know. He's like, last time he was up, he brought his paper towel and toilet paper, like we're not going to have any, like you know keeps bringing guns and stuff and has he been up to yeah well that's where he brings it to yeah i see yeah so but um yeah he's he's very convinced that without you know some kind of male supervision that we might just wither and die. But yeah, my mom is like, men smell. She's very happy about... She's extremely proud.

I mean, he is too, but in his own special way. Right. I thought it was really intriguing how you begin to explore this non-binary world through the discovery of people like Boy George and Annie Lennox, who are like icons of that notion that it need not be one or the other. So talk a little bit about how that kind of impacted how you reflected on yourself. That was, I mean, so early that I, you know, saw Boy George on the television and was like, wow. Just somehow I immediately identified with that, even though, you know, and just fascinated and sort of what is this, but also understanding it completely at the same time. To see a man looking so beautiful and dressed like a woman, kind of with makeup and long hair and all of that. And then also to see Annie Lennox and almost feel like, if I could think about it, feel like I shouldn't be watching this because I'm having feelings. I shouldn't be watching this because I'm having feelings.

Even as a kid, not like sexual feelings or anything like that, but almost feeling embarrassed. And I don't think I know anything about her sexuality at all, but seeing a woman who was very ambiguous and with short hair and wearing a suit and just thinking like, that's me too, you know? So being able to see both of them and feeling, like, completely connected, but even her more so. And, yeah, like I said, like, kind of feeling embarrassed, like I'm supposed to look away because if anybody sees how enthralled I am with this, then I'm going to be found out.

Yeah, that's threatening. Yeah. But it had to be empowering to see people like that who are so strong and unapologetic about who they are, right? Like they're standing in their strength in a very profound way, right? Where they're like, this is who I am. And there's a boldness to that that I think is, you know, it's hard to look away. Yeah. And that was like the only reference I had for anything like that when I was young. I think

at some points, like later on in life, maybe when I was in my early teens, some of my sisters, my sister Nina would, if there was something that was a little bit gay and not that much was coming out on TV, but it was starting to, she would say, oh, did you see this? Or have you watched this? Or, you know, like one of my sisters gave me, I was just talking about this the other day, my oldest sister Elizabeth gave me the, she was always giving me books to read because she was like, she, I don't know, she probably read like 25 books a year. She was very well read.

Elizabeth. Yeah, she well read. Elizabeth. Yeah, she liked all different genres. And she gave me the interview with a vampire, Anne Rice. And I really, that actually was a moment when I came out to myself through reading that book, was like, I'm gay. Because there's a lot of the homoeroticism, and I think they even might be partners at one point, and I can't remember the book completely, but Lestat and what's the other guy's name? I forget. I don't know.

Yeah, but they— I feel like a dummy now. I can't remember, but I know that they become involved at certain points. And I'm like, okay, I know that I feel this way too, but not about men, but about women. And just reading about that was like, oh, yeah, I am that. I am gay. Like, this is what I am. And so I was probably maybe like 14 or 15, even though I had some moments before then where, you know, I would kind of

come out to myself and say, yeah, you know, this is what it is, but then try to push it away. But that was one really affirming moment the other was i was in a in the movie theater with my mom and one of my good friends and we were watching don juan demarco with johnny depp and i think that's who was in it and she kept fawning over johnny depp like oh he's so cute he's so cute and i was like okay that the woman in the show is really wowsers you know and so it was at that moment too those were one of the moments i was like that's straight and then i am not that you know yeah so but um i don't know how i got on that topic anyways i think just oh boy george yeah yeah boy starting

before george but just this process of of self-discovery unfolding. And, you know, the way that you recount it makes me think, I wonder what it's like now. I mean, this is pre-internet, the pre, you know, look, we still have tons of problems, but there is who are able to transition because they feel a separate gender and how it's actually the earlier they start some of the hormones and things, the better for their transition later in life. And she says, I wonder if you were born now, how that would have impacted you and would you had changed? Would I be a guy sitting here? And it's like, wow. I mean, that's a really incredible question because I know for me, I'm I'm very happy, you know, being a woman and inhabiting a woman's body no matter what, you know, I may feel inside, but I don't feel like completely the opposite sex either, you know. And so I'm glad that that wasn't part of my experience. But, you know, it's really interesting to think about because, yeah, I probably would have, you know, given the choice, been like, yeah, let's do it. Right, to transition.

Get me a little penis. Yeah, it's complicated because on the one hand, it allows people to accept themselves and be accepted for, you know, wanting that and to get support for that. But also, if it's at a point where they're not fully mature, are they really in a place to make that decision that has an impact on the rest of their life? Right. Like, will they change? Will they develop a different perspective yeah and that's why i i feel like it's it's interesting to think about but something i can't speak to you know because like i can never say what what would happen and my experience has been that i'm i'm fine but that doesn't mean that other children

are necessarily ever going to be fine with staying in that same gender, you know? Right. But it's, yeah, it's really just a mind. It's like so, it's, yeah, it's just, it's very easy to mess with your mind thinking about that thing. And, I mean, we've even talked about it, like, what if our children, you know, want to transition?

And I'm like, I don't even know how to think about that. Yeah. Well, you cross that bridge when you come back. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, let's talk about the drugs and alcohol. Sure.

So where does this start to, yeah, go for it. When does that start to creep in and rear its head? creep in and rear attack? Well, from an early age, I had seen a lot of alcoholism in my family, whether it was big, like my Uncle Georgie, who was very scary and very aggressive as an alcoholic and, you know, would come over to the house with guns and shoot them and, you know, like at the house or whatever. Like, so knowing that that's one form that alcoholism takes. And another form is, you know, seeing my sister stumble around sort of dead drunk and be in trouble and, or going up. I remember my mom, I was small enough that my mom was carrying me,

and we got to the top of our stairs. And looking into my sister's room and knowing that she was in trouble, maybe it was the feeling that I had from my mom, but knowing my sister was in trouble and her passed out in the bed with, you know, puke all over her bedsheets and stuff because she had been vomiting in the night. And so there, and then there was the times where it was like, oh, these adults are getting louder and they're funnier and they're being goofy, but it's not scary. So that being said, though, I think that that's also part of like, it kind of explains, like I was saying earlier, the chicken with the egg, and also being addicted to some of that head-banging anxiety or whatever it is, because as a child, even though that could all be really scary,

I still thought was very intrigued by what alcohol could do. I was like, this thing's very bad, but I definitely want it. And so then when I started drinking, I mean, I had a couple times where I had sips of beer. You know, my dad would give me Mogan David shots when I would cough at night. And, you know, but I had never experienced what an actual drunk could feel like. But the first time I did experience that, my brain was definitely not wired to be like, okay, you've had enough. Now you should stop. Because I think some normal people

they go through that feeling where they're like oh i'm feeling good like all right i probably don't need anymore but that's not what happens to my my brain or my body it's like just it needs as much as possible um and from the get-go yeah and so And so when I was, the first time I drank, that was my experience with it. And I know addiction and alcoholism can manifest in different ways within people, whereas they used to maybe be able to control their alcohol intake. And then someday something happens where it just switches and they can't anymore, or it might be external or internal event. But for me, it was right from the beginning. So going also back to that inherited trauma or DNA, maybe that was definitely,

if it's a gene that gets passed along, I definitely got that gene right from the start. But also, it allowed me to feel comfortable in a body that I never really felt comfortable in. And also a mind, which my head was always somewhere else and always imagining some other time in life. And it allowed me to feel normal because I was always introverted and always shy and always awkward. And as a kid, that didn't always play out the best way. Like, why are you so shy? Why are you so quiet? That didn't always play out the best way.

Like, why are you so shy? Why are you so quiet? You know, when people then would turn the light on my awkwardness, then I felt more awkward. Of course. You know, and wanted to, like, shut down even more. And so then shutting down even more would create more of an issue. more of an issue. And to where when my family would have functions, if certain people were coming over, I would go and hide in my closet until they were gone, hide the entire time, because they were somebody who expected me to be a child who should play and talk to them. And it scared me, and I didn't want to be, like, focused on.

Right. You know, which is all just crazy, too, because when you think about my career, it's all about the focus. So it's just—it's very multidimensional. But, yeah, what were we talking about? Just talking about the beginning of alcoholism. And I think what you're saying gets glossed over and doesn't get enough attention, which is that it works. Like, there's a part of this. I mean, what you just shared could be, you know, my story is very different from yours, but, like, I completely relate to everything that you just said. Like, and I felt my own experience through the lens of your own in that it brings you out of your shell.

It makes you feel normal. And like, you can talk to another human being and you're comfortable in your own skin. And it's almost like, oh, this is how everybody else feels all the time. Like, I wanna feel like this all the time too. Give me more of that, you know? You know?

Yeah. And it isn't like, oh, well, one day, you know, one day it's fine and the next day it's a problem. This plays out over a very long period of time. Like it works until it stops working. But that's not a binary thing either. This is a scale. And for me, it worked for a long time. And I think it worked for a long time for you. Like I look at the way that I interact with people and I learned certain social skills as a result of drinking and using that I don't know how I would have learned otherwise. Maybe I would have just locked myself in my room and just not dealt. And I would imagine that, you know, despite the fact that you insist on

washing the dishes at your own restaurant you do have to manage people and you have to interact with them in very close quarters right and so some of those skills come out through the social lubricant you know initially that teaches you how to do these kinds of things yeah but I honestly

for me in recovery I had to relearn all of that. And now where I learn it is actually through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's what worked for me because I learned there how to share with people and be able to, you know, by, I don't know for you if your story, if you're familiar with it, but there's something called the fifth step where you share all of everything. You just share everything, right? that I learned how to talk to other people and kind of be able to learn how to express myself and my emotions and just communicate. And also learning how to talk with others like in the restaurant and with, you know, being a manager and being able to like look at,

you know, the things that might be frustrating to me, but also how to address them and being mindful of my tone. And I'm not always good at it, but at least I have some kind of mechanism and place to go back to where I've gotten some tools and some experience being able to just go through interactions that might be you know normal for some but for me feel really painful especially just sometimes just even having a conversation with somebody and be you know like one of the things that has been an issue with me

is just expecting that people should know how I feel. But I'm also somebody who doesn't really emote or have good communication skills. So how are they going to expect to know what to do or to know when something was done wrong if I don't go ahead and have the conversation about it, but then also have the conversation in a way that is, you know, not going to hurt them and be able to communicate what I need done effectively. Right. You know? Right. So that's a lot of energy. Yeah.

Well, I'm no stranger to the fist of myself. In fact, I had a, one of my second sponsor was from Chicago and I know the recovery community in Chicago is really, really strong. I know that I, lots of, lots of, you know, people from Chicago have moved out to Los Angeles and I've, I've been a few meetings out that way. And I know like what that community is all about and I know it's really tight. But yeah, you learn these tools, you learn how to own your own shit. You learn how to understand your story. You learn how to develop empathy for other human beings and see the world through their perspective. And all of this lends itself to improving communication skills, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that that was a big part of um with writing the book is that

because like i learned how to share and learn how to talk and uh essentially learn how to tell the truth like through the program it was easy for me to just kind of like spill it all out, you know? And like I said, my, my editor was like, wow, you know, like I think your honesty in this book is really unique and, and that's going to be really good. And, and I wasn't even thinking about that. Well, that's the thing. Cause you spend thousands of hours in these rooms listening to people be their most vulnerable and honest selves. And you learn to do that for

yourself and it becomes second nature. And it's always surprising when you kind of take that out into the rest of the world and people are like, whoa, you're so honest because it just becomes second nature. Right. And I was explaining that to somebody too. It's like, I will never feel more vulnerable than in those moments where I had to walk in a room full of strangers and say that, like, I'm actually not well, you know, and that I'm an alcoholic and that rawness, it, it feels very much like, you know, maybe how some people have the dream where they're naked in front of a crowd, which sometimes still I have that dream too. And it's like, oh my God, how did I get here? Why am I naked right now?

Yeah, I think that that's the most vulnerable situations I've ever been in, having to go into the memoir space is people with super crazy stories. You know, it's like who's got the craziest using story? And I appreciated the fact that yours, like, yeah, you tell some crazy stories, but it's not like I'm trying to, you know, out crazy everyone else. Like, this is just my personal thing and it has its own demoralizing aspects to it and things that maybe for normal people might seem shocking. But for me, I'm like, yeah, this is just, you know, this is like, here's an alcoholic and an addict being honest about what happened, what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I actually think that there was a part of me as I was writing the book was thinking about it in those terms, you know, because it was separated into the three parts and it was like, yeah, what it was like, what happened, and what it was like, what it's

like now. Right, all these things we learned in that construct. Yeah. So there was a lot. There's a lot to be said for that. I think what was making me think of this was talking about, yeah, the social lubricant of alcohol and how that taught me to be a certain way, but then also AA had to reteach me how to be a certain way, but then also like AA had to reteach me how to be a certain way. And there's

a lot to be said for that because like, I don't think, I mean, I say this definitely, at least in the acknowledgements of my book, but you know, if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have anything that I have today, you know? So. How do you think about the tradition of not sharing at the level of press, radio, and film? Like, did that infuse how you thought about how to talk about this in the book and how you're talking about it on podcasts and interviews? Like, it's a tricky thing. Right.

When I, for the first, like, five years of the program, I didn't. And I had already had my restaurant for about three years. And what ended up happening was that I was in the car with somebody from the press. Because before, I had never mentioned it at any public level. People who were close to me knew, and my staff would know and things like that. But I had a big book in there and she had asked me about it. And then I was like, this is off the record, but you know, here's the deal.

And, but it still made it to the, it still made it to print. And actually I had. Even though it was off the record she still put it in yeah it was still it still made it um and i i have to take that back because i don't know if i said this is off the record but i said this is something i don't talk about and then when it was going to print i asked her to please take it out because I think she might have sent me the story first, but she didn't. So it stayed in there. So I can't remember the exact conversation, but either way, I had asked for it not to be in there. But that story was the story that my publisher read and came to me and said, I think you have an interesting story, and I want you to write a memoir.

And a lot of that had to do with, you know, obviously my, so if it's a memoir, I have to talk about everything. And so then I talked to my sponsor about it and said, like, here's what I'm going to do, and I have this memoir. And, you know, I also talked to her about the piece that had come out in the magazine about it and was like, it's kind of out there now. And so there was a lot of conversations about like, well, what are you trying to get from this? You know, and I was like, honestly, nothing, just trying to tell my story and so we were talking a lot about just making sure that it's right sized wherever it is and that it's not from like a a platform of like i'm so great or

look at all these accomplishments or like you know um i got sober you should do it too, or trying to be like a spearhead or however you want to call it of AA, because I definitely don't think like, there's definitely moments that I even have up to this day where it's like, if people knew that'd be pretty embarrassing, they'd be like, if that's an alcoholic and she's sober, I don't want to get sober i might as well stay drunk you know so like i don't want to be the spokesperson you know um but yeah so i i guess you know if anything whenever i i go to actually a 12-step

meeting where we do the work out of the it's's my Monday night meeting and I really love it, and we work out of the 12 and 12. And whenever we get to that tradition, I'm like, oh, I hope I don't have to comment. That's just kind of how I feel in the room about it. And I know that some people know what I do and some people don't. And I just kind of leave it that way. And I just always hope that the comments don't come to me when we're on that tradition.

On that specific tradition. Yeah. Well, it's a tricky thing. I mean, I struggle with this quite a bit because on the one hand, like, I certainly don't want to hold myself out as a paragon of sobriety. Like, I have my struggles just like everybody else. But also, when I got sober, you know, 12- or if somebody I respected had referenced it or talked about it a little bit more openly, perhaps I would have found myself towards it a little bit sooner. And I understand the principles behind the tradition and all of that. But there's a lot of people out there suffering who don't know what to do also.

And so it creates this kind of confusion. what to do also. And so it creates this kind of confusion. Yeah. I mean, honestly, there has been a sense that one piece came out and even things that have happened since then that have come out. And with the book, there's been a lot of people who have reached out to me reached out to me because of their struggle. So I know that it's helping in some ways, probably hopefully more than hurting anything. But one woman actually was, I would correspond back and forth with her after that 2015 article because her husband was struggling with alcohol, and so she was on the Al-Anon side, and she just wanted to understand more about my experience. And obviously it was like, I really want him to talk to you,

but I would just kind of be like, oh, have you tried Al-Anon? And just giving her any suggestions that probably my sponsor would have given to me or somebody else, you know. But, yeah, some other chefs have said, yeah, I kind of struggle with alcohol and this and that. And I found your story really inspiring. It's good also that it's out there because at least people, it's resonating with them. because I definitely felt like the way I was feeling in my restaurant, you know, in the restaurant industry with some of the woes of management and just the hardship of, you know, doing this thing that I'm really passionate about, but the constant, you know, struggle with finances and everything else that I was feeling alone. But then I went to the MAD Conference, which I'm sure Jeff has told you about. I know

it's something that Renee puts on in Copenhagen. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I met the woman who organizes that. Yeah, Melina. Yeah. So when I went went to that in 2016 a lot of it was about mental health and i honestly coming back from that felt really renewed that i you know because just like in aa we get better as a group and having people that we can relate to so the same thing with that being amongst my peers and able to hear that they're. So the same thing with that being amongst my peers and able to hear that they're struggling with the same thing and we don't have to put up this front that we're like everything's okay

was extremely helpful because I was kind of feeling at certain points like I was pretty much going crazy, you know, and so that helped me feel a lot better that there was other people that were experiencing the same thing. Yeah. Well, drinking just infuses the restaurant culture in general, right? I mean, it's, I mean, I don't know what the percentage of people that work in that industry is that struggle with these kinds of things, but I would imagine it's probably high on top of the fact that work in that industry is that struggle with these kinds of things but i would imagine it's probably high on top of the fact that it attracts that kind of personality yeah

uh i i'm so far being in the restaurant industry i also feel like i'm so far removed with what's actually happening um and maybe it's because like i don't drink and I'm not in those circles, so I don't know. But I know that at my restaurant, a lot of my staff, they don't seem to be able to cut it if they have problems with addiction and alcoholism. It's funny how that works. Yeah. In the long run, at least. Yeah. And I think it's because we're so small and we have to work so hard

that if you are too exceptionally tired on too many days, you just can't do the work that's required. And so I find that in my environment, I don't think a lot of people struggle with addiction, or at least the staff that I have, or as far as I know, because I don't think that they have time for it. But I, you know, I don't know. But I think that there's definitely other restaurants that maybe they do, or maybe they're just really good at hiding it from me. But, yeah, I think that it's regardless of what I know about it.

I mean, I just know that the restaurant industry, at least when I was actively using, was definitely the place to be. Right. You know, because especially if you were working in front of the house and making good money, like then you could go to the bar and stay out till four and then wake up at noon or one and go back to work. And it was easy to do. Yeah. Yeah.

So you've been sober now almost 10 years? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This December will be 10 years. Congrats on that. Thanks. But early on, you bring your burgeoning alcoholism and your uh, gender and sexual identity into the carnival of the restaurant industry. You're bouncing around between all these restaurants, you're kind of

learning your craft and, you know, that's its own journey of self-discovery. Um, so walk me up to getting sober. And what I'm really interested in is when you start, open up this little business at the farmer's market that led to these dinners that you were hosting in your apartment. Because I think that's sort of like the foundation for what you've built since. Yeah, I was, so I spent a lot of my 20s not only drinking, but also sober because I was in and out of the program. And I think those periods of sobriety were very helpful to at least get me, one, I mean, I think if I had continuously drank throughout my 20s, I probably would be dead now. But so that those moments helped me get some perspective and helped me get my shit together at times. And I think it was from that that I was able to have enough of, I don't know, mindfulness to be able to think about where I wanted my life to go. And so I made that decision to move forward with the farmer's markets. That was kind of like my way to say, okay, here's how I'm going to show people that I know how to cook and that I can do

this and I can do this restaurant business thing. And I'll start by, you know, just like showing people what I want to do, which is grow my own things and make food from them, make, you know, prepared things, like whether it's tortillas or jams or biscuits or pasta. Um, and then what I ended up making, um, was pierogies. I had a lot of beets that I had grown in the garden. From your mom. Yeah. And I was like, um, all right, I think I'm going to mash these up and put them in pierogies and then you know she helped me figure out the dough recipe by using the noodle

recipe that she would make with her grandfather and or her uncle and so I went to the farmer's market with all these pierogies and I was in the northwestern in or like in crown point that's the first farmer's market I did was in, even though I was living in Chicago. And of course, being there, like pierogi, people are very familiar with that because they have the pierogi fest and everything else. And there's still a large Eastern European population there. So yeah, I had this huge line and sold out immediately and figured, okay, this is, if this is what's going to work, even though, as I was making the pierogies, I was saying

to myself, I'm never going to make these again. Um, because of the labor intensity of them, I was like, all right, this is what's going to work. And I think that that's probably one of my first um kind of ego beat downs in the restaurant world was like i'm never going to make this bullshit again and then was like well this is what sells so okay i'm gonna make this bullshit um um so um but people loved them and then um somehow i can't remember but somebody somebody in Chicago got word of that that's what I was selling at the farmer's markets. And they asked me to sell them in their store.

And so then I had to come up with like a little logo and packaging. And then I started selling them in a grocery store. And then somehow the Chicago Magazine had gotten a hold of them in the store and wrote about them. And then, I don't know if you remember I guess, because they sent out a thing that said that I, you know, it was something about my pierogies. I don't remember, but I just got all these crazy amounts of orders. And then I started selling them at another store. And so then I was in a couple of Chicago farmers markets, and so everybody thought I wanted to have a pierogi restaurant,

which was not the case. But when I finally decided to do the underground restaurant, I was selling pierogis and working as a server in a restaurant, and I had heard somebody talk about an underground supper club. And so I went home and I Googled that, like, what is this? And then I saw it was like people who were having like dinner parties in their homes, you know, and I thought, well, or they were more so at like undisclosed locations. But I thought, I'm going to do that. So I reached back out to the press who had written about me and my pierogies and said, I'm going to do this thing.

Are you interested in writing about it? And they said, yeah. So I had a soft opening for doing an underground restaurant in my house. And I invited the PopSugar people because I knew that that had worked for the pierogies. And a couple other people, and they came and they left and they wrote about it. And that filled me up for a summer. Right. And so then after that, after I was booked for the summer, I quit my serving job.

And I was still making the pierogies on the side, but then just doing the underground full time. And through word of mouth, like, I didn't have to go back to any other job for at least two years. So when people would come to the dinners, I would sit and talk to them at the end, and they would ask me, you know, like, well, what's your goal with this? And I said, I want to have a restaurant. But at that time, some smaller restaurants had opened, like, in Chicago, like more of the fine dining boutique restaurants, where it wasn't like millions of dollars poured into it. Or their kitchens were just, you know, pretty, pretty small. And it was really kind of

humble. And there was this restaurant called Chua, which is still around. And I had worked with one of the guys at Trio a long time ago. And, and I said, you know, I kind of want to do something like that, you know, because I know he opened with less than like $80,000. And so I eventually found some investors that were like, we can help you with this. And so, yeah, and that's how Elizabeth came about was, you know, all of that. Like in that, I hear the story of somebody who's slowly coming into their own and learning how to trust their instincts and their gut and finding their voice, right? Because somebody else could have had that success with pierogies and turned that into a big food company and there's no restaurant or

underground. It's like, why bother with that? Like, I have this thing here that people want. Like, how do I scale this and turn it into a huge thing that's in every grocery store across america i mean that could have been a path that you could have pursued oh yeah no that was that would have been terrible and i remember there was like that there was mrs t's parodies do you remember that yeah like i'm a triathlete and they used to sponsor triathlon races, and those things would be at every race you would go to. Oh, yeah. I remember them. Yeah. But that's, yeah, I mean, that's the difference. That's why I'm also not a great business person, because most people would be like, oh, that's the thing that you got to do so you can make money.

You're like, no, I'm going to have dinners in my apartment for like 10 people. That sounds better, right? But this is the creative, you know, person that you are, right? You're following your muse as opposed to what, you know, the logical, grounded, rational person would direct you to do. And there were moments throughout my restaurant career where it was about like, okay, so the next thing you do,

because you do want to eventually make money, right. And it's like, yeah, okay. Like, I don't want to keep struggling like this. And so we opened a,

a bakery, which, um, you know, just, I didn't have a great business partner and things went South. And also that was me trying to run a second small business and do all of the things which was just impossible and then that was bunny yeah and bunny is inside

kitsune well that was the first version of bunny which was its own separate thing and we lasted four months and then there was kitsune which came not long after that and that was another attempt to like do something i loved and a food that i was really excited about and um again the same thing like i i had plenty of great investors on a on small scale so it wasn't any fault of uh theirs but we were undercapitalized, and I was trying to do everything myself again. And when I was at one restaurant, one would start to lose their shit and vice versa. And so for two and a half years, we were just constantly struggling to pick up the pieces, even though we had a lot of great reviews. Like, you know, Esquire, best new restaurants in GQ, best new restaurants in Chicago Magazine, best new restaurants.

And there was all this great press around it, but still trying to, you know, pay for things that, you know, were already like way spent with. Just spiraling in debt and trying to make payroll. Like the veneer or the public perception versus the not so glamorous reality of trying to run a business like that. But I mean, first of all, you open up Kitsune, Japanese restaurant. You've never been to Japan.

Like what is going on there? I think that our focus you know i didn't even really think about that like at the time like it wasn't like that for me it was more so like i was thinking about the excitement that we had behind making our own soys and kojis and working with ingredients that were from Japan, things that we kind of did at Elizabeth but really amplifying it, so taking the techniques and applying it to everything that we had from the Midwest and really just honoring that and not necessarily trying to recreate anything that was like Japanese

but still using the methods, if that makes any sense. So really just kind of honoring it in that way. But yeah, I felt like it was, for me, just exciting to be pushing myself to study that. And it didn't really mean having to have been there or lived there or anything like that. But I guess maybe from the outside world, people were like, what an idiot. That's my chef voice of other chefs. But it doesn't seem, I mean, from my perspective, it doesn't seem like that's going on

because what the public perceived was, here you have Elizabeth, this beautiful restaurant named after your sister who passed away. And you're opening up these other restaurants and you're kind of this queen of what's being dubbed the new gatherer cuisine. Like you're at the forefront,

like you're a face of like this new vanguard of food that's emerging and becoming more and more popular. So from the outside perspective looking in, it's like, wow, she's like this crazy entrepreneur and this brilliant creative chef and like all this good stuff is happening. So there had to be at least in the Venn diagram or in the timeline where everything seemed to be working pretty good. timeline where everything seemed to be working pretty good. Yeah, well, probably, yeah, from the outside, for sure. But I think a lot of people's direction was like, you have to find something that becomes something that's scalable and a little bit more profitable so that you can continue to support the thing that's the creative one,

right, Elizabeth? But what ended up happening was that I think we also took kitsune to be a little bit too cerebral as well, you know, and it ended up becoming this, like honoring the Japanese cuisine and techniques and people really didn't care as much that we were like making our own kojis and our own misos and this really beautiful miso soup that we needed to sell for $15 to like make it make sense. And I mean, obviously there were the people who cared, right? Like, you know, people who were having it that were experienced in food,

whether it was you know different critics or whatever but then there was also like just from a business standpoint like this is not going to work like the labor and the quality um and so i was actually not a good business person in that way like i think that the what i've learned learned with those two ventures is that anything I do is not really scalable'm almost crawling back underground. And we've even more than underground have gotten this like cabin, which is in the middle of nowhere. You know, it's a very, it's like, if you, if you look at it on Google maps, your little blue dot is in the middle of the Hiawatha National Forest, like smack dab in the middle. Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in the middle of nowhere. I'm originally from Michigan.

I spent all my summers growing up on Lake Michigan. My parents had a place on the Leelanau Peninsula. So I'm very familiar with that part of the world. And when you were describing Kitsune, I know that one of the sort of Achilles heels in that restaurant was location, right? There's no foot traffic in that neighborhood, et cetera. So I'm thinking, well, you have two, you have a decision to make. Either you find a way to do what you're doing scalable, or you kind of pull a Rene Redzepi and you close shop and you go on a walkabout and you try to figure out what's

most important to you and you take your time, you breathe. And Milkweed, this thing that you've opened in the Upper Peninsula is kind of your version of Rene traveling the world and doing his pop-ups. Like it's this new expression that is truly not scalable and incredibly difficult to get to. But there's a beautiful story in that that I think speaks to your ethos and is very wedded in your childhood and why you're even doing this to begin with. Yeah, I had, I think I learned a lot of that through the writing process. And a lot of it was me thinking about, like, what am I going to do? Like, what, you know, like really experiencing sometimes like the desperation of like, my job is cooking and this is what it is. Like, my job is cooking, and this is what it is, but how am I going to do this, you know, for another 10 years at the level that I am in the restaurant? Because it's quite exhausting, and I worry about, you know, my mental health, and we want to have a family, and how do we find the time to actually do that?

the time to actually do that? You know, how do we find the time as two women who have to work all the time to actually, you know, have a family and be able to, like, really do things that are way more important in life than, you know, working my ass off. And so I think I'd spent the last the last like year and a half or two years really thinking about while writing the book, like, what do I want my, our, our life to look like, what I want my life to look like and how do we do that considering the career that we're in. And so, um, so yeah, it's definitely scaling down was one, but like, how do we make that happen? And how do I get back to like, just really making the food make sense? Because

I am thinking about the whole time, like one of the most depressing things is actually, you know, cooking this fancy food for people that can afford it and, or not, they're just really save up, but like the carbon footprint of the deliveries. And we try to get all our things from farmers and support them. But like, you know, even walking through Whole Foods and seeing the mounds and mounds of just beautiful produce and, you know, just thinking about just everything that that are trying to be green, who are serving, you know, 100 people a day, like I struggle with just serving 20 people a day and making sure that I'm being conscious enough. Right. You know. And the waste has to be unbelievable. Yeah.

So how are other people doing this? And it just, it's so counterintuitive to actually how I want to live or how I want to be in the world. And so doing something that's much smaller, but still doing what we do, and which is serving people and cooking for them. But also, you know, doing it this way at Milkweed just fits, you know, like we're foraging for a lot of our stuff, but also, you know, our neighbor is, he comes over with these big lake trout that he catches in Lake Superior and we make those for people and go to the farmer's market once a week and support the local farmers around there,

which, again, is all things you can do in a restaurant, but it's just a way different. It's a way, for me, it feels so much better. Well, it's grounded. You know, it is the gatherer cuisine. Like, you know, it's not just in name but in practice. Like you're on, you have like 150 acres, right? And so you're foraging all these mushrooms and these berries and the like,

and gathering as much of that food from literally the property on which this restaurant sits, which is really an inn. Like people, correct me if I'm wrong, but you can serve 10 people. They stay overnight. They got to get up there. And it's kind of like this. It's not just a dinner. This is an experience. Yeah. And people come on Fridays and we cook a little bit of a more casual three-course dinner. Then Saturday morning, I make them bread and toast. And then we have a big lunch that I cook over the fire. And then Saturday night, there's a multi-course dinner, which is some more of the whimsy, more like, you know, planned out kind of constructed storytelling dinner. And then Sunday morning,

there's a breakfast and people have actually used it. Well, they want to obviously come to have all these meals that I cook for them, but they're going hiking and they're going down to the river and going swimming and trying to go fishing. I say trying because our dog George, he's New Finland, and he jumps in the river, and so all the fish are gone. But they're using it, they're're coming and then they're like oh next we're going to this place so people are using it as a spot to come to like really as an inn as they go and take their travels further along you know the The Great Lakes tour or the Upper Peninsula. And so it feels special to us. And plus, we get to connect with people who have been our guests for a long time

because some of the people that come to Elizabeth came to my house, and they've still been with me through this whole entire journey. That's nice. Yeah, it's pretty incredible considering I'm pretty introverted and don't have a lot to say. But sometimes when I get talking, then I really get talking. But I feel comfortable. You're doing a good job talking now. I feel comfortable with them because they've started to just kind of know that here's this shy person and

i just approach her and i don't you know we just kind of enjoy each other's presence you know and and um they have they've gotten to know me and it feels really special and some people have become our very close friends um just even recently over the years and um but. And then we're meeting new people too who have never come to Elizabeth, who have never done anything with us, but they lived in Appleton or they live in Canada and they heard about us and this is much closer to get to than Chicago. And it sounds like a different experience. So right now there's two people who came to the cabin who had never been to Elizabeth, who are from Chicago, who are watching our dog, our old English sheep dog, because they fell in love with her at the cabin. And they were like, we want to see her in Chicago.

And so we're like, well, next time we go out of town. And so they're actually watching her. So that's nice. Yeah. So it's like this really awesome new experience and way to connect with people, which is introverted as I am. Like I still love people. Like I'll always say I hate them because there's quite a lot about humanity I don't know if it's called humanity at that point but humans that I don't really like but there's quite a bit about humans and human nature that I do love and that is one of those things that I do is like really getting together with people like that and cooking for them and just kind of being able to share myself with them through cooking and us getting to know them. And so far, it's been an incredible experience.

Yeah. Well, one of the paths forward to healing what ails us is creating environments for people to get together and enjoy food in an intimate setting. And so I think that's an important part of, you know, bridging the gap or the, you know, communication divide that seems to have fractured us. You know, if we can get across from a table and create a communal experience,

that seems like a good way to begin to solve these problems, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, even thinking about that on a very, like, more specific level, like, we've already had people who are, like, you know, from, well, different cultures, but even, like, different political backgrounds, and they're all sitting at the table together. And I think everybody's smart enough not to bring up too much politics, but that they can actually all sit together and have an amazing time. You know, even our neighbor, we know like we are in different definitely,

you know, places on that spectrum, but we are already connecting over food and love of the outdoors. And it's like, yeah, we may have completely different political ideologies, but we are still human and we can still be friends and we can still care about each other and, you know, like coexist and be happy. Well, there's got to be some characters up there in the Upper Peninsula, right? Yeah. Probably not a lot of married lesbian couples. No. But if everything goes to shit, I think you're probably safe up there. We're close to Canada.

And you can get to Canada quickly. Well, that was, we thought about that. And also, yeah, we, our neighbor actually went to bat for us when some people started to figure out what we were doing up there because they were very concerned about their hunting camps and, you know, people coming through and he reassured them that, you know, we were good people and it was probably better for us to have a B&B than another hunting camp. And, you know, people who weren't, you know, also trying to hunt the same animals that they were. And, you know, we were like, no. And also you'll be a responsible, caring steward of the land. Yeah, exactly. And I think that he explained that to them and, you know, then the subject was changed. And it was never brought up, our sexuality, but I think that that was part of something too, that scared people a little bit, and they didn't know how they should be approaching us. But then he settled everybody.

And we even had some of those neighbors that were supposedly mad at us come over and bring us some welcome gifts and stuff like that. yeah and um i was also able to tell him to tell them you know if we're going to be there a lot more than they are through like the spring and summer months when they're not out there hunting and we're happy to go look at their cabins and make sure that everything you know nothing's collapsed under the snow or, you know, whatever. And so that, yeah, exactly. We get to be a little bit stewards out there and watch other people's places and help them take care of it when they're not there. How far from the bridge is it?

From the Mackinac Bridge? Yeah. I don't know because we don't come that way. Oh, you don't? No. You come up the other side. Well, Anna knows. Yeah.

Two hours. Two hours? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like two hours to the beginning of our road and then another hour. Oh, is it from that side? I know that from- It's not easy to get there is the point. No, I know from the Wisconsin border, once we cross over,

it's about two and a half hours to get from there to our place. Right, right, right. And we're pretty much right in the middle. So it's probably, yeah, it's probably similar from the other end as well. But you're closed now until spring. Yeah. And then what, you open June through August or something? No, actually next year we're going to be mid-May through mid-October.

So a full six months. And are you taking reservations now for that? Yeah, we're like half sold out. Oh, you are? Wow. Maybe a little bit more than that. I sent my dad, my parents live in Washington, D.C., and I sent him the Washington Post article about you and Milkweed, and my dad was all about it.

He was like, I need to tell her I need to go to this place. So you can look forward to my parents in case you sell out. Yeah. Yeah. It's been awesome. silicon and actually say like wow this is an incredible spot because even some of their areas like don't you you have to when you're driving up you do go the elevation becomes a little bit higher but it's extremely gradual and once you get to our place we're on the top of like a tiny mountain but when you're looking out you can see see like that we're pretty much up there.

And it's just a beautiful landscape because we're right butted up to the we're in the Hiawatha. But there's also some private areas that are being developed by loggers. But then when you get to our property, it um butted up against the hiawatha where actually nobody's going to be logging and so there's just so much right so like it's just covered in trees yeah it's awesome um i can't help but kind of reflect your career against the trajectory of of what renee is doing with noma um and i don't know if you know this but i joined jeff this past summer and went to noma and had dinner there and had that whole experience are you listening yeah um have you for you obviously you know renee gave

you a blurb for your book yeah he's the other you know the most renowned kind of foraging oriented chef right um yeah we um i've had dinner there twice because i've been to mad twice right right 2014 2016 and then um anna and i went there for noma mexico so we went down to tulum and I stashed for a day in the kitchen and, um, and then we had dinner and, and, uh, yeah, it's, it's incredible. That was the Tulum, Mexico, uh, Noma experience was probably one of my best meals ever. And Jeff was there for that too, I think. Yeah. We, we, we had just missed each other. Um, but yeah, I know he went down there for that too. So I did kind of, in preparation for going there, I did a little bit of a deep dive

on this whole kind of foraging culture and learned what I thought. So I thought I kind of knew what was going on when I arrived. When you went to Noma, was it the current incarnation of that restaurant? No, it was still in their old location. So I haven't been to any of the new menus.

It's pretty crazy. Like I knew it was going to be this extraordinary restaurant, but what I didn't anticipate was that he's literally, it's almost like a mini university. Like it's a compound with like several test kitchens and like multiple buildings. And there had to be 30 or 40 young people working in the kitchen to serve like less than that. I don't know, 40 people or something like that. And I got to meet David Zilber, his fermentation guy, and get to know him a little bit. And I walked away from that experience realizing like, I didn't know anything about what it is that he does. But a

couple of things that I noticed is he's really learned how to create a culture and cultivate a team because he's the executive chef. Like he's not in there preparing the meals. because he's the executive chef. Like he's not in there preparing the meals. Like he's the conductor of this amazing orchestra, but he's running like this massive operation. In contrast, I see, you know, I think that potential, you know, reality exists for you as well.

And to see you kind of go in a different direction after you know having had a similar kind of reboot experience that he had to go small and keep it intimate yeah that's so everything they do then yeah pretty much reduce it down to one and anna definitely helping me because we were out foraging this summer. And just, you know, with the amount of time it takes to collect what we collect, to even just serve two people and to prepare it and clean it and save it and make sure everything's good is like, wow. When I think about how they do it, that's why they need so many people.

Because if you want to really serve that kind of thing and be stewards of the land in a way, but then also, I don't know how they do it for 40 people at lunch or if they have two services. I'm absolutely still baffled, even with that many people in the kitchen. It's really incredible. It's an incredible feat. But yeah, I mean, I've thought about it. And I think it's different when you have the status that he has and the ability to have the teams that he's constructed. And I know that they've had their moments with struggling financially, and every restaurant does, no matter if you're the best restaurant in the world

or nowhere on any of those maps. But I feel like there's a lot of resources there, which I don't know if I could ever get, but now that I know that I would never want, because even with Kitsune, when I was making the decisions to close that, I felt like I had to try every single thing possible first before I could go back to our investors and say, I can't do this. And it was to the point of madness because I was losing their money. And for a lot of them, they were probably investing amounts that they knew that they could afford to lose. But for me, it was something different. And I was really just thinking about them because I didn't care how that reflected on my ego.

Like, I am so happy that restaurant's gone, you know, and I didn't care if it looked like I had failed because I really didn't feel like I did. It didn't feel like a failure. It felt like a really part of like just an economic situation that was not only like in our climate, but also who i was as a person you know not willing to make sacrifices to shop at cisco or you know companies where i couldn't look at the the product and think this is exceptional so but yeah they have a whole different, I really admire him and his like, the way that they think about food and, you know, everything because I felt really connected to that restaurant. I first heard about them in 2010 or 2011. So well after they were already established and after they were established with, you know, being a foraging restaurant rather than

what they were before. And I obviously felt really connected to that because that was the same place that I was coming from with my cooking. Because when I started, I was like, oh, well, I'm going to go with what I know, you know, which is being very local and very seasonal and foraging and all of that. And so have always really, really admired them. And I think that there's not a single thing, you know, there's Rene, if you see his food, you know, you'll have seen like probably a hundred other chefs somehow, you know, been inspired by it in one way or another. Yeah, the Nama diaspora.

Yeah. And even he will say, well, and his food comes from somewhere else that it was inspired by. That's all art. Yeah. And they do do a lot of things that I think, I don't know who else is making egg yolk mold pies. So that might be something brand new to them. Were you having the mold menu? Well, they made sure that I went for the Plant Kingdom menu,

and they went out of their way to make sure. I mean, it was essentially 95% vegan as it is, but they went the extra percent to make sure that everything that I had was totally vegan, which was amazing in and of itself. But yeah, I had the mold pie, a vegan version of that and like everything. I mean, it was crazy. I mean, I thought like, oh, this will be an amazing experience. And I just couldn't believe like what I was eating. Like it was just so different than anything I could have imagined or anticipated. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm really interested in that because I had heard one of my chefs was telling me about a chef she worked for in Chile. And they were trying to inoculate vegetables so that it kind of grew like that cheese, almost camembert mold on it. And then I don't know if they accomplished it or what, but I was like, wow, that's crazy. And I started to think on a scientific level how that would work. And then I saw that Noma was figuring this out. And I don't know how they do, um, I just kept thinking like, wow, I really want to see what that tastes like because that's, you know, I think that that's the

curiosity and the thing that is what they're doing that's so magical is that, you know, they're really reverting to, um, you know, nothing that's new, you know, making kojis and making misos and fermenting and all this stuff that has been around forever, but then creating new flavors out of that. And, you know, so that. Well, it's Zilber. I mean, that guy is on the cutting edge of that world. And he has, I mean, you studied chemistry. He's got an entire lab devoted to trying to figure this stuff out.

And we did a tour. I have it like as a highlight on my Instagram stories. You could check. Like Renee gave us a whole tour before dinner. But we go through the fermentation lab and go into the walk-in refrigerator. And there's this gigantic mason jars with different fermentations of everything you can possibly imagine in there where they're just testing everything, trying to come up with new flavors that have never been discovered before. Yeah. I don't have a fermentation lab, but I have a couple little cabinets.

I don't think anybody else does. But this goes back to what you learned with your mom in the farmhouse. You've been canning since you were a kid. Yeah. Sometimes ours is like, I don't know. I grew this weird thing. It doesn't look like it's bad. Okay, let's pinch off a little piece and taste it.

Are you sure we should eat this? We could end up in the hospital, you know? Yeah. I don't know how they figure out what's safe and what's going to kill you. Yeah. Well, I think I've heard that if it's not black mold and if it's not green and if it's not fuzzy, then it should be okay. Right. There was one thing they served.

What was it? Maybe it was the mold pie like it was something that if i had opened up my refrigerator and saw it in the pantry i would throw it out there's like you can't eat that yeah yeah but uh i don't know there there's it's just incredible and his food is so beautiful and, you know, it's really inspiring. And so, yeah, I think a lot of people are, you know, just extremely attracted to that. And a lot of chefs, you know, it's, yeah, it's incredible to see what they do and the way that he pushes the food movement.

And I think, I mean, 10 years ago, like people were talking about fermentation for sure, but not on the level that they are now. And even like the same people, like if we're just using Instagram or Twitter as a source, like the same people that I would see, that I've been following for a couple years now are like, I did this Koji thing and this mold thing and this other thing.

And so everybody does really kind of – I think that he's the one who is like, okay, we're going to do this next. And then slowly everybody else is doing it too. These trends. I mean, let's just check our privilege. Very few people get to have the opportunity of going to a place like Noma or the ability to go to the Upper Peninsula

and experience what you're creating. These are very privileged experiences, but they are touchstones culturally that then sort of find their way into the mainstream discussion and dialogue and practices of cuisine. Well, yeah, I think Chef Jeff was talking about a young lady who is in, I want to say Austin, Texas, but I'm not sure who is doing a lot of that. He was talking about her on the Dave Ching podcast.

I can't remember her name right now. But, you know, it's now all of these kind of things, but it's coming in a paper boat, you know, like just like very— Oh, I know what you're talking about. I think he talked about that. Yeah. I can't remember the name of that restaurant, though. Petra?

Petra? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he wrote about her as well. It might be Nashville. I can't remember what city it is. Oh, yeah, I can't remember. Or somewhere in the southeast. I can't remember what city it is. Yeah, I can't remember. Somewhere in the southeast.

I can't remember. But anyway, yeah, I mean, I think that that's interesting. Yeah, so it does eventually, yeah, translate into a little bit for everybody. But I don't know. I think that, yeah, it's interesting. Oftentimes I find myself, you know, when I get really excited about a lot of these different projects, one, wanting to teach myself it. And it's like, well, will I use it or not? I don't know. It just depends if I can apply it.

But, of course, I want to learn, which, you know, keeps me sharp as a chef, which I think is, and Jeff talked about this in his book too, like the curiosity of Rene, you know, and I feel like I have that same curiosity and I did as a child too, which I think made sense, like, you know, growing up around things that we were collecting and then everything became like, well, can I eat this and can I eat this? And, you know, so that implanted that into me, the curiosity. But, you know, it drives me to want to learn how to do it. But then I find that I want to check myself too and be like, all right, is this necessary?

Do I need to put this in the food does everything need to be like on the plate dry age koji fermented and also miso and also salt fermented like does every you know i don't think like there's becomes a a place where it's like okay we have what part of that is ego versus what's actually serving yeah like does it even make sense yeah Yeah. So, you know, it's, like, cool and it's fun, but then where do I have to draw the line? And there became a point, too, where, like, a year ago I said to my chef, okay, like, let's do a menu where we only serve things actually on plates and in bowls. And, like, remove the twigs in the moss in the rocks in the shells you know and like just make sure everything's on a plate um so yeah i go through those moments too because it's very easy to get caught up and seeing beautiful things and then being like oh i want to

you know serve something on a rock and serve something on some moss. And just like when does that actually make sense and when doesn't it? You know, like now being at Milkweed, it almost makes zero sense at my restaurant to serve things on moss. But at Milkweed, it makes complete sense to serve things on moss, even though we haven't served too much on moss. Right. Well, it's remaining, it's trying to's, it's trying to root yourself in that childlike state and staying there. Right. There's a period of that. And, and there is this full

circle thing about you, you know, you, you know, there's a, there's a part of the book where you lament the loss of, of the farmhouse and what that meant to you. And, and, and that was more kind of impactful on you than even your parents you know uh the the strife in your your parents marriage but now it's this like kind of coming home like rooting yourself and and what got you into this to begin with and it seems like that provides this beautiful kind of robust tableau for you to really in a tactile way like connect with that childlike state that allows you to create on that level. Yeah. There was a couple of years ago where I was just feeling really depressed all the time.

And what I would think about at night when I was laying in bed was how badly I wanted to feel like a kid again, like how badly I wanted to go back to that feeling like the child that I used to feel like. And I think that was a big part of, you know, writing my book too, when I was writing that early childhood section. the innocence and just how comforted I felt in that house. And so to feel better, I would tell myself at night, like, I'm going to buy that house back someday. I'm going to get that house back. And I thought that that was going to cure me, being able to go back there and create a life there. But instead, it became like,

a life there. But instead, it became like, how can I just create that atmosphere? Anyways, you know, how can I get back there in the way that I need to? Now, in obviously, in a way that makes sense. And I think that that's how milkweed, like, you know, came was a lot of that like really thinking like how do i want to feel and where do i want to go from here you know so that was a big part of it because then like a year or so later i think well maybe like six months later i met anna and then about a year or so later that's when i started looking like at cabins and things like that and off the grid and like, wow, where could we actually go? And then sort of obsessing about it. Well, healthier emotionally than trying to buy the old farmhouse and try to recreate the past in a healthier way. That's probably not a good idea. Yeah. You know? But, yeah, I think it's so, you know, like a big part of what I've done or what I do is, you know, like really say, like, okay, this is what I'm going to do.

And then do it. Like figure out how I can do the things, which to a lot of people might seem like nonsense at the time. Even when we were getting close to actually opening this summer for Milkweed, I had a couple realizations where I would be like, oh my God, this is fucking crazy. What are we doing? But it's like, well, I guess we're doing it. Location, location location location you know you're just like going like let's find the most remote hardest place to get to in america and open a restaurant there for 10 people only yeah and i didn't even go there first right like i

bought it without actually having visited the location really Yeah. And then the first time I drove there, I couldn't even get through, which was in early April. And then... Was there any structure on the property? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, the whole place was there. Like, there was... It was just, we hadn't seen it in person. So, yeah.

That's a leap of faith. Yeah. And it was really complicated to get to. And so after I finally got there, I came home and told Donna. I was like, I don't know how we're going to get people back there, but we're going to figure it out somehow. Well, I think it's working. People are interested in it. And looking back, it's one of those things where it appears that all the dominoes are perfectly lined up to bring you to this place.

Yeah. Does it, like, how does that color how you think about destiny? Does it feel like this is your destiny, that there's still like a lot to come because, you know, we will figure this out and see how it works for us and work out the kinks. And, you know, maybe we realize that in 2021, we don't want to do it for six months out of the year. Maybe, you know, we talk a lot about maybe being able to be, what are they called? Winter birds or summer birds? Like we're already snow birds. We're already planning our retirement.

So like we go to Milkweed when it's warm during the summer months. And then maybe we find some place in like New Mexico that's like an old, you you know route 66 motel that has 10 rooms and then we create an in there as well and we go there during the winter and um i don't know we got a bunch of ideas um she would like to maybe raise a family out in this area and i was like i don't know what i'm gonna do for work because I'm definitely not moving to LA and opening a restaurant. That sounds like the right thing for you. No. So I don't know. I feel like we're still really young in that way and thinking about like, well, what do we do when we grow up?

Maybe don't grow up. It's the childlike nature in you that allows you to do what you do. Yeah. So hold on to that. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know what. But right now, at least, it feels good. And I actually feel refreshed being back at Elizabeth. And we've kind of even scaled that back a little bit.

And I have somebody in the office now doing a lot of my office work and um so we've restructured in a way that feels good um you hired a chef when you were up yeah right but are you going to be back oh yeah no now he's he he was done at the end of august and now i've been back in the kitchen managing and actually full-time, which, so instead of having a kitchen boss, I have a boss in the office, which allows me to be the boss back in the kitchen. And so I feel like we're always evolving in that kind of way, but I feel, I've, I feel good about it. I probably have had a lot less complaints lately about my job and being back in the kitchen than I did a year ago, you know, before I was like, I'm never going back there. Can you stay away from the dishwasher?

No, I still been washing the dishes. This is the lesson I think we need to learn. But yeah, it's been feeling good. I feel a little bit more rejuvenated. Well, good. Let's land this plane. I mean, I think the final thing that I think would be kind of cool to leave people with is, what is it that you want?

Maybe you haven't even thought about this, but what is it that you want? Maybe you haven't even thought about this, but like, what is it that you would like people to take away from your story and this book? I have thought about it. Because I've gotten that question, you know, like, who is this book for? And I think it's for everybody. And I think what people can take away from it is that like, no matter what circumstance you're in, or if there's something out there you think that you want to do but think you can't do, you have to erase that. Because that was still a guiding principle for me is that friend that I mentioned in the book that always said, what are you waiting for? Permission. And it's like, you don't need it. Just whatever you want to do, do it. Set the intention. And then take all the steps for it. And even if you're told no along the way, keep trying.

Because all my first books that I wrote were rejected. Every time I talked about the restaurant I wanted to have, somebody told me no, that I couldn't do it. And here I am having a restaurant, having that property in the middle of nowhere, which people told me was never going to happen, and also having a book that was published. Right. And the book was many years, right? Like the editor or the publisher that published it initially reached out to you, but then you kind of danced with a major publisher for a while and ultimately went back, right? Like there was many years of you working on this.

He approached me in 2015. I wrote for about a year. Then I escaped for about a year and worked with an agent and that fell flat on its nose, and then I went back to him. Yeah, it's a story of perseverance and individuality and survival and identity. It's really quite an accomplishment. It's a beautiful book. I highly suggest everybody pick up Burn the Place. In the meantime, maybe read the New Yorker article about the book, which is, that's like super cool too. We didn't even talk about that.

Like who gets their book written about in the New Yorker? Like that's amazing. Yeah. Pretty much just famous people and then me. They called it brutal and luminous. They used all these really cool adjectives. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people like to use the term gothic around it too,

so I think it has a lot of that. There's aspects of it that reminded me of Just Kids, Patti Smith's book. I mean, it's a very different story. You would love's book. I mean, it's a very different story. Yeah. You would love that book. Okay, I'll have to get it. It's very, like, the singularity of the voice, because your voice is so unique, and hers is as well, and, like, just leaning into that as opposed to trying to, you know, adapt to some convention. Right.

Yeah, well, I'm glad that I went back to my small publisher, because the agent was actually going to have me ghostwritten by somebody. That would have been a disaster. Yeah. So it would not have, you know, and also insisted that I write the book linearly. I can't even say the word. Linearly. Yeah. Do that.

Well, I'm glad you wrote it the way that you wrote it. Yeah. It's a huge accomplishment and well done. And you seem happy. Yeah. So best of luck to you. Thank you. And come back and talk to me again sometime.

Okay. And I want to come to your restaurant. Yeah. And also with your parents to milkweed. Yeah, I'll make sure. We'll be in touch on that. Cool. So for everybody listening out there, what's the best way to connect with you?

Oh, best way is probably through Instagram or Twitter. So I think our Instagram is ElizabethRestaurant underscore and underscore co. And then Twitter is at ElizabethRest. You have a personal Twitter, but you haven't updated it since like 2016. No. Yeah. I don't use that one. Yeah.

Cool. And pick up Burn the Place. You won't regret it. Thank you. All right. Peace. Forging mushrooms. All right.

We did that. Pretty great, that Ileana. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Please hit her up on the socials and let her know what you thought of today's conversation. She is at Elizabeth Rest, R-E-S-T on Twitter and at Elizabeth Restaurant underscore and underscore co on Instagram.

And be sure to check out the show notes on the episode page to learn more. And don't forget to check out her book, Burn the Place. It really is great. It's a wonderful memoir. I encourage all of you guys to check it out. If you'd like to support our work here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on the show on Apple Podcasts or and Spotify for all you Android users and YouTube for the visually inclined. You can share the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media.

I love seeing all the screen grabs on Instagram. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show.

Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing the visual version of today's show.

Jessica Miranda for graphics. Allie Rogers for portraits, DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Analema. Appreciate all of you. Thanks for the love. I will see you back here soon, shortly, with CEO and founder of Beauty Counter, Greg Renfrew.

It's a great one. Here's a clip to take you out. Until then, peace, plants, namaste. One and a half pages of legislation Here's a clip to take you out. You know, the sperm count in the U.S. is down 50% over the last 25 years. And, you know, about 40% of male sperm is now defective. So if we don't think it's impacting men, it's absolutely impacting. It's impacting all of us. And so, you know, every one of us needs to be focused on our bodies and our safety and hopefully, you know, just knowing a little bit more. And I also think that, you know that I say the product we sell is beauty, but we're trying to sell a clean lifestyle, a lifestyle that you live, Rich.

I think that just those little things like just wash your floors with water and vinegar, take your shoes off at the door, get rid of the plastic containers over time, don't use nonstick pans. There's some basic things that can make a difference in your life right out of the gate. Thank you.